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Trump’s Tariffs: ‘A Mafia Don Racket’ ⚙︎
I must give credit where it’s due for my use of “Mafia Don” in my two previous pieces. It’s from David Rothkopf’s article at The Daily Beast, which he opens thusly:
Imagine a mob boss were president of the United States. See, that wasn’t very hard, was it?
It’s paired with a pitch-perfect photo illustration that nails the comparison.
Rothkopf writes:
Trump seldom acts as past presidents do. Clearly, he does not put America’s national interests first. (Otherwise he would not weaken our institutions or national standing with every move he made.) But he does act as a crime boss. And he thinks like a crime boss.
The result is the question to ask when looking to understand a Trumpian action, big or small: What’s in it for Trump?
His bottom line:
These aren’t tariffs. They are a horse’s head in the bed of (almost) every world government and business leader.
Chef’s kiss.
Washington Post: ‘The White House had a TikTok deal. Trump’s China tariff wrecked it.’ ⚙︎
I referenced this The Washington Post story in my last piece about the TikTok ban, but I wanted to flag this bit on Trump’s obvious Art of the Deal brilliance:
The White House was hours away from announcing a proposal this week to spin off the popular video app TikTok when the Chinese government shattered the idea, saying it would not approve of any deal without first discussing President Donald Trump’s tariffs and trade policy, three people close to the negotiations said.
The White House and TikTok’s Chinese-based parent company, ByteDance, had agreed to a proposed deal by Wednesday and were preparing to announce it Thursday […].
Trump must be the greatest dealmaker in the world to get China to agree to a sale, and then blow up that sale by imposing 34% tariffs on China on the same day (and then threatening another 50% the next).
Clearly Trump is an n-dimensional chess player, where n is so bigly only Trump can play.
Trump this week mused about the possibility of including the sale in broader negotiations with China amid the escalating trade war.
“I’m a very flexible person,” Trump said. “Maybe I’ll take a couple of points off if I get approvals for something.”
Oh, no, my bad. It’s just his usual Mafia Don approach to doing “business.”
Trump Extends TikTok Deadline Another 75 Days, Without the Legal Authority to Do So, While Holding an $850 Billion Sword of Damocles Over Apple, Oracle, and Google ⚙︎
Matt Novak, Gizmodo:
President Donald Trump announced Friday that he will sign another executive order to allow TikTok to continue to operate in the U.S. for 75 days while a deal to sell the social media platform is negotiated.
Announced on “Truth” Social, where all legal proclamations are made, despite Trump not actually having the legal authority to extend the ban unilaterally, and especially via an executive order.
Or, as Mike Masnick headlines his Techdirt story, “Who Knew You Could Press A Snooze Button On The Law?” From that piece:
If you’re the President of the United States and you don’t like a law, you can apparently just… decide not to enforce it for a while? I mean, it’s not supposed to work that way, but for the past 74 days, that’s exactly what’s happened with the TikTok ban. Not just ignoring it quietly – Trump has explicitly declared we’re ignoring it. And today, he announced we’ll keep ignoring it for another 75 days.
In their story headlined “The White House had a TikTok deal. Trump’s China tariff wrecked it,” The Washington Post wryly notes:
Executive orders cannot overturn laws, and some lawmakers and legal critics have argued that Trump’s measure is insufficient to halt the law’s enforcement.
What’s striking about this second extension is that the ban was necessary for national security, but apparently not so necessary that a delay of another 75 days isn’t a national security concern, which makes exactly the kind of sense that doesn’t.
This second extension also leaves service providers like Apple, Google, and Oracle on shaky ground—facing fines of as much as $850 billion each for violating the plain language of the law—but they’ve received assurances that as long as they follow instructions, no one will get hurt, reports Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman:
Apple Inc., following assurances from the Trump administration, is keeping TikTok and other apps from ByteDance Ltd. on its US App Store for at least another 75 days.
The iPhone maker on Saturday received a letter from Attorney General Pam Bondi telling the company it should follow President Donald Trump’s executive order that will extend the pause on a TikTok ban in the US, according to people with knowledge of the matter. An Apple spokesperson declined to comment.
These ruinous fines dangle like a financial Sword of Damocles over Apple, Oracle, and Google, held back only by the thin, orange hair of Mafia Don’s good graces. Does anyone doubt he’s using it as a way of keeping them in line?
Tron: Ares Trailer ⚙︎
An admission which may result in the revocation of my geek card: I’ve seen Tron maybe twice and I think it’s… fine? I love the lightcycle and other visuals, not so much the plot. I haven’t seen Tron: Legacy (though I’ve listened to the Daft Punk soundtrack dozens of times). I didn’t know an animated series existed until today. Can I even code? But the trailer for Tron: Ares looks (and sounds) gorgeous. I look forward to streaming it.
China Halts Exports of Critical Minerals to U.S. ⚙︎
This report from Michael Barnard on CleanTechnica is a looming disaster of Trumpian proportions:
In April 2025, while most of the world was clutching pearls over trade war tit-for-tat tariffs, China calmly walked over to the supply chain and yanked out a handful of critical bolts. The bolts are made of dysprosium, terbium, tungsten, indium and yttrium—the elements that don’t make headlines but without which your electric car doesn’t run, your fighter jet doesn’t fly, and your solar panels go from clean energy marvels to overpriced roofing tiles. They’re minerals that show up on obscure government risk registers right before wars start or cleantech projects get quietly cancelled.[…]
What China did wasn’t a ban, at least not in name. They called it export licensing. Sounds like something a trade lawyer might actually be excited about. But make no mistake: this was a surgical strike. They didn’t need to say no. They just needed to say “maybe later” to the right set of paperwork. These licenses give Beijing control over not just where these materials go, but how fast they go, in what quantity, and to which politically convenient customers.[…]
The materials China just restricted aren’t random. They’re chosen with the precision of someone who’s read U.S. product spec sheets and defense procurement orders.
The potential ramifications Barnard describes are a direct consequence of Trump’s terrible tariffs. We’re talking an inability to build our own jet engines, semiconductor chips, fiber optics, radar systems, electric vehicles, solar panels… frankly, it’s quite alarming—and a diabolical move by China. And Trump still thinks he can bully them.
See also: The U.S. Department of Energy’s assessment of critical materials and minerals charting the critical Supply Risk of these (and other) minerals in the short and medium terms. I would imagine concerns have accelerated since publication in 2023.
United States ‘Disappeared’ ICE Detentions Tracker ⚙︎
A chilling site from Danielle Harlow:
Inspired by the USA Disappeared Tracker account on BlueSky, this dashboard visualizes persons brought into ICE custody when the Trump Administration has demonstrated undeniable political motive/animus and/or the person has been denied appropriate due process, even if the charges are eventually substantiated in a court of law.
As of April 6, 2025, it shows 803 people have been “disappeared.” When I first saw it on April 2, it was 243 people. A testament to the power of crowdsourcing no doubt, but that this site exists—that it needs to exist—is appalling, and a scathing indictment of both the United States government for doing it, and its citizens for allowing it.
Project 2025 Tracker ⚙︎
As you explore the progress (regress?) captured in the Project 2025 Tracker, remember that Donald Trump knows nothing about Project 2025, even as his regime has already implemented a third of its goals.
