“We may have short term some little pain.”

Medicaid portals in all 50 states went offline without warning.

Feb 04, 2025

A weekly dispatch taking aim at the relentless absurdity of the 24-hour news cycle.

The U.S. Office of Management and Budget issued a two-page memo directing all federal agencies to pause the disbursement of federal financial assistance, sowing confusion across the country regarding what portion of the trillions in congressionally-appropriated funds, which encompass SNAP benefits, rental assistance, and Pell grants, would be obstructed.¹ ² ³ ⁴ ⁵ Medicaid portals in all 50 states went offline without warning, and the New York attorney general led a 22-state legal challenge to the edict, which was duly rescinded by the Trump Administration.⁶ ⁷ ⁸ ⁹ “I cannot promise you that everything is going to be OK,” wrote the National Labor Relation Board’s acting general counsel in a note to staff four days after Trump brought the agency’s operations to an effective halt by illegally ousting one of its Democratic members and vaporizing its quorum.¹⁰ ¹¹ ¹² ¹³ Two commissioners were removed at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the body that protects American laborers from illegal discrimination in the workplace, which ordered its own employees, in what would represent a repudiation of their duty to enforce Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, to pause their adjudication of gender and sexuality-based complaints.¹⁴ ¹⁵ ¹⁶ ¹⁷ Staffers at the Center for Disease Control and the Departments of Energy and Transportation were ordered to remove pronouns from their email signatures, and the 60-year old Equal Employment Opportunity rule was overturned, once again allowing federal contractors to engage in acts of discrimination against their workers.¹⁸ ¹⁹ In an Office of Personnel Management email bearing the same subject line, “Fork in the Road,” as the message sent to Twitter staff days after Elon Musk’s 2022 takeover of the social-media company, nearly all of the country’s 2.3 million federal workers were offered a buyout and encouraged to go on vacation or find “higher productivity” jobs in the private sector; shortly thereafter, OPM staffers found themselves locked out of internal databases containing sensitive information on all government personnel.²⁰ ²¹ ²² ²³ ²⁴ ²⁵ ²⁶ Dozens of senior Department of Education employees were placed on administrative leave, dozens of Department of Justice prosecutors involved in criminal cases related to the January 6 insurrection were fired, and more than 1,000 people at the Environmental Protection Agency received notices that they were at risk of “immediate termination.”²⁷ ²⁸ ²⁹ ³⁰ ³¹ The Department of Agriculture ordered the removal of all mention of “climate change” from its websites, the Defense Department elected to no longer recognize Black History Month, and a man at Quantico was photographed painting over a mural bearing the words “Integrity,” “Cooperativeness,” “Stability,” “Diversity,” and “Respect.”³² ³³ ³⁴ Envoys from the Department of Government Efficiency, which lacks a congressional mandate and is thus legally not a federal department, sought and secured access to classified data in a Bureau of Fiscal Service system that disburses trillions in social security and tax refunds to millions of Americans each year as well as classified U.S. Agency for International Development intelligence briefings for which they lacked the required security clearances.³⁵ ³⁶ ³⁷ The Acting Secretary of the Treasury stepped down in defeat and two senior USAID security officers, who had tried to physically prevent DOGE personnel from accessing the restricted material, were escorted out of the Ronald Reagan Building and suspended.³⁸ ³⁹ ⁴⁰ “Time for it to die,” Musk tweeted of USAID, whose communications department was largely gutted shortly before its website went black.⁴¹ ⁴² ⁴³ ⁴⁴ ⁴⁵ Billions in U.S. foreign aid were frozen overnight, with an exemption made for military assistance to Israel.⁴⁶ “These guys are terrible at everything,” tweeted a Senate Democrat regarding Trump’s failure to deport as many immigrants as Joe Biden had in his first week in office, and House Democrats held an emergency Zoom meeting.⁴⁷ ⁴⁸

