Random News: March 6, 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 6, 2025, and it’s a Thursday for some reason. As is the case every weekday, I was up at 6am, got myself showered and dressed, made coffee, and am now ready to take a look at the world around me. Let’s today start with a question.

• Do you tell people who you voted for?
• I don’t walk around screaming about it, because that’s weird and rude. But I’m more than happy to mention it here.
• Why? I’m proud of my voting record and in looking back at this list, I can genuinely say that had all of my top choices won, we’d have been better off than the alternative. And of course, some of them did win, and we were.
• 1992: Primary - Bill Clinton. General - Bill Clinton
• 1996: Primary - Bill Clinton. General - Bill Clinton
• 2000: Primary - Al Gore. General - Al Gore
• 2004: Primary - John Kerry. General - John Kerry
• 2008: Primary - Barack Obama. General - Barack Obama
• 2012: Primary - Barack Obama. General - Barack Obama
• 2016: Primary - Bernie Sanders. General - Hillary Clinton
• 2020: Primary - Elizabeth Warren. General - Joe Biden
• 2024: Primary - Joe Biden. General - Kamala Harris
• You’ll note in every election since Obama was in office, my choice in the primaries ended up not making it to the general election.
• I didn’t scream and cry, or withhold my vote out of some kind of idiotic protest. Instead, I supported the winning candidate who — in nearly every case — had policies that were similar enough to my top choice that I felt fine about offering my vote.
• Anyway, there may come a time in the future when we’ll all need to independently document who we voted for, versus who the vote tallies say we voted for.
• Just a thought, in case fuckery is afoot.
• Let’s do some news.
• Starting with a note from the Comedy Desk, and the now widely-observed statement that Dumples the Idiot made during his little pep talk on Tuesday night.
• He said that the US spent $8 million making mice transgender.
• No, really. He said that out loud, in front of a bunch of TV cameras.
• The problem is his limited vocabulary. We didn’t make any mice transgender. The term he misunderstood was transgenic.
• Transgenics is a very common area of scientific medical study where DNA sequences from another species have been introduced by artificial means to mimic the traits of another species.
• It allows for research into disorders, medications, and medical techniques that help humans. It’s been used in genetic studies for decades, especially for topics in cancer research, Alzheimer’s, and many other gene-focused maladies.
• And it’s not just in animals. Transgenic crops have been produced that are more resistant to infectious diseases, grow faster, and produce more bountiful crop yields.
• Perhaps you’ve heard of the term “GMO.” That is one example of transgenics at work.
• And Donnie Dumpster stood there and told you that we’re spending millions to turn boy mice into girl mice. Not because he was just lying. Because he’s just not a smart person.
• Moving on.

• It could be as early as today that Dumpy issues an executive order directing newly-minted Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin the process of dismantling the Department of Education.
• While Dump has long signaled his intention to destroy our nation’s schools, fully eliminating the DOE will require Congress to act, at least according to McMahon during confirmation hearings. She was confirmed literally Monday of this week.
• I won’t sugarcoat it; this is the work of a madman hellbent to ruin the USA. It’s notable that even if King Dump succeeded in ending the department, it’s possible some programs and funding could be retained and shifted to other agencies, which is where they were housed before the department was created in 1979.
• Moving on to some news from the Money Desk…
• Stock markets in the U.S. opened sharply lower this morning amid mounting investor concerns about slowing economic growth and uncertainty over the impact of new Dump tariffs on Canada, China, and Mexico. 
• Why would that affect the stock market? Because those tariffs are taxes on the American people, who will have less to spend as a result.
• The S&P 500 fell 83 points, or 1.4%, to 5,759 point shortly after the start of trade, while the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrials Average slid 1.2% and tech-heavy Nasdaq composite tumbled 1.7%.
• And recent signals suggest the economy is weakening. Most worrying is a downturn in spending by American consumers, with federal data showing that retail sales across the U.S. dipped 0.9% in January.
• The job market is also cooling down, while layoffs in February soared to their highest level since July 2020. 
