Random News: March 14, 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 14, 2025, and if you can believe it, it’s a Friday once again! The sun is just starting to show its first rays of light right now. I’ve pretty much gone through the five stages of grief in regard to the start of Daylight Saving Time, which included Monday’s denial, Tuesday’s anger, Wednesday’s bargaining, yesterday’s depression, and today’s acceptance.

• Something I hate to consider but have to in this topsy-turvy world.
• What if Dumpy’s move to tank the US stock marketing and deplete the entire savings accounts of many Americans is being done on purpose?
• I mean, no one could be so incredibly dense to believe that these tariffs are designed to help Americans at nearly any income level.
• So, what if instead the goal is to tank the stock market so hard that only the top 1% of Americans will eventually be able to own most of the stocks, and that citizens with their retirement savings depleted and no means of new income will have no choice other than to cooperate with Dump’s plans of lifetime dictatorship?
• Yesterday the S&P 500 dropped into correction territory, sinking more than the landmark 10% amid investor anxiety over Dumpy’s trade policy and inflation.
• It closed at 5,521.52. A correction is defined as a fall of at least 10 percent from a peak.
• The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 1 percent yesterday alone, down 537 points, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index ended the trading session more than 2 percent lower, down 345 points.
• The tanking stock market is 100% the fault of Dumpy, who on threatened to slap a 200% tariff on European Union exports of wine, champagne, and other alcoholic beverages in retaliation for the trading bloc's hiking of duties on American whiskey to 50%.
• But the EU had announced the measures only in response to U.S. tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum taking effect on Wednesday. 
• Let’s do some promising news…
• U.S. District Judge William Alsup in California ordered six federal agencies to offer to reinstate probationary employees who were fired last month, finding that their terminations by the Office of Personnel Management — as directed by President Musk’s pseudo-agency DOGE — were unlawful.
• Alsup handed down his order in a challenge brought by a group of unions against the Dump administration from the bench. He said that neither OPM nor its Acting Director Charles Ezell had the authority to direct the terminations across agencies.
• Correct.
• The order extends relief to fired workers at the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, and Treasury.
• Alsop said, ”It is a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that's a lie. That should not have been done in our country. It was a sham in order to avoid statutory requirements."
• Also correct.
• And then, a second federal judge ruled that thousands of probationary employees laid off en masse by President Musk and Li’l Donnie must be temporarily reinstated to their jobs.
• Ha ha, you pieces of shit.
• The new temporary restraining order from Senior Judge James Bredar covers 18 agencies and will last two weeks. Bredar’s legal reasoning for reinstating the employees differs from that of Judge Alsup.
• In this case, Dump had violated a 6-day notice requirement for so-called reductions in force — or RIFS — as well as other procedural steps for such mass terminations.
• Let’s move on to some angry people… on our side.
• Scores of people poured into the lobby of Trump Tower in New York City yesterday to protest the arrest and detention of Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, whom Dumpy aims to deport over his pro-Palestinian activism.
• The arrest of Khalil, who is in immigration custody in Louisiana after his arrest in New York on Saturday, has sparked an outcry by Democratic lawmakers, the United Nations special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian territories, and civil liberty advocates, among others.
• The protest, organized by Jewish Voice for Peace, began shortly after noon when demonstrators dressed in red shirts that read “Not in our Name” and “Jews Say Stop Arming Israel,” flooded the Tower’s iconic golden lobby.
• They chanted “Free Mahmoud Khalil” and unfurled banners that read “Never Again for Anyone” and “Jews Say Do Not Comply.”
• Yes! My fellow Jews are here to chew bubblegum and kick ass… and they’re all out of bubblegum. LET’S GO!
• The NYPD said 98 arrests were made. Booooo!
• Let’s talk some more about the growing group of people who are pissed off and ready to fight back against President Musk and his employee Dumpy, and their attempt to destroy the USA.
• Last night, Republican Congressman Chuck Edwards (R-NC) was confronted by angry constituents during a town hall meeting about Dumpy and Elon’s sweeping cuts across the government.
• “How do you justify cuts to staff of the VA helping veterans, especially those with long term care needs,” asked one constituent who was met with a standing ovation from the raucous crowd in Asheville, NC.
• Edwards tried to claim there had been no cuts at the VA. But just last week, a VA memo indicated that the agency was preparing to lay off 80,000 from its workforce.
• The interaction turned so contentious and hostile that Edwards had to be escorted out of the building. “You don’t get to do this to us,” yelled another constituent.
• Fuck that guy and EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN AT EVERY LEVEL who enabled Dump and Musk to do what they’ve done.
• The time of reckoning is nigh, motherfuckers.
• Let’s keep on keeping on.
• Dumples the Asshole is begging the Supreme Court to allow restrictions on birthright citizenship to partly take effect while legal fights play out.
• In emergency applications filed at the high court yesterday, Dump asked the justices to narrow court orders entered by district judges in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington that blocked the order Dumpy signed shortly after beginning his second term.
• The order currently is blocked nationwide. Three federal appeals courts have rejected the administration’s pleas, including one in Massachusetts on Tuesday.
• Two dozen states, as well as several individuals and groups, have sued over the executive order, which they say violates the Constitution’s 14th Amendment promise of citizenship to anyone born inside the United States.
• The Justice Department argues that individual judges lack the power to give nationwide effect to their rulings. Hmm, my answer to that is as follows: fuck you.
• Moving on.
