Kathryn Watson for CBS News:

The Trump administration is “actively looking at” the possibility of suspending the writ of habeas corpus to handle people the administration says aren’t in the country legally, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said Friday.

A writ of habeas corpus requires authorities to produce in court an individual they are holding and justify their confinement. Article I of the Constitution says the “privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.”

Miller made the comments to reporters at the White House Friday when a journalist asked if President Trump is weighing the possibility of suspending habeas corpus to handle illegal immigration.

“Well, the Constitution is clear — and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land — that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” Miller said. “So it’s an option we’re actively looking at. Look, a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.”

There is no “invasion”. An invasion hasn’t happened here since the War of 1812, when the British got us good and burned down the White House and set fire to the Capitol.

Stephen Miller should be in prison.

Ken Truner, 98 year old WWII veteran:

I’m old enough to have seen fascism the first time around; now it’s coming back. Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, is using his immense power to support the far-right in Europe, and his money comes from Tesla cars. Well, I’ve got this message for Mr Musk. We’ve crushed fascism before and we’ll crush it again.

That quote hits like a thunderclap. Whether symbolic or literal, Ken Turner’s gesture captures a generational defiance that’s hard to ignore. The Greatest Generation didn’t just fight fascism — they lived through it, recognized it, and knew what it took to stop it. Turner’s message isn’t about cars or tanks — it’s about the danger of unchecked power and the moral clarity to confront it head-on.

There’s something powerful about seeing a 98-year-old veteran drawing a line and saying “not again” — especially at a time when history feels dangerously close to repeating itself.

Bertrand Russell From a 1940 collection of essays called Freedom: Its Meaning:

The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.

This technique is as old as the hills; it was practiced in almost every Greek city, and the moderns have only enlarged its scale.

Quote Origin: Fascist Movement – To Fascinate Fools and Muzzle the Intelligent

The Courts Must Stop Presuming Donald Trump is a Regular President. Marc Elias writing for the Democracy Docket:

If there is one thing that is clear from Donald Trump’s first 100 days, it is that he is not a regular president. But the courts continue to treat him as one, which is what has us barreling towards a full-blown constitutional crisis.

[…]

The consequences of this presumption are profound. Courts are reluctant to second-guess the administration’s motivations, unlikely to probe into the government’s internal processes and often dismissive of claims of improper bias.

[…]

Donald Trump is not a regular president, and the courts must stop treating him like one. He is an aspiring autocrat who weaponizes the legal process to undermine the rule of law. Through his words and conduct, he and his administration have forfeited the right to be believed or trusted.

It is time to take Trump both literally and seriously.

It is time for Congress and the Cabinate to use the powers granted to it by the United States Constitution to remove the sitting President of the United States.

His nickname should be Convict Donny “2 dolls” Trump.

Trump’s strategy seems to hinge on the idea that bluster and bravado can replace careful diplomacy and long-term economic planning. But China isn’t a junior player on the global stage — it’s the second-largest economy in the world, and they came prepared. The 84% retaliatory tariffs are no bluff — they’re a devastating counterpunch. And when Chinese banks stop buying U.S. dollars? That’s not just symbolic — that’s a shot aimed directly at the heart of American monetary influence.

Who pays the price? Not Trump or his billionaire cabinet. It’s the farmers in Iowa, the auto workers in Michigan, the pharmacy techs in Ohio, and the small business owners trying to stay afloat while their supply chains collapse under new tariffs.

This isn’t about winning. It’s about proving a point — and it’s costing real Americans their jobs, their savings, and their futures.

I’m forcing you to talk about it, Anderson!

That moment was electric. At 83, he’s showing more passion and presence than people half his age. A reminder that leadership is about showing up, speaking truth, and demanding attention to what actually matters. And that’s exactly the kind of energy we need right now. AOC / Sanders 2028 - lets go!

Lawrence O’Donnell cuts right to the heart of the hypocrisy. Trump’s tariff tantrum was never about “America First” or restoring American industry — it was about showmanship and playing to the base. But the moment those tariffs threatened to hurt his allies in the billionaire class? Cue the backpedaling.

And Elon musk is not finished. Elon Musk needs to be exempted from the goods coming into this country from China, because assembling a Tesla in the United States involves using components built in China.

