02/24/25

Good morning! It’s Monday, February 24th

National Tortilla Chip Day

Are you kidding me? Sign me up!

And now, the news.

Pennsylvania Hospital Shooting

-via ABC News

We start how we start here in America, with one dead and five others injured after a man entered a Pennsylvania hospital with a semi-automatic handgun and zip ties on Saturday morning.

The man entered the hospital around 10:3 AM and headed to the ICU where he took staff hostage before shooting a hospital doctor, nurse, and custodian, who are all stable. Three police officers were shot, and one died, during the incident.

The suspect was killed by police and it sounds like the shooting was motivated by the suspect’s response to a family member dying in the ICU.

Germany Elections

-via AP News, NBC News, and The Conservation

As we deal with of own bout of fascism and Constitutional crisis here in America, Germany has elected Friedrich Merz, a conservative opposition candidate, as the group known as AFD (or Alternative for Germany, a far-right and nativist group, never a great way you want a group described in general, and for sure not in Germany) doubled its support.

The election itself is news since it took place seven months early after Chancellor Scholz’s collision collapsed.

I guess the only vaguely good news we can take here is that no one seemed super into any of the candidates.

Still.

The biggest concern is the gains AFD made. And if that group sounds familiar, it’s probably because Elon Musk is a big supporter. You might remember that he appeared by satellite at a rally of theirs recently, telling Germany to forget about, and move on from, the holocaust.

This is after, of course, Musk did a nazi salute in front of the world because he was so excited that he would be able to do fascism here in America.

Ukraine

-via BBC

On Sunday, after Trump called him a dictator and accused him of not having elections because his approval rating was 4%, Ukraine’s President Zelensky said, "If you need me to leave this chair, I am ready to do that. And I also can exchange it for NATO membership for Ukraine."

They’re going to put him on the hryvnia.

Hryvnia has been the currency of Ukraine since 1918. I looked it up – it’s really pretty!

Our money is so boring in America.

I mean, please don’t let Trump know. That dude hasn’t touched cash in decades and if we remind him that we have the most boring bills, he’s going to start putting his face on all the money and the font’s going to be the cybertruck logo font.

Still though, maybe after we evade fascism and save democracy… we can get cooler looking money.

Pope Health Update

-via NPR

On Friday’s show I mentioned that the Pope, who has been in the hospital with pneumonia stemming from bronchitis, was getting better.

However, over the weekend, he seemed to take a turn for the worse. After of this recording, the Vatican is reporting that, although he had a peaceful night on Sunday, he was still in critical condition with double pneumonia (one is bad enough, I didn’t even know double was possible but apparently that’s when it’s in both lungs), as well as what they’re classifying as being in “mild” kidney failure.

Pope Francis is 88 years old and was elected in 2013.

Federal Employees

-via CBS News, People, and The Hill

Going all in on their Constitutional crisis, by the time you hear this, around 2,000 (though I also heard as many as 4,200) non-essential USAID employees will be placed on lead, according to an email sent to the Office of the Administrator.

The move comes after a federal judge lifted the temporary restraining order that prevented Trump and his most very special employee from firing employees.

I’m sure we’ll hear more shortly about which lifesaving groups just had their staff cut, but spoiler alert – some are from the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance. Seems bad!

And speaking of… you know… Constitutional crisis, Elon, chaos, and just all things that are generally bad –

Federal workers all over this country got an email, apparently from Elon who announced it on his dumb website, stating that they needed to respond listing five things they did last week, or be fired.

Can. You. Even.

It literally asked them to give "approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager."

And what’s cool here is that it’s not even clear if this is legitimate. Most of these employees can’t be fired without cause, and apparently the email didn’t even have the ultimatum in it.

Some guy who bought a website and a car company doesn’t get to come in and ask people what they did at work, some of whom were busy doing confidential work, or else they’ll be fired! And the only reason we know they’ll be fired is because he tweeted it?

And of all people… this is coming from Elon Musk?

Do you know five things he did last week?

·      Held a chainsaw above his head yelling “chainsaw!”

·      Said "There's living the dream, and there's living the meme. And it's pretty much what's happening, ya know?"

·      Wore a shirt that said "I’m not procrastinating, I’m doing side quests.”

·      Referred to his work with DOGE as "fighting the Matrix."

·      And was tagged in a tweet the woman which whom he has three kids, in which she asked him to "respond about our child's medical crisis."

Oh wait, that wasn’t last week. That was just while he was on stage at CPAC on Friday.

So we’ll see what happens here. Even Kash Patel told FBI employees not to respond.

And that’s it. That’s the news.

Lots of “we’ll see what happens here” in this episode. Not great. Not my favorite.

But you know what? It’s still Tortilla chip day. And that’s lovely.