The Daily Parker

Earlier I mentioned Cassie and I had a fun weekend with lots of outdoor time. Unfortunately, the weekend wasn't as much fun for others:

• Contrasting the 5-million-plus No Kings demonstrators across the country with the desultory turnout to the Army's 250th birthday parade that the OAFPOTUS co-opted, Norman Eisen concludes that the OAFPOTUS "is a lousy dictator."
• The OAFPOTUS, disappointed that he didn't get loads of goose-stepping troops carrying his photo like the DPRK army on parade, predictably threw a tantrum, threatening to step up mass deportations in cities with large No Kings turnouts.
• Still, as Philip Kennicott reports, the Army comported itself professionally as the non-partisan organization it strives to be, on what was after all supposed to be their celebration. (This only made the OAFPOTUS angrier, of course.)
• And Yascha Mounk answers the question of whether we're headed towards dictatorship with some optimism: "Not today. Not tomorrow. But the danger is real. And the ultimate outcome, far from being predetermined, may not be knowable for decades to come."
• The Verge's David Pierce has a WTF? moment over the "Trump Mobile" T1 8002 (Gold Edition), the OAFPOTUS's latest scam.
• Jodi Kantor takes a look at Justice Amey Coney Barrett's rulings, speculating that she may indeed be the next Brennan.

Finally, and completely outside of politics, the Nielsen-Norman Group has a detailed analysis of the hamburger-menu icon. Though it's only about 10 years old, most people know what they are today. Fewer people know how usability experts criticized it when it emerged, and how it still has serious failings as a design element. But like the gearshift lever on the steering column, it persists because it persists.

Oh, and because today would have been Parker's 19th birthday...

Cassie and I took a 7 km walk from sleep-away camp to Ribfest yesterday, which added up to 2½ hours of walkies including the rest of the day. Then we got some relaxing couch time in the evening. We don't get that many gorgeous weekend days in Chicago—perhaps 30 per year—so we had to take advantage of it.

Of course, it's Monday now, and all the things I ignored over the weekend still exist:

• Josh Marshall digs into the OAFPOTUS's attack on the state of California, noting that "all the federalizations [of the National Guard] during the Civil Rights Era were over the refusal of segregationist state governments to enforce federal law under court order. Trump’s argument is...[that] the President [has the right] to decide when a state government isn’t protecting or enforcing civil order to his liking and to intervene with federalized National Guard or the U.S. military to do it at the point of a bayonet. ... The crisis the administration insisted it needed to solve was a crisis of the administration’s creation."
• Philip Bump puts the encroaching fascism in broader context: "What’s important to remember about the fracture that emerged in Los Angeles over the weekend is that it came shortly after reports that President Donald Trump was seeking to block California from receiving certain federal funding. ... The point was that the Trump administration wanted to bring California to heel...."
• The Guardian highlights how Chicago has led the way in resisting the OAFPOTUS's xenophobic mass-deportation program, as part of our long history of respecting immigrant rights.
• Anne Applebaum looks at last week's election in Poland and feels a chill that "every election is now existential."
• Lisa Schwarzbaum, a former film critic for Entertainment Weekly, likens the OAFPOTUS's style of governing to Mutual of Omaha's "Wild Kingdom."
• Ezra Klein expresses surprise at who has objected the most to the recommendations in his recent book Abundance, and the left-wing emphasis on messaging: "Democrats aren’t struggling primarily because they choose the wrong messages. They’re struggling because they fail to solve problems. ... [Brandon] Johnson is the most proudly left-wing big-city mayor in the country. ... He’s also the least popular big-city mayor in the country and may well end up as the least popular mayor in Chicago’s history. Policy failure breeds political failure."
• Oh, by the way, Meta and Yandex have started to de-anonymize your Android device by abusing how your Internet browser works.

