Now Trump is playing “Let’s negotiate.” Howzabout I skip the tariff on cars, ok? Yeah sure bro, howzabout I torch 90% of your house instead of all of it?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to speak to his U.S. counterpart Wednesday after the Americans launched a trade war yesterday with devastating tariffs on all Canadian goods.

A senior government official told CBC News that the call is expected sometime around midday. It’s the first time Trudeau has spoken to U.S. President Donald Trump since his administration torpedoed free trade between the two countries by imposing steep levies on imports.

The call comes as the federal government grapples with the usual chaotic situation out of Trump’s Washington with the president’s advisers suggesting at different points over the last 12 hours that there could be a compromise on tariffs only to say later that tariffs will still apply but maybe at a lower rate.

Or with a box of chocolates, or only every other month, or upside down, or in suspendies and a bra.

After U.S. stock markets plummeted once Trump slapped tariffs on Canada and Mexico, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick appeared on Fox News Business Tuesday saying he’s working on a plan to “meet in the middle” on tariffs, without offering any clarity on what exactly that means.

Genius, sheer genius. “After the house burst into flames, the arsonist said he’s working on plans to put half the fire out.”

In an interview with CBC’s The National late Tuesday night, LeBlanc said Canada is “not interested in some sort of reduction of the tariffs. We want the free trade agreement with the United States and Mexico respected.”

Oh that. Well…the agreement was not our idea so we don’t have to respect it. That’s how this works, right? If you didn’t make the law or treaty or agreement, you don’t have to obey it?

In his address to Congress last night, Trump doubled down on the value of tariffs, including on allies like Canada.

“Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again, and it is happening and it will happen rather quickly. There will be a little disturbance, but we are OK with that,” he said.

That’s so elegant, that “rather quickly.” I just marvel at his brilliance.

David Frum in the Atlantic:

The Trump administration’s elimination of PEPFAR, the American program to combat HIV infection in Africa, symbolizes the path ahead. President George W. Bush created the program because it would do immense good at low cost, and thereby demonstrate to the world the moral basis of American power. His successors continued it, and Congresses of both parties funded it, because they saw that the program advanced both U.S. values and U.S. interests. Trump and Vance don’t want the United States to be that kind of country anymore.

The thing about this demonstrating the moral basis of one’s power is that you can’t do it without actually having the moral basis. The ulterior motive is there, but so is the immense good being done. Immense good is good.

The American people need to reckon with the mess Trump and Vance are making of this country’s once-good name—and the services they are performing for dictators and aggressors. There may not be a deep cause here. Trump likes and admires bad people because he is himself a bad person.

And not just a bad person but a kind of paradigm of a bad person – a bad man, specifically. Bad so thoroughly; bad in so many ways; bad to the total exclusion of any good. There are no stories of Trump doing something benevolent. None. Everything he does is about enriching and empowering and flattering himself; there is nothing left over for people who are not trump.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Prank.

Will nobody tell Trump how tariffs work? He’s under the impression (or giving the impression) that the countries he’s targeting with these tariffs are going to pay him for the privilege of selling in the US. Canada isn’t going to pay a dime; it’s US customers of Canadian goods who are going to be stuck with the bill, or needing to scramble to find alternate sources for the products we can sell more profitably elsewhere. Trump seems to think that, like some hoity- toity credit card with exorbitant annual fees, we’ll pay through the nose in order to be permitted to bow and scrape our way back into his good graces.

“It’s going to be very costly for people to take advantage of this country. They can’t come in and steal our money and steal our jobs and take our factories and take our businesses and expect not to be punished,”….

Wait. We’re talking about trade, right? Where does the “steal our money” happen? Are these countries shoplifting on a massive scale, stuffing their diplomatic bags with items they’ve pinched from Walmart? Traditionally, tariffs were used to protect domestic production from foreign competition. But what if there are few (or no) domestic producers left to protect? What’s the point? As for “stealing our jobs” and “taking” factories and businesses, wasn’t it American companies moving to those countries? Are they not permitted to do that? Isn’t it the goal of corporations to seek out the cheapest source of labour, the least regulated and profitable locations for their facilities? This corporate strategy has been used to roll back wages and working conditions in a race to the bottom. This is how the game is played, and if it were going in Trump’s favour, he would have no problem at all with it; he’d say he was “winning.”

