There is no shortage of colorful language (and memes!) being used today to describe the new Trump Tax we're all about to pay -- after having been "liberated" from, y'know, paying less money for stuff. I chose the term financial pundit Ross Gerber used to describe it for the headline, as it seemed the most descriptive:

I was just thinking about it and I've studied this for over 30 years, and I want to try to, you know, reassure people that things are going to be OK. But, honestly, this is just a disaster of idiocy that I can't even tell you beyond proportions.

As we stand on the brink of an entirely self-inflicted economic downturn, that seems about right.

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Before the votes were counted in Wisconsin last night, Elon Musk said the race "might decide the future of America and Western civilization" and "the future of the world." Afterwards, he tried to spin the outcome: "I expected to lose, but there is value to losing a piece for positional gain." Nice try, Elon.

This was the most expensive race for a state supreme court seat in American history, with over $100 million spent in total. Musk was responsible for one-fourth of that, sinking $25 million of his own money into the race. Which may have actually been the determinative factor, since many voters were absolutely disgusted with an outsider trying to openly buy a supreme court seat.

It was an important race, since it was a liberal seat up for grabs. If the conservative had won, the balance of Wisconsin's highest court would have flipped to the conservatives. But the liberal candidate romped to an easy 10-point victory last night, cementing liberal control for at least the next few years. Since liberals wrested control of the court back, they have ruled a gerrymandered district map for the state legislature was unconstitutional, which will level the field for Democrats in the state government. They haven't yet ruled on the gerrymandered districts for the U.S. House of Representatives though, where Republicans hold six out of eight seats (in a state that is as close to 50/50 as you can get). If that map gets tossed out too, it could flip two House seats to Democrats -- which would be almost enough for them to regain control of the House again. This was what Musk's overblown hyperbole was referring to.

Musk essentially put himself on the ballot. He made the race into a referendum on him. And Wisconsin voters showed him exactly what they felt about him. Not even jumping around a stage wearing a cheesehead hat helped.

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While this is not going to be an "April Fools!" column per se, it certainly is going to deal with some rampant foolishness from the Republicans in Congress right now. Because what they are trying to do is to replace actual math with nothing short of fantasy math. They are making this attempt to pull the wool over the taxpayers' eyes in order to reward billionaires, without it "costing" a thin dime -- when in reality, it's going to cost upwards of $5 trillion.

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So... is everyone ready to pay more for everything? Because that's why America elected Donald Trump president, right?

On Wednesday, Trump will be announcing sweeping tariffs on the entire rest of the world. As he likes to put it, "tariff" is his new favorite word in the dictionary. But consumers are likely to call it what it will actually be, to them: a tax. A big fat "Trump Tax" on all sorts of things consumers buy. Which will likely drive up inflation, and which will definitely hit consumers hard in the pocketbook.

Or maybe not. With Trump, you never quite know what he'll do next. And his record so far on tariffs has been completely chaotic. He'll announce one and then turn right around and suspend it. Or he'll announce that he's cut some wonderful trade deal and the tariff won't be levied at all. Or people from certain industries will beg him to relent and he will. There's no rhyme or reason, because there is no actual plan -- just Trump's whims.

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In keeping with the "world turned upside-down" nature of this week, we are going to start with a few things that haven't been front-and-center, then we'll circle in to a bigger-picture take, and finally we'll fit in the big story of the week at the end.

First, the stuff that may have been lost in the flood. This comes from a journalist's list of "this week's parade of horribles," but this is only the end of this list (the entire list was too long to include here):

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House Republicans seem to be getting worried. Their historically-thin majority isn't in jeopardy quite yet, but the political trends aren't exactly going in their direction. Which led to a surprise announcement from the White House that the nomination of Representative Elise Stefanik to be the ambassador to the United Nations was being pulled. Stefanik had already delayed going through the Senate confirmation process, since her vote was needed on budget bills. But now she won't be confirmed at all, as Republicans worry about holding on to their majority.

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Without a doubt, we now live in Orwellian times. Anyone who runs afoul of the Dear Leader must be punished. The truth is whatever the Dear Leader says (even when he contradicts something he earlier said). We don't have a Ministry of Truth (yet), but we do have Truth Social. We have always been at war with Canada, and Russia has always been our friend, right? The past is being rewritten, erasing any mention of the trans people who were instrumental in leading the Stonewall Riots, and any mention of why pioneers like Jackie Robinson weren't considered just some random baseball star. Maybe Rosa Parks will be next: "She was just some woman on a bus... not really sure why some woman on a bus is historic, but everyone remembers her name for some reason...." In all this Orwellian flood, though, the one that stands out for me is the up-is-down nature of the richest man in the world absolutely destroying major government departments in the name of "government efficiency." That one really takes the Orwellian cake, as it were.

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In what universe does information about exactly what (and where) American warplanes are targeting, the timing of airstrikes, and what weapons will be used in those airstrikes not qualify as "classified information"? That is a jaw-dropping concept, but that is one of the excuses being lamely trotted out for the massive security breach that recently happened. The secretary of Defense just decided on his own, willy-nilly, that such information was somehow perfectly acceptable to talk about on unsecured systems (possibly even including private, non-governmental phones)? That's without even adding in "with a journalist in on the chat" -- but that is indeed the tack some are attempting to take right now. It's all just no big deal, they insist. Nothin' to see here, folks!

Two of the people who participated in the Signal chat appeared before a Senate committee today, and they both tried to float this excuse, incredulously insisting at first that no classified information was shared on the chat. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard even refused to admit that she had even been on the chat. Later in the hearing, Gabbard and C.I.A. Director John Ratcliffe "added caveats to their answers, saying that no classified information under U.S. intelligence agencies' purview was discussed." They both said that the question of any other information being classified should be asked of the Defense secretary. This is laughably unbelievable.

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That headline is obviously meant as a callback to a time when Republicans expressed all kinds of alarm about top secret information being mishandled by high-ranking government officials. In particular, Hillary Clinton's emails. Republicans in Congress gleefully investigated Clinton's email server and what had been sent via a non-standard communications channel -- six ways to Sunday, in fact. They denounced the breach of national security in the strongest possible terms. Later, it became the go-to "whataboutism" response to just about anything Democrats would bring up in relation to just about any Republican. The phrase: "But what about her emails?" or just: "But her emails!" became such a cliché that it was even mockingly morphed (by elision) into merely: "Butter emails!"

Ah, those were the days, eh? When Republicans expressed alarm (real or faked) about national security leaks?

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President Elon Musk and his figurehead Donald Trump inched closer to a constitutional crisis (once again) last week. It still hasn't been fully resolved, so we've all got more of this to look forward to next week as well.

Trump invoked a law from the 1700s this week which would allow him personally to determine who gets deported. No due process, no hearing before a judge -- none of that. Just Trump deciding: "I don't like this guy, let's kick him out." The Alien Enemies Act is only supposed to apply when the United States is at war with another nation, and has only been used three times -- the most recent being the shameful internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. But as far as Trump is concerned, it doesn't matter than we aren't at war, he just doesn't want to deal with the courts at all.

The courts, unsurprisingly, disagreed. A federal judge ordered that nobody be deported using the Act, and further that any planes that were in the air with people on them actively being deported be turned around and brought back. The Trump administration refused to do so, and two flights landed in El Salvador (after the judge handed down his order), and everyone aboard was sent to a notorious prison where they will spend the next year doing forced labor.

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