Finally, a community group on the Northwest Side has launched an effort to build a 5-km rails-to-trails plus greenway project to connect the Bloomingdale Trail with the North Branch Trail. This would create a direct connection between the southern flank of Lincoln Park and the Chicago Botanic Garden in suburban Glencoe. It's still early days, though. I'd love to see this in my lifetime. I'm also waiting for electrified railroads around Chicago, but this project would be a lot cheaper.

A smattering of stories this morning show how modern life is both better and worse than in the past:

• A criminologist at Cambridge has spent 15 years working on "murder maps" of London, Oxford, and York, showing just how awful it was to live in the 14th Century: "The deadliest of the cities was Oxford, which he estimated to have a homicide rate of about 100 per 100,000 inhabitants in the 14th century, while London and York hovered at 20 to 25 per 100,000. (In 2023, the most recent year for which data is available, London’s homicide rate was about 1.2 per 100,000 inhabitants.)"
• An economist I've quoted often on The Daily Parker looks at the entirely-predictable falling out between the OAFPOTUS and the Clown Prince of X and finds a perfect example of the worst corruption the US government has ever experienced: "both men start from the presumption that the U.S. government is an entirely corrupt enterprise, with the president in a position to hand out personal favors or engage in personal acts of vengeance."
• Yascha Mounk sees it as the OAFPOTUS failing to build a coalition. (That this feud has erupted between two malignant narcissists and may be entirely kayfabe is left unexplored by both writers.)
• Jeff Maurer takes a different view that is no less depressing: "that farting baby penguin is a harbinger of the end of democracy (is a sentence that I thought I’d never write). ... Trump found a major flaw in our system, which is that you can get away with illegal stuff as long as you do so much illegal stuff that nobody can keep track."
• A tech bro with about the competence you'd expect named Sahil Lavingia used an LLM to create a script that purged more than 600 Veterans Affairs contracts in a partially-successful attempt to become the Dunning-Krueger Champion for the month of April.
• I'm not sure Slate's Scaachi Koul is entirely fair to Katy Perry in an article from earlier this week, but it's a compelling read.

Finally, I plan to spend a good bit of this afternoon on my semi-compulsory half-day holiday reading an actual book, John Scalzi's When the Moon Hits Your Eye, his latest and one of his silliest. What would happen in the moon suddenly turned to cheese? Hilarity, in Scalzi's world. It's a lot more fun to read than any newspaper.

And then...dinner at Ribfest!

Really, this post is just a list of links, but I'm going to start with Dan Rather's latest Stack:

• US Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) started her 2026 re-election campaign last week by telling constituents not to worry about the proposed $880 billion cuts to Medicaid because "we are all going to die."
• Writer Andy Craig takes a look at the destruction the OAFPOTUS and his droogs have caused, and tries to find a path back to a constitutional republic. "Whatever eventually replaces this crisis-ridden government will result in a new constitutional settlement, not a simple revival of what came before. We will find ourselves engaged in a kind of constitution-making arguably not seen since Reconstruction in the aftermath of the Civil War."
• Paul Krugman looks at what professional money people are doing, and thus what they're predicting, and warns that the TACO trade is misguided, because the OAFPOTUS really has no off-ramp for his tariff obsession: "[T]he nonsensical nature of the whole enterprise is why I don’t think he’ll find an off-ramp. After all, it’s obvious that the increased steel tariff wasn’t a considered policy, it was a temper tantrum after the Court of International Trade ruled against his other tariffs. ... If you want to know where this is going, keep your eyes on the bond and currency markets, where cool-headed traders realize that U.S. policy is still being dictated by the whims of a mad king."
• Evan Osnos smacks his forehead at the unprecedented scale and reach of said mad king's plundering of the United States.
• Max Boot points to the OAFPOTUS's assault on science and education as "the suicide of a superpower."
• Jen Rubin believes the Republican Party has "no good options on the budget," thanks to a Democratic Party in array.
• The Clown Prince of X likes to excuse his sociopathy, cruelty, immaturity, and incompetence by claiming he's "Aspie." (He isn't. He's just a rich asshole.)
• Josh Marshall relays the story about the mess (literal and figurative) that the United States Institute of Peace faced when they got back into their offices after its illegal DOGE takeover in March.