• And making matters worse, inflation also accelerated in January and remains stubbornly above the Federal Reserve's 2% annualized target.
• These economic trends show that the U.S. is likely headed for a rare bout of “stagflation," when the economy and the job market slow at the same time inflation rises.
• The country hasn't faced such a period of economic distress since the late 1970s and early 1980s.
• Dump is doing everything in his power to destroy America, and you’re sitting there letting it happen.
• Let’s move on with some better news.
• Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley blocked Dump from drastically cutting medical research funding that many scientists say will endanger patients and cost jobs.
• The new National Institutes of Health policy would strip research groups of hundreds of millions of dollars to study Alzheimer’s, cancer, heart disease, and a host of other illnesses — anything from clinical trials of new treatments to basic lab research that is the foundation for discoveries.
• Separate lawsuits filed by a group of 22 states plus organizations representing universities, hospitals and research institutions nationwide sued to stop the cuts, saying they would cause “irreparable harm.”
• Kelley had temporarily blocked the cuts last month. Yesterday, she filed a preliminary injunction that puts the cuts on hold for longer while the suits proceed.
• Good. More of this, please. Every day.
• And in somewhat related news…
• Emails have gone out to some Centers for Disease Control and Prevention probationary employees who got termination notices last month.
• They’re now being begged to return.
• The nation’s top public health agency says about 180 employees who were booted two weeks ago can come back to work.
• “You should return to duty under your previous work schedule,” said “upon further review” email. “We apologize for any disruption that this may have caused.”
• Assholes.
• Speaking of assholes…
• Does Dumpy love the proud veterans who courageously served our country?
• Evidently, no, not at all.
• The Department of Veterans Affairs is planning a reorganization that includes cutting over 80,000 jobs from the agency that provides health care for retired military members.
• The VA’s chief of staff, Christopher Syrek, told top-level officials at the agency that it had an objective to cut employees to a level of under 400,000. That would require terminating tens of thousands of employees after the VA expanded during the Biden administration, as well as to cover veterans impacted by burn pits under the 2022 PACT Act.
• The VA’s new directive also calls for agency officials to work with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to “move out aggressively, while taking a pragmatic and disciplined approach” to the Dump administration’s goals.
• If you thought it was difficult to get help from the VA before, veterans are in for a whole new round of PTSD now, thanks to Dump and his boss Musk.
• Let’s move on, sort of.
• Mr. Elmo went to Washington.
• Musk is attempting to work with Congress to enshrine his tax cuts for the wealthy into law.
• He had a private lunch meeting with Republican senators, who explained how the White House could put the billions of dollars of savings he has amassed into what’s called a budget rescissions package, and send it to Congress for a vote to rescind the funding.
• And President Musk seemed thrilled, they said. And I can tell you why.
• The only thing blocking most of Musk’s efforts to tear apart out government are the courts who, in many cases, have ruled that the money that’s already been allocated by Congress can’t be un-spent.
• But if Congress claws back the money via rescission, that’s a different story.
• Senators said it was unclear how big the rescission packages could be — Rand Paul (R-KY) suggested several packages of at least $100 billion in federal cuts — or how soon they might push ahead with any voting.
• President Musk has previously told lawmakers he envisions DOGE can save some $1 trillion in the federal government this year alone.
• And a rescission package can be approved in the Senate by a simple majority vote. So that, to use a technical term, is fucked up.
• However, senators on the Appropriations Committee are likely to pan the idea of spending cuts that would go against legislation they themselves had already approved to fund the government.
• As well as for the pet projects that benefit their own states, obviously.
• Moving on to a small but interesting story regarding Musk’s DOGE.
• Several DOGE goons were blocked yesterday afternoon from entering a small U.S. aid agency focused on African economic development.
• The standoff, which lasted about an hour at the U.S. African Development Foundation (USADF) headquarters in downtown Washington, is one of the latest acts of resistance from federal employees as DOGE subordinates attempt to access data systems and federal grants.
