They would have dragged him out by the neck to the nearest tree.....

Obama and Harris publicly rebuke Trump’s second-term actions

By Kaanita Iyer, Eva McKend and David Wright

Former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday each delivered remarks on the state of the country under President Donald Trump’s second term and criticized the administration’s recent actions.

Obama, who preceded Trump’s first term, sharply criticized Trump’s efforts to reshape the federal government, crackdown on immigration and dissent, and intimidate news outlets and the legal establishment.

“So, this is the first time I’ve been speaking publicly for a while,” Obama said during an on-stage interview at Hamilton College. “I’ve been watching for a little bit.”

“Imagine if I had done any of this,” Obama said, later adding: “It’s unimaginable that the same parties that are silent now would have tolerated behavior like that from me, or a whole bunch of my predecessors.”

Obama went on to say that he doesn’t think Trump’s new tariff announcement “is going to be good for America.” However, he said that he is more concerned with what he described as the White House’s infringement of rights.

“I’m more deeply concerned with a federal government that threatens universities if they don’t give up students who are exercising their right to free speech,” Obama told the crowd of college students. “The idea that a White House can say to law firms, if you represent parties that we don’t like, we’re going to pull all our business or bar you from representing people effectively. Those kinds of – that kind of behavior is contrary to the basic compact we have as Americans.”

Obama had previously warned of the dangers facing the country if Trump were reelected, while campaigning for Harris during the final stretch of the 2024 presidential race. “Just because (Trump) acts goofy,” the former president said at the time, “doesn’t mean his presidency wouldn’t be dangerous.”

In separate remarks, Harris on Thursday said Trump’s moves since he returned to office were largely predictable.

“There were many things we knew would happen,” Harris said in a video of her remarks at the Leading Women Defined Summit. “I’m not here to say I told you so,” she added before laughing.

Harris said she recognizes that Trump’s return to the Oval Office has created “a great sense of fear.”

“We are seeing organizations stay quiet. We are seeing those who are capitulating to clearly unconstitutional threats. And these are the things that we are witnessing, each day in the last few months in our country and it understandably creates a great sense of fear,” Harris said.

Earlier this week, Trump announced a deal with the law firm that employs former second gentleman Doug Emhoff – Willkie Farr & Gallagher – which the president said includes the firm agreeing to provide at least $100 million in pro bono legal services throughout his second term. It was another example of high-profile firms cutting deals with the White House as Trump has targeted firms that have done work with his perceived political enemies.

Before the Willkie agreement was announced, Emhoff addressed the matter saying, “The rule of law is under attack. Democracy is under attack. And so, all of us lawyers need to do what we can to push back on that.”

Harris’ Thursday remarks, video of which were first reported by MSNBC, are her most direct comments since the start of Trump’s second term.

The former vice president, who lost to Trump in the November election, went on to say that while fear is “contagious,” so is courage.

“Fear has a way of being contagious. When one person has fear, it has a way of spreading to those around them and spreading. And we are witnessing that, no doubt,” Harris said at the gathering of female leaders of color.

“But I say this also, my dear friends, courage is also contagious,” she added.

Google drops pants and turns around and bends over for Mango..

 Google takes it in the ass, then turns around and sucks off the tiny dick of orange president mango...

Stocks take it in the ass.... Thanks' fucking stupid maggots....

Dow plunges 2,200 points as tariff tumult rocks markets

By David Goldman and John Towfighi

US stocks were battered by a steep sell-off Friday after China retaliated against the United States for President Donald Trump’s tariffs in a tit-for-tat that escalates a global trade war.

The Dow plunged by 2,231 points, or 5.5%. The broader S&P 500 was 5.97% lower. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite was 5.82% lower.

The Nasdaq closed in a bear market for the first time since 2022, down more than 20% from its record high in December.

The Dow closed in correction, down more than 10% from its record high in December. It is the first time the Dow has closed in correction since March 7, 2022, according to Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research. The Dow posted its biggest back-to-back losses since March 2020, during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The S&P 500 shed $5.06 trillion in market value across the past two days, according to Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices. The benchmark index, which entered correction Thursday, sank more than 10% over the past two days.

