During the first Trump term, my dad (who lost his entire family in the Holocaust, before joining the partisans and fighting against the Nazis) often said America needs fewer norms and more laws. During the second Trump term, it's unclear that laws will be enough. Trump, along with what increasingly looks like his personal Justice Department, has gone to great lengths to dispute legal rulings, delay reactions to judicial orders, and even call for the impeachment of judges who issue decisions he doesn't like. I'd say this is a slippery slope, but it feels more like a near free fall. Don't take it from me, take it from Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist and coauthor of 'How Democracies Die' and 'Competitive Authoritarianism.' "'Honest to god, I’ve never seen anything like it...We look at these comparative cases in the 21st century, like Hungary and Poland and Turkey. And in a lot of respects, this is worse,' he said. 'These first two months have been much more aggressively authoritarian than almost any other comparable case I know of democratic backsliding.' There are many examples of autocratic leaders constraining the power of the judiciary by packing courts with compliant judges, or by changing the laws that give them authority, he said. But it is extremely rare for leaders to simply claim the power to disregard or override court orders directly, especially so immediately after taking office.'" NYT (Gift Article): Trump’s Judicial Defiance Veers Beyond the Autocrat Playbook.
+ One of the key cases in which Trump is attacking a judge involves the administration's decision to deport a group of Venezuelan men—not to Venezuela, but to a notoriously brutal prison run by a dictator in El Salvador. So let's take a look at What the Venezuelans Deported to El Salvador Experienced in this extension of American justice. "Inside the intake room, a sea of trustees descended on the men with electric shavers, stripping heads of hair with haste. The guy who claimed to be a barber began to whimper, folding his hands in prayer as his hair fell. He was slapped. The man asked for his mother, then buried his face in his chained hands and cried as he was slapped again. After being shaved, the detainees were stripped naked. More of them began to whimper; the hard faces I saw on the plane had evaporated. It was like looking at men who passed through a time machine. In two hours, they aged 10 years. Their nice clothes were not gathered or catalogued but simply thrust into black garbage bags to be thrown out with their hair. They entered their cold cells, 80 men per cell, with steel planks for bunks, no mats, no sheets, no pillow. No television. No books. No talking. No phone calls and no visitors. For these Venezuelans, it was not just a prison they had arrived at. It was exile to another world, a place so cold and far from home they may as well have been sent into space, nameless and forgotten. Holding my camera, it was as if I watched them become ghosts."
+ You might be disturbed at this harsh treatment being meted out to people who haven't been convicted of any crime. But this form of justice developed in El Salvador by President Nayib Bukele is not frowned upon by all Americans. It's being celebrated and even emulated. NY Mag: This Is Fascism: What Trump’s affection for El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele reveals about the fallen state of American democracy.
+ Meanwhile... Trump suggests sending Tesla vandals to El Salvador prisons. I guess this draconian law and order is required in a nation being overrun by crime. Oh wait. NORC’s Live Crime Tracker Shows Major Crime Declines in 2024. "The 2024 decline across multiple crime categories reflects a five-year trend of unparalleled change in crime in the United States compared to historical norms."
+ Trump isn't just attacking the judiciary, he's going after lawyers too. And some of them are ceding ground. NYT (Gift Article): Law Firm Bends in Face of Trump Demands. (If you just look at the nuts and bolts of the deal, Paul, Weiss — one of three law firms targeted by President Trump as part of his retribution campaign — didn't really agree to all that much. But Newton's law of inertia applies to ceding ground to autocrats. An object in motion remains in motion.)
"When employees at meta started developing their flagship AI model, Llama 3, they faced a simple ethical question. The program would need to be trained on a huge amount of high-quality writing to be competitive with products such as ChatGPT, and acquiring all of that text legally could take time. Should they just pirate it instead?" (Big tech facing a simple ethical question? I guess I should have said spoiler alert.) The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem. (Even my book was included. I guess they're scraping the internet, the database, and the barrel.)
"The Netflix feature was a breakout moment in Mr. Johnson’s five-year campaign to become the face of one of Silicon Valley’s most oddball fascinations: the pursuit of everlasting youth. The 47-year-old former Mormon missionary has become known for experimenting on his own body to defy aging, captivating the media and his nearly four million social media followers by receiving the blood plasma of his then-17-year-old son and repeatedly shocking his penis to increase his erections." But apparently Bryan Johnson has a lot to hide (which says something when he's already shared the penis shocking). NYT(Gift Article): How Bryan Johnson, Who Wants to Live Forever, Sought Control via Confidentiality Agreements. "Publicly, Mr. Johnson focused on other things. This month, he announced his own religion." (Oddly, the more I learn about the guy who wants to grant us everlasting life the more I sort of want to die.)