Corporations have no loyalty to anything but profit; this is a stance which Trump should appreciate, as he follows it himself (albeit, given his record, with limited success). Taxing the corporations that claim to be “American” while doing all of their manufacturing overseas would make more sense. Fighting for a level playing field internationally in terms of worker pay, environmental protection, and carbon pricing for shipping would, in the long run, make a lot more sense and make the world a better place for everyone. But that’s not what Trump wants. He wants obedience and gratitude, and he doesn’t care how many Americans have to suffer until he gets it. Good luck with that. The US isn’t in a position to dictate in this way any more. Trump can’t make anyone trade with him if they don’t want to. Beating with the tariff stick won’t really help. It might be awkward or difficult, but the world can bypass or ignore the US much more easily than in the past. There are other markets, and other customers.

It’s the science, stupid.

Fellows of the Royal Society met yesterday to discuss, as they put it, “Fellows’ behaviour”. In light of the resignation of two fellows and an open letter signed by nearly 3,500 scientists, many, including me, expected the discussion to be focused on the behaviour of one particular fellow: Elon Musk.

The Royal Society, as one of the world’s most esteemed scientific institutions, bears the responsibility of maintaining standards among its fellows. Musk, admitted as a fellow in 2018 for his technological innovations, has recently engaged in behaviour that contravenes the society’s code of conduct.

I did not know Musk is an FRS.

In particular, many scientists have taken issue with his assault on the conduct of science in the US and beyond as head of the Trump administration’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) as well as his malicious accusations against public scientists (such as Anthony Fauci) and other public figures.

Musk is an important figure (some would argue the most important) in a US administration that is laying siege to science and to scientific inquiry itself. The new administration’s executive orders have restricted research, silenced climate scientists and cut funding as part of a systematic targeting of the scientific community.

…

The Royal Society’s code of conduct for fellows states that “Fellows and Foreign Members shall not act or fail to act in any way which would undermine the Society’s mission or bring the Society into disrepute”. It is clear that Musk’s behaviour has contravened this rule. So why, even now, has the Royal Society not spoken out specifically against his actions?

…

So for me it’s time to take a stand, small as it may be, and to distance myself from the Royal Society until such a time as it has the moral courage to specifically denounce the actions that Musk is taking to undermine science in the US and elsewhere. 

Like firing a big chunk of NOAA to name just one item.

Trump being activisty again.

Wheels falling off already.

A leading spokesperson in the Department of Health and Human Services announced his resignation Monday after stark disagreements with Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over how to manage the growing measles outbreak.

Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Thomas Corry resigned effective immediately on Friday only two weeks after starting the job, he posted on LinkedIn, wishing his colleagues in the department “the best and great success.” Corry reportedly butted heads with Kennedy and Kennedy’s principal deputy chief of staff, Stefanie Spear, over how to manage the department, according to Politico.

Let me guess – he thought it should be managed in the direction of shutting down outbreaks of dangerous disease?

Specifically, Corry was not happy with Kennedy’s initial response to Texas’s growing measles outbreak, which has infected at least 146 people and caused the first measles death in the United States in 10 years. Last week, Kennedy said during a Cabinet meeting that measles outbreaks were not unusual, despite the fact that measles had been declared eliminated in 2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Well, eliminated, not unusual – they’re pretty much the same thing, right?

Since then, Kennedy said that HHS was helping health officials in Texas respond to the outbreak and spoke approvingly of the measles vaccine, but has still stopped short of calling for everyone to get vaccinated, writing Sunday in a Fox News op-ed that “the decision to vaccinate is a personal one.”

Nope. Just as the decision to burn down a neighbor’s house is not a personal one, the decision to be a risk to the health of other people is not a personal one. Decisions that affect other people cannot be purely personal.

Kennedy has long had a reputation for being anti-vaccine, although he tried to deny his previous comments during his confirmation hearings.

Since his confirmation to lead HHS, Kennedy’s actions have not been reassuring. He has paused multiple vaccine developments in the department and on his first day fired critical employees, including members of the CDC who respond to outbreaks. 