Investors have been fearful that a dramatic escalation of a trade war could plunge the US and global economies into a recession. JPMorgan analysts said Thursday that America’s economy and the broader world economy both had a 60% chance of sinking into a recession this year. The analysts also said odds of a recession would rise if countries began to retaliate against the United States — and China did so Friday. Retaliation raises the risk of further escalation and could diminish hopes for negotiation.

“Markets may actually be underreacting, especially if these rates turn out to be final, given the potential knock-on effects to global consumption and trade,” said Matt Burdett, head of equities at Thornburg Investment Management. “The tariffs have injected a level of uncertainty and volatility we haven’t seen since the early days of the pandemic.”

US stocks briefly rallied from their lowest point of the morning after Trump posted on social media that he had a “very productive call” with To Lam, the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam.

“[Lam] told me that Vietnam wants to cut their Tariffs down to ZERO if they are able to make an agreement with the U.S. I thanked him on behalf of our Country, and said I look forward to a meeting in the near future,” Trump said.

Nike (NKE), which slumped Thursday, rallied 3%. Nike relies extensively on international supply chains and imports from Vietnam, where many of its factories are located.

Yet stocks eventually slid back near their lows of the day as investors grappled with the extent of Trump’s tariffs and the potential for a slowdown in economic growth. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said during prepared remarks Friday that inflation could remain elevated because of Trump’s tariffs.

“While uncertainty remains elevated, it is now becoming clear that the tariff increases will be significantly larger than expected. The same is likely to be true of the economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth,” said Powell, who spoke at an event just outside Washington, DC. “The size and duration of these effects remain uncertain.”

Tariff anxiety roils Wall Street

Investors Friday morning wrestled with tariff anxiety while also digesting fresh data that showed stronger-than-expected job growth in March. The US economy added 228,000 jobs in March, a significant increase from February’s revised gains of 117,000, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Friday.

While job growth beat expectations, tariff angst continues to drive market sentiment.

“Unfortunately, the market is no longer focused on the jobs market and focused squarely on tariffs and trade wars as the US plays chicken with the rest of the world, potentially beginning a downward spiral into a worldwide recession,” said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer at Northlight Asset Management.

Traders ditched risky stocks, especially tech companies whose products are manufactured overseas and could soon be subject to enormous tariffs. Apple (AAPL), which tumbled more than 9% Thursday, was down another 7.3% Friday.

As stock futures tumbled ahead of the opening bell, Trump posted on social media, “To the many investors coming into the United States and investing massive amounts of money, my policies will never change. This is a great time to get rich, richer than ever before!!!”

Wall Street’s fear gauge, the Cboe Volatility Index, or VIX, surged 50%. “Extreme fear” was the sentiment driving markets, according to CNN’s Fear and Greed index, which slumped to its lowest level this year as investors braced for an escalating global trade war.

And as investors sold stocks, they poured money into traditional safe havens, including government bonds. The 10-year Treasury yield, which briefly fell below 4% Thursday for the first time since October, fell firmly below 4% Friday as investors bought bonds to insulate themselves from a potential economic downturn. Bond prices and yields trade in opposite directions.

Gold prices surged above $3,130 a troy ounce Friday morning, setting another record, before sliding to around $3,030. Gold has soared this year as investors seek out safe havens.

Investors ditched other commodities, including oil, out of fear that the trade war could send the global economy into a recession. US oil, which plunged nearly 7% Thursday, tumbled another 7.4% to $61.99 a barrel. Brent oil futures, the global benchmark, fell 6.5%. Both US oil and the global benchmark settled at their lowest level since 2021.

China retaliates against Trump’s tariffs

China announced sweeping 34% tariffs on all US goods starting April 10, a major escalation of a trade war that has been raging for years between the world’s two largest economies. But the tit-for-tat tariff escalation kicked into high gear after Trump took office for the second time in January.

