05/04/26
Good morning! It’s Monday, May the 4th.
And also with you.
And now, the news.
RIP Spirit
-via ABC News
Starting with – hey, are you a Spirit Airlines flight cause girl… you’re no longer in business.
Too soon?
Spirit Airlines, the airline known for its accostingly yellow logo and low prices, went out of business at 12:01 Saturday morning.
This is the first time in 25 years that a major US airline has shut down because of financial problems. It was in business for 34 years and was in its second bankruptcy.
Normally when a flight gets cancelled, the airline tries to work with you to get you on a new one. But when there’s no airline anymore, that’s not really a possibility.
To help people get home, the Department of Transportation said the majority of airlines with cap prices for travelers whose flights were cancelled. They are also getting an automatic refund.
United, Delta, JetBlue and Southwest are capping prices for a small period of time, while American, who is also capping prices, is looking at adding more routes where Spirit used to fly.
So that takes care of the immediate issue.
Big picture, although the Spirit jokes were easy to make, there are two unspoken benefits to Spirit. First, it allowed people who couldn’t afford more expensive flights to still travel. That matters. Taking away that option is not something we should take lightly.
Additionally, that low-cost option was a bother to more expensive airlines. Make no mistake, they’re playing nice now but they’re thrilled to see this go away, because Spirit kept those more expensive airlines in check.
Whether you flew Spirit or not, you benefited from the company. And this is a loss. And of course, they employed 17,000 people.
So now do you feel bad about the jokes you made?
Maybe the fees we paid were the friends we made along the way.
Update: Iran
On Friday the White House sent a letter to Congress just letting them know like hey, what’s up, just a quick update – hostilities with Iran have “terminated” (but also don’t worry about the fact that there are still armed US forces there. That’s a coincidence.)
Why? Because Friday, May 1st, was the legal deadline for the administration to get Congressional approval for the war.
So he sent this letter to let them know the deadline didn’t matter, since the whole thing was done and over with.
“Despite the success of United States operations against the Iranian regime and continued efforts to secure a lasting peace, the threat posed by Iran to the United States and our Armed Forces remains significant.”
See… done! We’re just, you know… still worried they’re a threat and keeping out troops over there and nothing’s changed.
To which Congressional Republicans responded – yeah, no, we weren’t going to, like, hold you accountable or anything! Don’t worry! You’re totally fine! Silly little guy. Anyway, wanna go to dinner or something? No? Cool cool cool. Yeah me either. I’m allergic to dinner. Yuck.
Man… it’s literally in the Constitution that Congress votes on wars. Article 1, Section 8, baybee.
They just don’t care at all when it’s Trump, huh?
Meanwhile, in Germany, it sounds like 5,000 troops are about to be pulled from the NATO-ally country, which the Pentagon says it’s part of a worldwide troop review, but comes on the heels of Germany’s chancellor saying Trump has no strategy to end things with Iran, adding that Iran’s negotiators had “humiliated” America (yeah, like that’s hard).
This even has Republicans concerned because one – Germany is our friend now. But also – the troops were sent after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and removal sends the wrong message to Putin. Germany doesn’t seem too concerned right now. And you’ll never believe why… they think Trump’s bluffing.
Huh. I wonder what could have ever given them that impression. It’s almost like they pay attention.
Wild.
The Government’s Open Again
-via CNN
Hey, the government’s open again.
On Thursday, on day 76 of Republicans fighting over the ICE funding and refusing to at least negotiate with the Dems, the Republicans finally folded (normally it’s the Democrats that do that!), passing by voice vote a bill that includes NO money for federal immigration enforcement.
But now Davey Waynes McMullies (oh, I’m sorry, did I get his ridiculous name wrong?) says DHS is almost out of money. I would say try reallocating the kidnapping money, mayhaps?
So here’s what’s actually going to happen with this:
DHS departments like TSA and FEMA will be funded through this funding bill.
ICE and border patrol will be funded through the very complicated reconciliation process that I talked about last week.
But the government’s open.
Which is good news for TSA agents who need to be able to depend on paychecks and, based on that first story, an upcoming very hectic travel time.
Torture Firm Hired
-via The Guardian
Just to give you an idea of why Democrats were fighting so hard not to fund ICE…
In their continued search for minors, not undocumented people in general, not the worst of the worst criminals Trump said he’d be going after, I’m saying specifically minors… they are going after so many minors that they don’t have enough people to help them do that.
They claim they’re tracking kids, again these are kids, to make sure they’re going to school and not being abused, but it’s the exact opposite. They do this with the goal of deporting the kids or pursuing a criminal case again the children and, or, the adults that are sheltering them.