What to Movie: Conclave manages to create a riveting thriller about one of the world’s most secretive and ancient events – selecting a new Pope. The movie gets a big assist from it's soundtrack that consists mostly of a cello and and instrument called a Cristal Baschet. The latter is a pretty obscure instrument that needs to be played with wet hands. Here's more.
+ What to Sports: One of my 2025 escapes is watching sports, thinking about sports, listening to sports radio, and reading about sports. The last item is assisted by the excellent newsletter, Yahoo Sports AM.
+ What to Book: Looking to get into the investing game? Thousands of books tell you how to invest. Barry Ritholtz's latest takes a different tact. How Not to Invest.
Grift, Drift, Shift, Lift: "There is opportunity in this drift: to reimagine what the party stands for, how it will fight its way back and who will lead it. Over the last few weeks, I’ve spoken to some members of the newer generation of Democrats in Congress wrestling with these questions, to the up-and-coming governor of Maryland and to activists who have battled authoritarianism in other countries. Their ideas leave me hopeful that there is a path for America’s political opposition if it casts off a top-down Washington strategy, stale talking points about democracy and the middle class and its own circular firing squads." Ben Rhodes: There Is a Way for Democrats to Stop Trump and Save America.
+ Let Them Eat Cybertrucks: "Food banks across the country are scrambling to make up a $500 million budget shortfall after the Trump administration froze funds for hundreds of shipments of produce, poultry and other items that states had planned to distribute to needy residents."
+ Dismantlepiece: "A little more than 23 years ago, Republican President George W. Bush sat at a desk at a high school in Hamilton, Ohio, and signed a law that would vastly expand the role of the Education Department and transform American schooling. On Thursday, his Republican successor, President Donald Trump, signed a very different document — this one an executive order designed to dismantle the department."
+ Terrorschism: "The FBI has cut staffing in an office focused on domestic terrorism and has scrapped a tool used to track such investigations, in a shift that could undermine law enforcement’s ability to counter white supremacists and anti-government extremists." (Anti-government extremism is the official policy of the current administration.)
+ Don't Short Elon: Motorists have traded in a record number of Tesla electric vehicles this month. Luckily, the Tesla stock has fans in high places. "Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick urged Fox News viewers Wednesday night to buy Tesla stock, an apparent violation of federal ethics rules that prohibit officials from endorsing products or businesses." Lutnick urges Fox News viewers to buy Tesla stock, raising ethics questions. (Actually, this doesn't raise ethics questions, it provides ethics answers.) Anyway, the problem is not the cars, the recalls, the Chinese competition, or Elon's torching of his own brand. Musk links trans people to Tesla attacks.
+ Throwing Shade at Shade: "The Trump administration's efforts to end federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs has hit an unexpected target: In February, communities around the country learned that funding was canceled for a nationwide tree-planting program aimed at making neighborhoods cooler, healthier and more resilient to climate change."
+ Your Bracket Can't Hack It: Feeling bummed about your March Madness bracket? Well, don't. And I'm not just saying that because mind literally didn't last through the first game. By the end of the first day, 99.9% of brackets were eliminated.
"Some students made homemade treats for pets at a local animal shelter, while others used their $20 to buy toiletries and food for unhoused people. 'One of my favorites was a student who bought $20 worth of doughnuts while visiting some of her family members in the Midwest,' Ulmer said. 'She stood on a corner with her uncle and randomly handed them out to people. It’s something she continues to do now every year.'" Teacher gives $20 to her students with one rule: Use it for kindness. (I used to teach high school in Brooklyn and more than a few times I considered giving my students $20 to do their homework.)
+ Canadian city blocks street for weeks so tiny salamanders can cross. (These are the people we're picking a fight with?)
+ How Alabama students went from last place to rising stars in math.
+ Researchers in New Zealand saw a colorful blob on top of a shark’s head. When they looked closer, they realized it had eight arms. This Octopus’s Other Car Is a Shark.
+ A happy ending to the story about the 11 year-old kid who pulled a rare baseball card. Rare rookie card of Pirates' Paul Skenes fetches $1.11M at auction. (The kid is a Dodgers fan, but this is the Feel Good Friday section, let's skip that part.)
