Odds and Ends — 25 March 2025

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Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, AI, and Debt:

Wealthy Americans seek refuge from Donald Trump in Swiss banks


Bitcoin flips ‘macro bullish’ amid first Hash Ribbon buy signal in 8 months

Coronavirus and Public Health:

Why the COVID Reckoning Is So One-Sided

Bird flu spreads to mammals, fears of human transmission

Politics:

———— Pete Hegseth, DUI Hire ————

The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans

U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.
The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.
I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.





This Is Not a Smoothly Functioning Government

Lost amid the headline-grabbing insanity of the classified details is what the principals were discussing on the group chat. It doesn’t take reading too deeply between the lines to see that the principals weren’t entirely clear on what Trump had ordered — someone, apparently Stephen Miller, says, ‘as I heard it, the president was clear: green light’ — which raises some troubling questions about how much White House staff and Cabinet leaders are interpreting or reading the tea leaves on vague presidential directives or desires. When the president of the United States commits US military forces to operations overseas there shouldn’t be any ‘as I heard it’ ambiguity.
Moreover, the principals here were having notably pointed policy discussions in the group chat — which, under a normal functioning government, would be handled at the interagency level by staff and sorted out long before it got a point where the vice president and defense secretary are texting back and forth.
The idea that the highest-ranking officials of the US government are just texting each other in the same group chat you use with your college roommates from a decade ago should raise dizzying questions about how policy is being thoughtfully decided and road-tested inside the federal government right now.




“From an operational security perspective, this is the highest level of fuck up imaginable. These people cannot keep America safe.” — Pete Buttigieg





———— Melon Husk ————

Why Did Elon Musk Go After Bunkers Full of Seeds?

———— Krasnov/Putin/Ukraine ————


Kremlin Wants to Drag Out Peace Talks

As high-level delegations from the U.S. and Russia arrive in Saudi Arabia for the second round of bilateral talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, Moscow’s envoys will have one goal on their mind: buying time.
For the Kremlin, dragging out peace negotiations for as long as possible is imperative for seizing as much Ukrainian territory as it can and getting an upper hand over Kyiv in relations with the U.S.


———— Autocracy R Us ————


The Judiciary’s Last Stand

…Donald Trump is at war with the rule of law in the United States. His assault is already the most hostile and sustained political attack on America’s legal and law-enforcement institutions since the Civil War. It is a war he declared before he began his first term, and one he pursued with tenacity once in office. It even had its own call to arms on January 6, 2021, or so many of his supporters believed.
Exiled temporarily from the White House, Trump spent four years vowing to continue this war if he were reelected, and he has made good on that promise, targeting the foundations of almost every institution of law and justice within his reach as the chief executive.



'Nazis got better treatment,' judge says of Trump administration's Alien Enemies Act deportations




———— Alina Habba ————

———— Mors Imperii ————

https://x.com/AdamKinzinger/status/1903971737793937551

Social Security Is Breaking Down

The Social Security Administration website crashed four times in 10 days this month, blocking millions of retirees and disabled Americans from logging in to their online accounts because the servers were overloaded. In the field, office managers have resorted to answering phones at the front desk as receptionists because so many employees have been pushed out. But the agency no longer has a system to monitor customers’ experience with these services, because that office was eliminated as part of the cost-cutting efforts led by Elon Musk.
And the phones keep ringing. And ringing.

Deportations Haven’t Surged Under Trump

In the first two months of President Trump’s immigration crackdown, the administration has taken new and unusual measures to conduct deportations. It has enlisted military planes, pressured other countries to retrieve their citizens, sent people to third countries far from their homes, and invoked a wartime law to remove migrants without due process.
But even as immigration officials have escalated efforts to remove people from the United States, they continue to fall short of the mass deportations Mr. Trump vowed to carry out. Overall, the number of flights and their destinations look largely similar to those under President Joseph Biden.

Serendipity:

How Japanese anime draws on religious traditions to explore themes of destiny, sacrifice and the struggle between desire and duty

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Badge thanks to arcange@arcange

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Odds and Ends — 25 March 2025 | Ecency