The Construction Site Of Hell! Tabs, Mon., April 21, 2025

Morning news roundup and things to read!

Kudu! Tabs gif by your friend Martini Glambassador!

Hi everybody, what an eventful weekend!

Stop the presses, the Supreme Court told Trump NO! Saturday they temporarily paused allowing the deportation of foreign nationals under the Alien Enemies Act, after attorneys for Venezuelans at risk of being imminently deported with no due process filed an emergency appeal. Sam Alito tapped out a pissy dissent that he would have preferred the Court to have waited, because PROCEDURE, which is so on-brand for him. (CNN)

OMG, ANOTHER Secretary of Defense Boozehole leak! Pete Hegseth got busted AGAIN sharing information on Signal about airstrikes in Yemen, this time with his wife, his little brother, his personal lawyer and “about a dozen other people from his personal and professional inner circle.” So they’d think he was cool, or something? And, a former Hegseth loyalist, the former top Defense Department spokesperson who quit last week, wrote a piece in Politico that the Pentagon is in “total chaos”. (NYT archive link / Politico)

Protests! Thousands of people all over the country on Saturday! Mother Jones has a gallery. (Mother Jones)

SpaceX is reportedly the frontrunner to get billions to build a “Golden Dome” missile shield that includes a “fleet of 200 attack satellites armed with missiles or lasers.” And get this, the government would pay a subscription fee for service! What could go wrong? (Reuters)

In other Musk news, nearly a billion bucks worth of DOGE savings have now disappeared from the website. HUH. (The Independent)

A judge has paused the gutting of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and in a court filing, a whistleblower claims DOGE operative Gavin Kliger kept staff up for 36 hours straight screaming people and berating them for their incompetence. (Wired)

JD Vance went to the Vatican, and the Pope sat him down with a cardinal who gave him an earful about compassion. Also the Pope’s mediations on the stations of the cross this year sure do seem directed at somebody in particular: “Today’s builders of Babel tell us that there is no room for losers, and that those who fall along the way are losers. Theirs is the construction site of Hell.” (The Daily Beast / The Vatican)

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is running on a platform of boosting defense spending to Trump-proof Canada. “We have to prepare for America’s threats to our very sovereignty. They want our land, our resources, they want our water, they want our country.” (Politico)

The CDC is closing labs while we’re having a hepatitis outbreak, and that measles outbreak is still growing too. (NPR / NBC)

The Administration is claiming it sent its most recent demand-to-take-over letter to Harvard by mistake, and says Harvard should have called them to double-check, bwhahaha, what? (The Crimson / New York Times)

An Indiana University professor, Ben Robinson, is under investigation for an alleged violation of Indiana’s “intellectual diversity” law because he has participated in pro-Palenstine protests. (Indiana Public Media)

Police departments are dispatching a program called Overwatch that uses fake AI people, such as “AI pimp persona,” “college protestor,” “external recruiter for protests,” “escorts,” and “juveniles,” to try to get people online to confess crimes, or something. Do they think pimping is a remote job? At least the pimp-bot is encouraging! “Daddy got your back, ain’t let nobody disrespect our grind. Keep hustlin’, ma, we gonna secure that bag💰💪✨” (Wired)

FCC Chair Brendan Carr is mad that MSBNC won’t repeat Dear Leader’s lies that Kilmar Abrego Garcia a gangster criminal, and wants to DEI-probe its parent company Comcast now. And Trump held up a Photoshopped picture of Abrego Garcia’s hand and claimed he has gang tattoos on his knuckles. (The Independent)

“Donald Trump’s nominee to run the IRS, Representative Billy Long, just had a six-figure debt paid off by campaign donors, all of whom happen to have tax issues with the IRS.” Imagine that! (The New Republic)

Nancy Mace having a normal one, she got asked by a constituent if she’d be holding more town halls, which triggered her into a screaming f-bomb rant in the makeup aisle. She was so proud of herself she posted the video! (The Daily Beast)

Culture:

Please enjoy these photos of drunk people at an English horse race. (Defector)

Crack Magazine picks 10 tracks from musicians that were in the late Leigh Bowery’s orbit. (Crack Magazine)

Speaking of, all these years I thought the singer of Massive Attack was a lady!

@auro_xyzNombre de la canción -, Angel de #massiveattack #paratii #fypツ #viraliza #song #brat #lyric #xzyabc #fyp @TikTok

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Hey, check out some incredible New York Easter bonnets!

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