Remember that whole TPP thing? Cancelling that must have made China very happy.

«the widely reported campaign against South Korean economic interests following Seoul’s decision to participate in the United States-led Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense program, announced in July 2016, offers a valuable case study. The THAAD dispute represents a broad-based coercive episode directed at an ostensibly vulnerable target: China is South Korea’s largest trading partner—the destination of approximately one quarter of its total merchandise and service exports at the time of the dispute—and therefore essential to national GDP, 40 percent of which comes from exports. By contrast, South Korea was the source of just 10 percent of Chinese merchandise imports and did not feature among the mainland’s top service suppliers.»

https://theasanforum.org/chinese-economic-coercion-during-the-thaad-dispute/

https://www.axios.com/2025/04/26/maga-maximalism-trump-base-wisconsin-judge-arrest

There will *always* be such people, along with their enablers and demagogues. Ideally, they’ll be driven underground again, with the same social opprobrium that the KKK experiences.

Really, though, I think it’ll be more like Nazis in Germany after WWII. Everybody will know, but life will return to “normal.”

Which means: I think post-war and post-post-war Germany has lessons for us.

If we’re willing to listen. 🙄

«Elon Musk, the president’s billionaire adviser who poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the 2024 election, has criticized ActBlue for weeks, claiming without evidence that the organization was funded by Democratic megadonors including Herb Sandler, who died in 2019. On Thursday, Mr. Musk wrote on his social media platform, “ActBlue is guilty of widespread criminal identity theft.”»

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/24/us/politics/trump-actblue-democrats.html?unlocked_article_code=1.CU8.WQGF.gIidzSoPlhsb&smid=url-share (gift)

Here we go, I guess.

I would imagine the P25 people will want lists of donors’ names and addresses so they can “verify their citizenship” or something. Don’t worry, though; the DOGE boys will treat that data with the utmost care to maintain confidentiality, and will definitely not sell it to Meta or Palantir or China.

I wonder how much this will push political donations to crypto-currencies. That’ll be greeeeaat.

«The National Republican Congressional Committee, the first major national party committee to accept cryptocurrency donations, uses both WinRed and BitPay — the latter is a service that converts crypto contributions into dollars before they land in a political committee’s campaign account.»

https://www.businessinsider.com/altcoins-bitcoin-crypto-cryptocurrency-candidates-politics-donations-congress-elections-2021-10

(Article from 2021.) Of course they do.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trumps-campaign-says-it-will-begin-accepting-contributions-through-cryptocurrency#:~:text=A%20representative%20from%20President%20Joe,Support%20PBS%20News%20Hour%20now.

No investigations, though. Huh.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/24/2318529/-Team-Trump-is-making-a-list-of-Jews-what-could-go-wrong

Mr. Thucydides! Imagine meeting you here!

«“China knows this is a very strong bargaining chip, and it is why they are playing it,” said Ashley Zumwalt-Forbes, who was a deputy director for batteries and critical materials at the Energy Department during the Biden administration. “This is fast emerging as our Achilles’ heel. What makes these bans particularly dangerous is oftentimes one of these materials is a single point of failure for entire supply chains, and its production rests solely in China.”»

https://wapo.st/4cI7j9o (gift)

«China on Monday accused Washington of abusing tariffs and warned countries against striking a broader economic deal with the United States at its expense, ratcheting up its rhetoric in a spiralling trade war between the world’s two biggest economies.»

https://www.reuters.com/world/china-opposes-any-deals-between-us-other-nations-its-expense-2025-04-21/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides_Trap#:~:text=The%20Thucydides%20Trap%2C%20or%20Thucydides,of%20China%E2%80%93United%20States%20relations.

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/trump-accreditors-executive-order-universities-4e4366cc?st=GmKrea&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink (gift)

“Trump this” and “Trump that.” Trump is a racist, sexist sock puppet for a racist, sexist organization, the Project 2025 people.

I have mixed feelings on higher ed.

1. It’s a racist filter as a job requirement, filtering out those who can’t afford it. (Yes, yes, I know exceptions will come out of the woodwork. (“Well, not all….” “Well, I….”))
2. It might be essential, to teach some trades.
3. It’s an artificial filter, because not all trades require a formal (4-year) education. (Of course, the “we don’t need no book larnin'” approach to software development, for example, has led to some pretty crappy software, so caution must be exercised there. It’s always possible for intelligent people to study independently, though. Nor is education any guarantee, for that matter.)
4. It’s generally good for art, visual and non-visual. Not required, but good for learning the basics.
5. It’s good for the pursuit of pure knowledge, which is good in its own right. This includes pure science, of course, but also things like history. The more we know, the better.

Maybe some reform is needed, along with better apprenticeship programs. But I do not trust the racist, sexist Project 2025 cohort to deliver that reform.

It’s a shame it might happen this way.

https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-next-terrorist-attack

«When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.»

(Via Wonkette. Give them some money, y’all. They do all the doom scrolling for you.)

https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/21/politics/homeland-security-kristi-noem-purse-stolen/index.html

Wow, who walks around with that much cash? Hopefully, the DHS access badge didn’t get them very far.

Good to-do list from Jennifer Rubin:

«And when Democrats (because, let’s be honest: there is no critical mass of Republicans prepared to return to democratic norms) regain power, they will need to rebuild government and erect a series of reforms (e.g., Supreme Court term limits or expansion; serious civil and criminal penalties for abrogating others’ constitutional rights or blocking congressionally appropriated funds; bright red lines on private citizens assuming governmental powers; complete divestiture of presidents’ business interests while in office) to secure our democracy.»

https://contrarian.substack.com/p/stop-waiting-for-a-formal-declaration