“The point of tariffs is not to make those things made by evil Johnny Foreigner more expensive. It is to enable the domestic capitalists to raise the prices of their domestically made goods: ‘HS2 firm says new steel tariffs will ‘exacerbate’ cost pressures for UK construction industry’ Doubling tariffs on imported steel will raise cost of the metal when Iran war is already inflating steel and concrete prices This is not an error nor a happenstance: it’s the whole and precise point of the act itself. … So, let’s not do that. Let’s not make everything in the country more expensive just to benefit that fraction of the 1%.” (03/31/26)
“The numbers from No Kings protests made a big splash. Roughly 8 million people declared their opposition to the present administration this past weekend in over 3100 cities and towns across the nation. But in the long run the impact of quality will be greater than quantity. Beyond the splash, the values expressed in the protests will continue to ripple through our collective consciousness. Here are some of those ripples that will spread out and energize resistance efforts in the weeks, months, and years ahead. Harmony and Equality: Those who showed up on the streets joined as one, all equal, no person better or more entitled than the other. Their participation loudly reaffirmed cherished democratic values as expressed in the First Amendment and human values anchored in the world’s religions.” (03/31/26)
“On Friday, the Iranians destroyed a U.S. Air Force E-3 Sentry aircraft at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. The drone and missile attack on the base also injured 12 U.S. soldiers. This was foreseeable — and in fact foreseen. Yet if President Donald Trump was concerned about this predicted threat, he hid it well. … perhaps the Iranians just got lucky with the shot that destroyed the E-3 Sentry in Saudi Arabia. But since the beginning of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, numerous reports have indicated that the Russians are helping Iran with their targeting of U.S. forces.” (03/31/26)
Source: The Dispatch
by Greg Lukianoff & Adam Goldstein
“Everybody understands, at least instinctively, why it matters when a president threatens the press. People also more or less understand why it matters when he menaces universities, museums, or other cultural institutions. Those are visible targets, and they read as political in an obvious way.
Attacks on law firms land differently. Part of that is because many major firms are hardly natural objects of public sympathy. Most everyday Americans won’t shed many tears for institutions associated with enormous hourly rates, corporate power, and a profession that people tend to joke about until they need a lawyer. … But that perception is exactly why this threat is so easy to underestimate.” (03/31/26)
“Meet the conservative legal minds telling the Supreme Court to side with Trump.” [editor’s note: By definition, a “conservative legal mind” would support birthright citizenship. Birthright citizenship is what the US has always had, and what the US Constitution has unambiguously mandated for the last 150 years. Only “living constitutionalists” (usually calling themselves “progressives”) could hold otherwise – TLK] (03/31/26)
“For months, lone vibe coder Rafael Concepcion has obsessively built tools to counter the federal immigration crackdown — pivoting as he’s been outmatched. He’s also lost his job and become a target.” (03/31/26)
“For many decades, U.S. presidents have cited national security as a reason for this or that exercise of power … and spending. Watching CBS’s 60 Minutes two weeks ago, it became painfully obvious that ‘national security’ are simply two words our past leaders spat out when politically convenient and not at all a concept to which they have paid serious attention.” (03/31/26)
Source: The American Prospect
by David Dayen & Maureen Tkacik
“For 14 years, the Abu Dhabi Investment Council (ADIC) remained silent about John Raymond’s woefully underperforming Houston private equity firm Energy & Minerals Group (EMG). The $330 billion sovereign wealth fund’s leadership made no public pronouncements when Raymond, son of the iconic Exxon chief executive who masterminded the merger with Mobil, agreed to invest some $3 billion in the new venture of extravagant fracking mogul Aubrey McClendon, who’d just been forced out of the company he’d founded for looting corporate coffers …. They raised no alarm bells when McClendon and his new company American Energy Partners were sued a few years later for stealing trade secrets, or when the next year he was indicted for orchestrating a vast bid-rigging conspiracy, or when following his spectacular death the day after the indictment by driving 75 miles per hour into an overpass wall, EMG’s investments were themselves set ablaze.” (03/31/26)
“Cases before the Supreme Court inevitably present hard issues of law and almost always involve questions over matters about which the lower courts have disagreed. But the constitutionality of President Trump’s executive order limiting birthright citizenship is an easy question of law and every single judge to rule on it has found it to be unconstitutional. On Wednesday, the justices will hear oral arguments in Trump vs. Barbara, and even for a conservative court that has repeatedly sided with the president, it is hard to imagine the justices upholding an executive order that is so clearly in violation of historical practice, the text of the Constitution and decided precedents.” (03/31/26)
