Meet Your New Mao Same As The Old Mao! Tabs, Wed., April 9, 2025

Morning news roundup and things to read!

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Supreme Court back on Trump’s jock, this time vacating judges’ orders that he rehire all the thousands of people Elon Musk threw in the woodchipper. Weird! (AP)

Sure, yes, 104 percent tariffs on China. Well, my little Temu problem was fun while it lasted. (CNN)

Who are these investment advisors who were caught by “surprise”? He promised it over and over and over again! (Ryan Cooper at The American Prospect)

Weird that Congress can delegate its tariff powers to Trump, but then when it wants to take its own powers back, Trump can veto it. That’s weird right? (Talking Points Memo)

Joy Reid had A LOT pent up about the tariffs, how stupid he is, how stupid he is some more, and many other things. PENT. UP! (Joy Reid)

Meet your new Mao: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says all the fired government employees can go work in the (not built yet) factory camps. (Newsweek)

This interview with former Wonkette Sexiest Man Alive and United Auto Workers head Shawn Fain is very strange. He says the tariffs (at least the first round) are great for the working man and the stock market is only bad for “half” of America that owns stocks, which last I checked includes … the United Auto Workers.

“Sixty percent of Americans have no retirement savings,” he said. “So when I hear all the crying about the stock market, this is just Wall Street. They're people that are already rich, and at the end of the day, most working class people are trying to survive right now. And it's infuriating that our livelihoods have been stripped from us for decades and no one's cared.”

Tell it to the teachers, the postal workers, and the United Auto Workers who all have 401k’s invested in “just Wall Street.” (NPR)

Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz putting a hold on 300 Trump nominees. GOOD. (Axios)

RFK Jr. is “endorsing” vaccines. Sure he is, out one side of his mouth. But his idiots are happy because they know he’s just lying. (Amanda Marcotte at Salon)

These children were not supposed to get measles. Because it was eradicated. But they just kept coming! Harrowing and excellent from 2019. (Wired)

Trump and JD Vance removing “improper ideology” (trans women existing) from the American Women’s History Museum. Love it when the president tells me what is “improper ideology” and what isn’t improper ideology, like loving the Klan and putting statues up to people who seceded from America so they could own slaves. (Erin in the Morning)

Meanwhile, Parker Molloy strongly recommends the following long John Oliver segment.

[T]he same lawmakers who claim to care so deeply about women's athletic opportunities are remarkably silent about the actual issues plaguing women's sports: inadequate facilities, sexual harassment, unequal funding, and lack of media coverage. Kentucky legislators, for instance, rushed to override a veto to ban a single 12-year-old trans athlete from competing but couldn't be bothered to pass a bill protecting young athletes from sexual abuse because... they had dinner reservations.

The National Parks Service removed references to “slavery” from its page on the Underground Railroad. They — and the picture of GENERAL Harriet Tubman — are finally back, along with some lies from the department that they were totally restored “immediately” and nobody ever told them to do that! (NBC News)

This guy Lee Stranahan is an old Breitbart weirdo. He used to call me on the phone sometimes for a gossip. This story is about his AI girlfriend, and it’s sort of heartbreaking and I don’t know how I feel about it. Maybe an AI girlfriend is better than dying of loneliness, just like they give baby dolls to women with advanced Alzheimer’s in nursing homes and it makes them happy. (Daily Dot)

Tesla’s no longer accepting its own Cybertrvcks as trade-ins? LOL. (Jalopnik)

I put on makeup to be on the Tavis Smiley show, which was audio only. That’s two and a half minutes of my life I will never get back! Got an hour? Listen to meeeeeee! :D

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