Finally, Streetsblog Chicago's Harjas Sandhu shakes his fist at the seeming inability of the Chicago Transit Authority to find competent leadership. At least it's not currently run by a not-too-bright reality TV star. (And I don't mean the OAFPOTUS.)

I have had no more than 15 consecutive minutes free at any point today. The rest of the week I have 3½-hour blocks on my calendar, but all the other meetings had to go somewhere, so they went to Monday.

So just jotting down stories that caught my eye:

• Ukraine's masterful and crippling strike against the Russian Air Force over the weekend has changed warfare forever, writes Max Boot.
• Jen Rubin wants to end the creeping normalization of the OAFPOTUS and his droogs because, as she says, they're all nuts.
• Because they want to nominate obviously unqualified people to the Federal judiciary, the Justice Dept will no longer ask the American Bar Association to vet them.
• Michael Tomasky explains why the Republican Party runs up massive deficits while complaining about massive deficits.
• Why does the MAGA right hate New York City, wonders Paul Krugman?
• Writer Anne Lamott cautions against "putting Biden's head on a spike."
• The oldest company in North America, the Hudson's Bay Co. founded 355 years ago, will permanently close its doors this summer.

Finally, the Illinois House failed to pass a budget bill that included funding the Regional Transportation Authority. Despite regional transport agencies facing a $770 million funding shortfall later this summer, the House couldn't agree on how to pay for it, in part because downstate Republicans don't want to pay for it at all. The Legislature could return in special session this summer, but because of our hippy-dippy 1970 state constitution, they need a 3/5 vote to pass a budget after June 1st. If they can't pass the budget soon, the RTA may have to cut 40% of its services, decimating public transport for the 7 million people in the area.

My party wants to govern, and understands that government needs to provide a service that millions of people who depend on even if people who don't use the service have to contribute. I mean, some of my taxes go to Republican farm subsidy programs, and I accept that's part of the deal. Republicans no longer think our needs matter. They need to be careful what they wish for.

First, an update on Cassie: her spleen and lymph cytology came back clean, with no evidence of mast cell disease. That means the small tumor on her head is likely the only site of the disease, and they can pop it out surgically. We'll probably schedule that for the end of June.

I have had an unusually full calendar this week, so this afternoon I blocked off three and a half hours with "No Meetings - Coding." Before I dive into finishing up the features for what I expect will be the 129th boring release of the product I'm working on, I am taking a moment to read the news, which I have not had time to do all day:

• Inae Oh reminds everyone that, while the Clown Prince of X may have departed his blatantly unlawful role in the White House after failing to achieve any of his stated objectives, he has nonetheless made everyone's life worse.
• Sherron Watkins and Cynthia Cooper, the two whistleblowers who blew up the spectacular frauds at Enron and WorldCom in 2001, warn that the GOP plans to make spectacular fraud great again by eliminating the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.
• Jennifer Rubin laments the OAFPOTUS's foreign policy malpractice.
• The administration's shift of national-security assets toward Stephen Miller's pogrom against immigrants has hobbled our efforts to combat domestic terrorism, forcing the states to make do with far fewer resources.
• David Ignatius believes that "the way to end the Gaza war has been clear for nearly a year," but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuses to stop fighting for purely domestic political reasons.
• King Charles III's visit to Canada this week was "an audaciously disjunctive event," writes The Guardian's Martin Kettle. "[T]he modern British monarchy has stood up and demanded to be counted, doing something new and perhaps genuinely consequential."
• NPR's Steve Inskeep remarks on how his interviews with polarizing figures like US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Republican über-troll Steve Bannon have been received by other media outlets.