(Also: Apt use of the .observer TLD.)
Trump Golf Tracker ⚙︎
A site tracking the golfing habits of the President of the United States would be mildly amusing, if its current office holder hadn’t already spent over a quarter of his days in office playing golf and wasn’t actively working to destroy the country. Instead, it shows just how sad, pathetic, and out of touch he truly is.
Protests Against Trump and Musk Extend Across the Country, but You’d Hardly Know It From the Mainstream Media
Donald Trump sure has a knack for bringing people together.
Saturday’s massive “Hands Off!” demonstrations brought together millions of people from across the country (and Europe) to protest the Trump/Musk regime, but judging from the front page of most newspapers and news sites today, you’d hardly know it.
The New York Times (still considered the nation’s “paper of record” for many) buried the demonstrations on page A18 of its Sunday print edition, and the rallies are nowhere to be found on the front page of nytimes.com.
Even Fox News briefly featured the protest as their top story (with the piffling headline “Anti-Trump protesters ditch their ‘jammies’—asked what they’re so mad about”) before dropping it to a second-level story—but still above the fold.
Here’s how other news services fared with their coverage (links to screenshots):
- ABC News: Second-level story (“Huge crowds gather in ‘Hands Off’ rallies nationwide in protest of Trump admin”).
- AP News: Below the fold (one page), under a “More coverage” section on tariffs (“Angry protesters from New York to Alaska assail Trump and Musk in ‘Hands Off!’ rallies”).
- CBS News: Top sidebar headline (“’Hands Off!’ Demonstrations protest Trump, Musk across the U.S.”).
- Chicago Sun-Times: Front and center.
- CNN: Bullet headline (“’Hands Off!’ protesters across US rally against Trump and Musk”).
- MSNBC: Below the fold (one page), under the “Most Watched” section (“Nationwide protests grow over Trump administration policies”). Not even an editorial decision.
- NBC News: Second-level story (“Demonstrators rally in ‘Hands Off’ protest against Trump policies and Musk-led government cuts”).
- The Washington Post: Well below the fold (eight pages), under the “National” section (“Mass protests across the U.S. signal opposition to Trump, Musk”).
- USA Today: Top left sidebar headline (“US citizens rally at nationwide ‘Hands Off’ protests”).
- Wall Street Journal: Well below the fold (five screens), with a bullet headline (“Protesters Rally Against Trump: ‘Democracy Not Dictatorship’”. Also, a sidebar under “Recommended Videos”: “Thousands of Anti-Trump Protesters Gathered Around the World”).
I understand news home pages change rapidly—and have already changed during the writing of this piece—but these nationwide protests against a deeply unpopular president and co-president deserve continuing, high-visibility coverage, if only to show others the depths of the anti-administration sentiment swelling within the population. Can you imagine if Joe Biden drew massive—or any—nationwide protests? It would get front page, above-the-fold, coverage for months. We’d still be talking about it today.
It’s almost like the mainstream media is trying to protect Donald Trump.
The Naked Gun Official Teaser Trailer (2025 Movie) ⚙︎
If a trailer’s raison d’être is to get you pumped, The Naked Gun official teaser succeeds beyond all reasonable expectations. I went in with trepidation—Really? Remaking The Naked Gun? Move along, nothing to see here…—but by the time the OJ joke hit, I was locked in. It’s a sequel, not a remake, with Liam Neeson, known for his Very Serious action roles, playing Frank Drebin Jr.—truly inspired casting, much as Leslie Nielsen’s was. I hope Neeson plays it as straight as Nielsen did. Absolutely everything about this movie is absurd, right down to the Leslie Nielsen/Liam Neeson snowclone. I can’t wait.
Polygon: ‘Tabletop Industry in Full Panic’ Over Trump Tariffs ⚙︎
Charlie Hall at Polygon presents the bigger picture of the impact of the Trump Tariffs on tabletop gaming. It goes well beyond the one (comparatively large) company I noted in my aforelinked piece:
Nearly 20 organizations that Polygon spoke with said that profits will be severely impacted. Many said jobs will be lost, companies shuttered, and games that have been in development for years may simply never come to market.
Tabletop gaming, which includes board games, card games, and role-playing games, has enjoyed a roughly two-decade renaissance brought on in part by crowdfunding. Nevertheless, much of the industry consists of individual creators, sole proprietors, small family businesses, and remote teams of creatives. The Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) said Thursday that the impact of these tariffs will be nothing short of a disaster.
People’s livelihoods are at stake.
Trump Tariffs Raising Prices for Tabletop Games Too ⚙︎
Meredith Placko, CEO of Steve Jackson Games, under the headline “Tariffs Are Driving Up Game Prices Now”, writes candidly about the challenges her small company will face under the new Trump Tariffs:
On April 5th, a 54% tariff goes into effect on a wide range of goods imported from China. For those of us who create boardgames, this is not just a policy change. It’s a seismic shift.
Placko writes that the company is “actively assessing” the impact of these tariffs on their games, pricing, and future plans, and notes:
We do know that we can’t absorb this kind of cost increase without raising prices. We’ve done our best over the past few years to shield players and retailers from the full brunt of rising freight costs and other increases, but this new tax changes the equation entirely.
Here are the numbers: A product we might have manufactured in China for $3.00 last year could now cost $4.62 before we even ship it across the ocean. Add freight, warehousing, fulfillment, and distribution margins, and that once-$25 game quickly becomes a $40 product. That’s not a luxury upcharge; it’s survival math.
She then anticipates the question many tariff hawks will have:
Some people ask, “Why not manufacture in the U.S.?” I wish we could. But the infrastructure to support full-scale boardgame production – specialty dice making, die-cutting, custom plastic and wood components – doesn’t meaningfully exist here yet. I’ve gotten quotes. I’ve talked to factories. Even when the willingness is there, the equipment, labor, and timelines simply aren’t.
Placko acknowledges that tariffs can be useful, when implemented intelligently:
Tariffs, when part of a long-term strategy to bolster domestic manufacturing, can be an effective tool. But that only works when there’s a plan to build up the industries needed to take over production. There is no national plan in place to support manufacturing for the types of products we make. This isn’t about steel and semiconductors. This is about paper goods, chipboard, wood tokens, plastic trays, and color-matched ink. These new tariffs are imposing huge costs without providing alternatives, and it’s going to cost American consumers more at every level of the supply chain.
Sadly, we don’t have an administration that thinks long term or strategically.
We usually focus our concern on big companies, but many small businesses will bleed to death as a result of these Trump Tariffs.
Trump Is the Reason We Can’t Have Nice Things, as Nintendo Announces and Then Delays U.S. Pre-Orders for Switch 2 ⚙︎
Nintendo, in a statement to Polygon (and others):
Pre-orders for Nintendo Switch 2 in the U.S. will not start April 9, 2025 in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions. Nintendo will update timing at a later date. The launch date of June 5, 2025 is unchanged.
By which I presume they mean “We’re probably gonna have to raise the $450 price tag in the U.S.”
