(Lights up on BlueScream, she's wearing a suit made entirely of Amazon Prime boxes, haphazardly taped together. She's holding a half-eaten donut on a string, dangling it in front of a taxidermied bald eagle.)
BlueScream: Good evening, citizens! Or, as the Moody's Investor Services is now calling you, "Collateralized Debt Obligations waiting to happen." I’m BlueScream, and welcome to The Event Horizon, where we look at the week’s news and try to decide if we should invest in bunkers or artisanal sourdough starters. It's a tough call.
So, another week, another avalanche of… gestures vaguely at a screen filled with flashing images of Trump, Mike Johnson, and soaring gas prices …this. I swear, my newsfeed looks like a ransom note written by a caffeinated chimpanzee.
Let’s start with the “Big, Beautiful Bill,” or as I call it, the “Billionaire Stimulus Package: Now with Extra Austerity!” It’s a tax cut for the rich so vast, so audacious, it makes Marie Antoinette look like a fiscally responsible accountant. And to pay for it? Oh, just some minor tweaks to Medicaid, SNAP, and the very concept of a functioning social safety net. Because who needs healthcare or food stamps when you can have… checks notes …more billionaires?
And House Speaker Mike Johnson is out there, bless his cotton socks and questionable judgment, calling it “moral.” Yes, folks, apparently depriving poor people of healthcare is now a virtue. I guess Jesus was wrong about that whole "feed the hungry, heal the sick" thing. Turns out, the real path to salvation is slashing social programs and praying for trickle-down economics.
Speaking of holy rollers, Texas is now requiring public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. Because nothing says “separation of church and state” like a giant list of rules from a Bronze Age deity hanging next to the periodic table. I’m just waiting for the inevitable class trip to Mar-a-Lago to illustrate the commandment about adultery. Extra credit if you can find photographic evidence.
And just in case you were hoping for a reprieve from the madness, Trump is now demanding the “names and countries” of all international students at Harvard. Because apparently, a diverse student body is a threat to national security. I guess he’s worried they’ll start teaching critical thinking skills and undermining his carefully cultivated army of uneducated sycophants. He’s probably furious Barron didn’t get in, but let’s be honest, the kid probably applied to Trump University.
"Why didn't he get in?" Trump said "It's Harvard! I have all the best people, and they still snub me!"
But it's not just higher education that's feeling the heat. Trump is now cracking down on scientific research, gutting funding and driving our best minds to foreign universities. Apparently, we don’t need science. We have… checks notes again …alternative facts! And a really, really stable genius. What more could you want?
Oh, and those scientists who are being forced to flee the country? Foreign universities are snapping them up faster than you can say "brain drain." Apparently, other countries actually value scientific expertise. Who knew?
Meanwhile, the DOJ has dropped oversight of police departments, which means… well, you can probably guess what that means. It’s like giving a toddler a flamethrower and saying, “Go nuts!” Except the toddler has a badge and a legally sanctioned right to use excessive force.
And let’s not forget about our friends across the pond. The EU is now facing a potential 50% tariff hike, because Trump is apparently running foreign policy like a disgruntled Twitter user. One minute we’re allies, the next minute we’re locked in a trade war over… squints at notes …Greenland’s mineral rights? I swear, the world has turned into a particularly bizarre game of Risk, and Trump is playing with a loaded dice and a complete disregard for the rules.
“They should give me a flying car,” he said as the deal was being debated. “I made them all that money.”
And speaking of weird geopolitical power plays, Trump is now claiming there’s a “white genocide” happening in South Africa and is pushing for new sanctions. I’m pretty sure he gets all his foreign policy advice from InfoWars and Breitbart. I bet he thinks Nelson Mandela was a typo for “Manchurian candidate.”
And speaking of…misinformation. Trump continues to spread misinformation about election fraud and the previous administrations health status, and it appears that he is starting to get caught in some new traps. He went after Harvard for their international students, until he started getting mocked for past President’s whose kid, Obama, went to Harvard.
And because apparently he is just a one-man human disaster, the Former President has decided to launch his very own meme coin and is selling access to it for hundreds of thousands of dollars! He is now being probed by the SEC for potentially stealing and violating the Stock Act law that prevents insider trading and the selling of government secrets for profit.
I don’t know about you, but this has been the most exhausting week of my life. I'm starting to think the only way to survive the next three years is to become a hermit, learn how to forage for food, and build a Faraday cage to block out all the crazy. Or just move to Canada. But they’re probably building a wall right now.
But hey, at least the stock market is… uh… doing something. And, well, at least we have