Elon Musk needing exemptions proves the point: the global economy isn’t something you can bully into submission with isolationist bluster. Even the companies that wrap themselves in the American flag rely on international supply chains. Tesla isn’t built in a vacuum — it’s built with parts from China, minerals from Africa, software from Europe.

And so, once again, Trump folds when real-world complexity crashes into his simplistic rhetoric. His tariffs, just like his entire economic worldview, are a house of cards — and people like O’Donnell are among the few still willing to say it plainly.

I am telling you these countries are calling us up - kissing my ass. They are dying to make a deal.

Exactly — it’s never been about policy or outcomes with Trump. It’s about ego, dominance, and theater. That quote isn’t about diplomacy; it’s about humiliation. He wants to be worshipped, not respected. And if the cost is alienating our allies, distorting trade policy, or putting global stability at risk — so be it, as long as he feels like the alpha in the room.

It’s transactional narcissism masquerading as leadership. Real diplomacy is built on mutual respect, long-term strategy, and coalition building. What he’s doing is play-acting power, treating geopolitics like a reality show ratings stunt. Meanwhile, American credibility suffers.

You nailed it: he’s not strong — he’s desperate to be seen as strong. And that insecurity is now U.S. foreign policy.

John Blake reporting for CNN:

What happened to the funk?

I ask this because I also grew up during funk’s golden era. I watched live performances of groups like Earth Wind & Fire as they drove crowds to a funk frenzy. I studied “Soul Train” every weekend to catch the latest dance moves that I could never learn. I never purchased an Afro-Sheen blowout kit to look like my favorite funk performers, but I proudly carried an Afro pick with a handle shaped like a clenched Black fist to capture their defiant “Get the Funk Out Ma Face” attitude. For my family and friends, funk wasn’t just a musical genre — it was a lifestyle and attitude built around what one music critic called “sweat and sociability.”

And then the music lost its groove. The ‘80s and ‘90s brought hip hop, grunge, rap and alternative rock. Today’s charts are dominated by plastic dance pop that feels like it’s been assembled by an AI bot.

I can’t help but wonder: Why did funk music lose its popularity? And did we lose something more than danceable rhythms when it went away?

Beautifully put — and tragically true. Funk wasn’t just a sound; it was a vibe, a movement, a cultural force that radiated pride, creativity, and human connection. When you heard Parliament drop the bass or Earth, Wind & Fire explode into a horn section, you weren’t just listening — you were participating. Funk demanded you feel it, not just consume it.

John Blake’s piece taps into something a lot of us feel but can’t always articulate: the loss of music as shared experience. Funk was sweaty, joyful, messy, communal. It came from real people with real instruments, flaws and all, and it celebrated the full spectrum of human culture — its pain, pride, humor, and swagger. And yeah, it had groove for days.

Today’s music industry — algorithm-driven, auto-tuned, and precision-packaged — too often feels like it’s missing that soul. The shift away from music education in public schools didn’t just kill brass sections and jam sessions; it silenced a pipeline of working-class creativity. Now, kids are told to produce loops and beats on laptops, not pick up a trumpet or learn four chords on a bass.

Some say it’s partly because the Reagan administration pulled funding to musical education programs in public schools. Kids didn’t learn how to play instruments anymore, so they turned to rap and hip-hop.

And yet — the hunger for funk never fully left. You still hear it in the DNA of artists like Anderson .Paak, Bruno Mars, Thundercat, and Vulfpeck. The groove lives, even if it’s buried under streaming stats and TikTok trends.

Maybe the real question isn’t just “what happened to the funk?” — but “how do we bring it back?” Not just the sound, but the spirit. The jam sessions. The dancing in the living room. The Afro pick in the back pocket. The sweat and sociability.

Thats the real revolution waiting to happen.

Trump’s infamous claim — that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any supporters — was once shocking hyperbole. Now, it feels chillingly literal. Except the shots aren’t coming from a gun — they’re coming from reckless economic policies that are crippling working Americans, in broad daylight, with zero consequences.

While Wall Street hemorrhages trillions, inflation eats away at paychecks, and job losses mount, Trump and his enablers cheer from the sidelines, unfazed and unaccountable. The damage isn’t theoretical. It’s real. It’s personal. And it’s targeted — not at the powerful, but at the everyday people holding this country together.

