by Heather Cox Richardson – posted yesterday April 2nd as the anticipated fallout began
Just five months ago, on October 19, 2024, The Economist ran a special report on America’s economy. That economy was, the magazine said, “the envy of the world.” Today, stock market futures plummeted after President Donald J. Trump announced that he will impose a 10% tariff on all imports to the United States, with higher rates on about 60 countries he claims engage in unfair trade practices, including China, Japan, Vietnam, and South Korea, as well as the European Union.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures lost more than 1,000 points upon the news, falling by 2.5%; the S&P 500 dropped 3.6%.
Trump’s erratic approach to the economy had already rattled markets, which dropped significantly in the first quarter of this year, and consumer confidence, which recently hit a twelve-year low. Trump waited until the stock market had closed today before he announced the new tariffs. Then, in a speech in the White House Rose Garden, he said: “For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike. But it is not going to happen anymore.” Instead, he said, tariffs would create “the golden age of America.”
“Never before has an hour of Presidential rhetoric cost so many people so much,” former treasury secretary Lawrence Summers posted. “The best estimate of the loss from tariff policy is now [close] to $30 trillion or $300,000 per family of four.” (continued)
This message is being sent to all staff, faculty and academic personnel across the University of Washington.
Dear colleagues,
Over the past two months, we have been tracking and responding to a range of policy changes and directives from the federal government while also facing major state budget cuts. Combined they create a perfect storm that we must continue to actively address.
As we navigate these and future challenges, we will be guided by our mission of expanding access to an excellent education and to serving the public good, as well as our University’s values. And we will continue to prioritize the well-being of our students, patients, faculty and other academic personnel, and staff as we make decisions.
Budgetary impacts
Federal impacts: As a major research university with a large health-care mission, the cancellation of grants and continued delays in annual award notices and renewals threaten our ability to fund and educate our graduate students, provide our undergraduates with important research experiences, and innovate. They also threaten our ability to provide our patients with leading-edge care in the present and develop and test new life-saving treatments and cures for the future.
On each of these issues, UW leaders, the Office of Federal Relations and the Washington Attorney General’s Office have been working with a range of partners, including higher education associations, UW supporters, and policymakers from Washington and other states to protect our ability to fulfill the UW’s mission. We have been successful in several areas, as court orders have blocked some of the most damaging proposals, at least for the time being. Additionally, this week a presidential message was sent to UW alumni living in other states to alert them to these challenges and urge them to join in our efforts to let others know the high societal cost of such draconian cuts to federal research.
As we navigate the ever-changing federal landscape, we are also working with principal investigators and other research leaders to mitigate the effects to the extent we can. That includes taking the risk of allowing advanced spending for 30 days on grants that are pending renewal. However, no source of money available to the University — public or private — can possibly replace more than a small fraction of the more than $1.2 billion in federally funded research we conducted last fiscal year alone. We must prepare for the long-term impacts of these federal policy changes.
State impacts: At the state level, the Washington House and Senate majorities’ proposed budgets disproportionately affect the state’s four-year universities and would impose especially damaging cuts on the UW. We recognize the state government is facing budget challenges that Governor Ferguson described as a “five-alarm fire,” and we are committed to doing our part. But the effects of these proposals on our ability to educate students and serve our state are profound.
In short, both chambers are considering measures that would cut the UW’s funding across the board, as well as reduce the amount and share of money provided for compensation increases. In addition, they raise the costs the UW pays for health insurance and other benefits.
Combined, these and other proposals would have major negative impacts on our students. Not only would they and their families be expected to pay more, but with cuts of this magnitude, we simply would not be able to provide students with the same level of educational excellence. These effects would ripple across the state and beyond for years and decades to come, as we still have not fully recovered from the state funding cuts of the Great Recession, and these proposed reductions would set us back again.
President Cauce will continue to travel to Olympia to meet with legislators, and Office of State Relations representatives are there daily. She has also written to UW alumni living in Washington to inform them of the situation and how they can get updates via UW Impact, a program of the UW Alumni Association.
With your help, and that of our alumni and supporters, we will continue to make the case for the importance of research funding at the federal level and push back against inequitable cuts by the state. Still, there is no question that our budget will be challenged in the upcoming biennium, with the University’s expenses already stretched thin before the current crisis.