• Dumpy the Dictator Clown is now turning to a 227-year-old law that gives presidents the extraordinary power to order the arrest, detention, and deportation of noncitizens who are 14 years or older and come from countries staging an "invasion or predatory incursion" of the U.S. 
• He’s planning to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 as soon as Friday to authorize the summary deportation of some migrants, including to Guantanamo Bay.
• Dumpy is going to cite the 18th-century statute — made when John Adams was president right after George Washington — to order the swift detention and deportation of suspected members of a Venezuelan gang with prison origins. 
• But we all know about the slippery slope where, once something is put into place, it gets used for reasons beyond its original intent.
• Those subject to the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 would not be allowed to have a court hearing or an asylum interview since they would be processed under an emergency, wartime authority — not immigration law.
• Those people will be detained and deported, with little to no due process, under Title 50, the section of the U.S. code housing America's war and defense laws.
• Unless we fight. And we are, and will keep doing so.
• Moving on to a bigger picture topic.
• One thing that’s always been in the playback of dictators and other people in power: keeping the population ignorant.
• So taking steps — like dismantling the Deportment of Education — is a purposeful effort to that end.
• More than one in five Americans (21%, or about 52 million adults) can’t read these news bullets — or anything else — because they’re illiterate.
• 54% of Americans can't read beyond the level of an 11-year-old. 57% of them have no education past high school.
• America ranks 36th in the world for literacy levels, and white US-born adults are the largest group with low literacy.
• Educated people don’t allow dictators to rule them, nor are they forced to do the bidding of billionaires (including giving them tax breaks while you pay out your ass).
• Which brings us to…
• More than 50 universities are being investigated by Dumpy for alleged racial discrimination against white people as part of Dump’s campaign to end diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
• Yes, we white people have it rough. Jesus fucking Christ.
• The Education Department announced the new investigations today, one month after issuing a memo warning America’s schools and colleges that they could lose federal money over “race-based preferences” in admissions, scholarships, or any aspect of student life.
• And now, The Weather: “ALICE” by sleepazoid
• In actual weather news, about 100 million people in the USA live in areas under threat from straight-line wind damage, hail, and tornadoes today and through the weekend.
• The greatest threat for storms today centers on the Midwest, where a squall line containing straight-line winds and embedded tornadoes is forecast to congeal later in the day and sweep across parts of Missouri east to Indiana.
• Stay safe, my peoples.
• Let’s do a chart. It’s 50 years ago today in March 1975. I am going on six years old.
• And a lot of the popular music was pretty damn great. Here’s the top of the Billboard 200 albums list.
• 1. Physical Graffiti (Led Zeppelin). 2. Have You Never Been Mellow (Olivia Newton-John). 3. Blood On The Tracks (Bob Dylan). 4. What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits (The Doobie Brothers). 5. Perfect Angel (Minnie Riperton). 6. Phoebe Snow (Phoebe Snow). 7. Nightbirds (Patti LaBelle). 8. For Earth Below (Robin Trower). 9. An Evening With John Denver (John Denver). 10. Heart Like A Wheel (Linda Ronstadt). 11. So What (Joe Walsh). 12. Rock 'N' Roll (John Lennon). 13. AWB (Average White Band). 14. Rufusized (Rufus And Chaka Khan). 15. Sun Goddess (Ramsey Lewis). 16. Do It 'til You're Satisfied (B.T. Express). 17. Autobahn (Kraftwerk). 18. Explores Your Mind (Al Green). 19. Eldorado: A Symphony By The Electroic Light Orchestra (Electric Light Orchestra). 20. Empty Sky (Elton John).
• From the Sports Desk… you can argue all day about the GOAT — greatest of all time — of NBA basketball. Michael Jordan? Kobe Bryant? LeBron James? All worthy contenders.
• But the greatest pure shooter of all time is pretty clear. It’s Steph Curry. Last night, the Warriors’ guard drilled a 28-foot 3-pointer from the right wing, becoming the first player in NBA history to reach 4,000 3-pointers.
• How far ahead is Curry from everyone else? The second place is James Harden with 3,127.
• Today in history… Eli Whitney is granted a patent for the cotton gin (1794). ‘The Mikado’, a light opera by W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, receives its first public performance at the Savoy Theatre in London (1885). Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge, the first national wildlife refuge in the US, is established by President Theodore Roosevelt (1903). Anne Miller becomes the first American patient to be treated with penicillin (1942). A USAF B-52 bomber carrying nuclear weapons crashes near Yuba City, CA (1961).
• March 14 is the birthday of composer Johann Strauss I (1804), SCOTUS justice Joseph P. Bradley (1813), dentist Lucy Hobbs Taylor (1833), astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835), US vice president Thomas R. Marshall (1854), railroad engineer Casey Jones (1863), physicist Albert Einstein (1879), race car driver Lee Petty (1914), librarian Zoia Horn (1918), photographer Diane Arbus (1923), actor Michael Caine (1933), songwriter/music producer Quincy Jones (1933), NBA player Wes Unseld (1946), actor Billy Crystal (1948), radio host Rick Dees (1950), MLB player Kirby Puckett (1960), musician Billy Sherwood (1965), NBA player Stephen Curry (1988), and gymnast Simone Biles (1998).

Alrighty. Look, there’s good news that happens all the time, every day. Don’t just focus on the bad shit. Look around at the people fighting the bad shit in their own way. That’s what I’m doing here. I’m anti-bad shit. Enjoy your day.