ICE is attempting to co-opt my personal favorite thing about America. So I’m in the Indianapolis Star explaining to Indycar fans why what ICE is doing is so harmful, and to everyone else about why Indycar, in particular, represents a better America than that. www.indystar.com/story/opinio...

RFK Jr. is gutting mRNA research while giving a full-throated endorsement to pumping fast-food fries and soda into Americans’ diets. MAHA! Column:

Since visiting Graceland last month, I’ve been obsessed with Elvis. I wrote a piece attempting to grapple with why I found Elvis’ mansion tour so moving.

Mike Braun grandstands on Indianapolis crime while murders drop 24% … from metro columnist @jamesebriggs.bsky.social www.indystar.com/story/opinio...

In which @profhicks.bsky.social predicts eight rural hospitals will close in Indiana.

There’s your empty shelf. US goods imports drop 19.8% in April — largest on record

I wrote about AI for my newsletter. There’s no more time to waste debating its virtues. It doesn’t care about our feelings. It’s here and it’s changing everything for white collar career paths. Adapt or die.

Jim Irsay talked with me about death quite a bit. Others’ deaths, yes, but mainly his – the one he’d avoided, the one he knew was coming eventually. Wednesday was the day death came for the Colts owner, for this complicated, imperfect, beautiful soul. www.indystar.com/story/sports...

Indiana is really enthusiastic about killing bad guys until the hour arrives and everything is done in total secret. Firing squads, as savage as they are, would be an improvement. www.indystar.com/story/opinio...

just over the last 5 weeks, Trump has helped swing elections (against him) in Wisconsin, Canada, Australia, and the Vatican.

Will home prices fall this year? Two data points make me think yes! 1) The median list price of homes for sale is nearly $40k more than the median price of homes sold. 2) 44% of sellers are giving buyers extra money after accepting an offer to make sure the deal closes.

Think of Trump's tariffs as a COVID lockdown, but for goods rather than people.

Great column today from @jamesebriggs.bsky.social with a sobering assessment of where we are and where we are headed. www.indystar.com/story/opinio...

Very lucky to have such a fine columnist in our local paper who writes on local and national topics with verve and intelligence @jamesebriggs.bsky.social

I'm confident that if Trump's goon squad were to send me (or you) to a foreign death camp, Sen. Jim Banks' response would be, "🤣 🤣 🤣."

I've been thinking about how far Trump's lawlessness can go and I came up with a framework: the Jim Banks test. Apply it to specific scenarios. Can Trump send US citizens to foreign torture prisons w/o due process? Would Banks defend/enable it? Then yes.

Few people so bad at politics have made it so far as Indiana Gov. Mike Braun.

NEW: The Supreme Court directs the Trump administration to "facilitate" the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from a prison in El Salvador, where he was sent due to an "administrative error." It also somewhat narrows the district court's order. No noted dissents. www.documentcloud.org/documents/25...

Combat Banks, Beckwith, Rokita stunts with earnestness. Opinion from metro columnist @jamesebriggs.bsky.social www.indystar.com/story/opinio...

Markets are going to assume we’re in a recession. What we don’t know is whether it’s a recession kind of like March/April 2020 that comes and goes once there’s a reversal in these policies or more of a classic recession that goes on for quarters.

At 12:01 Trump's tariffs officially took effect. Tariffs are now at their highest level in 100 years. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Ok what’s going on here? Yields are going up which means bond prices are going down. Fewer buyers of the world’s safest asset. Normally when the economy slows, there’s a flight to safety, not away from it. Means the world may be abandoning America. We are flirting with a true crisis.

The Trump admin people who used AI to create the tariff formula should consider asking it some more questions.

I don’t understand how we so quickly forgot the supply shock lessons of Covid. Do people not remember what it was like to just not be able to get ahold of stuff required for daily existence? I am telling you, manufacturers that can’t absorb these tariffs are going to simply stop assembly lines.

The discourse around tariffs has been “things will get more expensive” but I am here to tell you that I am knee deep in reporting on this subject and I strongly suspect that if super high tariffs endure, it will shift to *certain items cease to be available at any price*

I normally bring an NPR vibe to these things, but I get a bit animated (for me) here.

