Random News: March 13, 2025

DISCLAIMER: Zak's Random News is very random and doesn't cover many things, and not everything may be accurate, because I'm just some guy. Go find a real news source.

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Good morning. It’s March 13, 2025, and it’s a Thursday for some reason. I’m still mad about Daylight Saving Time, and about the attempted fascist takeover of my country. One of those things I can’t do anything about, so let’s focus on the latter.

• We have laws in this country.
• Laws are there to establish standards of behavior, maintain order, resolve disputes, and protect fundamental human rights and freedoms, thereby promoting a just and safe society. 
• We have laws to protect ourselves from each other, and from malicious prosecution. many of those laws are enshrined in our country’s constitution.
• And that brings us to the tale of prominent Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, who will remain in an ICE detention facility in Louisiana following a procedural hearing in New York, days after he was arrested by federal officials at his Columbia University residence in an attempt by the Dump administration to deport him.
• Khalil, I will remind you, is a legal permanent resident of the USA. New York federal Judge Jesse Furman has blocked any immediate effort to deport Khalil until his attorneys and the federal government appear in court.
• In court yesterday, Furman ordered that Khalil be allowed at least one call yesterday and today with his counsel as they prepare to meet briefing deadlines.
• As you know, you have the right to speak to an attorney in America, but thus far, Khalil has not been granted that right. “We literally have not been able to confer with our client once since he was taken off the streets of New York City,” said his attorney Ramzi Kassem.
• If the government itself is promoting lawlessness, don’t be surprised of the people of the country do the same in return.
• Let’s look at some news on the fight against Dump and his fascist bullshit.
• Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell temporarily blocked parts of Dumpy's executive order targeting a prominent law firm for its representation of Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and for causes unpopular with his administration.
• Yes, really. The fat fuck wrote an executive order to target a private company in the USA.
• Dumpy issued the executive order last week that accuses Perkins Coie of "dishonest and dangerous activity" and seeks to impose several punitive measures, including suspending security clearances held by Perkins Coie employees and prohibiting government contractors from retaining the firm.
• Dumpy’s dictatorial order also bars the firm's employees from federal buildings, and prohibits federal employees from engaging with Perkins Coie staff.
• But at a hearing in federal court in Washington, D.C., Howell issued a temporary restraining order blocking enforcement of Dumpty’s insanely illegal executive order.
• Howell said the president's order against Perkins Coie is clearly intended to punish the firm (duh), and likely violates its First, Fifth, and Sixth amendment rights.
• Three fucking constitutional violations in one executive order. It’s almost as if people with no legal or governmental background are in charge of our country. Hmm.
• Moving on to some breaking news that is definitely interesting.
• The White House has withdrawn the nomination of former Rep. Dave Weldon (R-FL), whom Dumples the Clown really wanted to serve as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
• The development came minutes before Weldon was set to testify at his Senate confirmation hearing this morning at 10am ET before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
• It wasn’t immediately clear why his nomination was pulled, but Weldon has held some anti-vaccine views similar to those of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
• And maybe having this guy spout his bullshit in the midst of multiple disease outbreaks would have been bad optics for Donnie.
• During his 14 years in Congress, Weldon criticized the CDC and questioned the safety of vaccines. Similar to Kennedy, Weldon has made statements linking vaccines to autism despite research showing no connection exists.
• Anyway, now they’ll need to find some other asshole to fill the crucial role.
• Let’s do some very hopeful news.
• I shouldn’t have favorite US district judges, and yet Tanya Chutkan is definitely one of them.
• She’s ordered Elon Musk and his pseudo department DOGE to turn over a wide array of records that would reveal the identities of staffers and internal records related to efforts to aggressively cut federal government spending and programs.
• Chutkan’s order forces Musk to produce documents related to DOGE’s activities as part of a lawsuit brought by 14 Democratic state attorneys general that alleges Musk violated the constitution by wielding powers that only Senate-confirmed officials should possess.
• Thank you!
• Chutkan said in her 14-page decision that she was allowing the state attorneys general to obtain documents from Musk to clarify the scope of his authority, which would inform whether he has been operating unconstitutionally to the extent that DOGE’s activities should be halted.
• Let’s make all this shit transparent. Isn’t that what you like, MAGAs? Government transparency? Not allowing unelected bureaucrats to rule your world? Then you should all be happy that Musk is going to have his ass handed to him.
• Moving on to the government (what’s left of it) funding bill.
• Yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said that Democrats would reject a bill that Republicans wrote and passed through the House, leaving it uncertain whether Congress can avert a shutdown before Friday night's deadline.
• Honestly? Fuck it. Let the shit collapse on them. They’re intent on tearing it down anyway.
• The government will shut down at the end of day tomorrow without a new funding law signed by Dumpy, who has endorsed the House legislation. Republicans control 53 Senate seats, but need 60 votes to defeat a filibuster.
• Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) said, “There are not the votes right now to pass it. Democrats had nothing to do with this bill. And we want an opportunity to get an amendment vote or two. And so that’s what we are insisting on.”
• I agree.
• There’s only one asshole Senator, to my awareness, in the whole Democratic party who is kissing the asses of the Republicans on this bill. That would be John Fetterman (D-PA) who said he will support the stopgap funding bill because it is preferable to a government shutdown.
• Guess we’ll see how that goes.
• Let’s break for some good news from the Justice Desk…
• A former pastor of a Texas megachurch who resigned after a woman accused him of sexually abusing her in the 1980s was indicted yesterday in Oklahoma on child sexual abuse charges.