Your continued efforts to reduce expenses are vital. Every dollar that goes to expenses that are non-essential now worsens the financial situation and will require deeper cuts later, putting not only new, but existing programs at risk. We must spend less to sustain the University’s mission through these uncertain times and ensure a healthier future for generations to come.
Commitment to our mission and values
In addition to the budgetary perfect storm, with state shortfalls magnifying federal cutbacks, many of us are deeply concerned about a range of other federal policies that impact our ability to provide an open, welcoming and supportive environment for ALL of our students, faculty and staff.
We do not view diversity and access as being in opposition to merit and excellence, and we remain committed to providing access to excellence for all. We are not mandating any preemptive changes in our policies as we already follow all state and federal anti-discrimination laws. Part of that compliance is ensuring that the members of our University are aware of their responsibilities. For example, in conjunction with state and federal requirements, we’ve expanded trainings on shared ancestry, race and sex discrimination for students, faculty and staff. Also, our five-year Campus Climate Survey will launch this spring to help guide further leadership actions. We hope everyone will participate to ensure the University remains a welcoming place for all. Our programs and services are open to all, and we engage in periodic reviews of our programs and activities using guidance from UW Compliance and Risk Services.
The UW is committed to welcoming students and employees with a diversity of experiences and viewpoints. Freedom of expression is core to the university experience and to American ideals, and we support the right to free speech across the spectrum of political and ideological positions. At the same time, as we have made very clear, we will enforce laws and policies against harassment, creating a hostile environment and disrupting University activities and operations. We also fully support our faculty and instructors’ right to academic freedom, including in their research and in the classroom, while reminding all that in the classroom this freedom applies to their areas of expertise, and not to introducing ideology or content unrelated to the subject matter of their classes.
We are also seeing more aggressive immigration policies and enforcement. International students at other universities have had their visas revoked and, in some instances, been detained. We are communicating directly with F-1 and J-1 visa holders about this situation and providing general advising on standard visa processes and information for international students and scholars about the resources available to them. We are also working directly with the representatives of a UW Medicine employee who was detained by immigration officials in late February when returning from a personal trip overseas. You can also review guidance on what to do if immigration officials come to a University facility.
These are difficult times for universities around the nation, and the UW is no exception. We will continue to work with our partners here in Washington and at the national level, guided by our mission and values.
In addition to the actions listed above, it is incumbent upon each of us to demonstrate the importance of the UW’s mission to the people of Washington and the United States. It is their investments that have created a system of universities that advance the nation’s health, prosperity and security and, as a result, is the envy of the world. And it is their investments — and our shared future — that are now at risk.
Sincerely,
Ana Mari Cauce President Professor of Psychology Tricia R. Serio Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Professor of Biochemistry
Lindsay Church left the Navy in 2012, having served under the United States’ “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which prohibited military servicemembers from being open about their sexual orientation.
“I really struggled with, am I a veteran, or am I queer?” Church told Next City. “And if I’m a veteran, I can’t be queer because they hate me here.”
Since then, Church co-founded Minority Veterans of America, a nonprofit that helps veterans that identify as gender, racial, or religious minorities.
A community of supporters at the opening of Q’mmunity House. Photo courtesy of Minority Veterans of America
In October, Minority Veterans reached an exciting milestone: The opening of the nation’s first-ever transitional housing facility for homeless LGBTQ+ veterans.
With a $1.8 million levy from King County, the organization opened Q’mmunity House, a renovated 1915 five-bedroom, two-story home in West Seattle.
Signing a 50-year contract with the county, Minority Veterans will operate the home, which gives residents a place to stay for six to 18 months as they find permanent housing.
The home is now open to eligible residents. Photo courtesy of Minority Veterans of America
“Today, we are filled with immense pride as we celebrate the realization of a long-held dream — Q’mmunity House,” Church said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the home.