Trump in February placed an additional 10% tariff on all Chinese goods imported to the US and doubled that rate to 20% in March. On Wednesday, Trump announced that tariffs on China would rise to 54%. That’s on top of existing import taxes, which he and former President Joe Biden already had in place on the country. So the effective tariff rate America imposes on Chinese goods will be well above 54% starting April 9.

Markets have been on edge: The Russell 2000, which tracks smaller companies, entered a bear market Thursday. Stocks tumbled all over the world Friday: European and UK stocks were down more than 3%, on pace for their worst performance in years.

On Thursday, the Dow fell more than 1,600 points, or nearly 4%. The S&P 500 fell nearly 5% and the Nasdaq plunged nearly 6%. Each of the three major US indexes recorded its worst performance in about five years, since the Covid-19 pandemic.

“This is just the tip of the spear. Next it’s going to be retaliation from the EU and other nations. Banks, airlines and other service sector firms are going to get targeted,” said RSM’s Joe Brusuelas. “The Chinese are calling Trump’s bluff.”

UBS on Friday lowered its year-end target for the S&P to 5,800 from 6,400 and said the US economy could enter recession in the near-term due to the impact of Trump’s tariffs.

“In the near term, we believe the effective tariff rates could be higher still, and without President Trump taking active steps to reduce tariffs over the next three to six months, we are likely to enter a downside scenario, including a meaningful US recession and lower equity markets,” said Solita Marcelli, chief investment officer for the Americas at UBS Global Wealth Management, in a note Friday.

Negotiations or more tariffs?

Trump said Thursday after the market close that he was open to negotiation on trade. He cited TikTok as an example, hoping China would agree to a sale of the popular social media app to a potential US buyer in exchange for lower tariffs.

“Every country has called us. That’s the beauty of what we do, we put ourselves in the driver’s seat,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One Thursday. “As long as they are giving us something that’s good. For instance, with TikTok as an example, we have a situation with TikTok where China will probably say, ‘We’ll approve a deal, but will you do something on the tariffs?’ The tariffs give us great power to negotiate. They always have.”

Some countries say they’re in active negotiations with the United States to lower the tariff barriers Trump announced this week. The United Kingdom, for example, said it is in talks with the United States to strike an economic agreement, British Foreign Minister David Lammy said on Friday.

But other countries chose to retaliate. Canada on Thursday announced retaliatory tariffs on some US-made cars.

France’s finance minister said the European Union was not considering reciprocal tariffs to respond to the Trump administration’s tariffs, because they could hurt European consumers, but the EU could target individual US companies, Eric Lombard said in an interview Friday with CNN affiliate BFMTV. The New York Times on Thursday reported the EU was considering penalties against Tesla.

Trump on Thursday dismissed the massive declines in the stock market, saying it’s “to be expected” and that the economy is in a “transition period.” He called the economy a “sick patient.”

Markets have more to digest on Friday. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is set to hold a discussion later Friday morning at which he will undoubtedly be asked about markets and the economy in the wake of Trump’s tariff announcement.

Deportation flights

Attorney General Bondi defends Trump administration handling of deportation flights

From CNN's Betsy Klein

Attorney General Pamela Bondi defended the Trump administration’s handling of the deportations of alleged gang members to El Salvador using a rarely used wartime law, saying the government did not defy a court order when it refused to turn two deportation flights around last month.

“I don’t think anyone defied an order by a judge. That’s pending in court right now. I think our attorneys have argued in court. I think there were arguments yesterday. We’re awaiting a ruling. I anticipate this will go to the Supreme Court, be ruled in our favor. I don’t believe anyone defied a court order,” Bondi told CNN during a news conference Friday.

Bondi continued, “Testimony came out in court that those planes not only had taken off but were outside of American airspace. Moreover, they were illegal aliens from El Salvador. … They were some of the worst of the worst to qualify under the Alien Enemies Act, and we should be concerned about the victims of these crimes here in our states more than these defendants.”

More context: Her comments come one day after a contentious hearing in which US District Judge Boasberg said that he is looking at whether “probable cause” exists to hold Trump administration officials in contempt for violating his orders halting the use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members.