Trump announced 25 percent tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, leading the premier of Nova Scotia to order the province’s liquor corporation to pull all 400 of its American alcohol products from its shelves, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to announce retaliatory tariffs on Floridian orange juice, the value of the Canadian dollar to tumble to levels not seen since 2003, and Canadian sports fans to readopt the Iraq War-era tradition of booing “The Star-Spangled Banner” when it was played at NBA and NHL games throughout the weekend.⁴⁹ ⁵⁰ ⁵¹ ⁵² ⁵³ ⁵⁴ ⁵⁵ ⁵⁶ U.S. stock market futures plunged, Asian shares slumped, and wait times to take out gold bullion from the Bank of England octupled as a stockpile worth an estimated $82 billion was amassed in New York in anticipation of global trade war.⁵⁷ ⁵⁸ ⁵⁹ ⁶⁰ “We may have short term some little pain,” Trump acknowledged as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the Vehicle Suppliers Association warned the White House of the supply chain upheaval threatened by the new duties, which stand to spike the price of cars, fuel, beer, and avocados.⁶¹ ⁶² ⁶³ ⁶⁴ ⁶⁵ ⁶⁶ Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum, who initially rejected the allegation that her government maintained an “intolerable alliance” with drug trafficking cartels, sent 10,000 troops to its northern border to intercept fentanyl trade, and Trudeau agreed to appoint a “fentanyl czar,” the two North American leaders later securing a one-month stay on the American tariff levy.⁶⁷ ⁶⁸ ⁶⁹ Goods from China were slapped with an additional 10 percent in import duties, prompting the country to announce that it would file a complaint with the World Trade Organization, whose ability to mediate international trade disputes was kneecapped when the first Trump Administration blocked appointments to its main adjudication body, all seven seats of which remain vacant.⁷⁰ ⁷¹ ⁷² “These sabotage actions will not be tolerated,” the Latvian defense minister said after a fourth data cable running under the Baltic Sea was damaged in what are suspected to be covert attacks, leading Norway to seize a Russian-crewed cargo ship.⁷³ ⁷⁴ ⁷⁵ On the Mediterranean Sea, the treaty granting the Russian Navy a military perch at the port of Tartus was terminated by the new Syrian government, which also demanded that the Kremlin, which is allegedly providing refuge to ousted leader Bashar Assad, pay the country reparations and “address past mistakes.”⁷⁶ ⁷⁷ The Panamanian president announced that his nation would step away from the Belt and Road Initiative as Trump renewed threats to reappropriate the country’s eponymous canal, through which $270 billion in cargo is ferried each year.⁷⁸ ⁷⁹ ⁸⁰ The Suez Canal Authority announced that peace had been restored to the Red Sea while Israel continued its assault on the West Bank.⁸¹ ⁸²

The Johnstown Flood Museum in Pennsylvania, which commemorates the victims of an 1889 deluge that killed 2,209 people, temporarily closed due to flooding instigated by a water leak on the building’s third floor.⁸³ “Everything I say leaks,” complained Mark Zuckerberg during an all-hands meeting about firing leakers at Meta, according to audio that was leaked within the day.⁸⁴ After capitulating to Trump’s executive order “Restoring Names that Honor American Greatness,” Google’s maps division reclassified the United States as a “sensitive country.”⁸⁵ ⁸⁶ “Perhaps this life is the most stable for me,” an 81-year-old Japanese woman said amid a rise in petty crime committed by the country’s growing population of single elderly women, some of whom are reportedly seeking imprisonment to gain better access to community and health care, and a 71-year-old Japanese man was found to be behind a string of local house robberies, which he said he committed in order to “look cool” and treat strangers to sushi.⁸⁷ ⁸⁸ “I wanted to build something creative for my community,” a Las Vegas ice cream truck driver said in response to social-media allegations that his vehicle was an Immigration and Customs Enforcement truck in disguise.⁸⁹ Punxsutawney Phil, the Pennsylvania groundhog ranked the 17th most accurate rodent weather forecaster in the country by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, saw his shadow and predicted six more weeks of winter.⁹⁰ ⁹¹ ⁹²—Maya Perry

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