This is a big deal. Spread the word. But it’s tiny compared to the totality of what’s happening at NIH. Cure Research for all cancers, Alzheimer’s, everything is being gutted. Intentionally. It’s all getting burned to the ground but the news isn’t getting out. The new cures won’t be there for you.

The White Lotus season 4 should be set among the crisis PR staff at White Lotus headquarters, just dealing with everyone constantly dying at all their properties

Personally, I don’t think Donald Trump is a prophet. I wrote about our impending recession, which was very much not inevitable.

Friday opinion dump: Indiana's secretary of state should be impeached.

“It would be kind of funny if the DOGE bros weren't demanding everyone else do more with less.” Once again, Briggs nails it.

The small men governing Indiana need big, expensive, taxpayer-funded cars — and they'll cut programs you depend on to afford them.

Invading Iraq destroyed the GOP’s credibility on foreign policy. Events of 2020-22 damaged the credibility of Dems on education and hurt the approval of higher ed and public health organizations. The GOP will pay a long-term reputational price on the economy from this.

One of the most memorable news events, where a policy announcement made the stock market tank in such a direct way. I've seen other press conferences/speeches where the market tanked, but it was always in the context of an ongoing crisis where the response looked insufficient.

Indiana's lieutenant governor needs an $88,000 SUV because the previous person in his role was a woman and he's a man who needs room in the car for other men. That's not even a joke, that's the actual explanation. www.indystar.com/story/news/p...

Maybe!

Conservatives are hunting for clandestine libs hiding out on sanctuary school boards across Indiana. Their solution: partisan school board elections. New column this morning:

Note the government is doing 2 separate things here: 1) Acknowledging it made a mistake (violated US law by deporting someone who was legally protected from deportation). 2) Refusing to fix the mistake by claiming it has no authority to do so.

Would’ve been a totally reasonable thing to believe on November 6th. What’s remarkable is how these guys thought it’d be “the most pro-business administration in history.” Like, your job is to get this right.

Yes - DOJ and FBI have been all over Fox promising to punish anti-Tesla actions as "terrorism," even though the FBI says the attacks are not coordinated and they don't fit a definition of terrorism. www.semafor.com/article/03/2...

A standout figure in IPS’ latest budget: $124 million — roughly a quarter of total operating expenses — are flagged for innovation schools, most of which are charter schools. This comes as charter leaders lobby state lawmakers to direct some property tax money away from IPS into their schools.

Much has been made of this, but it really is funny to see the extent to which Bluesky is a garden for the most 10% left-leaning disaffected Twitter users, who will respond with lethal force to anyone peddling apples in their Eden.

Indiana needs a normie revolution.

Meet Evan Anzoo, a five-year-old boy in South Sudan who died when Elon Musk shut down USAID and the boy lost access to his HIV meds. Musk says no one has died because of the aid shutdown, but that's because he didn't look. RIP, Evan, you deserved better. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

The really remarkable thing about this Trump admin is how many people's lives the president is disrupting in such a short period of time. It goes way beyond Biden-era "prices are high" touchpoints to things like "we're taking away your legitimate income."

This is crazy. I know there are many crazy things happening right now, but this is a very high density of crazy:

Trump announces more tariffs on Canada and says, "The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State."

*TRUMP SAYS HE'S INCREASING CANADA STEEL, ALUMINUM TARIFF TO 50% *TRUMP THREATENS TO `PERMANENTLY SHUT DOWN' CANADA CAR INDUSTRY *TRUMP: CANADA TARIFF DUE TO ELECTRICITY TARIFF

Trump has largely dropped populism of his first term and campaigns. Now he's pushing billionaires' agenda. Tech leaders at inauguration. Witkoff and Lutnik as advisers. Gold visa. Bitcoin reserve. Cutting thousands of middle-class jobs. www.nbcnews.com/politics/don... by @jonallendc.bsky.social

There's a very long list of ways in which Trump's choices are going to make life worse for people everywhere. One example: The VA plans to cut 80,000 jobs, which will mean more expensive health care and longer wait times for veterans in Indiana.