Good morning. It is February 3rd. Things are swiftly melting in New York City. Literally, in this case, as warm air comes in after overnight snow. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

Elon Musk, the world's richest person and the most active and possibly most powerful participant in the extralegal Trump administration has declared on the basis of no legal authority and contrary to existing laws that he is shutting down the U.S. Agency for International Development over the weekend. Four barely-adult representatives of Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency laid siege to USAID. During the previous workweek, Bloomberg reports, “Musk's junior operatives had descended on the building, demanded information about the organization's structure and personnel, ordered the director of employee and labor relations to fire some workers, and then pushed him onto administrative leave when he refused,” and Bloomberg reports redecorated the place. For example, Bloomberg writes, “artwork that depicted how USAID supported the LGBTQ community or that contained a mention of diversity, equity, and inclusion were removed from the walls. Eventually, everything was taken down, according to eight people with direct knowledge of the matter.” The chief of staff resigned and that fed into the events of the weekend when the Musk representatives demanded access to USAID's secure compartmented information facility. The secure room, Bloomberg writes, “houses some of USAID's most sensitive documents and personnel information. While the personnel documents they were seeking are not classified, according to people familiar with them, entry to the SCIF requires a top secret sensitive compartmented information security clearance. It is unclear whether the Doge team held security clearances at that level. Before the episode ended,” Bloomberg writes, “one of the Doge employees made a call to Musk, who informed the agency's security officials that he would involve the US Marshals Service if his team wasn't given access to even sensitive information. Eventually, the team received access to at least some of what it was after.” Again, Elon Musk has no legal authority to do any of this, certainly not to deploy the US Marshals. When they finally gained access, Bloomberg writes, “USAID's website was taken down. A slimmed down web page was moved to the State Department's website. ‘USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.’ Musk posted on X. On Monday morning,” Bloomberg continues, “USAID employees received a mass email saying the headquarters would be closed for the day and instructing most of them to work remotely. ‘Further guidance will be forthcoming,’ it said.” Elon Musk's entirely illegal assault on an independent agency is on page A17 of this morning's New York Times. “USAID security chief put on leave after barring Musk team from systems,” because page one is preoccupied by Donald Trump's more direct and statutorily legal, though deranged and insupportable activities over the weekend, namely launching the very multi-front trade war that he promised when he was running for office, and which the wisest titans of America's financial system assured one another in the public would never happen. 

“Trump's tariffs said to imperil global trading” is the lead news headline. “Tilts in China's favor. Speed and scope seen as crippling industries and raising costs. President Trump's move this weekend,” the Times writes, “to slap sweeping tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China is threatening to fracture the global trading system and a world economic order that once revolved around a US economy that prized open investment and free markets. The speed and scope of the import duties that Mr. Trump unveiled in executive orders on Saturday prompted widespread criticism from many lawmakers, economists, and business groups who assailed the actions as economic malpractice. They warned that the tariffs, which were levied in response to Mr. Trump's concerns about fentanyl smuggling and illegal immigration, could inflame inflation, cripple American industries, and make China an even more powerful global trade hub.” Well, there's economic malpractice and then there's economic malpractice. If you didn't want a president who was going to blow up the economy in the name of pursuing fantastical non-economic policy goals, you should not have supported the guy who said he was going to do exactly that. Our leading economists sincerely convinced themselves that Trump was lying about using tariffs as weapons to whip up his political support among the rubes, when in fact, they were the rubes. “On Tuesday at 12.01 a.m.,” the Times writes, “all goods imported from Canada and Mexico will be subject to a 25 % tariff, except Canadian energy products, which will face a 10 % tariff. All Chinese goods will also face a 10 % tariff.” You have to take the jump, go to the facing page, and read toward the bottom of the story at the bottom of the page there under the headline, “Who pays for tariffs? Here's what to know.” To get to the other tariff related move that Trump made after sharing an estimate that the Canadian and Mexican tariffs would cost the average American household more than $830 this year, the Times then notes that those costs don't include the results of the administration removing what's called the de minimis exemption, which allows shipments under $800 to come into the United States tariff free. This means that consumer goods direct shipped from China, the backbone of the whole cheap online marketplace business, are not only subject to the new tariffs, but to the tariffs from the first Trump administration from which they were previously exempt. And as I record this, I see that it is now past 10 o'clock, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has plunged $600, has dropped $599 or 1.33 % in the first 12 minutes of trading.

Back on page one, the left-hand side of the page is news analysis, “Favoring Tough Guy Act For Allies and Foes Alike / Trump’s Rejecting Soft Power Has Risks.” The piece by Peter Baker describes the riskiness and brutishness of Trump's approach to world affairs, but still treats it as a fundamentally rational, if rude strategy. “If he makes the targeted countries back down quickly,” Baker writes, “in response to his demand to do more to stop drug trafficking, Mr. Trump will take it as a validation of his strategy. If not, and the tariffs take force and remain in place for a prolonged period, American consumers could pay a price through higher costs on many goods.” The trouble here is that backing down quickly in response to his demand to do more about drug trafficking presupposes that Canada is being identifiably derelict against the international drug trade in a way that can be fixed through policy concessions. In fact, as Vice President JD Vance's social media posts over the weekend helped to make clear, Trump is simply antagonizing Canada for the sake of antagonizing Canada and in the hopes of precipitating some sort of crisis that would end with the United States seizing control of its northern neighbor.

At this point, it's worth remembering that Donald Trump is the oldest person ever to take the oath of office, and by all available indications, has long since sunk into alternating grandiose and paranoid delusions, which the American electorate and media and ruling capitalist power structure decided it would be safe to let him indulge with real powers and real consequences. Now the Dow has scooted up a little bit, to shave a few points off its early losses. Maybe the markets will decide to try to keep on believing that this is somehow all going to work out. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning Podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Socca-Ho. You, the listeners, keep us going through your subscription dollars and tips, which we greatly appreciate, and encourage you to send us more of.

Watch out for slush and potential shootouts between rival branches of the National Security Services. And if nothing too logistically unexpected happens, we will talk again tomorrow.