On Wednesday, which already seems like a lifetime ago, Nintendo announced its long-anticipated Switch 2. You can read all the details in The Verge, but in short:
- A large, 7.9", 1080p, 120Hz screen
- 4K (upscaled) dock for TV playing
- 256GB internal storage (up from 32GB in the original Switch)
- “Mouse mode” with the (larger) JoyCon 2 controllers
- Custom Nvidia processor
it looks great, and I’d buy it in a heartbeat, even though we hardly use our original Switch, if it was less expensive. And the market didn’t just crash.
Again: Fucking. Donald. Trump.
Stock Market Plummets After the World's Dumbest Tariffs are Revealed
Stocks plummeted Thursday, sending the S&P 500 back into correction territory for its biggest one-day loss since 2020, after President Donald Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs, raising the risk of a global trade war that plunges the economy into a recession.
A recession would be an unfortunate but necessary step on the way to all-out depression.
The broad market index dropped 4.84% and settled at 5,396.52, posting its worst day since June 2020. The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 1,679.39 points, or 3.98%, to close at 40,545.93 and mark its worst session since June 2020. The Nasdaq Composite plummeted 5.97% and ended at 16,550.61, registering its biggest decline since March 2020. The slide across equities was broad, with more than 400 of the S&P 500′s constituents posting losses.
China, one of the hardest hit, retaliated, as expected, leading to even steeper declines in the market today. Since Trump’s announcement, the major indices have nosedived:
- DJIA: -9.26% (-3,910.46 points)
- Nasdaq: -11.44% (-2,013.26 points)
- S&P 500: -10.53% (-596.89 points)
That’s not a month, or a year. It’s two days.
Apple, the company I follow the closest, got walloped Wednesday after the tariffs were announced, plunging over 9% in after-hours trading. As of Friday’s close, they’re down over 16% since Wednesday, and off over 27% from its Boxing Day high.
These tariffs are being described, wrongly, as “reciprocal”—Trump said “That means they do it to us, and we do it to them”—yet are being imposed on places that have no tariffs on the US, or even little to no trade with the US at all.
Mike Masnick writes in a fantastic piece for Techdirt, headlined “Trump Declares A Trade War On Uninhabited Islands, US Military, And Economic Logic”:
This is the core problem with Trump’s “Liberation Day” trade policy: it fundamentally misunderstands what trade deficits are. And if you think that’s bad, just wait until we get to the part where this policy declares economic war on penguins and our own military base.
The policy, unveiled yesterday afternoon, is called a “reciprocal tariff plan,” which is a bit like calling a hammer a “reciprocal pillow.” The premise is that since other countries have high tariffs on us (they don’t), we should have high tariffs on them (we shouldn’t). But that’s not even the weird part.
At the heart of this policy is a chart. Not just any chart, but what might be the most creative work of economic fiction since, well, Donald Trump launched his memecoin. Trump proudly displayed these numbers at a White House event, explaining that they showed the tariffs other countries impose on the US. He emphasized repeatedly that the US was being more than “fair” because our reciprocal tariffs would be less than what other countries were charging us.
There was just one small problem: none of the numbers were real tariff rates. Not even close. Vietnam, according to the chart, imposes a 90% tariff on US goods. This would be shocking news to Vietnam, which does no such thing.
It’s hard to imagine that a man who’s gone bankrupt six times—with casinos!—would lack such a fundamental grasp of basic economic principles.
James Surowiecki (former financial writer for The New Yorker, author of The Wisdom of Crowds) is credited as the first to crack the administration’s math:
Just figured out where these fake tariff rates come from. They didn’t actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did. Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country’s exports to us.
So we have a $17.9 billion trade deficit with Indonesia. Its exports to us are $28 billion. $17.9/$28 = 64%, which Trump claims is the tariff rate Indonesia charges us. What extraordinary nonsense this is.
The White House tries to dress this up with fancy math symbols and academic citations, but if you follow the numbers, it pencils out just as Surowiecki surmised: deficit divided by exports, which has nothing to do with what a country is “charging” us for our goods.
It gets worse. Dominic Preston, at The Verge:
A number of X users have realized that if you ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Grok for an “easy” way to solve trade deficits and put the US on “an even playing field”, they’ll give you a version of this “deficit divided by exports” formula with remarkable consistency. The Verge tested this with the phrasing used in those posts, as well as a question based more closely on the government’s language, asking chatbots for “an easy way for the US to calculate tariffs that should be imposed on other countries to balance bilateral trade deficits between the US and each of its trading partners, with the goal of driving bilateral trade deficits to zero.” All four platforms gave us the same fundamental suggestion.
These politically preposterous, mathematically farcical tariffs, which have already tanked the nation’s 401(k)s, are poised to do even greater damage:
J.P. Morgan on Monday had predicted that the probability of a recession stood at 40 percent, citing “heightened trade policy uncertainty” as “weighing on sentiment.”
A day after Trump announced the reciprocal tariffs, J.P. Morgan predicted the probably [sic] of a recession now stands at 60 percent.
Wiping out trillions of dollars of individual and corporate wealth is an acceptable outcome though, because it’s a useful negotiating tactic:
“The tariffs give us great power to negotiate,” Trump said, adding that “every country has called us.”
“If somebody said that we’re going to give you something that’s so phenomenal, as long as they’re giving us something that’s good,” Trump said.
No doubt many companies are also seeking remedy. By levying these punitive taxes against countries crucial to the bottom line of many American businesses, Trump can offer “relief” by demanding compliance or payment.
Apple, for example, has certainly reached out to the administration in hopes of an exemption, as it faces prices so high it threatens sales of their flagship iPhones. The $1 million Tim Cook “personally” donated to Trump, and the $500 billion US investment Apple announced was clearly insufficient. What will Trump demand of Apple next?
It seems remarkably like extortion and bullying.
On “Truth” Social, Trump blathers on about another aspect of these tariffs:
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!!!
He just can’t help himself, he must make sure his grift is transparently obvious to everyone: I’m destroying the American and global economy so we can all be filthier rich.
How many of his people sold the stock market short the last few days? How many are salivating at snatching up stocks at a massive discount?
Meanwhile, the retirement savings of millions of Americans have been decimated.
The Legal Breakdown Tackles the ‘Mistaken’ Deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia ⚙︎
Brian Tyler Cohen and Glenn Kirschner on The Legal Breakdown illustrate the utterly preposterous and incredibly dangerous state of affairs in Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s “mistaken” deportation case:
Cohen: Are you telling me, with all the agreements that we have with El Salvador that allows us to just—without any due process—deport these people to their country… we have no mechanism whatsoever to bring back somebody who is a legal resident, who is there as a result of an administrative error, that we have no mechanism to bring that guy back?
Kirschner: I don’t believe, you don’t believe it, but that is what the attorneys who are in court—not exactly defending this action, because they concede they did not have a legal reason to deport him, a legal basis—they’re also saying “Uh, we just don’t think we have a mechanism to bring him back.”
Cohen later makes this astute observation about Trump’s intentions:
I think this isn’t necessarily about this one specific person, this is about Donald Trump showing his detractors that he is exactly as all-powerful as he perceives himself as being […].
He doesn’t care what person he has to steamroll through in order to get his way, he’s trying to send a message and everybody that gets hurt as a result of that, that’s just collateral damage […] The goal here is the chilling effect this will have […].He’s not looking to bring [Abrego Garcia] back, because the fact that [Abrego Garcia] can be disappeared in an extrajudicial way is the point unto itself. It’s not about this guy, it’s about Trump being able to display his power.