• Robert Morris, 63, has been charged with five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child. he started molesting this girl when she was 12 years old. The abuse continued for four years.
• The Gateway Church, based in the Dallas suburb of Southlake, was founded by Morris in 2000. It said in a statement Wednesday that its members are praying for “all of those impacted by this terrible situation.”
• In 2020, Morris and his church hosted Donnie Dump on its Dallas campus for a discussion on race relations and the economy.
• Under no circumstance would I allow a purported religious leader or other so-called spiritual adviser alone with my child for a nanosecond.
• Let’s end on a happy note: Pastor Morris faces up to 20 years in prison for each of the five charges. If all goes well, he’ll never see the outside of a prison once he’s in.
• In other news…
• We need to continue to highlight the topic of Social Security. President Elon Musk is, more than ever, determined to kill it entirely.
• Every single claim Musk has made about Social Security — like his accusation that millions of people over the age of 130 were receiving Social Security checks — has invariably collapsed under scrutiny.
• Musk called Social Security — the systems helps keep our elderly parents, disabled citizens, and many military vets alive — “the biggest fraud in the history of humanity”
• He also went so far as to label Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.”
• In a recent interview, Muck was open about his view.
• “You’ve got to actually take action. So, I mean, the waste report in entitlement spending, which is most of the federal spending, is entitlements. So that’s, like, the big one to eliminate. That’s the sort of half-trillion, maybe $600, $700 billion a year.”
• Did you catch the key word there?
• Eliminate.
• We told you this would happen long before you voted for Dumpy. Anyway, start cleaning out that extra room at your place for your folks — and your spouse’s folks — to move into.
• Let’s move on, but also stay on the topic of people who need housing.
• Dumpy — at the direction of President Musk and his DOGE — is halting a $1 billion program that helps preserve affordable housing, threatening projects that keep tens of thousands of units livable for low-income Americans.
• Hundreds of thousands of low-rent apartments, many of them aging and in need of urgent repair, are at risk of being yanked out from under poor Americans.
• The Green and Resilient Retrofit Program, passed by Congress in 2022, has already awarded the money to projects that would upgrade at least 25,000 affordable units across the country, but the program is being terminated at the direction of DOGE.
• Homelessness is going to skyrocket in cities across the USA as a result of this decision by President Musk and his lapdog Donnie Dump.
• Moving on.
• You know how I mentioned the other day that measles outbreaks had extended past Texas and cases were seen in Oklahoma and one here in LA County, CA?
• Yeah. Now new numbers as of yesterday show the measles virus continuing to spread across the United States with cases now being reported in at least 15 states.
• We’re fucked. And with a non-functional department of Health and Human Services, we’re far worse off than we would have been under a non-corrupt president.
• This shit would never be happening with Kamala Harris in charge.
• In other news…
• 2026 is still a long ways off, but the race to succeed California Governor Gavin Newsom — who is termed out — is in full swing.
• This week, former Democratic U.S. House member Katie Porter announced that she is entering the contest. You probably know Katie via the white board she brandished at congressional hearings while grilling CEOs.
• The unknown factor that would upend the race: there are rumblings that former Vice President Kamala Harris will join the race.
• Harris is also a former California state attorney general and U.S. senator. Porter is friendly with the former veep, and has indicated she would step aside if Harris joins the race.
• Beyond Porter, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis will be running on the Democratic side… unless Kamala runs, and then they’ll all drop out quickly if they’re smart.
• Democrats are expected to easily hold the seat in a state where they outnumber registered Republicans by nearly 2 to 1. Republicans have not won a statewide election in California in nearly two decades.
• The only major Republican to announce a bid to replace Newsom is Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco. He’s the typical “MAGA with a mustache” kind of dude.
• And now, The Weather: “Nite Lite” by knitting
• From the Sports Desk… I guess the NCAA Men’s basketball tournament is starting soon? Like next week?
• I don’t do college sports. I don’t fill out brackets. Maybe it’s fun. I wouldn’t know.
• I can tell you which sports conference is sending the most teams to the tourney, though.
• SEC: 13. Big Ten: 9. Big 12: 8. Big East: 5. ACC: 4. Mountain West: 3. WCC: 2.
• None of them really means anything to me.
• Today in history… Harvard College is named after clergyman John Harvard (1639). William Herschel discovers Uranus (1781). Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto receives its premiere performance in Leipzig with Ferdinand David as soloist (1845). The Act Prohibiting the Return of Slaves is passed by the United States Congress, effectively annulling the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and setting the stage for the Emancipation Proclamation (1862). The news of the discovery of Pluto is announced by Lowell Observatory (1930). Apollo 9 returns safely to Earth after testing the Lunar Module (1969). The 2013 papal conclave elects Pope Francis as the 266th Pope of the Catholic Church (2013). President Donald Trump declares the COVID-19 pandemic to be a national emergency in the United States (2020). Breonna Taylor is killed by police officers who were forcibly entering her home in Louisville, KY (2020).
• March 13 is the birthday of UK prime minister Charles Grey (1764), US first lady Abigail Fillmore (1798), astronomer Percival Lowell (1855), physicist John Hasbrouck Van Vleck (1899), publisher/philanthropist Walter Annenberg (1908), science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard (1911), cartoonist Al Jaffee (1921), singer-songwriter Neil Sedaka (1939), actor William H. Macy (1950), actress/guitarist Charo (1951), actress Dana Delany (1956), bass player Adam Clayton (1960), rapper/actor Common (1972), actor/rapist Danny Masterson (1976), rapper Jack Harlow (1998), and tennis player Coco Gauff (2004).

That’s a ton of news… some good, some bad, some unknown until further events transpire. But that’s life, you know. Really, it’s more about what you choose to do and how you react to things that makes a difference. But at least knowing what’s going on is the first step. Now you know. Enjoy your day.