“This milestone represents years of dedication and hard work to create a refuge for LGBTQ+ veterans who have too often been left behind and experienced discrimination and stigma when accessing essential services.” (continued)
Lund University alumnus Mikael Dolsten is the Chief Scientific Officer at Pfizer in the United States. Pfizer is, of course, the American pharmaceutical company that launched one of the first fully certified vaccines against COVID-19 in the fall of 2020. As Head of Research, Dolsten has been the “conductor of the symphony orchestra” that pulled all the necessary resources together to develop the vaccine in less than a year – a process that would normally require a decade.
Much has been written about the fact that the Pfizer vaccine has to be stored at a very cold temperature. Compared to other COVID-19 vaccines, this is a drawback when it comes to distributing it to remote communities, especially in the developing world. However, one advantage of the Pfizer vaccine is that it can readily be used as a booster if a person’s immunity begins to wear off. Another advantage is that it can be quickly adapted for maximum effectiveness against new strains of the virus. This is so because it is based on so-called mRNA, a molecule that may be processed and edited.
Dolsten grew up in Halmstad in the south of Sweden. He went on to study medicine at Lund University, obtained a PhD in cancer immunology, and was eventually appointed Adjunct Professor. In parallel he worked for the Swedish pharmaceutical companies Pharmacia and Astra. Pharmacia was later bought by Pfizer, and Astra became UK-based AstraZeneca.
In 2004, Dolsten and his family settled for good in the United States. While at Pfizer, he served as scientific advisor to the Obama administration’s task force for improving regulatory and drug development, as well as to VP Biden for the coordination of cancer research. He holds dual Swedish-US citizenship.
During his time as a young researcher at Lund, he was granted a scholarship which enabled him to travel abroad and gain experience of international research.
“That is something I am grateful for today,” he stated in an interview. “As a researcher you are part of a global knowledge community and need to get impressions of how others work, learn new techniques and gain new approaches. Travel scholarships are a tremendous investment in young researchers.”
Mikael Dolsten spent 20 years in Lund, and the southern Swedish city has always occupied a special place in his heart. He therefore did not need much persuasion to accept a recent invitation to return to his Alma Mater, despite his heavy workload at Pfizer. As of January 1, 2021, he is a Visiting Professor at the University, intent on sharing his knowledge not only in research but also in the best ways to manage innovation and create entrepreneurial structures, so as to maximize the practical benefits of the research.
Trump discovered today that Elon Musk has developed a secret “Make America Young Again” (MAYA) plan. Information about this clandestine plot was leaked to a furious Trump by an aging disgruntled MAGA diehard.
A few years ago ethicist and oncologist Ezekiel Emmanuel published an article in the Atlantic stating that he hopes to die before age 75. He felt that his life will have been fully lived by 75 and that he would not want any medical treatment for ailments after that age. Elon’s team quickly picked up on this idea brilliantly reasoning that if we promoted kicking the bucket by age 75 the cost of Medicare, Medicaid and Veteran’s care would plummet. Younger people could be freed up from long periods of caregiving. “It’s a win-win,” said Musk.
To carry this out, his team began actively looking for ways to advance illness in the aged. Several ideas were being promoted with the underlying concept of making getting old harder and more uncomfortable while making dying easier. The proposals included severe cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security; removing disability access and support; instituting tax penalties increasing with age 75 and above; and restricting antibiotic use, heart medications, oxygen and vaccines in the elderly.
At the same time comfort drugs like morphine, valium and fentanyl could be widely prescribed and supplied after 75 at no cost. A study promoting tobacco use found that smokers, despite illness, save the government billions by dying earlier–so all smoking restrictions could be eliminated by executive order.
And finally, if an elder agreed to euthanasia by their 75th birthday (65 for minorities, 55 for immigrants), the relatives would be paid a sizable federal bonus, provided free burial costs and given an autographed MAYA hat.
Musk noted, “Think of all that money saved — we’d have piles of surplus to spend on border walls, tax cuts and Teslas! So he ordered the “Make America Young Again” plot to move ahead.
The 78 year old President had enough of this treasonous plotting which might cost him his 2028 third term. So today, with his trademark smirky grin, he barked out his two favorite words to Musk, “You’re fired!”
Ed note: Smugness and demonizing those that disagree with us has wormed its way into our political discourse all too often. This article reminds us that those with an opposing view may not be “irrational and stupid” as we accuse them of “anti-science.” We have to learn to listen and navigate between the extremes.