Boasberg ordered in March that the government turn the planes around immediately pending a legal challenge to Trump’s use of the sweeping wartime authority. At the start of Thursday’s hearing, Boasburg told a Justice Department attorney there was a “fair likelihood” that the government didn’t comply with his orders but that he was open to be persuaded otherwise.

Tumbles 1,000 points

Dow tumbles 1,000 points after China retaliates against Trump's tariffs

From David Goldman and John Towfighi

US stocks opened sharply lower Friday after China retaliated against the United States for President Donald Trump’s tariffs in a tit-for-tat that escalates a global trade war.

The Dow fell 1,000 points, or 2.5%, and the broader S&P 500 was 2.6% lower. The tech-heavy Nasdaq was 3% lower and flirting with bear-market territory — a decline of 20% from its peak in December.

Plays with himself as america dies...

trump arrives at Florida golf course as global trade war escalates and markets stumble

From Jeff Zeleny 

With a global trade war escalating, President Donald Trump arrived at his golf course on Friday morning about 15 minutes after the US financial markets opened amid a second day of fallout from a new tariff policy that is disrupting the world economy.

The president waved to onlookers as his motorcade turned into the Trump International Golf Club after a short drive from his Mar-a-Lago resort, where he arrived Thursday night. He is expected to remain in Florida, with no public events on his schedule, until Sunday evening.

Split-screen moment: While the president has traveled to Florida most weekends since taking office, his arrival on the golf course on Friday morning offered a remarkable split-screen to the deepening crisis on Wall Street and across the economy in the hours before the latest wave of tariffs are set to take effect at midnight. Those 10% tariffs on countries across the world are set to be followed next week by far larger levies on allies and adversaries alike, including China, Europe and Japan.

Before hitting the links, the president sent a series of a messages on social media about his trade policy, defending his actions and promoting America as a strong place to do business.

“To the many investors coming into the United States and investing massive amounts of money, my policies will never change,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “This is a great time to get rich, richer than ever before!!!”

No matter where they travel, all presidents are accompanied by the trappings of office and can conduct business from anywhere. On Friday, Trump was doing just that from his golf course, a White House official said, taking calls and speaking to his advisers.

He left the White House on Thursday afternoon to attend a LIV Golf event at Trump National Doral Golf Club in Miami. The golf tournament is almost entirely funded by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund.

At what point do you ask if he is crazy?????

trump administration fires director of National Security Agency

By Sean Lyngaas, Katie Bo Lillis and Alayna Treene

The Trump administration has fired the director and deputy director of the National Security Agency, the United States’ powerful cyber intelligence bureau, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the situation, members of the Senate and House intelligence committees and two former officials familiar with the matter.

The dismissal of Gen. Timothy Haugh, who also leads US Cyber Command — the military’s offensive and defensive cyber unit — is a major shakeup of the US intelligence community which is navigating significant changes in the first two months of the Trump administration. Wendy Noble, Haugh’s deputy at NSA, was also removed, according to the former officials and lawmakers.

The top Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence committee, Sen. Mark Warner and Rep. Jim Himes, denounced the firing of Haugh, who served in the roles since February 2024, in statements on Thursday night.

Lt. Gen. William Hartman, an experienced military officer and the deputy of Cyber Command, is expected to serve as acting head of the command and NSA, the two former officials said.

The news of the dismissals comes as the White House also fired multiple staff members on the National Security Council on Thursday, after Laura Loomer, the far-right activist who once claimed 9/11 was an inside job, urged President Donald Trump during a Wednesday meeting to do so, arguing that they were disloyal.

Loomer, who brought a list with roughly a dozen names of people she deemed insufficient in their support of Trump, also advocated for the firing of Haugh and Noble, two sources familiar with the meeting told CNN.

During the meeting, Loomer told the president that Haugh specifically should be fired because he was handpicked by the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley. Haugh was nominated in 2023, while Milley was serving, to head up the NSA and Cyber Command.