That’s a guy who wants more people to catch dangerous diseases.

Goddam Democrats voted unanimously to let men invade women’s sports.

Help is on the way.

No, it’s really not.

Women’s history is women’s history. That’s all. We have zero obligation to share it with other categories of people, because it’s women’s. Words have meaning.

Trump is doing his tariff thing.

Donald Trump just took the biggest gamble of his young second presidency.

His hammer-blow 25% tariffs against Canada and Mexico that hit at midnight dealt a fresh shock to an economy showing alarming signs of slowing growth and rising inflation – a perilous mix for any president.

Trump also doubled an additional tariff on all Chinese imports to 20%, in a trio of decisions that sent stocks – a cherished metric of his own performance – tumbling. 

Not to worry. All part of the plan. These guys know what they’re doing. This is three dimensional chess.

“It’s going to be very costly for people to take advantage of this country. They can’t come in and steal our money and steal our jobs and take our factories and take our businesses and expect not to be punished,” Trump said Monday. “And they’re being punished by tariffs. It’s a very powerful weapon that politicians haven’t used because they were either dishonest, stupid, or paid off in some other form.”

Hmm. The economics of punishment. That works, does it?

Trump’s decision to launch full scale trade wars with America’s neighbors is a landmark moment in his second term and is just the latest occasion when he’s stuck to his sweeping campaign trail promises despite the enormous disruption that honoring his word entails.

Maybe because enormous disruption is what he wants? Because it’s fun? Like pulling the wings off insects?

Tariffs – a device used for generations earlier in America’s history but that was largely phased out in the 20th century – are stamped in the DNA of Trump’s “America First” movement. Their implementation against Canada mirrors the worldview behind his eruption at Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office last week. For Trump, all foreign policy is a monetary transaction in which the United States is either winning or being taken advantage of. This mindset precludes the idea that America has friends or allies with common interests. Instead, his use of tariffs to try to wring concessions from Mexico and Canada on immigration shows that his White House views them not as an exclusively economic tool but as part of a deeper national security arsenal.

Or to put it more simply, another way to bully everyone.

Trump has stopped military aid to Ukraine.

We’re restarting our live coverage as the White House announces that the US will pause military aid for Ukraine.

“The President has been clear that he is focused on peace. We need our partners to be committed to that goal as well. We are pausing and reviewing our aid to ensure that it is contributing to a solution,” a White House official has told the BBC’s US partner, CBS News.

…

According to officials this pause is said to be temporary until President Trump determines that Ukraine can demonstrate a “commitment to peace negotiations” with Russia.

The Trump administration basically wants President Zelensky to sign the minerals deal and “make peace” with Russia, without giving him the security assurances he wants.

Which is not “peace” but surrender. Trump is trying to force Zelenskyy to surrender. To his homey Volodya.

In the early afternoon, US President Donald Trump went on his social media platform Truth Social and warned Zelensky that “America will not put up with it for much longer”.

His message was in response to a comment made by Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday, when the Ukrainian President said during a press briefing that a deal to end the Russia-Ukraine war “is still very, very far away”.

Trump is saying he won’t “put up with” Zelenskyy’s refusal to surrender.

We’re all trapped in the cesspool with Trump.

The dogma is solemnly recited.

JKR replies:

The fringe idea that we all have a ‘gender identity’ that may or may not match our biological sex is the whole point of this discussion. Trans activists act as though the existence of ‘gender identity’ is a settled, self-evident point, when to the vast majority of the world it’s unevidenced, quasi-religious, pseudoscientific nonsense, which has been imposed top down on our society with serious consequences for vulnerable women and troubled youth in particular.

Meaningful discussion about competing needs and rights cannot happen inside an elitist ideological bubble where everyone is forced to adopt gender ideology’s approved jargon, accept its self-contradicting slogans as fact and pretend fact-light assertions and feeble sophistry are critical thinking.