This spring in West Texas, it’s as if the seasonal winds blew us back in time. We’re catching national attention for calamities that seem straight out of the 1930s: grim dust storms and a measles outbreak, which started about 65 miles from my home in Midland. Sometimes on social media, local moms share dark jokes: Wasn’t expecting to be living like a Depression-era American Girl doll in 2025.
Like those moms, I’ve been caught off-guard by much that’s unfolded over the past decade. If you had told me in 2011, when my oldest daughter was born, that driving a Tesla and being a crunchy granola mom would become right-coded by her 14th birthday, I’d have laughed. And if you had told me — the mom who always listened to her pediatrician — that I’d grow more skeptical of the advice offered by public health authorities over the next decade, I’d have thought you had the wrong person.
But a lot has changed. Many Americans have lost trust in public health agencies and the advice they offer, especially in more conservative parts of the country like mine. That declining trust is showing up in personal choices: In 2018, some 46,000 Texans requested vaccine exemption forms from the Texas Department of State Health Services. In 2024, more than 93,000 did.
If I had to do it all over again, I’d still follow my pediatrician’s advice and vaccinate my children. But in the years since Covid, I increasingly understand the thought process of my neighbors who do not.
There’s a tendency to assume the worst about people who don’t trust public health authorities’ advice about vaccines. At best, they’re dismissed as backward and stupid; at worst, selfish and unempathetic. I feel the pull to dismiss some people as all those things, such as the pastor in Fort Worth who bragged that his church’s school had the lowest measles vaccination rate in Texas. But while smugness might feel good, it doesn’t help anyone understand the average vaccine-hesitant person’s perspective, and it doesn’t solve our collective problem. Eroded trust in our public health institutions harms us all, and in order to get back on track, we need to understand how we got here. (continued)
Ro Khanna, who represents Silicon Valley, sees the vice president — a likely heir to President Trump’s political movement — as a unique threat to the constitutional order.
Representative Ro Khanna has been trying to counter the Trump administration, including by holding town halls in Republican districts across California.Credit…Scott Strazzante/San Francisco Chronicle, via Associated Press
Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, has been busy in the early months of 2025 trying out ways to make himself a counterweight to the Trump administration.
In a social-media skirmish in February over the administration’s hiring and firing of an official who had written racist posts, Mr. Khanna drew the ire of Vice President JD Vance, who told him, “You disgust me.” More recently, Mr. Khanna has been staging town halls in Republican districts across California with a parade of progressive co-sponsors.
Now, he is planning to shine an even brighter spotlight on Mr. Vance — and on himself — with speeches aimed directly at the vice president in April in Ohio, Mr. Vance’s home state, and at their shared alma mater, Yale Law School.
In an interview, Mr. Khanna, 48, said he intended to cast Mr. Vance as a unique threat to America’s constitutional order, and argued that there was no time to waste in building the case against Mr. Vance, a likely heir to President Trump’s right-wing political movement.
His speaking tour of several cities in Ohio, and on Yale’s campus in New Haven, Conn., is also an effort to nudge himself into the national conversation about the Democratic Party’s future.
For Mr. Khanna, who has represented much of Silicon Valley since unseating a Democratic incumbent in 2016, that has been a long-term project. He makes a cascade of cable news appearances and travels widely; his repeated trips to New Hampshire before the 2024 election included appearances as a surrogate for former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and an unusual debate with Vivek Ramaswamy. At last year’s Democratic convention, he arranged to meet with delegates from 15 states.
“I don’t deny having ambition,” Mr. Khanna said. “Ambition is a good thing if it’s used towards good ends. And I want to be in a place where I can have, ultimately, the maximum impact on our country and our party.” (continued)
PAVLOHRAD, Ukraine — They are Ukraine’s “Rosie the Riveters,” rolling up their sleeves and doing a dirty job once considered suitable only for men.
But unlike their American equivalents in World War II, they’re not working in defense-industry factories. Instead they’re going 900 feet underground, helping to dig coal and keep the power on, replacing the men who left to fight Russia. Now they’re hopeful that President Donald Trump can secure a ceasefire deal and bring an end to the war, which entered its fourth year in February.