In a social media post overnight Loomer said, “NSA Director Tim Haugh and his deputy Wendy Noble have been disloyal to President Trump. That is why they have been fired. As a Biden appointee, General Haugh had no place serving in the Trump admin given the fact that he was HAND PICKED by General Milley.” She went on, “Thank you President Trump for being receptive to the vetting materials provided to you and thank you for firing these Biden holdovers.”

Loomer did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment on Haugh and Noble’s dismissals, however, she told CNN on Thursday that it “was an honor to meet with President Trump and present him with my findings, I will continue working hard to support his agenda, and I will continue reiterating the importance of strong vetting, for the sake of protecting the President and our national security.”

Cyber Command and the NSA declined to comment and referred CNN to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which could not be immediately reached for comment. CNN has requested comment from the White House National Security Council.

Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer, who serves on the House Intelligence Committee, called the move “insane” and said he hasn’t received an explanation for the decision in a strong reaction on “CNN News Central” Friday morning.

“You’re talking about a moment where you would not want to destabilize the national security agency, and this is exactly what the president has done, without any explanation to any of us, except to listen to Laura Loomer. And you know this is just more again, just pure chaos instead of common sense,” Gottheimer told CNN’s Kate Bolduan.

Last month, Haugh hosted billionaire Elon Musk, who oversees the Department of Government Efficiency, at the NSA and Cyber Command headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland.

Some current and former defense officials say there is a growing culture of fear inside the officer ranks within the Defense Department, among officials who worry that they could be fired at any moment for conduct deemed insufficiently loyal to Trump.

Haugh was not in the now-infamous group chat on the messaging app Signal, in which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other top officials discussed a sensitive military operation targeting the Houthis in Yemen while unaware that a journalist was part of the group. At a House Intelligence Committee hearing last week where Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe were grilled about the Signal group chat debacle, Haugh testified that, in general, there are risks to using the app.

NSA is one of the US government’s most powerful and critical spy agencies. Its code breakers and computer operatives conduct intelligence operations all over the world that provide insights to the president and his top advisers. Cyber Command was established over a decade ago to combat growing foreign threats in cyberspace and has matured considerably in the years since.

Cyber Command has taken on a prominent role in defending US elections from foreign influence and interference, including by knocking a Russian troll farm offline in the 2018 election and defending against Iranian hackers in the 2020 election.

Renée Burton, a cybersecurity expert who spent more than two decades at NSA, called the news of Haugh and Burton’s ouster “alarming.”

“NSA mission is vast and extremely complicated,” Burton told CNN. “General Haugh and Ms. Noble have built the expertise and credibility it takes to oversee such a vital part of our national security. Replacing them will not be easy and the disruption will expose the country to new risk.”

In an unprecedented purge of the military’s senior leadership in February, Trump fired the top US general just moments before Hegseth fired the chief of the US Navy and the vice chief of the Air Force.

Taking a huge hit......

Stock market massacre continues

By STAN CHOE

Stock markets worldwide are careening even lower Friday after China matched President Donald Trump’s big raise in tariffs in an escalating trade war. Not even a better-than-expected report on the U.S. job market, which is usually the economic highlight of each month, was enough to stop the slide.

The S&P 500 was down 2.9% in early trading, coming off its worst day since COVID wrecked the global economy in 2020. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1,038 points, or 2.6%, as of 9:53 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 2.9% lower.

So far there are few, if any winners, in financial markets from the trade war. European stocks saw some of the day’s biggest losses, with indexes sinking roughly 4%. The price of crude oil tumbled to its lowest level since 2021. Other basic building blocks for growth, such as copper, also saw prices slide sharply on worries the trade war will weaken the entire global economy.

China’s response to U.S. tariffs caused an immediate acceleration of losses in markets worldwide. The Commerce Ministry in Beijing said it would respond to the 34% tariffs imposed by the U.S. on imports from China by imposing a 34% tariff on imports of all U.S. products beginning April 10. The United States and China are the world’s two largest economies.