In response to a question from Cohen about what can be done, Kirschner offers one possible solution:
The Trump administration and these ICE agents that engaged in this unconstitutional deportation violated a court order, violated a judge’s protection order saying Mr. Garcia cannot be deported to El Salvador.
One thing the court has available to it is the power of contempt, and if a court wanted to inspire the Trump administration to get a plane down there to El Salvador and bring this man back, the judge could say “I am going to begin to hold everyone in contempt who was part and parcel of this unconstitutional deportation that violated a judicial order.”
I would love to see them all held in contempt. Sadly, enforcement of such sanctions is done via the US Marshals Service, which is under the Executive branch, and while the US Marshals are supposed to legally comply with a judicial order, I expect the president, via his attorney general, to attempt to block any contempt order.
US Government ‘Mistakenly’ Deports Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvadoran Megaprison, Claims Nothing Can Be Done to Get Him Back ⚙︎
Nick Miroff, at The Atlantic, chronicles this incredibly harrowing tale (Apple News+ link):
The Trump administration acknowledged in a court filing Monday that it had grabbed a Maryland father with protected legal status and mistakenly deported him to El Salvador, but said that U.S. courts lack jurisdiction to order his return from the megaprison where he’s now locked up.
The case appears to be the first time the Trump administration has admitted to errors when it sent three planeloads of Salvadoran and Venezuelan deportees to El Salvador’s grim “Terrorism Confinement Center” on March 15. Attorneys for several Venezuelan deportees have said that the Trump administration falsely labeled their clients as gang members because of their tattoos. Trump officials have disputed those claims.
But in Monday’s court filing, attorneys for the government admitted that the Salvadoran man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, had been deported accidentally. “Although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error,” the government told the court. Trump lawyers said the court has no ability to bring Abrego Garcia back now that he is in Salvadoran custody.
This story is absolutely terrifying. It’s a constitutional five-alarm fire that should see Americans up in arms and flooding the streets.
In their filing, the US government’s lawyers write:
This Court lacks jurisdiction because Abrego Garcia is not in United States custody.
Writing further:
[…] a person “is held ‘in custody’ by the United States when the United States official charged with his detention has ‘the power to produce him.’”
They’re claiming that no United States official has such power. Rather than apologizing profusely and taking every possible action to rectify the situation, Trump’s lawyers instead argue against the judge’s jurisdiction and the family’s right to petition for redress. The government has effectively professed that once they deport a person—without any due process—there’s nothing the United States can do to reverse course, even after admitting the removal was done in error. That Abrego Garcia—or anyone else—is forever out of their reach. It’s the despotic equivalent of “finders keepers, losers weepers,” or the “Oh no! Anyway” meme, applied to a man’s life.
A week ago Timothy Snyder wrote:
If you accept that non-citizens have no right to due process, you are accepting that citizens have no right to due process. All the government has to do is claim that you are not a citizen; without due process you have no chance to prove the contrary.
The truth is, today, right now, there is absolutely nothing preventing Donald Trump’s regime from snatching you or anyone you know, throwing you or them on a plane to El Salvador, and wiping their hands clean.
Or, as Gillian Branstetter wrote:
No matter your station in life, there is astoundingly little separating you from those men in that cage behind Kristi Noem. No charges, no attorneys, no hearings, no trial. Just conjecture and brute force could be enough to justify completely dehumanizing you, too.
How are we any different from Nazi Germany, or modern-day Russia?
Cory Booker’s ‘Screen Performance of the Year’ ⚙︎
Steven Zeitchik, at The Hollywood Reporter, with the most interesting take I’ve read about Cory Booker’s marathon speech:
You may not have watched anything but the last hour, or few minutes, or even a second of the Democratic senator’s 25-hour, one-sitting (or standing) opus on YouTube or C-SPAN. Trust me then when I tell you the whole thing was the kind of spectacle that should be eligible for an Emmy, so subtle were its layers and so ambitious the performance.
On its face, Booker’s speech building an elaborate case against the policies of Donald Trump and Elon Musk was pure political theater — if theater involved a prize for never relying on a chair, food or the bathroom. As he broke Strom Thurmond’s 24-hour, 18-minute mark for longest Senate-floor speech in history, the New Jersey lawmaker spoke from giant loose-leaf binders of facts and read anecdotes off index cards; he thanked the Parliamentarian and gave at least his vocal cords a break by deferring to extended questions (that were more of a comment) from other senators. Booker balanced rousing constitutional ideals with basic economic litmus tests, reappropriating Ronald Reagan’s famous 1980 debate line of, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” as (fittingly for these lightning times), “Are you better off now than you were 71 days ago?”
But what Booker was doing was nothing less than creating a cinematic spectacle, a binge-worthy awards contender in which all 25 hours happened to drop at once. And while the consequences are deadly serious, the techniques came from some of our most popular entertainment. Focus on different through lines of Booker’s performance and you’d experience different arcs; come in at different moments and you’d infer different genres.
Senator Cory Booker Speaks for 25 Hours, 5 Minutes on the Existential Threat of the Trump Regime, Setting the Record for the Senate’s Longest Speech
Sen. Cory Booker set the record for the longest speech in Senate history Tuesday night in marathon remarks that began Monday evening and tore into what he called the Trump administration’s “grave and urgent” threat to the country.
Rachel Treisman and Alana Wise for NPR:
Sen. Cory Booker spent a full day standing on the Senate floor, delivering an impassioned speech in protest of the Trump administration’s policies.
Nik Popli, Time magazine:
For more than 25 hours, the New Jersey Democrat stood at the Senate lectern speaking against President Donald Trump’s policies in what may be the most dramatic and sustained public challenge to Trump’s agenda since his return to the White House.
Hunter Walker, in his lede for Talking Points Memo, contextualizes the historical significance:
Only two men have spoken on the floor of the U.S. Senate for more than 24 straight hours. One of them fought to keep Black people out of public life, the other was a Black leader who staged a landmark protest.
Cory Booker’s feat of determination—his act of astonishing stamina, as the New York Times put it—surged him past the 68-year-old record set by a segregationist demagogue filibustering the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
Booker understood the significance:
“To be candid, Strom Thurmond’s record always kind of just really irked me — that he would be the longest speech, that the longest speech on our great Senate floor was someone who was trying to stop people like me from being in the Senate,” Booker told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Tuesday night. “So to surpass that was something I didn’t know if we could do, but it was something that was really, once we got closer, became more and more important to me.”
As Booker noted in his speech:
I’m not here, though, because of his speech. I’m here despite his speech. I’m here because, as powerful as he was, the people are more powerful.
Booker’s achievement stands in stark contrast to Thurmond’s lengthy filibuster aiming to deny Black Americans equal protections under federal law. Booker later told reporters that he had been “very aware” of Thurmond’s efforts since entering the Senate over a decade ago.
“Of all the issues that have come up, all the noble causes that people have done or the things that people have tried to stop, I just found it strange that he had the record,” said Booker, who is Black. “And as a guy who grew up with legends of the Civil Rights Movement myself, my parents and their friends, it just seemed wrong to me, it always seemed wrong.”