You tell us to ‘educate’ ourselves, by which you mean, ‘adopt our beliefs unquestioningly,’ but at this point, most of us know your arguments off by heart. These include, but are not limited to: feelings trump facts and unless we agree we’re ‘erasing people from existence’; women and girls aren’t definable entities, so why should they be entitled to their own sports and single-sex spaces; clownfish and people with DSDs mean sex is ‘on a spectrum’ and ‘woman’ is a set of stereotypes associated with the female sex class, so it doesn’t matter if you’ve got a penis, if you identify with those stereotypes you’re ‘valid’.

The reason we haven’t been won over by these talking points and remain so tragically ‘uneducated’ isn’t that we’ve failed to grasp the sophistication of your world view. It’s that we think you’re talking unadulterated bullshit and making fools of yourselves.

And that you’re violating women’s rights all over the shop.

Letter to Dim Don:

https://twitter.com/rshereme/status/1896628969174335519

https://twitter.com/rshereme/status/1896628987180523908

https://twitter.com/rshereme/status/1896628992343683458

Signed, Lech Wałęsa, former political prisoner, Solidarity leader, President of Poland

National Organization for Women:

ACTION ALERT: Urge your Senators to vote against the “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act

Yes hello we are the national organization for women and we are telling you to vote against keeping men and boys out of women’s and girls’ sports. We are telling you to campaign not to exclude men and boys from sports for women and girls. We are, in short, telling you to ruin sports for women and girls. Are we progressive or what.

This bill prohibits school athletic programs from allowing trans women, or individuals not assigned female at birth, to participate in school athletic programs. This endangers all players on women and girls’ sports teams no matter their age, sport, or level of competition.

Wrong, you horrible fools. Allowing boys to participate in school athletic programs for girls is what endangers girls. As you must know, even as stupid as you are.

“All the land,” he exclaims in dramatic shock-horror. Yes all the land that Putin invaded – what’s the shock-horror about? If somebody breaks into your house do you feel obliged to give up the living room and kitchen before calling the cops?

It’s terrifying how captured these people are.

The Guardian puts it more strongly.

The Trump administration announced it will take control of the White House press pool, stripping the independent White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) of its longstanding role in deciding which journalists have access to the president in intimate settings. The move has immediately triggered an impassioned response from members of the media – including a Fox News correspondent who called it a “short-sighted decision”.

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, made the announcement during Tuesday’s press briefing, framing the move as democratizing access to the president.

“A group of DC-based journalists, the White House Correspondents’ Association, has long dictated which journalists get to ask questions of the president of the United States,” Leavitt said. “Not any more. Today, I was proud to announce that we are giving the power back to the people.”

And by “the people” she means Trump and his trumponians.

The announcement upended more than 70 years of protocol of journalists – not government officials – determining which rotating reporters travel with the president on Air Force One and cover events in the Oval Office or Roosevelt Room.

It’s quite similar to the protocols that keep corporations and lobbyists and clerics and military brass from deciding who gets to report on them.

As the media reeled from the attack on the press pool, the three main wire services that routinely report on the US presidency released a joint statement protesting Donald Trump’s decision to bar the Associated Press from official events.

Reuters and Bloomberg News joined AP in decrying Trump’s move to restrict AP’s access to the president. The top editors of each of the wires said the unprecedented action had threatened the principle of open reporting and would harm the spread of reliable information to individuals, communities, businesses and global financial markets.

And labor unions, environmental scientists, watchdogs.

The standoff between Trump and AP began on 14 February when the White House announced it was indefinitely barring AP reporters from the Oval Office and Air Force One. Officials said the step had been taken to punish AP for refusing to amend its style guide to change the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”, as Trump had dictated.

Are we stupid enough yet?

Now the dictator is deciding who can report on his dictatorship.

On Tuesday, the Trump administration announced the White House would determine which media outlets would cover the president in smaller spaces such as the Oval Office.

The White House Correspondents’ Association has traditionally coordinated the rotation of the presidential press pool. Reuters, an international wire service, has participated in the pool for decades.

This is all wrong. Administrations should not be deciding who can cover them, for reasons that are blindingly obvious.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that while traditional media organizations would still be permitted to cover Trump on a day-to-day basis, the administration plans to change who participates in smaller spaces. The pool system, administered by the WHCA, allowed select television, radio, wire, print and photojournalists to cover events and share their reporting with the broader media.