Markets briefly recovered a bit of their losses after the release of Friday morning’s U.S. jobs report, which said employers accelerated their hiring by more last month than economists expected. It’s the latest signal that the U.S. job market has remained relatively solid through the start of 2025, and it’s been a linchpin keeping the economy out of a recession.

But that jobs data was backward looking, and the fear hitting financial markets is about what’s to come. Will the trade war cause a global recession? If it does, stock prices will likely need to come down even more than they have already. The S&P 500 is down nearly 15% from its record set in February.

Much will depend on how long Trump’s tariffs stick and what kind of retaliations other countries deliver. Some of Wall Street is holding onto hope that Trump will lower the tariffs after negotiating with other countries to pry out some “wins.” Otherwise, many say a recession looks likely.

For his part, Trump has said Americans may feel “some pain” because of tariffs, but he has also said the long-term goals, including getting more manufacturing jobs back to the United States, are worth it. On Thursday, he likened the situation to a medical operation, where the U.S. economy is the patient.

“For investors looking at their portfolios, it could have felt like an operation performed without anesthesia,” said Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management.

But Jacobsen also said the next surprise for investors could be how quickly tariffs get negotiated down. “The speed of recovery will depend on how, and how quickly, officials negotiate,” he said.

Vietnam said its deputy prime minister would visit the U.S. for talks on trade, while the head of the European Commission has vowed to fight back. Others have said they were hoping to negotiate with the Trump administration for relief.

On Wall Street, stocks of companies that do lots of business in China fell to some of the sharpest losses.

GE Healthcare got 12% of its revenue last year from the China region, and it fell 13.4% for the largest loss in the S&P 500.

DuPont dropped 12.5% after China said its regulators are launching an anti-trust investigation into DuPont China group, a subsidiary of the chemical giant. It’s one of several measures targeting American companies and in retaliation for the U.S. tariffs.

United Airlines, which is in an alliance with Air China and got a third of its passenger revenue last year from flights across the Pacific, lost 9.4%.

In the bond market, Treasury yields continued falling sharply as worries rise about the strength of the U.S. economy, along with expectations for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates to cushion it.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury tumbled 3.94% from 4.06% late Thursday and from roughly 4.80% early this year. That’s a major move for the bond market.

In stock markets abroad, Germany’s DAX lost 4.2%, France’s CAC 40 dropped 4% and Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 2.8%.

Now dying young

America lived fast and is now dying young

SFGATE columnist Drew Magary writes on trying to survive in the fire of Donald Trump's America

By Drew Magary

I wake up. It’s another day in Donald Trump’s America, but I try not to think about that. I try not to think about that name, given that I haven’t even gotten out of bed yet. It’s too early for America right now. I can deal with my country later, once I’m ready.

I get out of bed and take stock of my immediate surroundings. Sunlight is already poking through the curtains. My wife and dog are still asleep in the bed. One of our sons is already up and getting ready for school. The other one will stumble out of his room, bleary-eyed, in a few minutes. I go downstairs to hug the 16-year-old and then put on a pot of coffee. I wolf down a bowl of cereal and grab my phone. No one texted overnight. That’s good. That means no one has died.

I get breakfast ready for the dog and then sit in my chair with my coffee. I could check the news right now, but I’m not ready for the impact yet. Instead, I ease into my day gently, checking scores and playing a few dorky New York Times games. This is arguably the best part of my day, because it’s when I am most at peace. Eventually, that peace will be disturbed: by my younger son coming downstairs to prep for school, by the dog needing to go out for his morning piss and by America barging in with all of its America-ness.

I have to check the news now. I’m a journalist. It’s my job to stay informed. Besides, even if the news weren’t my job, the news would find me anyway. You can ignore the elephant in the room for only so long. S—t, that elephant all but owns the deed to your house now. So I have to keep tabs on the elephant, lest I end up under its foot. I live in the Washington, D.C., area, and all around me are dead public servants walking. Some of them are family. Some are friends. Some are neighbors. Most are strangers, but ones I’m grateful for. They’re all getting laid off, or are terrified they’ll be laid off at any second, because the people in charge of things have decided to rip the heart out of the government and replace it with a motherboard. Is that what the rest of my countrymen really want? Do they understand what’s going on right now? Do they even know what their government does?

