It’s good to be the King!

The chronicles of the Donald

The Trump administration deported two planeloads of Venezuelan migrants who had not been given a hearing, potentially in defiance of a federal judge’s orders. The planes unloaded them in El Salvador, whose President Nabib Bukele, is lobbying the Trump administration to pay his country to hold American prisoners. Bukele mocked the American judge on Twitter saying, “Oopsie… too late.” First of all, we’re not sure if they are all Venezuelans. Rumors have it that the group included hundreds of employees of the Department of Education, Jack Smith, the special prosecutor who prosecuted Trump, and the President of Columbia University. Trump responded, “They are all hardened criminals, okay? They are very bad people. They are terrible people. They’ve done nasty things to me. No one is going to miss them.”

The Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, John Roberts, issued a rare public statement after Trump called for the impeachment of the federal judge who tried to halt the deportation flights. "For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose," Roberts said in the statement. Trump shot back on Truth Social, his social media platform, “Elon thinks we should impeach Roberts first. I might be okay with that as long as he keeps writing a hundred million dollar check every month.”

Israel’s military broke its ceasefire with Hamas this week, launching airstrikes in what became one of the deadliest days of the war in Gaza. The truce lasted a mere eight weeks and largely held only because the Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, was distracted by a kidney stone. Netanyahu has vowed to drive out all Gazans out of Gaza, even if it meant wiping out half the population in the process. Last week, he implored the global community to not term this a genocide. “It’s wrong to call this a genocide because we asked them very nicely to leave, at first.”

During phone calls with Trump, the leaders of both Ukraine and Russia agreed to temporarily halt strikes on their respective energy infrastructures. They agreed to a 30-day pause in attacks on energy targets so “we can all charge our cell phones.” Speaking to reporters, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy alleged that the US Vice President, JD Vance, was sending him texts from a burner phone pretending to be furniture salesman. “I get up in the morning and I have a hundred messages asking me buy couches, and I can’t help think this must be JD,” rued Zelenskyy.

A federal judge in Maryland ruled this week that Elon Musk’s efforts to dissolve USAID were likely to be unconstitutional. The ruling was based on the finding that Elon Musk, who is leading efforts to downsize the federal work force, had acted as a US officer without having been properly appointed to that role by President Trump. This marks the first time a federal judge has acted to restrain Musk. Elon responded, “The judge seems to have this the other way around. I appointed Trump and not the other way around. One more impeachment incoming.”

The US government released 64,000 documents about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The documents appear to reveal many tangentially related or unrelated things such as the interception of Cuban military messages during the Cuban missile crisis, social security numbers of congressional staff members, covert operations in Greece, Finland, Brazil and Cyprus, as well as the secret presence of CIA agents in US embassies. What they do not reveal is any clear evidence of a second gunman in the President’s assassination. Speaking to reporters on the White House lawn, Trump said, “The second gunman was Ted Cruz’s dad. Everyone knows this.”

Harvard University announced this week that it would make tuition free for students from families with an annual income of $200,000 or less. Less than five percent of applicants who apply to Harvard get in. The other 95% of Americans were busy checking their Insta, and unavailable for comment. A small group of Asian students at Harvard whose parents make exactly $201,000 a year have formed a sub-reddit group and now plan to sue the university for discrimination.

Two American astronauts, Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, splashed down on Tuesday, ending a nine-month trip to space that was supposed to last eight days. They originally blasted off on a test flight of the Starliner, a Boeing spacecraft meant to provide NASA with an alternative to Space X. But the Starliner experienced problems with its propulsion system, and NASA sent it back to Earth with no crew. The astronauts returned on Space X’s Crew Dragon capsule. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump mused from behind the Resolute Desk, “Have you seen that woman’s hair? It’s wild. It’s everywhere. Wild hair. She’s not playing any games with her hair, I tell you.” (Note: This is not a parody. This is actually what Trump said).

The NCAA men’s and women’s college basketball tournaments began last week. There are 64 teams in all. The odds of picking every result correctly in a betting pool are 9.5 quintillion to one. Just you know, a thousand billion is a trillion. A thousand trillion is a quadrillion, and a thousand quadrillion is a quintillion. The odds are staggeringly low that you can predict of all the matches correctly, but they are slightly higher than the chances of Howard Lutnick, the US Commerce Secretary, making any sense whenever he opens his mouth.

Robert F Kennedy Jr, Secretary of Health and Human Resources, announced that his team was working on a program that “would allow Americans to perform their own surgeries in the safety of their homes.”

In other news,

Forever 21, a favorite mall destination for young people, filed for bankruptcy. Their CEO rued, “It’s hard to sell to people who don’t have money.”

Klarna, a Swedish fintech company, and DoorDash, a food delivery company (think Swiggy), are joining forces to offer customers the option to buy food now and pay later. Let me say that slowly. They are offering to loan money to buy six-dollar Burger King whoppers and four-dollar tacos. Back in the day, when people borrowed money to buy food, we called them poor and no one would lend them money. My take? I think the Klarna and DoorDash guys should get on a call with the Forever 21 folks. I don’t know, man. The Federal Reserve Chairman, Jay Powell, said earlier this week that the fundamentals of the economy were “in strong shape.” I’m not sure anymore. If someone sees a market need to lend people money to buy food, something is seriously off.

That’s all, folks. There’s room this week for a serious note. Maybe I’ll write one later mid-week. Have a great weekend!