• Just before noon, some kids with backpacks appeared at the USADF building and attempted to gain entry to fire employees. A security officer at the front desk said they claimed they were USADF staff and needed access to the building, but they did not have keycards.
• The DOGE kids then threatened to call the U.S. marshals, and they were let upstairs. But when they reached the USADF’s floor, the DOGE employees could not find anyone to let them inside the suite.
• Hahahahahahahaha.
• More of that, please. And sure, they’ll eventually get inside (probably today when they do come back with some kind of force). But it’s our duty as Americans to impede them every step of the way. Hats off to the USADF staff.
• Keep fighting. Every day, in every way.
• And now, The Weather: “Angle Mort” by GARAVENTAFrom the Sports Desk… let’s take a look at ESPN’s NBA power rankings, which are often a better measurement of how things are really going with teams beyond their win-loss record.
• 1. Cleveland Cavaliers. 2. Oklahoma City Thunder. 3. Boston Celtics. 4. Los Angeles Lakers. 5. New York Knicks. 6. Denver Nuggets. 7. Memphis Grizzlies. 8. Houston Rockets. 9. Milwaukee Bucks. 10. Detroit Pistons.
• And another note from the NBA that we probably should have covered yesterday.
• The Los Angeles Lakers' 40-year-old superstar LeBron James became the NBA's first 50,000-point man Tuesday night.
• He came into the Lakers' game against the Pelicans needing a point to reach 50,000 combined points for his career in the regular season and postseason. He reached the milestone on his first shot, connecting on a 3-pointer from the left wing off a Luka Doncic feed.
• Congrats to him. He’s definitely a once-in-a-generation athlete.
• Today in history… The Farewell Sermon of the Islamic prophet Muhammad (632). Ferdinand Magellan arrives at Guam (1521). York, Upper Canada, is incorporated as Toronto (1834). After a thirteen-day siege by an army of 3,000 Mexican troops, the 187 Texas volunteers, including frontiersman Davy Crockett and colonel Jim Bowie, defending the Alamo are killed and the fort is captured (1836). The Supreme Court of the United States rules 7–2 in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case that the Constitution does not confer citizenship on black people (1857). Dmitri Mendeleev presents the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society (1869). Bayer registers "Aspirin" as a trademark (1899). Italian forces become the first to use airships in war, as two dirigibles drop bombs on Turkish troops encamped at Janzur, from an altitude of 6,000 feet (1912). President Franklin D. Roosevelt declares a "bank holiday", closing all U.S. banks and freezing all financial transactions (1933). Ghana becomes the first Sub-Saharan country to gain independence from the British (1957). Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad gives boxing champion Cassius Clay the name Muhammad Ali (1964). Joseph Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva defects to the United States (1967). For the first time the Zapruder film of the assassination of John F. Kennedy is shown in motion to a national TV audience by Robert J. Groden and Dick Gregory (1975). Forbes names Jeff Bezos as the world's richest person, for the first time, at $112 billion net worth (2018).
• March 6 is the birthday of painter/sculptor Michelangelo (1475), author Cyrano de Bergerac (1619), poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806), gun designer Georg Luger (1849), journalist Ring Lardner (1885), singer-songwriter Furry Lewis (1893), musician/bandleader Bob Wills (1905), actor Lou Costello (1906), TV announcer/co-host Ed McMahon (1923), guitarist Wes Montgomery (1923), economist Alan Greenspan (1926), MLB player Willie Stargell (1940), singer-songwriter/guitarist David Gilmour (1946), singer-songwriter Kiki Dee (1947), actor/director Rob Reiner (1947), actor Tom Arnold (1959), actor D. L. Hughley (1963), NBA player Shaquille O’Neal (1972), NFL player Sage Rosenfels (1978), songwriter/rapper Tyler, the Creator (1991), and fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried (1992).

That’s plenty to think about. I’m going to keep on doing what I do. Maybe just the act of helping you people stay aware of what’s going on is my way of best contributing to the Resistance. Maybe I’ll find other ways soon enough. For now, time to do other things to keep life moving along as close to normally as possible under these extraordinary circumstances. Enjoy your day.