Losing My Perspicacity February 28, 2025

Good morning and Happy Free Friday! Thanks for checking in today.

As ever, yesterday was one of those “Holy crap! A lot of stuff is happening!” days, which I guess is the new normal. Each day, I say something along the lines of “I don’t even know where to start.” But not today. Today, I know exactly where to start.

If any women out there remained under the delusion that they (or their safety) matter at all to the Trump administration, I hope bringing accused rapist and proud misogynist Andrew Tate and his brother, Tristan, to the US has dispelled that belief. They should have figured that out when Trump nominated Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, and Elon Musk to his cabinet, but I digress.

If you don’t know who Andrew Tate is, he’s a “manosphere” influencer who spends his time saying that women belong in the home, are the property of men, and that rape victims are responsible for their own assaults. Last year, Romania charged Tate with sexual assault, and he and his brother were charged with human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women. As a result of the charges, both Tates were under house arrest and had their passports confiscated. The Tates are also currently under investigation for trafficking 34 other women.

This is where I mention that Tate is also good friends with Donald Trump Jr.

Enter Donald Trump, whose administration began pressuring Romania to ease the Tate’s travel ban, though Romania now denies those allegations.

Next thing you know, the Tate boys are on a private jet and landing in Florida. Why Florida? I bet you can guess.

To his credit, even Ron DeSantis doesn’t want these two in his state, saying, “Florida is not a place where you're welcome with that type of conduct.” Florida’s AG, James Uthmeier, went further, writing on X, “Florida has zero tolerance for human trafficking and violence against women. We will hold them accountable if any of these alleged crimes trigger Florida jurisdiction.” Given what I know about Jeffrey Epstein, I’m not sure that’s true, but still.

Trump, of course, is now denying any role in bringing the Tates to the US. Today, he said, “I know nothing about it.”

The next time Trump starts banging on about immigrants being rapists and human trafficking over the southern border, remember that he is so concerned about women’s safety that he went out of his way to bring a couple of accused rapists and traffickers to the US.

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Because I wrote exclusively about the Idaho town hall yesterday, we’ll spend our time today catching up on some of the most important stories of the week that we haven’t talked about yet.

Today: Jeff Bezos is trying to do journalism again, with predictable results; We might not be getting flu shots next year; The GOP turns their sights on the trans community; A federal judge slaps down DOGE’s firing of probationary employees, and we bad Gene Hackman a fond farewell.

Here we go.

Jeff Bezos sticks his nose into WaPo business again

The Washington Post has lost its opinion editor, David Shipley, thanks to owner Jeff Bezos interfering with what was once the most important investigative outlet in America (that crown probably goes to Pro Publica these days).

What Bezos fails to mention is that the “free market” he and his fellow oligarchs want is one that’s largely unregulated, leading to harm to consumers in a multitude of ways.

But even if Bezos had the best intentions (he doesn’t), telling those working at WaPo what op-eds they will and won’t publish is contrary to the entire idea of op-eds, which are not supposed to be circumscribed by the paper publishing them. Limiting op-eds to specific points of view not only shrinks the marketplace of free ideas, it also limits the pool of op-ed writers significantly. How many economists out there agree with Jeff Bezos? How many of them can write in a way that makes sense to those who read WaPo? Bezos is not only doing a grave disservice to the national conversation, he’s also kneecapping his paper.

If I hadn’t canceled my WaPo subscription the last time Bezos sought to impose his personal political beliefs on the paper, I’d be canceling it now.

Meanwhile, it seems that a fair number of high-profile journalists at WaPo have one foot out the door:

In early January, Ann Telnaes, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for WaPo quit after the paper killed one of her cartoons, which depicted Bezos (alongside other billionaires) genuflecting at the feet of Donald Trump.

I’ve published a few stories at the Post, and I saved the first paycheck I ever got from them, so excited was I to have gotten a piece in the paper of Katharine Graham, Ben Bradlee, and Woodward & Bernstein. However, Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post is not the Post that was so important in speaking truth to power to the government of the United States. The paper that took down a president has become a paper that will do anything to curry favor with a wannabe dictator.

