While immigration and illegal border crossings have long been complex and contentious issues, the notion that there's an invasion or a national emergency was invented by officials who have a determination to amass more executive power and a fetish for public displays of militaristic cruelty. This is pretty obvious unless you're able to convince yourself that there's a massive crime wave in America that's made up of millions of people who risk everything to cross the border and then work for decades stitching clothes, picking crops, washing cars, and paying taxes as part of some longterm undercover plot to commit a heinous crime to be named later. Uh, send in the Marines? Reminders of the vital role these workers play in the American economy isn't just being called out by immigration advocates or left wing columnists. They're coming loudly and urgently from business owners. A sick irony of our current American moment is that one of the business owners who has long employed undocumented workers is the president behind the current crackdown. Even he's hearing the message from his fellow business owners. His latest message: "Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace. This is not good." (If only personal experience over several decades or the constant refrain from every business leader and economist ever had suggested this could be the case.) White House border czar Tom Homan is still indicating that there will be a massive expansion of enforcement operations in workplaces, and that employers may be targeted as well as workers. We'll see if reality and logic can win the day on this issue. Neither has had a great track record lately.

+ GQ: When It Comes to Clothes, ‘Made in USA’ Has Always Meant Made by Immigrants. "The recent ICE raids on Los Angeles’s Fashion District served as a potent reminder that immigrant labor has been the backbone of the American garment industry for generations."

+ The immigration raids aren't just impacting workers and employers. They're impacting big businesses that are seeing blinking red warning signals when it comes to consumer behavior. WSJ (Gift Article): ICE Raids Have Sent Latino Shoppers Into Hiding and Big Brands Are Hurting. "Across America—and particularly in Southern states with large Hispanic populations—consumer goods companies, food and beverage makers, restaurants and retailers are taking a hit. Coca-Cola’s sales volume in North America fell 3% in the first quarter of the year, partly because of the pullback by Hispanic shoppers, company executives said. Colgate-Palmolive, Modelo brewer Constellation Brands and restaurant chains including Wingstop and El Pollo Loco over the past few months have told investors that a decrease in Hispanic spending is hurting their sales." (Apparently, buying a lot of toothpaste and Coca Cola is also part of this criminal conspiracy.)

2

11-A

"An Air India flight carrying 242 people including 12 crew bound for London crashed shortly after departure in India's northwestern city of Ahmedabad today."

+ Somehow, it appears that one passenger survived the crash (that also killed bystanders on the ground). British passenger in seat 11A survives India plane crash.

+ "According to flight-tracking information on Flight Radar, the plane had reached a maximum height of just 625ft." Here's the latest from The Guardian and BBC.

3

Is Israel Frontin'?

"Israel appears to be preparing to launch an attack soon on Iran, according to officials in the United States and Europe, a step that could further inflame the Middle East and derail or delay efforts by the Trump administration to broker a deal to cut off Iran’s path to building a nuclear bomb." NYT (Gift Article): Israel Appears Ready to Attack Iran, Officials in U.S. and Europe Say. While one might guess that this threat is part of a unified strategy for the US to extract more concessions from Iran in the ongoing nuclear talks, it sure sounds serious. "The concern about a potential Israeli strike and the prospect of retaliation by Iran led the United States on Wednesday to withdraw diplomats from Iraq and authorize the voluntary departure of U.S. military family members from the Middle East."

+ But don't worry. America's leadership in the region is in totally sane hands. US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff: "No disrespect to Netanyahu, but Trump could be US president and Israel’s PM at same time."

4

Watch My Smoke

My wife and I are coping with the onslaught of bad news during Trump 2.0 by watching everything on TV. And I mean, like, everything. And for a while now, we've been noticing a trend. Smoking is back. In fact, I think this article, while on topic, probably understates the prevalence of smoking by TV characters. NYT (Gift Article): Pop Culture Takes Up Smoking Again. "From movies and TV shows to music, the habit is no longer taboo. It’s even being celebrated for the way it makes characters look cool or powerful."

5

Extra, Extra

OK, Boomerang: "It remains unclear whether the truce will hold — or crumble like one struck in May did. Even if the agreement does prove durable, its big accomplishment appears to be merely returning the countries to a status quo from several months ago, before President Trump provoked tensions with China in early April by ramping up tariffs on goods it produces." NYT (Gift Article): New China Trade ‘Deal’ Takes U.S. Back to Where It Started. Oh sure, that's what the fake liberal news says. But what does the WSJ have to say? "This gets to the larger problem with Mr. Trump’s tariff strategy—that is, he doesn’t have one." (That said, these days I view anything that ends up back where we started before Jan 20, 2025 as a major victory.)

+ The Morale of the Story: "Three different advocacy organizations representing military families said they had heard from dozens of affected service members who expressed discomfort about being drawn into a domestic policing operation outside their normal field of operations. The groups said they have heard no countervailing opinions." Troops and marines deeply troubled by LA deployment: ‘Morale is not great.' But wait, what about all those soldiers cheering when Trump turned a Fort Bragg address into a politcal rally? Well, it turns out that "troops who attended an address by President Donald Trump at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on Tuesday were reportedly screened for their appearance and political views." (Editor's note: The military isn't supposed to express political views.)

+ Don't Reign on the Parade: "The United States Army deserves a celebration, as do the other armed services during their upcoming birthdays. Tens of millions of Americans have passed through the Army’s ranks, and something close to a million have died in the line of duty, while many more were wounded or taken prisoner, or suffered extraordinary hardships. We owe them a lot. The administration, however, is orchestrating a parade not to honor service, but to celebrate power." Eliot A. Cohen in The Atlantic (Gift Article): A Parade of Ignorance. From The Verge: Big Tech quietly sponsors Trump’s military parade party. (This is not surprising. Big tech wants deals with the Pentagon. And, if you take Trumpism out of the equation, the military should be celebrated ... when it's not being deployed in American cities.)

+ General Relativity: "When asked by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) whether Putin intends to 'stop in Ukraine,' the general was frank: 'I don’t believe so, sir.' When pressed by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) to say if he believes the demonstrations and violence in Los Angeles are a sign the United States is 'being invaded by a foreign nation,' as Trump told an audience of soldiers Tuesday in North Carolina, Caine said he doesn’t." A hopeful sign. WaPo: Trump’s top general contradicts his assessment of Putin, L.A. unrest.

+ Once Upon a Time: "There’s a concept in psychology known as time perception: the subjective experience of the passing of time. Humans don’t feel time as a constant, monolithic thing that progresses at a fixed rate. Instead, we have moments that seem to last forever and ones that pass by in an instant. The exact same time span can feel long or short, depending on a number of factors, from the cognitive (how much we are paying attention, for instance) to the emotional (how we’re feeling, whether we’re bored or excited, and the like)." Maria Konnikova with an interesting look at the psychology of time perception. (Or why 2025 will last approximately 10,000 years.)

+ Taking Flight: "A man who posed as a flight attendant for four different airlines scammed 120 free flights over the course of years." (And the S.O.B. still hasn't brought me the second bag pretzels I asked for...)

6

Bottom of the News

Trump got a mixed reaction when he entered the Kennedy Center to watch Les Mis. The drag queens who showed up got only cheers.