03/27/26

Good morning! It’s Friday, March 27th

International Whiskey Day!

Yessssssss

I will be celebrating!

And now, the news.

Sharpies

-via AP News, ABC News, and CBS News

Starting with… hey, do you know about Sharpies?

On Thursday, in a cabinet meeting about the war in Iran, while the government is in a partial shutdown, oil prices are going higher and higher, and the stock market is like “what do I dooooooo” – Trump went off on a five-minute aside about a Sharpie. 

He started talking about how the White House pens that were previously used to sign ceremonial documents cost $1,000 each. Not sure how true that is. But he hated that because, “I love the government like I love myself, economically. I want to save money.”

I love that he added “economically” because we know he doesn’t love the government realistically!

So then he said he wanted to cut cost, so he worked with a company, and he wouldn’t say which one because he didn’t want to give them too much publicity. And then he was like – okay fine, it’s Sharpie. 

And he was like, yeah I wanted to save everyone money by using Sharpie so me, Donald J Trump, the world’s best businessboy, I got them to make a deal. I said, Sharpie, I mean, whoopsie! I said, mysterious marker company… I’m paying $5 per marker. And that’s it!

 And that’s to get the Sharpie to have the White House logo on it.

I went on pens.com, to see how much it would cost me, a normal person, to get a bulk number of Sharpies personalized. And if I buy 2,500 Sharpies, they’re $1.43 each. 

And that’s without a contract, which one would assume he would create because obviously you’re buying more than 2,500 Sharpies.

But I love that this idiot really was like – look how good I am. I am so smart, from the ankles to the brain, all of it works and is normal, I’m so good at business that I tricked this company into letting me spend $3.57 MORE per Sharpie. 

Anyway, things in Iran continue with no end in sight as Steve Witkoff says the US has presented Iran with a 15-point plan for peace but Trump, who extended the pause in Iranian energy infrastructure strikes because the talks are going well, said he’s not “desperate” to make a deal.

Of course he’s not, he’s got his Sharpie deal to keep him warm at night.

Something else keeping him warm at night? Trump’s signature is going to be added to money now, I guess.

Great. Great use of time. 

Great use of focus!

He will be the first sitting president whose name will be added to currency.

He’s also trying to get his picture on a $1 coin and a special gold coin. 

Federal law says no living president can appear on US currency but this administration says it doesn’t apply to coins, which is insane because that’s still currency. But you know… cult’s gonna cult.

In a statement on Thursday, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said: “There is no more powerful way to recognize the historic achievements of our great country and President Donald J. Trump than U.S dollar bills bearing his name, and it is only appropriate that this historic currency be issued at the Semiquincentennial.”

I am famously a suck up and I’m not even that much of a suck up!

How embarrassing!

Whatever, we’re a cashless society anyway, you dorks.

TSA Payday

-via CNN

On Thursday, Trump directed former MMA fighter, Markwayne Mullin, the new head of DHS, to pay TSA agents using funding from last year’s funding bill still, mortifyingly, called One Big, Beautiful, Bill. 

The White House is still working out how, exactly, to make this happen and nothing is exactly locked in.

But that’s the big headline on Thursday. He signed an executive order which, I want to remind you is basically presidential fan fiction. It’s an order, yes. But it doesn’t immediately supersede law or procedure. Remember that calling it the Gulf of America was an executive order and when’s the last time you thought about that nonsense? 

I do, desperately, want these people to get paid. I’m not a monster. It would be great if this worked. I just… I’ll believe it when I see it.

Things we also need to see… in a rare late-night session, the Senate voted to fund more of DHS, except ICE and Border Patrol, in a move that would reopen the government fully and get those TSA agents paid. It still needs to pass the House. 

IOC Bans Trans Athletes

-via NPR and New Day Studio

On Thursday, the International Olympic Committee announced that, beginning with the 2028 games, set to be played here in the city of angels where we’ve never done anything wrong ever and I am truly disgusted that we are the first city where this will be implemented… trans athletes will be banned from competing in women’s events.

Exactly one person, ONE, openly transgender woman has ever participated in the Olympics. Her name is Laurel Hubbard and guess what? She didn’t even medal. 

I mean, don’t get me wrong, she’s still better than me (she’s a weightlifter), but still… everyone’s so worried but like, the one openly trans athlete didn’t medal.

And like – how are you going to test? Because this erases people whose reproductive anatomy doesn’t fit binary definitions of male or female.

But it’s more than that.

It’s about two things. 

One – it is yet another attack on the trans community. In this case here, there were between 11,000 and 11,500 athletes competing in the 2021 Olympics. One was openly trans. 

ONE. It’s not about something happening in the Olympic Games.

It’s about keeping trans people out of sports. 

And they always say it’s to protect the women. Us fragile little women. First of all – trans women are women, so protect them. Because stuff like this only puts them in more harm.

But they act like they’re here to protect women, as if they care about women and women’s sports. Imagine! Imagine a world where people cared as much about women and women’s sports as they do about regulating our bodies. 

They don’t care about women’s sports. But they should! 

The WNBA? The 2024-2025 season saw the fastest growth in professional sports brand value, with record-setting viewership and in-person attendance.

In general, women's professional sports, including the NWSL and WNBA, are experiencing hypergrowth and have grown 4.5 times faster than men's sports by revenue between 2022 and 2024.

How about before they go pro? Girls' flag football has seen a 60% increase in participation, narrowly beating out girls' wrestling, which remains a top-growth sport. Not a top-growth sport for girls. Top-growth sport overall. 

For the first time in 1954, there will be a women’s professional baseball league.

And yet – women’s sports get about 5-10% of the airtime the men get. 

I guess these networks don’t care about money. 

We’re paid less than men. We are promoted less often. We’re less represented in boardrooms, in government, in science, in every other place where decisions about our lives are being made. 

All the while, we’re out here having to worry about being murdered by these same guys who get to mess up 100 times, only to get 101 chances to make it right.

Do you really think that there is a man on earth who would go through everything it takes, the physical and mental toll, to transition for life, for literally forever, to a woman… to compete in the Olympics? For what? What does that do for them?

Cool necklace! What are you going to do now? Go get paid less than a man for the rest of your life? Will you think fondly of your necklace while you walk to your car with your keys between your fingers because parking lots and garages are the third most likely locations for murder and assault, and as a woman, you’re a target, but as a trans woman, you’re 3.6x more likely than that to be assaulted. 

But at least you got to go to the Olympics and probably not medal because I know every frat bro in town with a 3” vertical thinks they can beat a WNBA player in a one-on-one, but the fact remains that these are the best athletes in the world and for the US team alone, in the 2024 Olympics, while the men were partying with Kash Patel and laughing at the idea that women might have to be invited to a place they didn’t want to go, the women were the one’s bringing in the medals.

67 out of the 128 medals won by Team USA came from the women’s team.

In fact, if American women were an independent nation (and frankly, how do we make this happen??), our medal count would place us in the top three among all countries in recent Olympic Games.

This is not about protecting women. If it were, you’d protect women. You’d let us make choices about our bodies. You’d pay us. You’d put our sports on television. 

And for the love of everything, you’d protect transwomen because they are women too.

No, this is just cruel for the sake of being cruel.

And that’s it. That’s the news.

I’m proud of transathletes. They’re just trying to play the sport they love. 

I’m proud of women’s sports. Everyone watches women’s sports.

I’m proud of whiskey. It helps.

But more than whiskey, because you, too, are smooth… I’m proud of you.