“We really wanted to help and to replace those men who went to fight and to protect Ukraine,” Nadiya Moskalenko told NBC News on Thursday.
The 48-year-old grandmother said two of her sons had volunteered to fight Russia, and a few months after President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion in February 2022, she signed up to go down the 50-year-old mine on the outskirts of the city of Pavlohrad in eastern Ukraine.
Nadiya Moskalenko working at the DTEK coal mine.Ted Turner / NBC News
Before the war started, the government barred women from doing jobs underground because it considered the work too physically demanding. But after many male miners joined the military early in the war and others were later conscripted, the Soviet-era policy was scrapped.
Moskalenko, who wears lipstick and eyeliner to work, operates the cable cars that move workers and supplies across the mine’s vast 75-mile tunnel network. (continued)
Monday’s astounding story that the most senior members of President Donald Trump’s administration planned military strikes on Yemen over an unsecure commercial messaging app, on which they had included national security reporter and editor in chief of The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg, has escalated over the past two days.
On Monday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth looked directly at a reporter’s camera and said: “Nobody was texting war plans.” Throughout the day Tuesday, the administration doubled down on this assertion, apparently convinced that Goldberg would not release the information they knew he had. They tried to spin the story by attacking Goldberg, suggesting he had somehow hacked into the conversation, although the app itself tracked that National Security Advisor Michael Waltz had added him.
Various administration figures, including Trump, insisted that the chat contained nothing classified. At a scheduled hearing yesterday before the Senate Intelligence Committee on worldwide threats, during which senators took the opportunity to dig into the Signal scandal, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said: “There was no classified material that was shared in that Signal group.” Director of the Central Intelligence Agency John Ratcliffe agreed: “My communications, to be clear, in the Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.” In the afternoon, Trump told reporters: “The attack was totally successful. It was, I guess, from what I understand, took place during. And it wasn’t classified information. So this was not classified.”
After Gabbard said she would defer to the secretary of defense and the National Security Council about what information should have been classified, Senator Angus King (I-ME) seemed taken aback. “You’re the head of the intelligence community. You’re supposed to know about classifications,” he pointed out. He continued, “So your testimony very clearly today is that nothing was in that set of texts that were classified…. If that’s the case, please release that whole text stream so that the public can have a view of what actually transpired on this discussion. It’s hard for me to believe that targets and timing and weapons would not have been classified.”
Meanwhile, reporters were also digging into the story. James LaPorta of CBS News reported that an internal bulletin from the National Security Agency warned staff in February 2025 not to use Signal for sensitive information, citing concerns that the app was vulnerable to Russian hackers. A former White House official told Maggie Miller and Dana Nickel of Politico, “Their personal phones are all hackable, and it’s highly likely that foreign intelligence services are sitting on their phones watching them type the sh*t out.”
Tuesday night, American Oversight, a nonprofit organization focusing on government transparency, filed a lawsuit against Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of State Marco Rubio—all of whom were also on the Signal chain—and the National Archives for violating the Federal Records Act, and suggested the administration has made other attempts to get around the law. It notes that the law requires the preservation of federal records.
By Jacob Lorinc via Bloomberg in the Seattle Times
Canadians need a drink.
The country has been on edge since November, when U.S. President Donald Trump began threatening to impose tariffs on Canadian goods and started calling for Canada to become the 51st state — through “economic force” if necessary.
These pressures prompted Moosehead Breweries Ltd., the country’s oldest independent beer maker, to unveil a specialty product: a pack of 1,461 beer cans, one for each day of Trump’s presidency. The first one sold within 11 minutes of the product’s launch, and more than 400 prospective buyers are now on a waitlist.
For about C$3,500 ($2,445) — including shipping — the company will send its “Presidential Pack” to customers in three provinces. The pack comes in a crate that’s about four feet (1.2 meters) wide and four feet tall, and weighs around 1,900 pounds (862 kilograms) — about the same as two concert grand pianos.
Each crate features a message: “Congratulations,” it reads. “You are now 1,461 beers closer to 2029. We can’t predict how the next four years will go, but considering how 2025 started, we have a feeling this many beers will come in handy.”
The company has sold 10 Presidential Packs so far, according to Moosehead spokesperson Brittany Ballentine. Whether the family-owned brewery can meet that demand is “unclear, logistically,” Ballentine said.
Moosehead’s mega-packs are in keeping with a nationwide campaign to buy Canadian products and ditch US alternatives. Canadian companies have seized the moment, sometimes offering products at 25% discounts — the rate at which Trump has threatened to levy most Canadian goods — and clearly labeling US-sourced products for customers seeking to avoid buying American.
Booze, too, is a touchy subject. Provincial governments, which control liquor distribution in Canada, removed American alcohol from many stores earlier this month in a retaliatory move against US tariffs. Adding to the woes of beermakers in both countries is the rising cost of aluminum lids and cans after Trump imposed 25% tariffs on the metal flowing from Canada.
Moosehead was founded in the eastern province of New Brunswick in 1867, the same year Canada officially became a country. Under the Oland family — a Maritime clan that spans six generations — it’s survived Prohibition, the Great Depression, two world wars and more than 150 years of on-and-off trade barriers.
The Presidential Pack is Moosehead’s latest way of navigating economic uncertainty.
“While four years may seem like a long time, together, we will push forward, as we always do,” the company said in a news release earlier this month. “One day, one well-earned beer at a time.”
Today the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, dropped the story that senior members of the Trump administration planned the March 15 U.S. attack on the Houthis in Yemen over Signal, a widely available encrypted app that is most decidedly not part of the United States national security system. The decision to steer around government systems was possibly an attempt to hide conversations, since the app was set to erase some messages after a week and others after four weeks. By law, government communications must be archived.
According to Goldberg, the use of Signal may also have violated the Espionage Act, which establishes how officials must handle information about the national defense. The app is not approved for national security use, and officials are supposed either to discuss military activity in a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF, or to use approved government equipment.
The use of Signal to plan a military attack on Yemen was itself an astonishingly dangerous breach, but what comes next is simply mind-boggling: the reason Goldberg could report on the conversation is that the person setting it up included Goldberg—a reporter without security clearance—in it.
Goldberg reports that on March 11 he received a connection request from someone named Michael Waltz, although he did not believe the actual Michael Waltz, who is Trump’s national security advisor, would be writing to him. He thought it was likely someone trying to entrap him, although he thought perhaps it could be the real Waltz with some information. Two days later, he was included in the “Houthi PC small group,” along with a message that the chat would be for “a principles [sic] group for coordination on Houthis.”
As Goldberg reports, a “principals committee generally refers to a group of the senior-most national-security officials, including the secretaries of defense, state, and the treasury, as well as the director of the CIA. It should go without saying—but I’ll say it anyway—that I have never been invited to a White House principals-committee meeting, and that, in my many years of reporting on national-security matters, I had never heard of one being convened over a commercial messaging app.”
The other names on the app were those of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President J.D. Vance, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Brian McCormack from the National Security Council, Central Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe, Trump’s Middle East and Ukraine negotiator Steve Witkoff, White House chief of staff Suzy Wiles, perhaps White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, and Trump’s nominee for head of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent.
Goldberg assumed the chat was fake, some sort of disinformation campaign, although he was concerned when Ratcliffe provided the full name of a CIA operative in this unsecure channel. But on March 14, as Vance, for example, took a strong stand against Europe—“I just hate bailing Europe out again”—and as Hegseth emphasized that their messaging must be that “Biden failed,” Goldberg started to think the chat might be real. Those in the chat talked of finding a way to make Europe pay the costs for the U.S. attack, and of “minimiz[ing] risk to Saudi oil facilities.”
And then, on March 15, the messages told of the forthcoming attack. “I will not quote from this update, or from certain other subsequent texts,” Goldberg writes. “The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East, Central Command’s area of responsibility. What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.”
On the chat, reactions to the military strikes were emojis of a fist, an American flag, fire, praying hands, a flexed bicep, and “Good Job Pete and your team!!,” “Kudos to all…. Really great. God Bless,” and “Great work and effects!”
In the messages, with a reporter on the line, Hegseth promised his colleagues he would “do all we can to enforce 100% OPSEC,” or operations security. In a message to the team outlining the forthcoming attack, Hegseth wrote: “We are currently clean on OPSEC.”
Two hours after Goldberg wrote to the officials on the chat and alerted them to his presence on it by asking questions about it, National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes responded: “The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials.”
When asked about the breach, Trump responded: “I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic. To me, it’s a magazine that’s going out of business. I think it’s not much of a magazine. But I know nothing about it. You’re saying that they had what?” There is nothing that the administration could say to make the situation better, but this made it worse. As national security specialist Tom Nichols noted: “If the President is telling the truth and no one’s briefed him about this yet, that’s another story in itself. In any other administration, [the chief of staff] would have been in the Oval [Office] within nanoseconds of learning about something like this.” (continued)
Many of us are still trying to process the sudden passing of Frank Chopp. Frank was one of a kind: a community organizer, strategist, and statesman who cared deeply for our community in the 43rd Legislative District and for people across the state. I had the good fortune to work closely with Frank for the last 19 years. As a seatmate, mentor, and friend, Frank had a profound impact on my life and career in public service. I will miss him immensely.
This afternoon we observed a moment of silence on the Senate floor to honor his extraordinary life. Last year, as Frank was preparing to retire, I shared my reflections on his remarkable career in the Legislature. You can read that here.
Frank’s wife Nancy summed up what we all loved about Frank in a letter to legislators and staff this morning: “His intellectual curiosity was as boundless as his energy. He woke up each day with a passion to solve problems and improve people’s lives. It was an honor to be around all that creativity and optimism.”
Yesterday morning I started a thread on our subscriber chat and I was so heartened by the responses, I wanted to share some of them here.
What I posted:
“Yesterday on my walk I saw tiny new buds on this tree I’ve passed each day of WInter, and below it, as if they were a team, the green of new tulips. And I thought, “Spring is still happening”. Then I thought, “Gladness is still happening”, and “The love Eric and I share is still happening” and “Cookies are still happening”.
And then I thought I’d start this thread so you can add to my list.
Name what, even though so much is being taken away, is still happening….”
What the amazing subscribers of The Corners said:
Theater is still happening.
Photography is still happening
Loving pets are still happening.
Meadowlarks are still singing.
Good things that are beyond our control, and that we don’t need to know about are happening.
African penguins at the New England Aquarium will live well into their golden years on a new, private island specifically created for aging birds.
Aquarium officials announced that six of its geriatric birds, who range in age from 14 to 34, are settling into the new retirement retreat. The island is separate from the main penguin colony and is designed to provide a calm, comfortable environment that lets the animal care team keep an eye on the penguins, many of whom are experiencing medical conditions due to their age.
“Our goal is to take a proactive approach to managing geriatric animals in an environment that better meets their physical and behavioral needs,” said Kristen McMahon, the Aquarium’s Curator of Pinnipeds and Penguins.
Penguins settle into the New England Aquarium’s new retirement island for older birds. New England Aquarium
More than half of the aquarium’s penguin colony has met or surpassed their typical life expectancy of 10 to 15 years in the wild. Last year, aquarium staff started reimagining the iconic penguin exhibit and how it could accommodate the aging birds. According to aquarium officials, the island features flat areas with mats and sloping ramps to make for easy access.
Aquarium staff gradually transitioned the elder penguins to their new island home over the past month. Among the residents are Harlequin and Durban, both age 32, who have been a pair since 2000 and raised eight chicks together.
Other penguin retirees include Boulders, 34, who is showing symptoms of arthritis, and Isis, 29, who has struggled socially as she’s aged. Joining them are Lambert, 32, who has a history of cataracts, and his younger mate Dyer, who is 14.
One of the older penguins swims near the island. New England Aquarium
The older penguins have a special diet that contains hydrated fish that have been injected with extra water to promote kidney health. They also get daily eye drops, foot treatments to prevent infections, acupuncture, and physical therapy.
Aquarium staff monitors the birds both in-person and via video feed, looking for any changes in feeding and behavior that could indicate advanced-age ailments. However, aquarium officials said the tranquil area may also help other birds with specialized medical needs, regardless of age.
