Odds and Ends — 17 March 2025

9 days ago

Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, and Debt:

Congress repealed the IRS broker rule, but can it regulate DeFi?

Trump Is Making Foreign Stocks Great Again

The S&P 500, which for years had been soaring above the stock indexes of other countries, is now trailing major markets in Europe and China, as investors have started to pull money from the United States and reallocate it around the world.

https://twitter.com/quantian1/status/1901130627539497382

Forget about rare earth minerals. We need more copper

Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:

Long Covid is the pandemic’s dark shadow. Why does no one in power in Britain want to talk about it?

Politics:

https://twitter.com/MarkSZaidEsq/status/1901298029916815731

Doctor/Professor Deported Despite Judge’s Order

A kidney transplant specialist and professor at Brown University’s medical school has been deported from the United States, even though she had a valid visa and a court order temporarily blocking her expulsion.

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1901446630240395396
https://twitter.com/jonfavs/status/1901379180190986498

How the White House ignored a judge's order to turn back deportation flights

https://twitter.com/BarbMcQuade/status/1900989569866330342
https://twitter.com/JayinKyiv/status/1901190855748104369

Kari Lake May No Longer Have an Agency to Run

Late Friday, Trump issued an executive order that directed VOA and an array of federal offices to ‘be eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.’ About 1,000 journalists were placed on indefinite leave. Those who showed up to work to broadcast their programs were locked out of the building.
It wasn’t exactly what Kari Lake was planning. The onetime candidate for Arizona governor and U.S. Senate whom Trump tapped to lead VOA had, like other MAGA loyalists, eagerly sought a role in the new administration…
But the rapid pace of events in recent days shows that Trump’s campaign to dismantle the federal bureaucracy and control U.S.-backed news content across the globe has effectively gutted VOA, potentially forcing it to go dark for the first time since it launched during World War II.

https://twitter.com/thesharpestsph1/status/1901413476200747098

MAGA Influencers Urge Pardon of Derek Chauvin

Prominent supporters of President Trump — led by podcaster Ben Shapiro — are fueling a major push to pardon Derek Chauvin, the white former Minnesota police officer convicted of killing George Floyd in 2020.

Be careful what you ask for. If Chauvin wasn’t serving time in federal prison and was instead in one of Minnesota’s two maximum security prisons (Stillwater or Oak Park Heights), he’d be a dead man walking.

https://twitter.com/general_ben/status/1901178054740775099

‘Beyond My Wildest Dreams’: The Architect of Project 2025 Is Ready for His Victory Lap

Paul Dans, the ousted director of Project 2025, says he’s delighted that Trump is implementing his agenda after all.

https://twitter.com/ruthbenghiat/status/1901089651244302618

Destroying America’s Brand

This turn away from military dependence on the U.S. is understandable. America is no longer a reliable ally to the world’s democracies; indeed, between Trump’s turn toward Putin and his talk of annexing Canada and Greenland, we don’t look like an ally at all. Rumors that U.S. jets have a “kill switch” that would allow Trump to disable them at will are probably false, but sophisticated military equipment requires a lot of technical support, so you don’t want to buy it from a country you don’t trust.
And this observation got me thinking. How much economic damage will America suffer because it has become a rogue nation?

https://twitter.com/metalgearobiden/status/1900962826258460837

Kennedy Center Bottoms Out: Ticket Sales Plummet, No Donations, Cancellations

https://twitter.com/StatisticUrban/status/1901124382996791747
https://twitter.com/MikeOkuda/status/1901311343271309443