Finally, the city of Chicago has started formal negotiations with the Union Pacific Railroad to acquire an abandoned right-of-way on the Northwest Side—that Cassie and I walked on just a week ago and that my Brews & Choos buddy and I used to get to Alarmist back in November 2023. The project still requires a few million dollars and a few years to complete. Still, the city also is talking about building a protected bike lane along Bryn Mawr Avenue in the North Park and Lincoln Square Community Areas, which would connect the Weber Spur with the North Shore trail just east of the Chicago River. For the time being, the UPRR doesn't seem to mind people walking on their right-of-way, though technically it's still private property. But that trail will be really cool when completed.

And now, I will finish this feature...

A three-judge panel at the US Court of International Trade has granted summary judgment to a group of states and organizations, ruling that the OAFPOTUS's reliance on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 is unconstitutional, and thus nearly all of the administration's tariffs are unlawful:

On Wednesday, the Court of International Trade, the primary federal legal body overseeing such matters, found that Mr. Trump’s tariffs “exceed any authority granted” to the president by the emergency powers law. Ruling in separate cases brought by states and businesses, a bipartisan panel of three judges essentially declared many, but not all, of Mr. Trump’s tariffs to have been issued illegally.

It was not clear precisely when and how the tariff collections would grind to a halt. The ruling gave the executive branch up to 10 days to complete the bureaucratic process of ending them. The Trump administration immediately filed its plans to appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

A White House spokesman, Kush Desai, sharply rebuked the court, saying ... “It is not for unelected judges to decide how to properly address a national emergency.”

The USCIT agrees with you, Mr Desai: Congress should decide how to properly address tariffs. And there is no emergency.

There were, naturally, a few reactions this morning.

Krugman: "Is there a dignified legal way, preferably in Latin, to say 'Holy Shit?' ... [I]t has been obvious all along that Trump’s use of the 1977 International Economic Emergency Powers Act to justify Smoot-Hawley level tariffs was a massive abuse of power. I mean, since when are 4 percent unemployment and 2.5 percent inflation an emergency justifying the reversal of 90 years of policy?"

Marshall: "So is this all over? I suspect it may be. There are laws which grant the President the power to impose tariffs for specific reasons. But this particular law doesn’t even mention tariffs as something the President can do under this act. So I don’t think as a legal matter it’s a terribly close call."

Zoe Williams: "The observer could file all this under 'government: harder than it looks.' Moving fast and breaking things doesn’t work. Borrowing and spending while slashing and burning in a formless, ad hoc fashion doesn’t work. Billionaires with fragile egos, trying to cooperate while reserving the right to say whatever they like about each other, well, this has never worked. It would be the gravest imaginable mistake, though, to think that just because the wheels are coming off it this bus is losing its destructive power."

I'm surprised to discover, however, that none of my other usual suspects reacted. "Flooding the zone with shit" does work, to an extent, because they can produce alarming quantities of feculence quickly. But so far, the OAFPOTUS has lost every one of his major initiatives in court. Well, district court, and one or two circuit courts of appeal. We have a long way to go before the bus actually stops moving.

The OAFPOTUS is blatantly selling pardons now:

[Paul] Walczak, a former nursing home executive who had pleaded guilty to tax crimes days after the 2024 election, submitted a pardon application to President Trump around Inauguration Day. The application focused not solely on Mr. Walczak’s offenses but also on the political activity of his mother, Elizabeth Fago.

Ms. Fago had raised millions of dollars for Mr. Trump’s campaigns and those of other Republicans, the application said. It also highlighted her connections to an effort to sabotage Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s 2020 campaign by publicizing the addiction diary of his daughter Ashley Biden — an episode that drew law enforcement scrutiny.

[W]eeks went by and no pardon was forthcoming, even as Mr. Trump issued clemency grants to hundreds of other allies.

Then, Ms. Fago was invited to a $1-million-per-person fund-raising dinner last month that promised face-to-face access to Mr. Trump at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla.

Less than three weeks after she attended the dinner, Mr. Trump signed a full and unconditional pardon.

Imagine if any other president had done this—and I mean, any other president—he'd be impeached and convicted by the end of June.

