05/01/25
Good morning! It’s Thursday, May 1st.
May Day.
Help.
Globally, May Day is International Workers Day; while we technically celebrate Labor Day in September. But really we should be celebrating unions and workers every day.
And now, the news.
Columbia Students
-via ABC News
“I am not afraid of you.”
That is what Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi said in a statement to President Trump on Wednesday after a federal judge ordered his release from prison.
He was arrested by ICE two weeks ago after being charged for—oops, sorry about that, no charges were actually filed.
Mahdawi was born and raised in a West Bank refugee camp before he moved to the United States in 2014. Together with Mahmoud Khalil, he co-founded the Palestinian Student Union at Columbia University. He was arrested last month at an immigration office in Vermont, where he believed he was actually taking the final steps to become a citizen.
Like Khalil, the Trump administration was trying to deport Mahdawi by saying that his presence in the country was a threat to national security for… using his First Amendment right on campus by speaking out against the genocide in Gaza.
But now, thanks to a federal judge in Vermont, he is back home.
His case hasn’t been dropped yet, but at least he’s not in jail anymore at least. And that’s not nothing.
GDP Gone Bad
-via CBS News
In spite of being handed an economy that was literally called the envy of the world, literally envy of the world, Trump has done his thing and… ruined it.
Say what you will but that dude freaking LOVES ruining things.
He’s not good at anything, but he’s pretty good at ruining things.
In the first quarter of 2025, our GDP, which stands for gross domestic product, and is the value of all of our products and services, shrank at a 0.3% annual rate. Bad already! Worse, when you hear that, in the final quarter of last year, we were actually up 2.4%.
That’s the worst quarterly performance, according to the Commerce Department, since early 2022, when we were recovering from COVID.
Uh oh!
Really bad!
And he has no one he can blame it on (relax! He’ll find someone! Somehow the GDP will have gone woke!). But the economy was forecast to show a .8% growth in this quarter before someone accidentally told Trump the word tariff and now he thinks he has to put it on everything the way I put Tajin on everything.
Side note – how good is Tajin?
Trump Turns to NYT
-via CNN
Okay, so to get to this story, we have to drive through another story.
As you may remember, back during the campaigns, CBS’ 60 Minutes offered both Trump and Kamala Harris an interview. Which is what they do for all presidential candidates at that stage of the campaign. Trump declined, Kamala said yes.
Trump then accused 60 Minutes and CBS of election fraud by airing the interview and editing it (all interviews are edited for time – the full, unedited interview was put online, and nothing substantial was changed).
Cut to now. We live in the worst, dumbest, most dangerous timeline. Trump won that election. We live in the upside-down. And now he has a $10 BILLION, yeah, BILLION, dollar lawsuit against 60 Minutes for that interview.
60 Minutes has that case in the bag, but the problem is… stay with me here.
60 Minutes airs on CBS.
CBS is owned by Paramount.
Paramount is trying to merge with Skydance Media.
That merger needs to be approved by Trump.
In order to help this merger go through, the producer of 60 Minutes, who has been a cornerstone of the show for literal decades, just quit. Let me say again – 60 Minutes did nothing. They did nothing. This is a pointless case. I’m waiting moments of my own wild and precious life even telling you about it. It’s all so silly.
But now a man has quit his job because he’s trying to help a merger go through, simply because Trump is so feckless and fragile that he will stop this merger simply because he decided to that he wasn’t going to sit down for his own interview so somehow 60 Minutes must have engaged in election fraud.
What fraud, man? You won! You won this election!
Anyway, as I am covering here, as did the NY Times.
So now… yeah, you know where I’m going here… now Trump has threatened the New York Times calling their opinion of the CBS lawsuit, in which the Times said “legal experts have called the suit baseless and an easy victory for CBS,” Trump now says “makes them liable for tortious interference, including in Elections, which we are intently studying.”
What election are they interfering in?
What planet is this taking place on? And if it isn’t earth, can I please go there?
Anyway, that is a very real thing that is happening right now. I cover it further on the Substack because, as someone who works in film and television, who believes in the First Amendment, who would like to continue having a career in film and television, and therefore needs there to continue to have media outlets exist, this is very scary.
Hegseth Investigation Blocked
-via NPR
And while I’m already exasperated…
House Republicans have blocked an investigation into Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the app Signal on his personal phone, and his work computer!!, to make group chats about highly sensitive military information.
Why?
Because, according to Washington House Rep. Adam Smith, they already know his actions are “indefensible.”
So they’re not going to look into it.
I… I…
Yeah. That makes sense.
Who needs consequences for actions anyway?
SCOTUS v Freedom of Religion
And speaking of things we don’t need anymore, apparently… separation of church and state.
On Wednesday it appeared that the Supreme Court is poised to rule in favor of approving the first-ever religious public charter school. The school would open in Oklahoma and weaken the separation of church and state thing we have going on, you know, all around the country.
It is possible, possible, this could come down to a 4-4 split because Amy Comey Barrett, wild card that she is, is recusing herself from this case. She didn’t say why, but it’s believed it’s because she’s good friends with an advisor for the school involved in the case.
If true – very good.
Charter schools are publicly funded and, therefore, are not supposed to be religious schools. Religious schools are private schools.
Separation of church and state.
Famously, one of the reasons America became a country.
But all the rules are out the window now!
It all comes down to Chief Justice John Roberts, who can sometimes be a wild card but, as of late, has been a wild card that falls to the conservative, um… deck. I think I lost the metaphore. He does, in theory, consider himself to be a big huge traditionalist fan of the constitution, so this one seems like it would be right up his alley to vote with the liberals on.
A real TBD situation here.
Just… how we like it.
Not scary at all.
Core tenant of one of our founding principals and we’ll just… see how a guy with basically two first names feels when he wakes up that day.
And that’s it. That’s the news.
I’m proud of workers. And unions.
And May.
The whole month.
But more than that, more than a whole month. More than a whole year! Because even on a leap year there are 367 reasons you’re an A++… I’m proud of you.