We’ve learned about probably illegal rendition flights being ordered in defiance of a judge’s rulings, Elon offering people cash for votes …and more about Trump’s unlikely fondness for musical theatre
Donald Trump loves Cats.
The musical, probably not the animal. We can’t imagine the noted germaphobe being super into actual felines.
But as anyone who has heard the playlist that goes on before his speeches will know, the US President has an unlikely fondness for show tunes – particularly those of Andrew Lloyd Webber, who famously flew across the Atlantic to vote for benefit cuts in the House of Lords.
(And whose theatrical works have been diminishing returns since Jesus Christ Superstar if you ask us, but you do you Donald.)
Anyway, in amongst the antidemocratic protest crackdowns and probably illegal rendition flights to brutal foreign prisons, we learned a bit more about Trump’s love of the theatre this week.
Oh and his buddy Elon is trying to buy people’s votes. Literally, a group he funds is stopping people in the street and offering $100.
Here’s a roundup of the most troubling things the Trump White House has done since yesterday.
1. Revoked legal status for half a million immigrants
A notice posted last night confirmed the Trump administration’s plans to revoke legal status for 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans – putting them on a fast track for deportation as soon as 21 April.
It’s part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to strip legal status from more than 1.8 million people allowed into the country on humanitarian programmes, or because they have US sponsors.
The 1.8 million figure includes almost quarter of a million Ukrainian refugees who fled after Putin’s invasion.
2. Demanded more musicals like Cats
OK, this didn’t happen in the last 24 hours. In fact, it was reported on Wednesday. But I can’t let it go without recording it.
Trump turned up to his first meeting as self-imposed Chairman of the board of renowned cultural institution the Kennedy Centre, and it could not have been more Kim Jong Il if he’d worn unflattering military fatigues and posed for pictures pointing at the stage.
According to a leaked recording sent to The New York Times, the President canvassed opinion on which the board thought was better, Les Mis or Phantom.
And he banged on about being at the opening night of Cats, before demanding the Centre put on more shows like that, with “gorgeous” women laying on the stage, and less “totally woke” productions.
He spoke fondly of Betty Buckley, who originated the role of Grizabella the Glamour Cat on Broadway.
For Ms Buckley, now 77, the feeling is not mutual.
In a 2019 interview, she talked about ending friendships with Trump supporters, saying: “Never again. I feel bad about that, because I love these people. I still love them, but I can’t, I just can’t.”
If you were wondering, the current Trump-approved board of trustees agreed that Phantom was better than Les Mis, which probably tells you all you need to know about them.
3. Columbia University caved and put itself under government control
Under threat of losing $400m of federal funding, Columbia University has agreed to a set of wildly inappropriate demands from the Trump White House.
According to Reuters: “Columbia agreed to place its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies department under a new official, the memo said, taking control away from its faculty. The demand had raised alarm among professors at Columbia and elsewhere, who worried that permitting the federal government to dictate how a department is run would set a dangerous precedent.”
The college has also “hired three dozen special officers who have the power to arrest people on campus and has revised its anti-discrimination policies, including its authority to sanction campus organisations, the memo said. The school also said it is searching for new faculty members to ‘ensure intellectual diversity.”
This is all because Trump got upset about anti-Israel protests on the campus earlier in the year, decided they were anti-semitic and started summarily deporting people who were involved.
Following these evidently undemocratic capitulations, people on social media have started to refer to Columbia as King’s College – the name it had when it was founded in 1754 during the reign of George II.
4. Censored some scientists, no big deal
Two California researchers said Friday that a U.S. government health publication instructed them to remove data on sexual orientation from a scientific manuscript that had been accepted for publication.
The researchers also said they were told to remove the words “gender,” “cisgender” and “equitable” from their paper, which looked at smoking among rural young adults.
The reason given for the changes was to comply with an executive order from President Donald Trump, researchers Tamar Antin and Rachelle Annechino said.
5. Probably ignored a judge’s order to block a manifestly illegal rendition flight
A federal judge examining the Trump administration’s use of an 18th-century wartime law to deport Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador has vowed to “get to the bottom” of whether the government defied his order to turn the planes around.
Chief Judge James Boasberg is trying to determine if the administration ignored his turnaround order last weekend when at least two planeloads of immigrants were still in flight.
“I will get to the bottom of whether they violated my order, who ordered this and what the consequences will be,” Boasberg said during a hearing for a lawsuit challenging the deportations.
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6. Tried to buy votes for cash
A group funded by Elon Musk is offering Wisconsin voters $100 to oppose ‘activist judges’ in a forthcoming election.
The petition comes less than two weeks before the state’s Supreme Court election and after the group made a similar proposal last year in battleground states.
The campaign for Susan Crawford, the Democratic-backed candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court, said Musk’s America PAC is trying to buy votes ahead of the April 1 election that will determine ideological control of the court.
The offer was made two days after early voting started in the hotly contested race between Crawford and Brad Schimel, the preferred candidate of Musk and Republicans.
Musk’s PAC used a nearly identical tactic ahead of the November presidential election, offering to pay $1 million a day to voters in Wisconsin and six other battleground states.