Why we might not be getting flu shots next year

He’s only been in office for a few weeks, but RFK Jr. is already affecting our ability to get flu shots next fall. Each spring, the FDA convenes an vaccine advisory committee to decide which strain of the flu is most likely to make its way to the US in the fall. The flu shot Americans are urged to get in the fall is based on a recommendation from that committee.

This year, the FDA, which reports up to the Department of Health and Human Services (and RFK Jr.) has canceled the advisory committee meeting.

The email offered no explanation and the meeting has not been rescheduled.

RFK Jr., an infamous anti-vaxxer, played a significant role in a 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa that killed 83, most of whom were children. This week, amidst a worsening measles outbreak in Texas that has already killed one child, RFK Jr. downplayed the crisis, saying that a measles outbreak was “not unusual.”

Before this week, the last death from measles in the US was in 2015.

Oh, and also bird flu might be windborne. Just in time for summer!

The GOP has the trans community in their sights

The cruelty is the point.

This week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio (I still can’t believe I have to type out those words in that order) ordered officials to deny visas to transgender athletes trying to enter the US for competitions and to issue “permanent bans” to those who “misrepresent” their “birth sex” on visa applications.

One of my least favorite things about Trump is that his relationship with the truth is so fraught, he has no problem whatsoever exaggerating every claim beyond anything suggested by anyone, anywhere. Female athletes are definitely not being “beaten and battered” by transgender athletes, and I have no idea how he came up with this, other than that he’s clearly senile and probably misunderstood.

Meanwhile, in “it was never about sports” news, Iowa’s legislature voted to revoke state civil rights protections for the trans community that goes back nearly 20 years.

Shoutout to Iowans for protesting the hell out of this bill. Here they are in the rotunda of the state capital, chanting, “We won’t go quietly.”

Republicans can pass all the anti-trans bills they want, the trans community isn’t going away, and neither are their allies. In the meantime, let’s do all we can to mitigate harm to the trans community.

Finally, some good news out of the courts

Late yesterday afternoon, a federal court in San Francisco ruled that DOGE’s mass firing of probationary federal employees was unlawful.

Judge William Alsup ordered OPM to rescind its email to federal agencies telling them to determine which employees should be retained and which should be terminated, but the ruling does not reinstate fired workers.

I can guarantee you that the DOJ is going to appeal, which begs the question of how much DOGE is costing Americans in having to defend all these freakin’ lawsuits.

Oh, and speaking of DOGE, Elon Musk has decided that Verizon is not doing a good enough job on its FAA contract and that the contract should be instead awarded to SpaceX. Heh — remember that whole thing about Musk policing his own conflicts of interest? Yeah…

The High Note

Each day, despite the state of the world, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and/or the will to fight another day.

Yesterday, we bid farewell to Gene Hackman, who probably starred in more movies I love than any other actor. While everyone seemed to be remembering Crimson Tide, The French Connection, The Conversation, and Hoosiers, I want to remember him for one of the funniest movies ever made: The Birdcage. Of course, Robin Williams, Nathan Lane, and Hank Azaria are all brilliant, as is Diane Wiest, but I’m not sure the movie works as well as it did without Gene Hackman as a dim and distracted conservative Senator Kevin Keeley.

My youngest struggled with anxiety when he was younger, but he loved The Birdcage, so “Albert, you pierced the toast. So what?” became our mantra when he started to freak out. And I probably say, “No. We can’t get out of the car!” at least once a week, and multiple times on road trips. This is one of those movies our family watches over and over — it taught our kids about tolerance and all families looking different more than anything we did.

So RIP Gene. And thanks for all the great flicks.

Don’t forget, today is the national economic boycott. Don’t buy anything unless it's from small, local shops, and use cash when you can!

Survive and advance today, kids. Don’t let the bastards get you down.

Have a great weekend.