These are kids who arrive here alone.
They need extra help.
So they contracted out. With whom?
A company that has faced accusations of “torture” and “enforced disappearance.”
The company is called MVM and in 2018, in Trump’s first term, they help immigrant children in an office building with dark windows, no kitchen, and very few bathrooms for three weeks. During COVID, the company put kids, some not even a year old, in hotel rooms in the supervision of transportation workers who were not trained in childcare.
They locked a woman and her seven-month-old baby in a hotel for five days. They removed the phone and didn’t tell her when she could leave.
And it’s not like ICE didn’t know about these things before awarding them this contract. They’ve actually gone to court for cases of abuse before. But they asked the court to toss those cases because even though they work with government agencies, they don’t believe they should have to follow the same rules.
Isn’t that great?
So yeah… maybe no funding is good.
SCOTUS v Abortion
-via CNN
And because time is a flat circle when it comes to Republicans trying to take away our rights…
On Friday, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that abortion pills must be obtained in person, a devastating blow to one of the last safeguards to abortion access since the Supreme Court ended overturned Roe in 2022.
It’s so wild… I could feel it when I was writing it, and I can feel it again as I’m saying it… I’m just so mad about that. I can physically feel it.
Not unlike the blow to Section 2 of the VRA last week, the case also comes out of Louisiana and the opinion was written by a Trump-appointed judge. Elections matter!
Following this ruling, an emergency appeal was filed with the Supreme Court to pause that ruling. The bummer there is that it was filed with Aleako. (Fast-tracked cases just get filed with whatever Justice is up next in the rotation.)
The makers of the abortion pill Mifepristone filed the appeal, saying it’s going to cause confusion with time-sensitive medicine. Patients could be holding the prescription right now. And I actually will cry thinking about that.
Thinking about the patient holding that prescription. Thinking about what that prescription could mean for them. Thinking about what it took for them to get it. Thinking about their life in that moment.
And then to be denied it. Simply because some failed reality star white supremacist loser whose dad never loved him was elected president and appointed a whole bunch of judges and three Supreme Court justices, some of whom lied in their hearings, took an oath and then lied, and said they wouldn’t overturn Roe, did. Because they want to control the life and body of someone who can get pregnant.
It’s not about protecting the kids. Because if it were, this would be the best educated, best fed, healthiest country in the world.
It’s not about protecting the person who can get pregnant. Because if it were, they would be able to get the abortion they want or need.
It’s just about control.
Louisiana Hits Pause
-via AP News
Following the Supreme Court’s ruling last week, gutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, Louisiana announced that they are delaying the US House primaries. Two weeks before early voting was about to start.
This is not how this works!
They’re now going to redraw their maps!
To gerrymander.
Coming off of that last story straight into this one was either a terrible choice or the exact right one, but either way, I’m coming in hot.
This is not how it works. We draw maps every ten years based on the census. California and now Virginia will do it early, based on a measure that voters passed.
This is just bald-faced gerrymandering.
And I don’t understand why Republicans aren’t as mad as Democrats. They are doing this because they can’t win fairly. Why? Because their ideas aren’t popular. How about instead of cheating, you help people?
Everyone should be mad about this! Every single person should be mad! If you would rather your party cheat to win, than work to win you over…
I don’t know what to say. Couldn’t be me. Patriotism looks different for everyone and for me it will always look like demanding the best from this country and this is not it.
And it’s going to blow the door open for other states to do it as well.
Bad. This is bad.
But hear me.
We are going to fight for every single seat. Every seat is in play.
435 seats.
We’re going after every single one of them.
And that’s it. That’s the news.
Oh, I gotta shake those last two stories off.
I was going to end on this really weird AI image Trump posted of him, Secretary of Interior Doug Bergman, as well as Veep Vance and Marco Rubio with some random woman in a bikini. And they’re all hanging out in the Reflecting Pool in DC. And the post is about how he’s going to clean it up because Biden didn’t. But the picture shows what Trump wishes he looks like without his shirt on (low on the list of things he needs to cover in therapy but wowzers does that guy have some serious body issues) and I don’t want you to have to look at it. I already did. It’s chilling.
I do like that everyone’s in the pool, except Trump who’s in an inflatable.
Does he not know how to swim? Like – even in his AI version, does he not know how to swim?
Whatever. He is… the worst.
I’m proud of… oh that joke in the beginning is because May 4th is Star Wars day and people say May the 4th be with you.
Actually, I’m proud of that joke.
But more than that joke, because I barely ever even heard of a Star War, but on your behalf I’d war all those stars… I’m proud of you!