Thurmond spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes, but unlike Booker, who used his time to make a powerful and coherent case for reclaiming American democracy, Thurmond filled time with tactics like reading from an encyclopedia.
According to [Jeff] Giertz [Booker’s senior advisor and communications director], Booker began planning for the speech about a week ago. This required an extraordinary push from his staff. […] Those staffers had a few marathon nights of their own in the past few days as they put together the 1,164 pages in more than a dozen binders Booker used for his remarks.
Much of the initial coverage of Senator Booker’s feat has understandably focused on the length of the speech and its historical significance, and not on the content of the speech itself, which, from what I’ve read, is a tour de force.
It was a cathartic moment for a vast swath of demoralized voters across the country, who tuned in amid hunger for some action by the opposition party beyond the traditions of business as usual.
Frank Luntz, quoted in The Hill:
“He struck the kind of tone that grassroots Democrats are looking for. He gave them a reason to fight. He gave them a reason to stand up and say, this is my country too,” Luntz told [NewsNation’s “On Balance”] anchor Leland Vittert.
“Of course, every Republican watching will say, ‘This is nonsense.’ But he is not speaking just to Republicans, he’s speaking to Americans, and what I saw over the last 25 hours absolutely blew me away,” he added.
Philip Elliott at Time magazine, under the headline “Cory Booker Reminds Democrats What Fighting Back Looks Like” :
That, right there, is how it’s done.
Sen. Cory Booker, the New Jersey Democrat who has long been a believer that his party should not shy from a fight out of fear, held the Senate floor for more than 25 hours in a history-making show of defiance of President Donald Trump’s chaos-laced agenda. Booker, beginning Monday evening, owned the podium where he stood without any real break in a bold display that drew fellow Democrats to the floor to watch in admiration. They might have done well to take notes about how, even in the minority, their party still can find ways to inspire voters in the face of Trumpism.
Cory Booker figured out a way to get the entire world to hear him. He worked hard to do it, put himself through an uncomfortable physical experience but he did it. He did it to make a dent, try to blow a hole. he got creative, sacrificed and got national and global attention for our plight. Don’t tell me what can’t be done. tell me what we can do.
In a moment when it feels like we’re powerless to stop the spreading roots of fascism, Cory Booker put his country above comfort to warn us about this regime, to exhort us to fight, in whatever ways we can, with whatever tools we have.
Booker closed by invoking John Lewis:
He endured beatings savagely on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, at lunch counters, on freedom rides. He said he had to do something. He would not normalize a moment like this. He would not just go along with business as usual. He said for us to go out and cause some good trouble, necessary trouble, to redeem the soul of our nation.
I am ready to cause some good trouble.
I Will Never Tire of Listening to Marvin Gaye’s Isolated Vocal Track of ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’ ⚙︎
Just an amazing voice. Pure, raw, powerful.
Growing up, Marvin’s music was always playing in our home. He is such a part of my musical firmament, I was surprised to realize that I was just 15 when he died, 41 years ago today.
‘VIP: Yankee Stadium’ and ‘Bono: Stories of Surrender,’ Two New Immersive Videos Coming to Apple Vision Pro
Buried at the bottom of today’s Apple press releases was this tantalizing tidbit:
VIP: Yankee Stadium premieres this Friday, April 4, featuring an all-encompassing look at how elite athletes, die-hard fans, dedicated staff, and epic moments make the Bronx ballpark legendary. Bono: Stories of Surrender pulls back the curtain on the deeply personal experiences that have shaped Bono as a son, father, husband, activist, and U2 frontman. The groundbreaking film from Apple TV+ premieres May 30, and will be available in 2D and in Apple Immersive Video.
I originally presumed both films were being announced today for the first time, but Bono was announced February 26—which I missed because, well, Bono—and VIP: Yankee Stadium was mentioned in the new season announcement of Friday Night Baseball on March 3—which I ignored because, well, Friday Night Baseball hasn’t been that great.
I’m sure the Bono film will be heartwarming, and I’ll eventually watch it (there’s only so much immersive video), but it was VIP: Yankee Stadium that really caught my attention.
From the early March press release:
Apple today also announced VIP: Yankee Stadium, a new Apple Immersive Video for Apple Vision Pro that gives viewers an all-access pass to one of the world’s most iconic sports venues. In the film, available for free next month, broadcasting legend Joe Buck welcomes viewers to Yankee Stadium for a June 2024 “Friday Night Baseball” matchup between the Yankees and their longtime rivals: the Los Angeles Dodgers. From early morning prep scenes to a tense nighttime finale, viewers will go far beyond the front row — with an all-encompassing look at how elite athletes, die-hard fans, dedicated staff, and epic moments make the Bronx ballpark legendary.
Readers of this site know I detest the damn Yankees with all of my being—a fervent and deep-seated hatred borne of two decades of living in New York with a family that rooted for the Bronx Bombers while I cheered on my oft-suffering New York Mets—but I absolutely cherish baseball history, and I’m especially captivated by the majesty of ballparks. I can’t deny the Yankees are the most storied team in baseball—and Yankee Stadium is baseball’s most storied ballpark.
You can bet I’ll be watching this one in fascination and awe—even though it was filmed during last year’s World Series matchup between the two teams I hate the most.
More intriguingly, VIP is listed on Apple TV+ as “Episode 1 Yankee Stadium.” I think (and hope!) this implies the series will (eventually) showcase all 30 major league ballparks. An immersive tour of every stadium would be exhilarating. I’m crossing my fingers!
(Goodness though, corporate naming rights have royally screwed the game. VIP: Citi Field? VIP: Oracle Park? They don’t have quite the same solemnity, do they? Get rid of corporate naming deals and call the parks by their team names. I’d much prefer to see VIP: Giants Ballpark.)
New OS Releases Bring Apple Intelligence to Vision Pro, European Union, and Several Additional Languages
Two press releases and five new OS releases top today’s Apple headlines.
Starting today, with the availability of iOS 18.4, iPadOS 18.4, and macOS Sequoia 15.4, Apple Intelligence features are now available in many new languages, including French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese (simplified) — as well as localized English for Singapore and India — and are accessible in nearly all regions around the world.
In addition, iPhone and iPad users in the EU have access to Apple Intelligence features for the first time, and Apple Intelligence expands to a new platform with an initial set of features available in U.S. English with Apple Vision Pro […]
The second press release offers more details on “the first set of powerful Apple Intelligence features” for Vision Pro:
visionOS 2.4 is available today, bringing the first set of powerful Apple Intelligence features that help users communicate, write, and express themselves on Apple Vision Pro […] visionOS 2.4 also introduces the Apple Vision Pro app for iPhone to help users easily find new content and apps, and enhancements to Guest User make sharing Vision Pro experiences even easier.
Added are Writing Tools, Image Playground, Genmoji, Smart Reply, natural language search, Create a Memory Movie, plus—
Priority Messages in Mail, Mail Summaries, Image Wand in Notes, Priority Notifications in Notification Center, and Notification Summaries.
Apple Intelligence on Vision Pro is only available for US English.
