The Daily Parker

With the total acquiescence of the Republican majority in Congress (only Congress has the power to impose tariffs, really), the OAFPOTUS has exceeded everyone's expectations with yesterday's tariff announcement, solidifying himself as the stupidest person ever to hold the office:

Mr. Trump’s plan, which he unveiled on Wednesday and is calling “reciprocal,” would impose a wave of tariffs on dozens of countries. The European Union will face 20 percent tariffs, but the heavier levies will fall on countries in Asia, hitting friends and foes alike. Security partners Japan and South Korea will face tariffs of 24 and 26 percent respectively, while China will absorb an additional 34 percent on top of existing levies.

“The global economy will massively suffer,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said in a statement Thursday. “Uncertainty will spiral, and trigger the rise of further protectionism.”

“Our close partners appear to be treated similarly to our rivals,” said Wendy Cutler, a former U.S. trade negotiator who is now vice president of Asia Society Policy Institute. “Asian countries in particular have been hard hit, causing them sharp economic pain given their export-driven economies.”

Analysts said China may see a diplomatic opportunity. Mr. Trump imposed some of the highest tariffs on the smaller nations in Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, a producer of shoes and clothing bought by Americans, which now faces a levy of 46 percent.

The announcement itself contained so many falsehoods that the Post had to run a special Fact Checker column this morning:

Not only will tariffs be unlikely to reduce the budget deficit — especially if the economy sinks — but it’s a fantasy to suggest the national debt can be paid with tariffs.

The “subsidy” to Canada supposedly includes military benefits the U.S. provides to the NATO ally, but we fact-checked this and the numbers did not add up. In 2024, the deficit in trade in goods and services with Canada was about $45 billion. The trade deficit with Mexico was about $172 billion in 2024.

The income tax was intended to shift the burden to wealthier Americans as the cost of tariffs fall mainly on lower-income people. Tax revenue was also considered a more stable source of funds. One big advocate for an income tax was Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican. As for the Great Depression, many historians credit the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, signed into law in 1930, as worsening the economic slowdown because it sparked a global trade war.

It didn't help that the list of countries and dependencies getting new tariffs included Diego Garcia, a small island in the Indian Ocean entirely populated by US and UK military personnel.

More reactions:

• James Fallows goes deeper into how and why countries use tariffs, with an analysis of how deeply stupid yesterday's announcement was.
• Josh Marshall calls yesterday's announcement deeply stupid, as well as the unofficial beginning of the 2026 election campaign.
• Jonathan Chait points out that by revealing himself as deeply stupid in a way even his supporters can't miss, at least he won't have as much power to do the other deeply stupid things he wants to do.
• Jennifer Rubin can't stand the deeply stupid lies.
• Paul Krugman just says the tariffs are deeply stupid, full stop: "When the fate of the world economy is on the line, the malignant stupidity of the policy process is arguably as important as the policies themselves."

Noah Smith, writing on Saturday and therefore only anticipating the malignant stupidity of yesterday's announcement, opened with a sentiment many of us share: "I do not believe that Donald Trump is secretly a Russian plant, hired by the Kremlin to destroy America’s economy and global influence. But frustratingly, Trump’s actions are often indistinguishable from what he might do if he were a foreign agent bent on destruction."

The IQs of the three Republican presidents of the 1920s do not sum up to 300. And yet even Warren Harding managed to get through three years in the White House without doing anything as stupid as this--and he knocked up a maid in one of the building's closets.

I can only hope that someone bundles Peter Navarro off to a Louisiana detention facility so that some other sycophant can help the OAFPOTUS end the dumbest trade war in history. Sadly, that does not seem likely.

Cassie and I found a 20-minute gap in the rain this morning so she could have a (slightly-delayed) walk. Since around 9 am, though, we've had variations on this:

Good thing I have all these heartwarming news stories to warm my heart:

• Dane County, Wis., Judge Susan Crawford beat Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel 55% to 45% for the vacant seat on the Wisconsin state Supreme Court, despite the $25 million the Clown Prince of X donated to Schimel's campaign. The CPOX himself drew laughs from people with IQs above 80 by claiming he didn't really try to buy the seat for the right-wing Schimel.
• Paul Krugman reminds the credulous that "there's no plan, secret or otherwise" behind the OAFPOTUS's tariffs. ("Does he really believe that Canada is a major source of fentanyl? Worse, does he believe that fentanyl smugglers pay tariffs?") Timothy Noah concurs.
• Scholar Larry Diamond lays out the ways we can get through the constitutional crisis the OAFPOTUS has created.
• A Federal judge has dismissed corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Johnson, but enjoined the US Attorney from threatening more charges. It's only a partial win for corruption in the US, but still a win.
• The Times looks at Brightline's success and asks, "What's so hard about building trains?" After pointing out that "in Florida, Brightline has proved that it can operate reliable, well-designed passenger trains that people want to ride," they fail to project that it will probably get bailed out at least once in the next 25 years by state and federal money.
• The Onion imbues the Chicago Transit Authority with "an unconscious fear of success manifesting through self-sabotage." They're not wrong.