This moment isn’t just about stock tickers and GDP charts — it’s about economic violence. Wages that can’t cover rent. Healthcare out of reach. Retirement dreams erased. And still, his supporters shrug. The Fifth Avenue test was never a metaphor. It was a warning.

And now we’re living it.

Behold: the official “reciprocal tariff formula” as posted by the U.S. Trade Representative annotated by Ben Brkowitz. A dizzying display of pseudo-academic nonsense dressed up with Latin variables and mathematical flair — all to justify economic policies that make absolutely zero sense in the real world.

Let’s be honest: this isn’t economics, it’s theater. A PR stunt in equation form. And while it might look impressive at a glance, it’s built on sand. Because slapping tariffs on allies in the name of “fairness” — using formulas like this one — doesn’t help American workers. It raises prices, invites retaliation, and destabilizes global trade.

You can’t run a 21st-century economy with 19th-century protectionist dogma and a whiteboard full of nonsense. But hey, as long as it looks “smart” on Fox News, who cares about consequences, right?

Tariffs by formula? More like economic malpractice in disguise.

$9.6 trillion. That’s how much value U.S. stocks have lost since Donald Trump took office again. $5 trillion of that vanished in just the last two days — the largest two-day drop in history. Meanwhile, four American soldiers have died in service overseas.

And what’s Trump doing? As Wall Street melts down and the world watches in stunned disbelief, Trump’s response is Golfing. Again.

This is the same man who once claimed he’d be “too busy” in the White House to ever hit the links:

But as of Day 76 of Trump’s second term, he’s already logged 19 days on the golf course. That’s 25% of his time in office spent not working, not leading, but swinging a driver while Americans lose jobs, savings, and loved ones. That’s not leadership — that’s negligence dressed in khakis.

Remember Ben Stein? The monotone teacher from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off who somehow made “voodoo economics” unforgettable? Well, turns out he’s still schooling us—this time on something MAGA desperately needs a refresher on: the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act.

For the uninitiated: Smoot-Hawley was a protectionist tariff passed in 1930 meant to “protect American jobs.” Instead, it helped plunge the world into the Great Depression. Other countries retaliated with their own tariffs, global trade collapsed, and millions lost their livelihoods.

Sound familiar?

Fast forward nearly a century, and we’ve got Trump 2.0 spinning the same tale—tariffs as salvation, isolationism as strength. It’s the exact playbook that failed miserably the first time. But MAGA seems hellbent on repeating it, minus the history book.

Ben Stein walks through it with clarity, wit, and actual facts. And if you’re part of the flag-waving crowd that thinks economic nationalism will somehow create prosperity—this is your wake-up call.

So yes, every MAGA voter should be required to sit down, take notes, and maybe—just maybe—learn something before cheering the next economic train wreck disguised as “patriotism.”

UPDATE: Director John Hughes told Ben Stein, who had a degree in Economics, to present an actual Economics lecture in his scenes. Hence nothing Stein says (aside from the roll call) is scripted.

If anyone has earned the right to drop a “I told you so” on a daily loop, it’s Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton. These two women warned us—repeatedly—about the dangers of Trumpism, about the fragility of our democracy, about exactly the chaos we’re seeing unfold right now.

And they were mocked. Dismissed. Called shrill. Unelectable.

But here we are, watching democracy buckle under the weight of corruption, incompetence, and authoritarian cosplay—and suddenly everything they said hits like prophecy.

So yes: Say it louder.

Make the slogan a mic drop. Put it on bumper stickers, billboards, tote bags. Let it ring out across every state that rolled their eyes in 2016 and 2020.

Because the truth hurts. And it’s about damn time the truth got the last word.

We’re only 75 days into Trump’s second go at the presidency—and it already feels like a full term’s worth of disaster. Let’s take stock of the damage so far:

1. Prices are surging. Inflation is back on the rise and everyday Americans are feeling the squeeze—at the grocery store, the gas pump, and their utility bills.

2. 401(k)s are tanking. The markets hate instability, and this administration is delivering it in spades. Retirement dreams are evaporating.

3. We’re barreling toward a recession. Economists are waving red flags, and the White House is too distracted with culture wars and Twitter rants to notice.