Also available is the Apple Vision Pro app for iPhone, which:
offers a new way for users to discover new spatial experiences, queue apps and games to download, easily find tips, and quickly access information about their Vision Pro […]
Most useful, at least for me, are improvements to Guest Mode:
visionOS 2.4 lets users start a Guest User session on Apple Vision Pro with their nearby iPhone or iPad. To make it easier to guide a guest through the Vision Pro experience, users can now choose which apps are accessible to their guests and start View Mirroring with AirPlay from their iPhone.
This is a good start, and it’ll make it easier for me to share my Vision Pro with my wife, but Vision Pro desperately needs a real “multi-user” experience, like Mac has had for decades—but which iPhone and iPad have never gotten. A $3,500 device needs to be shareable within a household.
Five OS Updates
Enabling all of these new features are five new OS updates: iOS 18.4, iPadOS 18.4, macOS 15.4, tvOS 18.4, and visionOS 2.4.
In addition to the above-noted features, these releases also add Apple News+ Food, eight new emoji (the Face with Bags Under Eyes may become my personal avatar) and a whole host of “bug fixes and enhancements.”
Apple developers can download the releases and read detailed Release Notes.
MLB ‘Apologizes’ for MLB.TV Outage by Asking Fans to Spend More Money
After Thursday’s Opening Day whiff, I knew MLB would apologize to their MLB.TV customers for the outage. It didn’t come on Thursday. Nor on Friday. It wasn’t until Saturday at 12:06 p.m. that I got an email:
Dear Loyal Subscriber,
Opening Day is one of the most exciting days on the Baseball calendar. It’s the first chance to watch your favorite team and players start competing for a World Series Championship. And for over 20 years, MLB.TV has consistently given you the chance to stream those Opening Day games from wherever you are.
Our PR people tell us that every great apology starts with gratuitous, self-congratulatory backslapping. We’re also going to pretend the blackouts that prevent you from watching “your favorite team and players” if “wherever you are” is in a designated home region just aren’t a thing.
Unfortunately, MLB.TV experienced a technical issue yesterday that resulted in a temporary inability to access our live game streams.
By “temporary,” we mean “at least a third of the average length of a ballgame.”
While our technical team addressed this issue immediately…
Got on the phone and yelled at people. So much yelling.
… and restored access as soon as possible,…
The credit card charge finally went through.
we understand how disappointing this was to fans who were eagerly awaiting the start of the season.
We have no idea how disappointed fans—many of whom took the day off—were at missing the first game of the year, the game that sets the tone for the rest of the season, the one they’ve been looking forward to since their team was eliminated last year, and instead spent two hours staring at error messages and yelling at us. So much yelling.
For that, we apologize.
For that, we apologize.
MLB fans deserve the best streaming experience possible and we will continue to strive to provide that.
We paid upfront for service through November. Also, we’re reopening negotiations with ESPN. (Apple? 🤙🏻 Call us, mmmkay? )
To thank you for your support of the National Pastime, MLB would like to offer you $10 off any purchase of $25 or more at MLBshop.com. See details below. Enter code [REDACTED] at checkout on orders over $25.
There’s no better way to say we’re sorry than to give you a discount on merchandise you had no intention of buying. What’s better than giving us at least $15 more for completely screwing up? Did we mention there’s a minimum shipping fee of $8.99? But don’t worry about that, we’re currently running a free shipping promotion. Of course, you can only use one coupon code at a time, so you can either save $8.99 or $10, so really, this is a $1.01 coupon. This is so much better than the $0.93 you’d get with a prorated refund of your $150, 162-game MLB.TV subscription. Math is tough. Let’s go shopping!
We thank you for continuing to support the game we all love and look forward to an exciting 2025 season.
Please don’t cancel your MLB.TV subscription! Please, please, please!
A Slightly Expanded Footnote on Why Timothy Snyder should Leave X/Twitter (and Substack)
I included this footnote in my aforelinked Timothy Snyder/John Lithgow piece:
Linked reluctantly to Snyder’s Substack site. I wish he would leave Substack already. While I’m at it, he should stop posting to X/Twitter, too. He already has a vibrant Bluesky following. His continued presence on those sites drives revenue and attention to them.
It made my point, but I wanted to expand slightly on one aspect of the impact of Snyder’s X/Twitter presence. It became too unwieldy for a footnote, so here we are.
First, regarding Substack: There are plenty of really good, long-standing reasons why Snyder should abandon Substack. I won’t belabor that.
As for X/Twitter, Snyder has a “Verified” account. This means he signed up to pay the execrable Elon Musk at least $7 a month for a blue checkmark next to his name. So did John Lithgow and many businesspeople, brands, authors, influencers, and activists—many of whom, I’d wager, would express personal distaste for the man whose business they willingly support with their money and attention, thus fueling his ability to continue wreaking havoc on our democracy.
Paying for Premium is the only way to get a blue verified checkmark today:
Starting April 1, 2023 we began winding down our legacy Verification program and accounts that were verified under the previous criteria (active, notable, and authentic) will not retain a blue checkmark unless they are subscribed to X Premium.
Let’s put aside the obvious protection racket of having “paid verification systems”—which amount to little more than “it would be a shame if someone impersonated you”—because what’s more irksome is that X/Twitter uses the fact that these well-known, supposedly respectable people have paid for protection—I mean, Premium accounts—as a way to drive more subscribers to Premium by prominently placing ads for the service on the site, with this come-on:
Get your own Blue badge
Verification boosts your credibility and visibility, like @TimothyDSnyder.”
Every verified account you view displays this ad (until you dismiss it)—they’re paying to be exploited.
Gross.
From Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny, ‘Twenty Lessons, read by John Lithgow’ ⚙︎
Here is my best guidance for action, rendered beautifully by the great John Lithgow. I first published these lessons more than eight years ago, in late 2016. They open the twenty chapters of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Millions of you, around the world, have put these lessons to good use; it has been humbling to learn how from courageous and creative dissenters, protestors, and oppositionists. I am delighted to have this special chance now to share the lessons again. I was honored when John, a wise advocate for civil discourse and civic engagement, volunteered to read them aloud.
Lithgow is a stellar choice.
(Apropos, I’ve finally ordered a copy of On Tyranny.)
Linked reluctantly to Snyder’s Substack site. I wish he would leave Substack already. While I’m at it, he should stop posting to X/Twitter, too. He already has a vibrant Bluesky following. His continued presence on those sites drives revenue and attention to them. Update: Read more in this expanded "footnote." ↩︎
An American Citizen Was Arrested by ICE Ten Days After Trump’s Inauguration ⚙︎
In a story for WBEZ (signup required; Apple News+ link), Adriana Cardona-Maguigad writes that “attorneys with the National Immigrant Justice Center and the ACLU of have Illinois” accused the federal government of violating immigration law—arrests without probable cause, “making arrests without proper warrants and creating warrants in the field after the arrests,” which allegedly violate something called the Nava Settlement.
The story includes this revelation about one of the arrested people:
[…] Chicago resident Julio Noriega, 54, a U.S. citizen […] was arrested, handcuffed and spent most of the night at an ICE processing center […]. He was never questioned about his citizenship, and was only released after agents looked at his ID.
“I was born in Chicago, Illinois and am a United States citizen,” Noriega said in his statement, adding that on Jan. 31, after buying pizza in Berwyn he was surrounded by ICE agents and arrested. Officers took away his wallet, which had his ID and social security card. “They then handcuffed me and pushed me into a white van where other people were handcuffed as well.”
