The ways in which it’s getting bad
Tariffs reach our shores
The costs of this adminstration’s tariff policy hit Temu over the weekend, if Reddit (r/TemuThings) offers any indication.
Shipping container volumes from China are plummeting. Executive director of the Port of Los Angeles expects a 35% drop in total import volumes within two weeks [WSJ gift link]. Concerns are being raised not just at ports but in the American trucking industry, which will have fewer loads to carry, leading to expectations of layoffs this summer.
It’s difficult to verify every statement made on the internet about retail shelves being empty at this point (See Bluesky posts tagged “#emptyshelves”) but that’s just because we haven’t seen the real impacts hit yet.
The costs of “efficiency” keep rising
When first announcing his “Department of Government Efficiency”, Memlon Fuchs suggested it could save $2 trillion from the federal budget. He reduced that estimate to $1 trillion, and then to $150 billion (just 7.5% of of what he’d imagined). It’s difficult to believe even that number, given the continuing sloppiness of the math being shared (and the increasing secrecy around even that).
With an independent review of the impact of DOGE cuts, it’s clear that these “savings” will be worth even less, with an estimated $135 billion in costs due to “firings, re-hirings, lost productivity and paid leave of thousands of workers”, and an additional $8.6 billion in lost revenue due to reductions in force at the Internal Revenue Service.
The starkness of the math is unsurprising when considering that Fuchs’s primary tools for accumulating wealth have always been a) government subsidies and b) simply making shit up. He didn’t invent Tesla or SpaceX; he walked in and bought the inventions and labor of others (just as he bought his status as a “successful” videogamer).
This also seems like an underestimation of the costs of DOGE’s cuts, once we add in the legal efforts and expenses of defending DOGE’s actions in court, and the compounding inefficiencies of the government services that remain (with tens of thousands of fewer people to deliver them), increased bottlenecks, public wait times, and prospects for future pandemics and mass food poisonings.
Fuchs knows how to bully an organization into a state of malfunctioning, but he doesn’t understand a @#$%ing thing about efficiency, because he has never understood how anything @#$%ing works.
Arresting a judge for show
Every legal expert I have seen writing on the arrest of Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan suggests that the legal reasoning around it is norm breaking and in bad faith (including, for example, the choice to charge her via criminal complaint rather than a grand jury indictment). Add to that the public posturing by Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, including exaggerations, falsehoods, and violations of DOJ policy against the presumption of guilt, and we can recognize this as an act of publicity, not public policy.
If you would like to go deep on the Dugan case, I can always recommend the crushing detail available in a post by Marcy Wheeler.
And then there’s this asshole
I’ve thus far chosen not to write about our Secretary of Health and Human Services, a man who Illinois governor JR Pritzker has taken to calling a “weird nepo baby who once stuffed a dead bear in the back of his car”.
I fear that his particular vile rankness feels too personal to me, and I run out of words to even talk about him and his toxic untruths.
So I will point you to this week’s episode of Last Week Tonight about RFK, Jr., because John Oliver’s team of writers and fact checkers are more capable of applying both rigorous analysis and nuanced language to his first 100 days on the job.
With which they reach the same conclusion:
Oliver and team continue to do hard and good work each week, most notably with their recent episode on the manufactured panic around trans athletes, which you should most definitely sit down with your trans-hesistant friends and family members to watch together.
One @#$%ing thing
With the recent Lenten boycott of Target now continuing indefinitely, I re-registered as a member of Costco for basic staples. Costco, who rejected a shareholder proposal to roll back its DEI investments, has continued to see week-over-week increases in foot traffic. (Will its shelves also empty out as the impacts of tariffs increase?)
You can learn more about the Target boycott, and other companies whose commitments to a more diverse America are worth less or more investment, at targetfast.org
All the @#$%ing things
Night 49: Reflected on the goals of this project, and caught up with Pete Hegseth’s job performance
Night 48: Listened to a historian’s reflection on the lighting of two lanterns in Old North Church
Night 47: Shared photos from April 5 to Facebook
Night 46: Shared photos from the April 5 Hands Off protests
Night 45: Subscribed to Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter
Night 44: Donated to two campaigns for Congress in 2026
Night 43: Looked at projects tracking individuals abducted by ICE
Night 42: Learned more about Louis Armstrong, in his own words
Night 41: Revisited 20 lessons on tyranny
Night 40: Donated to victims of the LA fires
Night 39: Donated to a non-profit disaster alert service
Night 38: Removed Meta apps from my phone
Night 37: Added a new subscription for politics and culture news
Night 36: Catalogued things we know about Memlon Fuchs
Night 35: Described an early MAGA rift
Night 34: The gap between what voters want and what they’re getting
Night 33: An editorial policy of sorts
Night 32: Requesting records when medical claims are denied
Night 31: Things I’ve learned about money laundering
Night 30: Turned to the words of Frederick Douglass
Night 29: Canceled my OpenAI subscription
Night 28: Donated money to three orgs
Night 27: Addressed a hazardous tile floor
Night 26: Picked up trash with the Trash Falcons
Night 25: Learned more about Pete Hegseth than I wanted to
Night 24: Canceled recurring subscriptions I no longer need
Night 23: Dwelt in gratitude
Night 22: Picked up pie from a favorite local business
Night 21: Downsized my clothes closet
Night 20: Increased my monthly contribution to the ACLU
Night 19: Deleted a blog from two decades ago
Night 18: Researched nonprofit board opportunities
Night 17: Contributed to Trans Lifeline
Night 16: Spent time together with loved ones
Night 15: Bought from a not-for-profit online store
Night 14: Refined an icon and wordmark
Night 13: Contributed to the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund
Night 12: Contributed to The Guardian
Night 11: Read, reflected, and rested
Night 10: Sent money to support vaccinations in Nigeria
Night 9: Sent money to a friend in need
Night 8: Gave gifts and spoke words of appreciation aloud
Night 7: Contributed to a California-focused nonprofit newsroom
Night 6: Made homemade donuts for my team
Night 5: Opted into a paid Buttondown tier
Night 4: Reviewed my local election results
Night 3: Deactivated my X account
Night 2: Contributed to my local nonprofit newsroom
Night 1: Started by starting
Words, sorts, thinks, and actions by Chris Ereneta, from Oakland, California. Thanks for reading! Consider forwarding this to a friend! Thoughtful feedback and questions are welcomed at that.often@gmail.com