Administrative Error
The U.S. secretary of education confused AI with A.1. steak sauce, and students in Waterloo, Canada were afflicted with a spate of attacks by a pair of geese.
A weekly dispatch taking aim at the relentless absurdity of the 24-hour news cycle.
Apple transported 600 tons of iPhones from India to the United States via chartered cargo jets before the U.S. president’s “Liberation Day” tariffs took effect, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued a notice that smartphones were among those electronic goods that would be temporarily exempted from reciprocal tariffs.1 2 3 Shares plummeted in copper, crude oil, cocoa, and coffee; and the “magnificent seven” tech companies, five of whose CEOs flanked the U.S. president during his inauguration in January, collectively lost trillions of dollars in market value.4 5 6 7 8 9 10 “No winners in a tariff war,” China’s president said while on a trip to Spain, shortly before raising tariffs on U.S. products to 125 percent.11 Mexico’s government reportedly opened discussions with the private sector to expand its domestic fracking industry, and the U.S. president called Mexico’s president “elegant” during a cabinet meeting.12 13 14 The euro made gains against the dollar, imported vehicles piled up at American ports, and investors worldwide began dumping American government bonds.15 16 17 “Everything’s,” said the Barstool Sports founder and daytrader Dave Portnoy, “in the shitter.”18
The IRS reached an agreement to hand over sensitive taxpayer information to support ICE’s efforts to identify undocumented immigrants, and the Trump Administration classified more than 6,000 living immigrants as dead to pressure them to return to their birth countries.19 20 The Supreme Court implicitly allowed the use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to arrest and deport alleged members of a Venezuelan gang; the White House admitted that a Maryland man of Venezuelan origin who was accidentally sent to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center last month on account of an “administrative error” was “alive and secure” but that his homecoming hinges on the nation’s authoritarian leader, who during a White House visit reiterated that he would not allow the man to return to the United States; and former Blackwater CEO, Erik Prince, proposed that some segment of this same maximum-security prison, which has been flagged by Human Rights Watch for its abusive conditions and from which no detainee has ever been released, should be designated an American territory in order to circumvent legal challenges.21 22 23 24 25 26 An American-born Massachusetts immigration attorney received an email from the federal government that she must self-deport within seven days; the lawful permanent resident and Palestinian student Mohsen Mahdawi was detained by ICE agents at his naturalization interview in White River Junction, Vermont; and a Louisiana immigration judge affirmed that the deportation of Columbia University campus organizer and green-card holder Mahmoud Khalil, whose “current or expected beliefs,” the state department had alleged, contravened American foreign policy, could proceed.27 28 29 30 “Don’t worry,” Khalil told his supporters after the decision.31
The White House announced that it would withhold federal education funding from the state of Maine after its governor refused to ban transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports, the U.S. secretary of education confused AI with A.1. steak sauce, two more American universities were hit with nearly $2 billion in federal fund freezes, and students in Waterloo, Canada were afflicted with a spate of attacks by a pair of geese.32 33 34 35 36 37 “We can’t even,” said one student, “leave our house.”38 A penguin in an open cardboard box caused a helicopter to crash after embarking from Bird Island, South Africa; and a Tesla was pinned under a box truck in Atlanta.38 39 The home of Pennsylvania’s governor was set on fire in an arson attack shortly after he and his family celebrated the first night of Passover, and the Israel Defense Forces inaugurated twice-daily civilian hiking tours of newly-occupied Syrian land on the occasion of Passover weekend.40 41 “Sorry,” began a note slipped to a Citibank teller by a 22-year-old in Tribeca who made off with $10,000.42 “This is a robbery.”43 —Maya Perry
I love this work. Pray proceed.