Finally, Bruce Schneier and a colleague published a paper yesterday lauding "Rational Astrologies and Security." In the paper, the authors analyze beliefs like "Nobody every got fired for buying IBM" and "It's always been done this way" as rational, and how security professionals can use them. The timing of the paper's publication in no way affects the soundness of these conclusions, of course.

I've encountered online comments and what passes for deep thoughts from the OAFPOTUS's apologists. Even The Economist has wondered aloud if the vandalism and incompetence of his administration is somehow 4-dimensional chess, his way of bringing about a glorious new world of higher living standards and improved Western cultural hegemony, or some such nonsense. So after this horrible right-wing experiment, should we credit the administration with the centrist correction?

No.

I believe we will recover from this era. I believe that the pain the OAFPOTUS will inflict for the next 46 months or so will, in fact, lead to a massive reset of US politics starting with the 120th Congress in January 2027, and a massive repudiation of both right- and left-wing extremism. And perhaps by the time I'm 80 we'll have a society in North America that bears some resemblance in empathy and technology to the Europe of today, with universal health care, a stronger democracy, and a high-speed train network at least worthy of 1990s France.

This will not, however, have anything to do with the OAFPOTUS himself, nor the Clown Prince of X, nor the double-speaking half-wits they surround themselves with. It will be despite them.

Hiroshima doesn't thank Paul Tibbets for its beautiful city center. America won't thank these thugs for what comes after them, either.

We had a wild ride in March, with the temperature range here at Inner Drive Technology WHQ between 23.3° on the 14th and -5.4°C on the 2nd—not to mention 22.6°C on Friday and 2.3°C on Sunday.

Actually, everyone in the US had a wild ride last month, for reasons outside the weather, and it looks like it will continue for a while:

• US Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) spent the night haranguing the OAFPOTUS from the Senate floor.
• Jennifer Rubin is not tired of winning against the OAFPOTUS, who has lost every single court case brought against his administration's actions.
• David French points at the decrepit Russian Army to remind us that a politicized military is an ineffective military.
• Anne Applebaum frets about "the corruption and stagnation in our future" if the OAFPOTUS keeps behaving like Viktor Orbán.
• ProPublica takes us along with the flight attendants on those illegal ICE deportation flights.
• Mother Jones' editor in chief Kiera Butler spent last weekend with the deeply weird Christianists who want more Christian babies.
• Midland, Texas-based writer Carrie McKean explains that people in her part of the world aren't actually superstitious bumpkins who want the freedom to let their children die of measles instead of vaccinating them, no matter how much that duck quacks.

Finally, the Dunning-Krueger poster children working for the Clown Prince of X have announced plans to replace the 60 million lines of COBOL code running the Social Security Administration with an LLM-generated pile of spaghetti in some other language (Python? Ruby? Logo?) before the end of the year. As this will only cost a few million dollars and will keep the children away from the sharp objects for a while, I say it's money well spent for software that will never see the light of day. There are only two possibilities here, not mutually-exclusive: they are too dumb to know why this is stupid, or they don't care because they actually want to kill Social Security by any means they can. I believe it's both.

First, yesterday's temperatures at Inner Drive Technology World HQ gave us whiplash:

Not shown: the violent thunderstorm that hit around 2:30, while I was driving up to Evanston where I made a critical error in the final trivia round that cost us the win.

Yesterday I also came across this graphic, which says so much about how North America screwed up its built environment while showing us how we can fix it:

Really, if we wanted to, we could get back to the 1920 pattern in my lifetime. Too bad we're busy trying just to keep our democracy.

But I must, must share this ad from Canada's Liberal Party. Wait for the end:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who you should remember as a Fox News presenter with no knowledge of the military, added Atlantic Editor in Chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a group chat on the only-kind-of-secure messaging app Signal:

On Tuesday, March 11, I received a connection request on Signal from a user identified as Michael Waltz. Signal is an open-source encrypted messaging service popular with journalists and others who seek more privacy than other text-messaging services are capable of delivering. I assumed that the Michael Waltz in question was President Donald Trump’s national security adviser. I did not assume, however, that the request was from the actual Michael Waltz.

