Losing My Perspicacity, October 21, 2025

Good morning and Happy Tuesday! Thanks for reading today.

Yesterday was another looooong day for those of us covering the ongoing lawsuits over Donald Trump’s attempts to deploy the National Guard in Chicago and Portland. We’ll get to that in a second.

First, I’m sure you’ve all seen this by now:

While we’re all out here paying $9 for a carton of eggs and losing our healthcare, Donald Trump is spending $250 million on a ballroom and sending $20 billion to Argentina. Too bad we don’t have money for universal healthcare or student loan forgiveness. I know Trump said that he’s paying for the ballroom with “private funds,” but he also said he wouldn’t structurally change the existing White House, and now he’s taken a wrecking ball to it.

What you’re looking at above is the East Wing, where the First Lady’s offices were located.

It’s hard to see this, on the heels of Trump’s AI video of him literally dumping shit on the #NoKings protestors, as anything other than petty revenge for the largest political protest since 1970, and a punishment for the American people and his absent wife, who seems to hate him as much as the rest of us do. And by the way, here’s how Jill Biden decorated the East Wing for the holiday season in 2023:

I believe that entire walkway is now gone. Apparently, the Treasury Department, which has a front row seat for the demolition of The People’s House, has told employees not to share their pictures of the "ballroom construction.” Why ever not?

Everything Trump touches turns cold and ugly.

Today: The Ninth Circuit rules for Trump in the Oregon National Guard case; Turns out ICE recruits aren’t so fit; How the hell do you rob the Louvre?; and The High Note.

Let’s do it.

The Ninth Circuit is a mess

It was clear to anyone listening to oral arguments in Oregon v. Trump last week that the two Trump-appointed judges on the three-judge panel were leaning heavily on the side of Dear Leader, arguing things like “Maybe the President has information we don’t have?” and “How can a state or city tell the President what he can and can’t do?” Well, it’s called sovereignty, friends.

Today, the ruling on the federal government’s motion to stay the temporary restraining order (TRO) issued by the district court came down, and, as expected, the two Trump judges ruled in his favor, while the Clinton-appointed judge was the lone dissenter. In other words, the court held that the district court judge was wrong in issuing the TRO, which stopped Trump from deploying the National Guard in Portland.

The ruling is somewhat unhinged, with the Ninth Circuit finding that events in Dallas and Chicago in June justified Trump’s federalization of the Guard in late September.

The opinion was actually issued Per Curiam, which means we don’t know which judge wrote it, but between Judges Nelson and Bade, a lot of Nelson’s talking points made their way into the ruling. However, Nelson went even further, issuing a concurrence that said he didn’t even think the President’s actions were reviewable by courts and that Oregon and Portland might not even have standing to bring the lawsuit. Okay, my dude.

But wait! All is not lost. I told you that Portland and Oregon have the option to ask for a rehearing of the case by an en banc panel of Ninth Circuit judges, and it turns out Oregon didn’t even have to make the motion. Chief Judge Emeritus Sidney Thomas, who was Chief Judge of the 9th Circuit for seven years (and appointed by Bill Clinton) filed his own sua sponte motion for an en banc rehearing. I didn’t even know appellate judges could do that. That’s how bad Judge Thomas apparently thought Nelson and Bade’s ruling was.

Judge Graber strongly dissented in the case, saying “Today’s decision is not only absurd… it erodes core constitutional principles, including sovereign States’ control over their States’ militias and the people’s First Amendment rights to assemble and object to the government’s policies and actions.” Right on, sister.

Graber also hit back on the argument that Trump had to call in the Guard in order to execute the laws of the United States (because protestors supposedly made it impossible) with this gem:

So, where do we go from here? Well, both sides will submit their arguments on why there should or shouldn’t be an en banc rehearing of the case — those are due on Wednesday. By the end of the week, I would imagine we’d have a vote of all the judges in the Ninth Circuit. Judge Thomas, who called for the rehearing, will not have a vote due to his status as a senior judge.

However, should a majority of judges vote in favor of a rehearing, the case will go before the en banc panel, which is the Chief Judge plus 10 judges of the Ninth Circuit chosen at random. For what it’s worth, the current Chief Judge is Mary H. Murguia, who was appointed to the federal bench by Clinton and appointed to the Ninth Circuit by Barack Obama.

More to come on this one. Keep in mind, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals found the exact opposite of the Ninth Circuit in Illinois v. Donald Trump.

Those ICE recruits aren’t looking so good

Before getting to this story, I wanted to mention that both ESPN and TNT are running ICE recruitment ads during their programming. AEW wrestler Hangman Adam Page has urged fans to express their displeasure about ads running during the weekly Dynamite and Collision shows with HBO and TBS. If, say, you wanted to let ESPN know how you feel about ICE ads, you could, hypothetically, send an email to [email protected]. If you wanted to.

Back to the story. It turns out America’s best, brightest, and most athletically-inclined are not going out for ICE.

Not being able to do 32 situps seems suboptimal. But this is my favorite line:

“Athletically allergic!” I love that. I wish I’d had time to put it on a poster for #NoKings day.

How to rob the Louvre

I LOVE a good art heist. Or maybe I just love a good art heist documentary.

I don’t love people keeping priceless objects, like Rembrandt’s Storm on the Sea of Galilee, away from the public, however. In a perfect world, thieves would make off with the art just to prove they could, then promptly hand it back over to its keeper, undamaged. My all-time favorite art heist is the robbery of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, which remains unsolved. Anyway, if you want recs for good art theft documentaries, hit me up.

You probably know that someone managed to rob THE GD LOUVRE on Sunday, by leaning a ladder against a second-story window and just…climbing in. Suck on that, Danny Ocean. Anyway, here’s a gift link with a lot of pics of how they pulled this off.

In a world where we all think you have to be able to hack security systems and perfect parkour to pull off museum heists, perhaps we’ve all moved on from the good ole smash-and-grab too soon.

You apparently don’t have to do this anymore:

Also, don’t yell at me, I don’t condone theft. I just can’t believe robbing the Louvre is even possible in 2025. And blame my great-aunt for giving me my first Perry Mason books when I was eight.

The High Note

Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.

Throwing it back to when we didn’t have to worry about the collapse of The Republic every 15 minutes.

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