04/24/26
Good morning! It’s Friday, April 24th.
National Arbor Day
Arbors are trees.
Actually, I wrote that as a joke and then I went to look it up and arbor is Latin for tree. Why am I the smartest person in the world?
And now, the news.
Louisiana Mall Shooting
-via ABC News
We start how we start here in America, with at least one person dead and five others injured after a shootout at a mall in Louisiana.
Authorities believe the shooting, which took place Thursday just before 1:30 PM, was a targeted attack, versus an at-random shooting, that started after two groups of people started arguing and then shooting at each other.
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry’s thoughts are with the victims.
But also with the guns… In 2024, he signed SB1 into law, allowing citizens to carry concealed guns without a permit. He also signed legislation to reduce the number of places where guns aren’t allowed, supports measures that would nullify local gun laws if they’re more restrictive than the state law, limited liability for people who use a concealed handgun in self-defense, and protected the gun and ammunition industry from lawsuits related to the misuse of their product.
So… I’m sure you’re going to do some real good thinking about those victims Jeff. Just totally unknowable how this happened.
Update: Iran
-via AP News
Overseas, Israel and Lebanon have agreed to extend their ceasefire by three weeks.
And speaking of ceasefires… here’s a little update on our own ceasefire with Iran. Which, as you may recall, is going on indefinitely.
On Wednesday, Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard attacked three cargo ships attempting passage through the Strait of Hormuz. (none of them were ours)
Then on Thursday, the US seized an oil tanker that isn’t Iranian-flagged, so that matters, but it’s associated with the smuggling of Iranian oil. So – not an Iranian tanker, but a buddy of Iran.
The name of the tanker was Majestic X. (And then Justin Timberlake popped up and was like, "Drop the 'Majestic.' Just 'X.' It's cleaner.” Mom, that’s a reference to the movie The Social Network)
He also posted: “I have ordered the United States Navy to shoot and kill any boat, small boats though they may be, ... putting mines in the waters of the Strait of Hormuz.”
So that’s… not necessarily peaceful? Not full of peace. But not a violation of the ceasefire, until one of those boats, “small boats though they may be,” is from Iran.
He’s also ordering minesweepers to clear the Strait and he’s “hereby ordering that activity to continue, but at a tripled up level!”
Tripled up! Wowzers!!
In a different post on Thursday, Trump said the US would work with Lebanon to protect itself against Hezbollah. Fairly, a reporter asked him following that post, hey, what’s that gonna look like? To which, Trump replied:
"Well, we've just got to work with them – I mean, we have a good relationship with Lebanon. The amazing thing is [Lebanon] actually have sort of a good relationship with Israel, and they don't deal with each other. But now they’re going to deal with each other, we’re putting them together."
Say a sentence!
Adding, also – did you know Lebanon is a country and not lemons?
By the way, I had to go on that Temu Twitter website to look at that post, and don’t go there, but it’s like so filled with ads. I’m not kidding, politics and long ties, aside, it’s genuinely feels like a website that will give your computer a virus.
Like, I have the site pulled up, and then I switched to write the script for this segment, and just now I went back to the site, and it’s now all grey’d out with just an ad for Ivermectin in the middle. And the ad says things like “may help fight cancer” and “may help fight covid-19.”
And then after every like post or two is another ad.
But, and here’s a great thing… one of his posts from Thursday just says: “I LOVE TRUTH SOCIAL! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
All caps except the word President. Which is capitalized, but not all caps.
He is truly, impossibly, exceptionally… dumb.
And that’s our president!
Soldier Makes Deal, Gets Arrested
-via Washington Post and Fortune
A Special Forces officer, who was involved in the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, was charged with using insider trading to earn more than $400k on Polymarket, where you can bet on things like, the weather, or whether or not an inhuman, dangerous, genuinely bad dude who’s taken control of a country that’s not the president of will be ousted.
Charges include commodities fraud, wire fraud, theft, and using confidential government information for personal gain.
This is how I learned, in connection to that last story, that TruthSocial was actually planning to start its own betting site. When asked his thoughts on those betting sites, Trump said: “The whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino,” adding, “I was never much in favor of it. I don’t like it conceptually.”
YOU OWNED CASINOS!!!
Anyway.
So that Special Forces officer also lost his account.
Be a Lot Cooler If You Did
We’re Trump-heavy in this episode. I’m so sorry!
But on Thursday the Trump administration said it would loosen legal restrictions for medical marijuana, making it easier for research and treatment options.
They were like – don’t worry! We’re classifying it as a Schedule 1 drug! How else will we jail Black people be at higher rates than white people? (Unfun fact: Nationally, Black people are between 3.6 and 4 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people and about six times more likely to go to jail for marijuana-related offenses in some jurisdictions. This hasn’t gotten better, even as more states have legalized or decriminalized the green goods.)
No… don’t worry, Todd Blanche said the DEA would have a hearing in June to change the classification. Adding: we’ll find a way to jail Black people at higher rates, we always do. That’s the reason we have the prison system we do!
This is a good! Now, with all things from this administration, we have to wait to see if it actually happens, but medical marijuana has real benefits. So here’s hoping.
And then this makes everything he’s ever done okay!
DOJ Investigates Itself
-via The Guardian
On Thursday, the Department of Justice announced that their office of the Inspector General is launching an audit of the DOJ’s release of the Epstein Files, which has consistently missed deadlines, pulled files down after the general public started doing crazy things with them (like looking at them), and redacted the information of the monsters instead of the victims and survivors.
And then immediately following the announcement they announced that everything was fine, the DOJ did nothing wrong, and actually how dare we even think about asking??
So… we’re all going to jail now, I think.
Vote-a-Rama
-via Al Jazeera
And finally - as a reminder, the government is still a little shut down. It’s day 69 of the shutdown. So congrats Trump! The three longest government shutdowns have been because of him, but this one’s really long so he might have the record.
You did it!
Imagine if his dad were here. He’d be like… I’m still not hugging you.
Anyway, the thing holding up the reopening of the government is the fact that the Dems don’t want to increase funding for ICE because of how sometimes they murder people in cold blood and even when they’re not doing that, they’re still kidnapping and the whole thing’s really gotten out of hand.
In order for a budget to get out of the Senate, it needs to get 60 votes. Republicans only have 53 seats. That math doesn’t math.
However, in this case they used a budget reconciliation which is very annoying so it’s rarely used but basically you get 50 hours of debate, and then Dems do a vote-a-rama, where they toss out rapid-fire amendments, which are usually symbolic (for example – can we add an amendment that ICE agents can’t do murder?), and immediately voted on.
And then following that, they vote on the budget reconciliation and it only needs a simply majority to get out of the Senate. It now goes to the House, where they will actually start building the funding legislation. Because what came out of the Senate isn’t a funding bill, but just the instructions on HOW to write the funding bill.
If anything changes in the House with those instructions, the House and Senate have to work out the differences. Then, once that’s done, the bill gets written, which will be subjected to another 50 hours of debate before another vote-a-rama. And then, finally, if all of that works, it heads to Trump’s desk for his super normal signature.
Timeline-wise, Republicans believe this should be done by… end of next month.
No rush! It’s just holding up paychecks for TSA agents all over the country! Ya putzes.
And that’s it. That’s the news.
I’m proud of arbors. They clear our air and arbors can be boys or girls. That’s… super weird.
But than arbors – because you deserve a whole day, but aren’t weird, but are a tall glass of clear air (it’s a saying, look it up)… I’m proud of you!