Two days later—Thursday—at 4:28 p.m., I received a notice that I was to be included in a Signal chat group. It was called the “Houthi PC small group.”

A message to the group, from “Michael Waltz,” read as follows: “Team – establishing a principles [sic] group for coordination on Houthis, particularly for over the next 72 hours. My deputy Alex Wong is pulling together a tiger team at deputies/agency Chief of Staff level following up from the meeting in the Sit Room this morning for action items and will be sending that out later this evening.”

I have never seen a breach quite like this. It is not uncommon for national-security officials to communicate on Signal. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters—not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of a pending military action. And, of course, I’ve never heard of an instance in which a journalist has been invited to such a discussion.

Josh Marshall points out that these people using Signal instead of a secure channel likely means they are violating recordkeeping laws as well: "How many of President Trump’s conversations with foreign leaders are happening on these apps? It’s the obvious place for bribes, various kinds of criminal conduct, asking foreign governments to do dirty jobs, maybe against American citizens, that Trump doesn’t dare try himself."

Incompetent, malevolent, and corrupt. We have another 16 months of this crap before we can even get Congress back. Marvelous.

Even better: Former US Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) pointed out that one of the members of the group chat was physically in Moscow at the time. It just keeps getting worse.

Having the morning free, and having a lot of cool air and sun, I took a quick stroll around Nashville. I'll have more later, but for now, here's the Tennessee State Capitol, apparently under construction:

Of course, since the Tennessee General Assembly has a well-Gerrymandered 75-24 Republican majority, I would expect they're actually deconstructing the Capitol. But whatever.

I also passed by Riverfront Station, the downtown terminus of Nashville's adorable little 6-times-a-day toy commuter train:

It may be a really sad attempt to have real public transportation, but it's also a train station, meaning there are Brews & Choos-qualified breweries right by my hotel. I'm planning to visit one today. You'll have to wait until at least Friday for the reviews, though. And also for better photo editing.

Leading the hit parade of horrors this morning, London's Heathrow Airport completely shut down after an electric transformer caught fire yesterday, leading to over 1,100 flight cancellations so far. Flight operations have resumed, sort of, but Europe's busiest airport going offline will cause rippling failures throughout world aviation for a few more days at least.

Speaking of massive transport failures, we have yet more evidence that the Clown Prince of X knows dick about cars (or rockets or software or anything, really) as Tesla recalled nearly all of its Cybertrucks after people discovered the door panels can fall off. That's if they don't rust, or crumple, or warp, or cut your fingers off.

I Googled "how bad is the Tesla Cybertruck" and got so many responses I had to whittle the search down to just the last month, and it still took a couple of pages to find a source that most people trust: Consumers Union. And they don't like it at all. (I love this bit, too: "Unfortunately, we can’t ask Tesla any follow-up questions about the vehicle—even clarifying ones that could help us better understand it—because Tesla dissolved its media relations department in 2020, and the company did not respond when contacted through its press email." This is the guy now destroying the US government. You were warned, and you voted for the OAFPOTUS anyway.)

Time to walk the dog again, now that it's up to 9°C.

Before getting to the weather, I don't anticipate any quiet news days for the next couple of years, do you?

• Someone who owns at least 16 rooms and condos in the OAFPOTUS's Wabash Ave. building in downtown Chicago has sued, alleging that—wait for it—the organization running the building is bilking investors. I mean, how preposterous!
• Speaking of corruption flowing from the OAFPOTUS like toxic waste from a Union Carbide plant, Molly White mourns the end of SEC oversight of the crypto industry.
• Former US Representative Adam Kitzinger (R-IL), the last sane Republican, calls the "desperate, weak, and ultimately meaningless bluff" that the OAFPOTUS won't honor President Biden's pardons.
• James Fallows steps through the "correlation of forces" that defines the struggle between the OAFPOTUS and the Constitution.
• Jennifer Rubin interviews Illinois Governor JB Pritzker (D), "a man refreshingly candid about his disgust with the current administration's policies and its lack of humane leadership."
• Yascha Mounk thinks "the World Happiness Report is a scam," just a pile of elite misinformation.
• A sophisticated supply-chain attack may have put 20,000 GitHub projects at risk of subtle but far-reaching security problems.

Finally, the snow that covered Chicago and parts north and west has indeed melted in the past few hours, even though we've barely gotten above 2°C: