onfocus

President Trump’s on-again, off-again tariff announcements sent stock markets plunging. On this week’s On the Media, how to make sense of the ever-changing news about the economy. Plus, the policy behind the ‘Make America Healthy Again’ rhetoric.

I thought this On the Media was a great tariffs 101 and the interview with Brown economics professor Mark Blyth was especially good.

Amid the aid freeze, FEWS NET has no funding to pay staff in Washington or those working on the ground. The website is down. And its treasure trove of data that underpinned global analysis on food security – used by researchers around the world – has been pulled offline.

Republicans want to maximize suffering. Please vote against them in the future.

Let us all—wherever and whenever—live on what the world’s timekeepers call Universal Time, or UTC (though “Earth time” might be less presumptuous). When it’s noon in Greenwich, England, let it be 12:00 everywhere. No more resetting the clocks. No more wondering what time it is in Peoria or Petropavlovsk. No more befuddled headaches crossing the International Dateline from Tuesday back into Monday.

I’m in. UTC for all sounds fine. It’d make programming easier.

Other data have also sounded alarms on the economy. Jobless claims were up last week as cuts by DOGE rippled through the labor market, pending home sales hit a record low, and consumer confidence indicators sank on rising fears of tariff-fueled inflation.

From a strong, growing economy to a garbage economy in one month. Please remember who caused this when you vote.

Even as Donald Trump has made his fealty to Putin clear, even as his Director of National Intelligence parrots Russian disinformation (protected now by the FBI), Elon Musk has been vacuuming up all the data of all the government. And every claim that he’s been modernizing networks or searching for fraud have fallen apart.

I’m not sure how direct sabotage would be different from what we’re seeing.

“TASS was not on the approved list of media for today’s pool,” a White House official told CNN in a statement. “As soon as it came to the attention of press office staff that he was in the Oval, he was escorted out by the Press Secretary.”

Sure, Jan.

The billionaire wrote on his social media platform X that 18F and TTS had been “deleted” weeks ago, re-posting another account that called the 18F a “far left government computer office” and pointed to its work on the  IRS’ free tax filing system, Direct File.

Anything that saves people time or money is considered far left by Republicans. I invite you to join the far left where people believe it should be easier to file your taxes. This is destruction of a government that serves the people.

The Trump administration has publicly and privately signaled that it does not believe Russia represents a cyber threat against US national security or critical infrastructure, marking a radical departure from longstanding intelligence assessments.

US Republicans have betrayed their country. They are now the Russian party. Americans need to resist and vote for people who will protect the country, not lower its defenses for takeover.

The cuts, which are said to affect between 560 and 1,830 workers at the agency, were planned for at least a week, contingent upon the confirmation of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who oversees the agency. NOAA reported a permanent workforce of 11,758 in fiscal 2023, meaning the cuts could affect more than 10 percent of employees. One source who asked to speak on background told The Hill the firings began Thursday and will continue Friday.

I like getting a heads up on bad weather headed my way. It sure seems like Republicans don't want anyone to have a heads up on bad weather for some reason.

Good commentary on this from climate scientist Daniel Swain on Mastodon.

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said on Tuesday that the Trump administration would start handpicking which media outlets were allowed to participate in the presidential pool, the small, rotating group of journalists who relay the president’s day-to-day activities to the public.

Media outlets didn't stand with the AP as they were pushed out. And now they're being pushed out anyway. There's power in numbers and they're coming for you anyway, why not band together and refuse to cover these propaganda events?

“It should be done through layoffs rather than individual, performance-based firings," she said. "The government has processes to do, and we would have 60 days to look for a new job and, most importantly, acknowledgment that these terminations weren't our fault. Private companies have to do that, too.

This story is pretty rage-inducing. Part of how I process the rage is sharing it here on my weblog. I completely understand that it’s too much but the Republicans are too much right now.

Federal workers across the U.S. government received an email on Saturday afternoon asking them to account for what they did in the past week — and Elon Musk says they will be fired if they don't respond.

Federal workers don’t deserve this bullying and disrespect. At some point Republicans are going to find there aren’t enough sycophants or party loyalists to do the things they want to do.

Update (2/25): AP: Federal technology staffers resign rather than help Musk and DOGE