“We think of this island like assisted living, where we’re helping the birds be more comfortable in a calmer environment,” said Diana Major, Manager of Penguins. “The New England Aquarium places a high priority on husbandry, which involves specialized training to get the animals comfortable with healthcare. Being relaxed is key, and we think the new retirement home will ultimately lead to happier and healthier penguins.”
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Yesterday, I was at Costco buying a large bag of Purina Dog Chow for my loyal pet, Necco, the Wonder Dog, who weighs 191 lbs. I was in the checkout line when a woman behind me asked if I had a dog.
What did she think I had–an elephant?
Since I’m retired and have little to do, I decided, on impulse, to have some fun. I told her that no, I didn’t have a dog–I was starting the Purina Diet again. I added that I probably shouldn’t, because the last time I tried it, I ended up in the hospital. But before that happened, I had lost 50 pounds!
I went on to explain that I woke up in an intensive care unit with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IVs in both arms. Still, I insisted, it was essentially the perfect diet. The way it worked was simple: load your jacket pockets with Purina Nuggets and eat one or two whenever you felt hungry. The food was nutritionally complete, so it worked well. And despite my past experience, I was planning to try it again.
(I should mention here that practically everyone in line was now captivated by my story.)
The woman, horrified, asked if I had ended up in intensive care because the dog food had poisoned me.
I told her, “No, I stopped to pee on a fire hydrant, and a car hit me.”
I thought the guy behind her was going to have a heart attack–he was laughing so hard.
Costco won’t let me shop there anymore.
Better watch what you ask retired people. They have all the time in the world to think of crazy things to say.
If you’re interested in watching the presentation and discussion a few days ago, it can be VIEWED HERE. (Note: you can fast forward through the part of the discussion about light rail if you wish).
Whether you’ve driven through a toll recently or not, you might’ve gotten a text saying you owe money for unpaid tolls. It’s probably a scam. Scammers are pretending to be tolling agencies from coast to coast and sending texts demanding money. Learn how the scam works so you can avoid it.
You get a text out of the blue that says you have unpaid tolls and need to pay immediately. The scammy text might show a dollar amount for how much you supposedly owe and include a link that takes you to a page to enter your bank or credit card info — but it’s a phishing scam. Not only is the scammer trying to steal your money, but if you click the link, they could get your personal info (like your driver’s license number) — and even steal your identity.
Don’t click on any links in,or respond to, unexpected texts. Scammers want you to react quickly, but it’s best to stop and check it out.
Check to see if the text is legit. Reach out to the state’s tolling agency using a phone number or website you know is real — not the info from the text.
Report and delete unwanted text messages. Use your phone’s “report junk” option to report unwanted texts to your messaging app or forward them to 7726 (SPAM). Once you’ve checked it out and reported it, delete the text.
Learn more about spotting and avoiding text scams at ftc.gov/textscams.
A review card of Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway, written by a Los Angeles Public Library staff member around the time of the book’s publication.
James Sherman/Los Angeles Public Library
Before the internet made book reviews widely accessible, where would curious minds go to find information about a new novel’s subject matter or a plot?
If you lived in the Los Angeles area, you could reference the Los Angeles Public Library’s index of fiction book review cards. The reviews, a collection of thousands of index cards, contain library staff members’ thoughts and opinions about new fiction releases that the library carried. The library system was used starting in the 1920s and into the 1980s.
Robert Anderson, who has worked as a librarian at the Los Angeles Public Library since 1980, says the staff review cards were a handy tool that library staff used to answer specific questions the public had about different books.
“In the the pre-internet days, when you couldn’t just Google something, if people called and said, ‘I’ve heard about this book and I just want to know what it’s about,’ you could pull out the card and read it to them or show it to them if they were in person,” Anderson said.
The reviews, along with being a helpful public tool, also helped staff pick which books the LAPL would order for their shelves. “They didn’t always write reviews for every book, but it was a major way they made the decision on what to buy, particularly for newer authors,” Anderson said. If a staff member reviewed a book favorably, they were more likely to carry the title and order multiple copies, he said. (continued)
Ana Mari Cauce
Tricia R. Serio