ICE arrested a US citizen—born here!—because, I presume, he “looks like” an immigrant and has “an immigrant’s” last name. No questions, no due process. He was held for ten hours:
He was released after midnight without any way to return home and without documentation of what happened […].
Appallingly, this isn’t the only instance of citizens being detained. Since Trump retook office, ICE agents are allegedly targeting people they presume don’t look or sound American, including Spanish-speaking Puerto Ricans and Navajo Nation tribal members.
We’ve officially entered the snatching Americans and legal immigrants off the streets phase of fascism. Next, we’ll be told it’s merely protective custody.
Kaveh Akbar: ‘What Will You Do?’ ⚙︎
Kaveh Akbar drops a searingly emotional piece for The Nation in reaction to the abduction of Rumeysa Ozturk:
This is, more than anything, a plea for principled leftists to rise en masse and not just decry but disrupt a nation helmed by gleeful genocideers. I’m writing frantically, aware my prose is ugly, overearnest, unvetted against worst-faith readers. It’s graceless, unlovely. So am I.
Tonight I want to be understood, not appreciated.
I could quote the piece at length, but to do so would be a disservice to both Akbar and to you.
It’s critical that I share this plea, however:
I want to tell you powerlessness is an alibi. Hopelessness too. I want to ask, what specifically are you going to do? Tomorrow, the next day? What’s your “I am Spartacus” move to protect the more vulnerable, the targeted, the invisibled, the next-on-the-list?
I want to say, it’s your turn now, help. This is us asking you while we still can.
I’ve taken one tiny step: I added the phone number for the San Francisco Immigrant Rapid Response Hotline (415-200-1548) to my contacts, so I’m prepared to act if I see someone being confronted by ICE.
Find the equivalent service in your area and add the number to your phone.
The Disturbing Abduction of PhD Student Rumeysa Ozturk ⚙︎
I finally brought myself to watch the video of ICE’s abduction of Tufts PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk. It’s even more disturbing than I expected after reading the story because, watching, it looks exactly like a random kidnapping off the streets—plainclothes men and women, with masks, approaching a woman and coercing her into an SUV. It was simply done quietly, with badges and handcuffs, instead of loudly, with guns and chloroform-soaked handkerchiefs.
Opportunistic criminals with two-bit tin badges can now confidently disappear someone off the street, and we’ll simply assume they’re with ICE.
That ambushing people on the street or at home is tolerated, even applauded by a fraction of Americans—and defended by our government officials, no less—is profoundly alarming. That it’s done in such a casual manner is equally disturbing.
At what point does ICE become indistinguishable from the Gestapo?
MLB.TV Streaming Service Swings and Misses on Opening Day ⚙︎
Dan Bernstein, writing at (the new-to-me) Sportico:
Starting around the 3:07 p.m. ET first pitch of the game between the Baltimore Orioles and Toronto Blue Jays, fans trying to watch any game on MLB TV via web browser or apps received error messages. The technical problems during one of the biggest days of the season caused backlash on social media, with complaints quickly racking up thousands of likes.
There might be worse days for MLB.TV streaming to experience a massive outage, but Opening Day has got to be right up there. Maybe Game 7 of the World Series with two out in the bottom of the ninth and the winning run at third beats it out.
Maybe.
I was among those affected while trying to watch the Mets vs. Astros game (chosen because MLB’s ridiculous blackout policy prevented me from watching the Giants vs. Reds game—honestly, I’m not sure why I continue to pay $150 a year for the service).
Let’s hope MLB has this fixed for the rest of the season.
My Money’s on Pete Hegseth to Take the Fall for the Signal Intelligence Leak ⚙︎
The Wall Street Journal ran this story Wednesday evening (Apple News+ link) by Michael R. Gordon, Nancy A. Youssef, and Lindsay Wise, posted at 6:26 pm EDT, under the headline “Hegseth Comes Under Scrutiny for Texting Strike Details as Fallout Grows” and the subhead “Republicans react with concern about new details on posts about weapons used and timing of Yemen attack.”
It reads like the first sharp blows of an upcoming hit piece against Hegseth, presented initially as mostly Democratic criticisms, with a few Republicans tossed in so those criticisms aren’t dismissed out of hand.
The entire piece is filled with jabs and body blows, each one preceded by a slight feint of a defense of Hegseth’s actions before countering with a gut punch of reality.
One example: About his decision to share “specific times that F-18s, MQ-9 Reaper drones and Tomahawk cruise missiles would be used in the attack” and “that an unnamed target of the strikes was at a ‘known location’”, the WSJ dryly notes:
Such information is normally guarded carefully by the Pentagon before imminent strikes to avoid disclosures that could help adversaries.
Hegseth’s lack of qualifications for the position is also called out—he’s “never held a senior national security post”—with the paper noting his experience as a “former Army National Guard major and Fox News host” and following up with a comment from “Sen. Mark Kelly, the Arizona Democrat who flew combat missions in the 1991 Persian Gulf war as a naval aviator,” who dubbed Hegseth “the most unqualified Secretary of Defense we’ve ever seen.”
Then, WSJ has other chat participants doing their best to distance themselves from Hegseth, basically saying “I didn’t post classified information in the chat.…”
But to me, the real tells about Hegseth’s future come from the various members of the military and security communities—past and present—making their (anonymous) opinions clear:
Several U.S. military officials said the strike information Hegseth included was still classified as secret when he shared it.
And:
Targeting plans and the employment of American forces have long been considered to be highly classified before action is taken because their disclosure can tip off adversaries and provide them with insights on how the U.S. conducts sensitive military operations, former officials and national security experts say.
The WSJ added:
Top national-security officials have access to secure communications on government networks designed for classified discussions about such information.
They then closed thusly:
Earlier this month, the Pentagon sent an advisory to all military personnel warning that a “vulnerability” had been identified in Signal and warned against using it for classified information.
“It borders on incompetence,” Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator and defense secretary during the Obama administration, said of Hegseth’s texts. “It’s certainly reckless.”
It’s tough to run the Department of Defense if the military you’re responsible for doesn’t trust you to keep their secrets and keep them safe.
To me, all of this adds up to Hegseth’s resignation because “the fake news media has made this story a distraction to President Trump’s important agenda to Make America Great Again.”
I expect a WSJ Opinion calling for his resignation within the week, Hegseth’s decision to step away soon after, and reluctant acceptance by Trump, who will undoubtedly cast it as a “witch hunt,” and be followed by the inevitable pardon.
The New York Times Takes Great Pleasure in Annotating the Signal Chat Leak ⚙︎
Not too much new in this New York Times annotated version of The Atlantic’s leaked Signal chat, but I sniggered several times at the obvious delight the reporters took in slapping the Trump administration officials. For example, this, from Helene Cooper, on Pete Hegseth’s response to J.D. Vance:
Pete Hegseth: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.
Cooper: Mr. Hegseth is echoing here a Trump-administration critique that the U.S. Navy does more to keep shipping lanes through the Suez Canal open than European naval forces do. Using words like “loathing” and “pathetic” will likely make his next meetings with European counterparts dicey.
“Dicey.” Right.