It should not be the administration’s call who participates in smaller spaces. The administration should not have the power to manipulate the reporting on itself.

The three wire services that have traditionally served as permanent members of the White House pool, the AP, Bloomberg and Reuters, on Wednesday released a statement, opens new tab in response to the new policy.

The services “have long worked to ensure that accurate, fair and timely information about the presidency is communicated to a broad audience of all political persuasions, both in the United States and globally. Much of the White House coverage people see in their local news outlets, wherever they are in the world, comes from the wires,” the statement from the three organizations said.

“It is essential in a democracy for the public to have access to news about their government from an independent, free press.”

Independent and free – not chosen and managed by the people they’re reporting on.

Huff Post called the White House decision a violation of the First Amendment right to freedom of the press…On Tuesday, the WHCA also issued a statement protesting the new White House policy.

The move follows the Trump administration’s decision to bar the Associated Press from being in the pool because it has declined to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, the name Trump has assigned the body of water, or update its widely followed stylebook to reflect such a change.

They’re moving fast and breaking the tools we need to keep track of them.

National Organization for Men spits on women yet again.

They order us to vote AGAINST defending women’s sports. Against it, I tell you.

I can’t read the cartoonist’s name (on the back of Zelenskyy’s chair) and can’t find it otherwise but I like the cartoon.

ZEZVOZ?

H/t tigger_the_wing

Please, insult us some more.

An Australian ‘Woman of the Year’ award has become the subject of furious backlash because the winner was not born female.

No, that’s not accurate. The fury is because the winner is male and thus cannot be any kind of “woman of the year.” The fury is because it’s wildly insulting to give an award for women to a man. The fury is because of the contempt for women behind calling a man “woman of the year.”

Transgender woman Brianna Skinner was named the 2025 Sydney Local Woman of the Year this week.

A NSW government initiative, the annual awards give MPs the opportunity to celebrate the contribution of women in their electorate.

By giving an award for women to a man. That’s not a subtle new way of celebrating the contribution of women: it’s a direct open explicit insult to women. It says no woman in Sydney is good enough for this award so we gave it to a man even though it’s designated for women.

Because there’s not enough bad news yet – How Trump is Crushing US Climate Policy:

In a few short weeks, President Trump has severely damaged the government’s ability to fight climate change, upending American environmental policy with moves that could have lasting implications for the country, and the planet.

With a flurry of actions that have stretched the limits of presidential power, Mr. Trump has gutted federal climate efforts, rolled back regulations aimed at limiting pollution and given a major boost to the fossil fuel industry.

…

To achieve such a wholesale overhaul of the country’s climate policies in such a short time, the Trump administration has reneged on federal grants, fired workers en masse and attacked longstanding environmental regulations.

…

He has fired thousands of federal workers, dismantled programs aimed at helping polluted communities and scrubbed references to climate change from numerous federal websites.

He has waged a multipronged assault at regulations designed to curb pollution, immediately sweeping some rules to the side and circumventing the normally lengthy rule-making processes. At the same time, Mr. Trump has declared an energy emergency, giving himself the authority to fast-track the construction of oil and gas projects as he works to stoke supply as well as demand for fossil fuels.

…

Many of Mr. Trump’s moves may have a lasting effect on the country’s ability to confront climate change.

Thousands of federal jobs that are eliminated now may be hard to restore. Clean energy projects that were relying on federal funding may not proceed without the expected investments. A sudden stop to scientific work could create gaps in data collection that are impossible to fill. And environmental regulations that are stripped away could be difficult to revive.

…

John Podesta, a senior climate adviser in the Biden administration, called many of the Trump administration actions illegal. “We followed the law, and they’re breaking the law,” Mr. Podesta said. “It remains to be seen whether they’ll be allowed to get away with it.”

In the past few weeks Mr. Trump has fired thousands of employees at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department, the Department of Energy, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the government’s premiere climate science agency. On Thursday, a federal judge said directives that led to mass firings were illegal.

…

The effective dissolution of the United States Agency for International Development has led to the immediate termination of long-running projects in the developing world aimed at helping vulnerable countries adapt to a hotter planet.

It’s interesting how little Trump cares about his grandchildren and their future children.