4. Elon Musk is laying off thousands. The so-called “genius” of American innovation is gutting jobs left and right.

5. Dodge is laying off veterans. Yes, veterans—the very people Trump claims to champion.

6. He’s gone soft on Russia. Again. Putin is playing Trump like a fiddle while Ukraine bleeds and NATO strains.

7. We’ve lost our allies. U.S. credibility? Shot. No one trusts us to lead, much less to keep our word.

8. Defense is a joke. Inexperienced loyalists are running the Pentagon while serious minds are sidelined.

9. Measles deaths are back. Public health is collapsing. Misinformation and anti-vax lunacy are putting children in graves.

10. Billionaires are bankrolling votes. Forget democracy—this is oligarchy in real time.

We’re only 75 days in.

This isn’t just dysfunction—it’s demolition. The foundations of American governance, diplomacy, and public health are all under assault. If this is what the first 2.5 months look like, imagine the rest.

Terrified? Yeah. You should be. And so should anyone who believes in facts, democracy, and a future worth inheriting.

1,386 days to go.

Don’t get me wrong—I’ve rarely found myself nodding along with anything Mike Pence has said over the years. But credit where credit’s due: he finally got something right.

The Trump Tariff Tax is the largest peacetime tax hike in U.S. history.

Let that sink in. While Trump rails against taxes and claims to be the champion of the working class, his tariffs functioned as a massive, stealth tax on American consumers. They hit everyday people at the checkout line while pretending to punish foreign governments.

And now? Pence is suddenly seeing the light. Maybe having a mob chant for your hanging during an insurrection sharpens your sense of clarity. Funny how that works.

Whether it’s too little too late is up for debate. But one thing’s certain: when even Mike Pence is calling out Trump’s economic disaster in plain terms, the cracks in the MAGA facade are starting to show.

The Economist reporting:

When The Economist uses words like “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered” only to mock the president of the United States for saying them — well, you know things are off the rails.

On April 2nd, Donald Trump unilaterally detonated over a century of U.S. trade policy, launching what he hailed as “Liberation Day.” The truth? It was a deeply destructive, economically illiterate, and globally destabilizing move that marks one of the most dangerous turns in modern American history.

It’s hard to know which is more unsettling: that the leader of the free world could spout complete drivel about its most successful and admired economy. Or the fact that… he committed the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era.

Trump’s grasp of economics seems inspired more by 19th-century protectionist fairy tales than any serious understanding of how the modern global economy works. His admiration for the tariff-heavy era before the Great Depression is not only misplaced — it’s outright dangerous. Economists overwhelmingly agree: tariffs deepened the Great Depression, and they will harm working people now just as they did then.

But here we are. A man with zero understanding of global trade is dragging America backward, cheered on by a party either too afraid or too complicit to stop him. And invoking the 25th Amendment? Sure, on paper it sounds sane. But look at the bench — JD Vance would be next in line. That’s like trading an arsonist for the guy who sells gasoline.

How did we get here? Through decades of anti-intellectualism, media echo chambers, and a political culture that rewards spectacle over substance. Trump didn’t create this moment—he’s the symptom. But make no mistake: this “Liberation Day” may one day be remembered not as a course correction, but as a historic unforced error.

And the rest of the world? It’s already planning how to limit the damage—because they know America just abdicated its economic leadership.

Bernie Sanders is not mincing words. In a powerful and urgent address, he laid out exactly what’s at stake in this political moment—and he nailed it:

Under Donald Trump, this country is hurtling rapidly toward oligarchy, toward authoritarianism, toward kleptocracy and toward more and more income and wealth inequality.

This isn’t hyperbole. It’s a clear-eyed diagnosis of a nation teetering on the edge, driven by a GOP that has become fully captive to the billionaire class. Sanders echoed the warning first given by Lincoln—of a government of the people, by the people, for the people—and made it painfully clear: today’s reality is a government of, by, and for the billionaire class.

But here’s where the tide turns. Sanders isn’t just issuing a warning—he’s building a movement. Alongside Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, he’s launched a “Fighting Oligarchy Tour”, hitting battleground states from Nebraska to Arizona. The message is resonating. Crowds are turning out in force. The energy is real.

The people of our country are sick and tired of Trumpism. They are tired of Oligarchy. They are tired of authoritarianism. And they are prepared to fight back.

And that right there? That’s the GOP’s worst nightmare. Not just resistance—but organized, energized, and mobilized resistance.

If Bernie is right—and history suggests he is—the fight to preserve American democracy is far from over. It’s just getting started.