Axios: ‘What Top Trump Officials Claimed vs. What the Texts Show’ ⚙︎
Axios also has a great compendium of the Trump administration’s repeated denials of any classified information being leaked in that Signal chat:
After Goldberg published a partial version of the texts, withholding key details for national security reasons, national security adviser Mike Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegsethswiftly went into shoot-the-messenger mode. […]
Here’s how those statements match with what we learned in the subsequent Atlantic story.
My favorite:
Ratcliffe in the Senate hearing said he was not “aware” of any “information on weapons packages, targets or timing” that was discussed in the chat. Gabbard concurred.
The texts include a detailed sequencing of the timing of the attacks, to include Hegseth’s to-the-minute breakdown of when F-18s and drones would take off and drop their payloads.
The Atlantic’s Editor Shares Definitely ‘Not Classified’ Receipts ⚙︎
Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor in chief, and Shane Harris share the byline on this story detailing exactly what was shared in that now-infamous Signal chat. (Apple News+ link.)
So, about that Signal chat.
I chuckled at the dry acknowledgement that a chat thread is the biggest story of the week.
Much of the text thread reads like first-time managers receiving status updates from their teams and, having no understanding of what it is or means, naively share it, believing it makes them look like they’re “in the loop.”
I also get a distinct vibe (from Pete Hegseth, especially) of “check out what I know! I’m cool now!”
Goldberg and Harris:
On Monday, shortly after we published a story about a massive Trump-administration security breach, a reporter asked the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, why he had shared plans about a forthcoming attack on Yemen on the Signal messaging app. He answered, “Nobody was texting war plans. And that’s all I have to say about that.”
It surprises no one that Hegseth (and Mike Waltz, Tulsi Gabbard, and the rest, all the way up to Trump himself) would deny any top-secret national security information was leaked. What’s surprising is those denials would come knowing Goldberg had screenshots of the Signal thread—and that it was already confirmed as legitimate by administration officials.
In my head canon, Goldberg presented the original story as he did, confident the administration would go into full-on denial mode, and claim, as they did, that the material shared was not classified, thus freeing him to post the thread in its entirety:
At a Senate hearing yesterday, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, were both asked about the Signal chat, to which Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, was inadvertently invited by National Security Adviser Michael Waltz. “There was no classified material that was shared in that Signal group,” Gabbard told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Ratcliffe said much the same: “My communications, to be clear, in the Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.”
President Donald Trump, asked yesterday afternoon about the same matter, said, “It wasn’t classified information.”
I can’t be sure that releasing the full chat was the plan from the outset, but it must be deeply satisfying to use a person’s (or administration’s) predilection for lying against them.
Some Thoughts on WWDC25
As is tradition this time of year, Apple announced the dates for its annual developer conference: June 9–13, 2025.
Apple is basically following its COVID-era playbook: pre-recorded presentations, and, for the third year, a one-day “in-person experience” the Monday of the show.
The modern WWDC is somewhat emblematic of the modern Apple: high production values, efficient, and with enough humanity and playfulness to distract us from the intricately choreographed nature of the beast.
In many ways, I miss live, in-person WWDC. I mean the whole thing, not just the one day event. It was a hellacious week for those of us working the show—and for many in Apple, a hellacious several months—but the experience cannot be matched, from the crucible of rehearsals and related preparations to the energy of a live presentation to bumping into old friends you see but once a year.
COVID restrictions made preparations somewhat easier, as pre-recorded videos can be more easily honed: script every word, read off a teleprompter, repeat until perfect, and edit as necessary. Live presentations required as much as half-a-dozen rehearsals, and the speaker might still get nervous up on stage and flub a line or a demo.
And I loved helping speakers craft and hone their presentations. It was, and remains, one of the highlights of my job.
The other part of WWDC I miss dearly is the in-person labs. Once the exclusive domain of DTS, these labs were expanded to include all of engineering. Eventually, once videos were easily available for streaming on demand, the labs became the big draw for many developers. There’s nothing like a ten-minute in-person conversation with an Apple engineer to unblock a stalled project.
Each year, I eagerly anticipated my role as a lab “concierge”—ensuring every developer met with the right engineer (or App Reviewer or Evangelist) while also acting as an escalation point for developer complaints—even though it meant “performing” an extremely extroverted version of myself. It allowed me to meet amazing developers and connect them with equally amazing Apple people to solve their pressing issues. It was a deeply fulfilling week.
(But goodness, was I emotionally—and physically!—drained at the end of that week! I usually needed at least the weekend, if not the full week after, to refill my battery. Still, totally worth it.)
Pre-COVID, only the 4,000–5,000 in-person attendees benefited from labs. After COVID, and the creation of a virtual lab experience, thousands of developers from around the world were able to meet with DTS and other Apple engineers. That was a huge win for the developer community, expanding who benefited from these conversations. Still, while we extended our reach, I can’t help but feel we lost some of the humanity. Labs became less fluid and more transactional. Gone missing was the ability to pull in a colleague, or walk someone over to another lab, or share the learning experience with other developers. The community aspect of in-person labs dissipated online.
And I definitely missed the random in-person developer conversations I was fortunate enough to have.
Apple is again hosting a special event at Apple Park on “opening day.” In years past, attending WWDC was an experience for the privileged few. You had to be wealthy enough, employed enough, or simply fortunate enough to get in, and if you were outside of the US, it was an additional burden, even in the best of times. During COVID, these special events were further limited to those who were healthy enough—or foolish enough, depending on your perspective—to brave a brush with COVID and lucky enough to get picked in the “random selection process.”
Regardless, WWDC is a career highlight for many a developer.
This year, attending WWDC from outside the United States is a much scarier proposition considering the sharp authoritarian turn this country has taken, and the very real threat of visitors being detained for weeks, deported, or illegally rendered to a hostile country.
Many developers coming to the US for WWDC must first receive a visa letter from Apple “inviting” them. Historically, those invitations and visas were routine (except for some countries, like China), and there was seldom a safety concern for those visa recipients.
Today, not so much. I’m confident that inside Apple, there are conversations (or at least, people trying to have conversations) about the safety concerns—and the ethics—of issuing those visa letters. You can bet your bottom dollar Apple lawyers and public relations folks are busily gaming out scenarios for what to do if a developer “invited” by Apple is held at the border, or worse.
Apple will not publicly comment on this, of course. How can a $3 trillion US-based multinational company possibly express concern about the eroding civil liberties of their home country?
As an individual citizen of the United States, though, I cannot in good conscience recommend a developer come here for WWDC. It’s simply not worth taking the risk that some overzealous border control or ICE agent will consider you a threat. No conference is worth that.
There is something Apple could do to ease any developer anxiety about traveling to the US, while reducing the potentially overwhelming sense of FOMO that may drive many developers to chance it anyway.
Instead of making Apple Park the center of the developer universe, hold events in any of the many cities where Apple has a presence. Battersea in London, for example. Outside of the US, Apple has a dozen and a half Developer Academies in five countries and Developer Centers in three more.
These locations already host developer events. Do something special for WWDC. Commission unique t-shirts and pins for each location. Have senior executives show up and take selfies. Go wild!
With no shortage of stunning spaces in which to host developers, Apple could make WWDC a truly global event. And it would quietly demonstrate to developers that Apple understands the moment we’re in.