The Republican Party has embraced corruption in all its forms. Selling a pardon doesn't even make them blink.

We've had a run of dreary, unseasonably cold weather that more closely resembles the end of March than the middle of May. I've been looking at this gloom all day:

We may have some sun tomorrow afternoon through the weekend, but the forecast calls for continuous north winds and highs around 16°C—the normal high for April 23rd, not May 23rd. Summer officially starts in 10 days. It sure doesn't feel like it.

Speaking of the gloomy and the retrograde:

• Former US judge and George HW Bush appointee J. Michael Luttig argues that the OAFPOTUS "is destroying the American presidency, though I would not say that is intentional and deliberate."
• In a case of "careful what you wish for," FBI Director Dan Bongino can't escape his past conspiracy theorizing but also can't really escape the realities of (or his lack of qualifications for) his new position.
• Writer Louis Pisano excoriates Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez for their "idea that billionaires can buy their way into virtue with just enough gala invitations, foundation launches, and pocket-change donations" in Cannes this week.
• Adam Kinzinger shakes his fist at the OAFPOTUS-murdered Voice of America, now "subsidized by taxpayer dollars [to broadcast] Trump-aligned propaganda in 49 languages worldwide."
• Jen Rubin, vacationing in Spain, explains how the country's centuries-long Catholic purges of Jews and Muslims drove their globe-spanning empire into irrelevance. "The notion that national defense required ethnic and religious homogeneity not only resulted in mass atrocities, it also deprived Spain of many of the people and ideas that had helped it become a world power," she concludes. (Not that we need to worry here in the US, right?)
• Chuck Marohn shakes his head at the Brainerd, Minn., city council for ignoring his advice and building massive infrastructure they can't afford to maintain.
• Metra has formally taken control of the commuter trains running on Union Pacific track, including the one that goes right past Inner Drive Technology WHQ.
• The village of Dolton, Ill., has informed potential buyers of Pope Leo XVI's childhood home that it intends to invoke eminent domain and work with the Archdiocese of Chicago on preserving the building. Said the village attorney, "We don't want it to become a nickel-and-dime, 'buy a little pope' place."

Speaking of cashing in on the Chicago Pope, Burning Bush Brewery has just released a new mild ale called "Da Pope." Next time Cassie and I go to Horner Park, we'll stop by Burning Bush and one of us will try it. (Un?)Fortunately, we won't have time to get there by 11pm Friday, so we'll miss the $8 Chicago Pope Handshake special (a pint of Da Pope and a shot of Malört). Dang.

Radley Balko, who has spent his career examining police policy and law-enforcement mission creep, elucidates the latest authoritarian trolling from the White House:

Donald Trump says he wants to “unleash” the police.

The [latest executive order] is more virtue signaling than policy — more an expression of Trump’s mood than a serious proposal. And, when it comes to conventional crime, Trump’s mood is right where it’s always been: fearful, demagogic, and perpetually stuck in 1988.

The key term in the executive order is unleash, and it’s worth delving into what exaclty he means when he uses it. The literal definition is to remove from a restraint. In the context of law enforcement, it conjures images of cops siccing police dogs on suspects and protesters. Metaphorically, we tend to associate the word with starker imagery: we unleash fury, wrath, and retribution. Trump wants to project both.

He believes in projecting strength, and believes strong leaders demonstrate strength with violence. This is why he has often suggested that police officers will attack his enemies if called upon, and why the Capitol Police who defended Congress from his supporters received so much of MAGA’s wrath.

Yet you can’t unleash something that has never been restrained in the first place. And in the U.S., the police have never been restrained.

In other words, this version of reality in which police officers are hamstrung by overly restrictive rules, activist judges, and woke prosecutors only really exists in Donald Trump’s mind, and in the minds of his followers.

In the end, Donald Trump doesn’t really want to unleash the police. He just wants to be sure he’s the one holding the lead.

I mean, you can't have an authoritarian police state without balaclavas, can you?