Tariffs are a smaller threat than China

Megyn Kelly, and Kevin O'Leary discuss tariffs and China.  China is the real problem.

Cringe worthy

I guess cringeworthy is standard for Elizabeth Warren.

Judicial Coup D’Etat

Via The Federalist:

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports there had already been at least 17 national injunctions against the Trump administration between Inauguration Day and March 27 — on everything from the firing of federal workers to Trump’s executive orders taking on disastrous DEI policies. There have been more since.

D.C. Courts have been particularly unfriendly to Trump’s efforts to close the southern border his predecessor, President Joe Biden, pushed wide open. Efforts to use executive branch enforcement tools to deport even known violent criminals and terrorists have been routinely rebuffed by federal courts in the D.C. bubble. Chief among the Trump halters is Judge James E. “Jeb” Boasberg, an Obama-appointee who became Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court, District of Columbia, in 2023.

Over the Easter Weekend, a courage-deficient, seven-justice Supreme Court issued what dissenting Justice Samuel Alito described as a “middle of the night” ruling temporarily blocking the Trump administration from deporting Venezuelan illegal immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

“Both the Executive and the Judiciary have an obligation to follow the law,” Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote in his stinging dissent, adding that the majority’s decision to countenance the far left American Civil Liberties Union’s emergency appeal was “unprecedented” and “hastily and prematurely granted.”

Luckily congress is not sitting idly by:

 The Republican-controlled House is trying to check what members like Onder believe to be a constitutional crisis created by an overreaching judiciary. Earlier this month, the House on a party-line vote passed the No Rogue Rulings Act of 2025 (NORRA) aimed at limiting the use of national injunctions. The bill, now before the Senate Judiciary Committee, basically bars U.S. district courts from issuing injunctive relief orders unless they apply to specific parties bringing a complaint.

Let's hope this has legs.

Pope Francis passing and legacy

Pope Francis has died. Via the BBC:

Tributes have been pouring in for Pope Francis from around the world.

The pontiff had been ill for several weeks, but appeared in public yesterday to give an Easter Sunday blessing in St Peter’s Square.

Yesterday, he also briefly met US Vice-President JD Vance, who shared his condolences this morning.

And what might be his legacy? I tend to agree with this take from The Spectator, or at least this portion of it:

Modern popes, for better or for worse, tend to be defined in soundbites.

John Paul II’s clarion call of “Be not afraid” became emblematic of his invitation to young Catholics to embrace their faith and his rallying of the West against the specter of international Communism. Benedict XVI’s great theological career, and his term as a pope in the model of priest and professor, remains summed up in his simple declaration that Deus caritas est. For Francis, the world will likely remember, in the immediate weeks after his death anyway, his often quoted, though often misrepresented, motto of “who am I to judge?”

Uttered during one of his habitual in-flight press conferences in response to a question about gay clergy who sought to live their ministry and their lives faithful to the Church’s teaching on human sexuality, it became a shorthand for a pope committed more than anything to a radical posture of welcome – a “Vatican Council II pope,” he was dubbed in the media, dedicated to throwing open wide the Church’s doors to Catholics, and indeed to everyone, without censure or reservation about their complicated lives.

Sunday verse

 

Wishing everyone a wonderful Easter

Amazing Grace.