I have no f—king idea. I try not to think about it.

That is, I try not to think about it all the time. I thought about it all the time back at the end of the 2010s, and it made me angry. Violently angry. That anger did me no good. It helped the bad guys more than it ever helped me, so this time around, I’m much more fastidious about my information load management. I focus on my salad. I don’t follow any political accounts on social media, and I’ve muted any friends of mine there who regularly air their political grievances. I want to stay informed, but on my terms.

Both of my sons are now off to school, and my wife has left for work, leaving just me and the dog. It’s as good a time as any to rip off the Band-Aid. I open the Washington Post’s front page on my phone. I know that this newspaper has been hopelessly compromised, but so have the rest of them. The majority of the news media is coalescing into a single propaganda arm now. But I know that, which means that I know how to maneuver around it. I can skim these front pages and articles for useful information while ignoring the dreck. I can also track down bits of good news and then bail on the article before the inevitable “but some are saying” follow-up. So I skim, I absorb, I close the tab, and then I think. Then I let the back of my consciousness process those thoughts while I try to go about my day as if it were any other.

I go to work in my office all morning. Then I break for lunch and a workout, and then I shower and then take a nap with the dog. It’s a good day in my world so far.

But America still manages to pierce my shield. The news comes in dribs and drabs, giving me more to process. They’re grabbing kids off the streets, redacting entire chapters of the nation’s history, firing all of the good scientists, and rifling through the passport database to hunt down those they consider to be foreigners. My wife is afraid to travel now because, despite being a U.S. citizen, she wasn’t born here. She isn’t sure they’ll let her back in here if she leaves. I also wasn’t born in the U.S., so maybe that means that I can’t go anywhere either. My wife has also heard a rumor going around that the goon squad’s next act will be sniffing around the passport database to find out which U.S. citizens have listed a new gender for themselves upon reissue or put an X in that space. What will they do to these people? Who’s next after that?

I don’t know, so I spend the afternoon banging out a post about the NFL. I don’t bother to write a post about greater America, because then I’d have to think about greater America, which would give me hives. Sometimes I open the release valve just so I have somewhere to put the aggravation, even if it doesn’t stay there. Most of the time though, I try to keep the valve shut. Perhaps you’ve tried to distract yourself in a similar fashion.

But distractions are only so effective against the gathering storm. I live in a country that lived fast and is now dying young. A strongman has taken things over and used the good will of both America’s citizenry and of its public officials to rob it blind. He can get away with it all too, because he already has, and because my fellow Americans hired him to do it again. And no one in power is fighting back because, in my lifetime, no one has ever wanted to lose Republican customers. Not even Democrats.

This is the end result, and it has a nasty logic to it. It only looks like Republicans don’t know why they’re dismantling useful, heretofore apolitical public services. But they know why. They know that this will make millions of people sick and kill millions more. They know this will make America both poorer and dumber. Those are the end goals here, because a destitute country is one that’s easier for them to rule. Ask Vladimir Putin. Ask Kim Jong Un. Ask Pol Pot. The more a dictator can expand the wealth gap inside the walls of their kingdom, the more comfortable they feel.

And comfort is the true dictator here. Like every other American, I have been trained to both expect and demand comfort at all times. Comfortable housing. Comfortable cars. Comfortable businesswear. If I’m ever uncomfortable, then something must be amiss. That’s an awfully spoiled way to live. From Bill Bryson:

“It really is extraordinary how long it took people to achieve even the most elemental levels of comfort. There was one good reason for it: life was tough. Throughout the Middle Ages, a good deal of every life was devoted simply to surviving.”

Americans need not worry about survival anymore, and so they occupy themselves with pettier matters, like a momentary lapse of comfort. To be uncomfortable feels wrong to the average American, and virtually all of our inner conflict stems from an endless disagreement over our respective sources of that discomfort. Some Americans find racism uncomfortable, as they should, while some Americans find confronting racism to be a personal affront. They’d rather not think about racism, so they don’t — or they simply pretend there is no racism at all. And if you ask them to think about racism, they swear vengeance. You are the woke, and you must pay. In a country where everyone abhors being inconvenienced, it was only a matter of time before the worst of us decided that our greatest inconvenience was one another.

I try not to let that thought overtake me, because the stress will kill me before the goon squad does.

Later, my daughter texts me from a protest on her college campus. I ask her to send me a photo so I can see her fighting for justice. She texts back, “I don’t wanna make anyone uncomfy. We’re all disguised and wearing masks and stuff, just in case.” I understand. I’m proud of her. I also hope that her masked face isn’t being scanned right now by a distant satellite and then logged into Trump’s janky-ass “Enemies” folder. I try not to think too hard about that last part, because I’d rather be proud than afraid. If I can’t be proud of my country, I can be proud of my family. That’s how I’ll survive this, I tell myself, however long it lasts.

What I try not to tell myself is that this could last for a long time. An excruciatingly long time. And what happens as more and more of American society falls apart? Will my family die if we don’t flee? When will we know it’s time to? When will we know if the water we’re in has started to boil? Will we still be in the pot? Will you?

I try not to dwell on it, because it makes me feel uncomfortable. More important, it makes me feel DUMB. I’d tell you I feel ashamed to be an American right now, but that turn of phrase has grown hackneyed. I just feel f—king stupid. Embarrassed. STAINED. Why do I live here? Do I REALLY owe this country anything? What if I defect to another country? Would I be a coward for that? Would it be worth the moral abdication? Is it a moral abdication at all? Everyone else who’s left America by choice doesn’t seem too pained by their decision. And I get it: Who would want to live in this spiritual vacuum of a place?

I try to think about why I AM still here. The answers come faster than you’d think. Everyone I love either lives in America or is American. All of them. I love these fine Americans to death and want to take care of them. I also love my house. I love my adopted home state of Maryland, which is one of the very few whose representatives actually seem to get it. I love my work-wife state of California, even if Gavin Newsom is a scumbag of the highest order. I love the food in America, I love the music, and I love the scenery. So it’s not just mere convenience keeping me an American, nor is it loyalty to the flag. It’s love, and all of the grief that love entails. I don’t know when America will be gone — it feels like awfully soon — but I try not to work myself up about that part of it. After all, just because this place can’t keep its s—t together doesn’t mean that I can’t.

The day is over, and everyone is home. I have done my processing and have earned the right to chill. I’ve got a gummy working its way through my system, a fresh near beer sitting on my armrest and my dog in my lap. Sometimes I think about keeping a happiness journal, where I could sit down at night and make a tally of everything that made me happy that day, large or small. I haven’t started it, though, because I already know what makes me happy, and I already know where to find it. It’s all here, right where my day started. Against all odds, that’s a comforting thought.

It’s also a fleeting one. I turn on some basketball, and every other ad is one for Trump. I try not to think about it.

Hickson 44

Scanning the skies for galaxies, Canadian astronomer Paul Hickson and colleagues identified some 100 compact groups of galaxies, now appropriately called Hickson Compact Groups. The four prominent galaxies seen in this intriguing telescopic skyscape are one such group, Hickson 44. The galaxy group is about 100 million light-years distant, far beyond the spiky foreground Milky Way stars, toward the constellation Leo. The two spiral galaxies in the center of the image are edge-on NGC 3190 with its distinctive, warped dust lanes, and S-shaped NGC 3187. Along with the bright elliptical, NGC 3193 (above and left) they are also known as Arp 316. The spiral toward the lower right corner is NGC 3185, the 4th member of the Hickson group. Like other galaxies in Hickson groups, these show signs of distortion and enhanced star formation, evidence of a gravitational tug of war that will eventually result in galaxy mergers on a cosmic timescale. The merger process is now understood to be a normal part of the evolution of galaxies, including our own Milky Way. For scale, NGC 3190 is about 75,000 light-years across at the estimated distance of Hickson 44.