Extra, Extra

Losing Our Marble: “You look at this, it’s so beautiful. As a construction person, I’m seeing perfect marble. This is what they call perfecto.” Trump marvels at wealth of his Arab hosts while he eyes White House and Air Force One upgrades. Trump met with Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa in Riyadh (“attractive guy, tough guy”) and moved toward normalizing relations. He also announced Qatar’s plan to purchase a lot of jets from Boeing. Here’s the latest from BBC.

+ Hey BS Corpus: US Homeland Security secretary says requirements have been met to suspend habeas corpus. (Editor’s note: They haven’t.)

+ Inside Jobs: “If the administration were serious about countering antisemitism, first and foremost they wouldn’t be appointing people with antisemitic and other extremist ties to senior roles within the administration.” NPR: Multiple Trump White House officials have ties to antisemitic extremists.

+ Beach Body Politic: The New Yorker: How an Election Denier Became the U.S. Treasurer. “Brandon Beach was a state senator in Georgia who got involved in Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election results. Now his name will be on our money.” (This one is crazy even by our current standards.) Related: Oklahoma education standards say students must identify 2020 election ‘discrepancies‘.

+ More Tales From the Crypto: “GD Culture Group, a publicly traded firm with a Chinese subsidiary, has only eight employees, its public filings show, and recorded zero revenue last year from an e-commerce business it operates on TikTok.” Tiny Company With China Ties Announces Big Purchase of Trump Cryptocurrency. (Seems kosher…)

+ Narco Dependent: Here’s a headline that doesn’t quite match the administration’s public stance on the southern border. Mexican security chief confirms cartel family members entered US in a deal with Trump administration.

+ Meat Up: “Understanding how the sausage is made will come in handy: The actual production of Chomps (not their distribution or marketing or anything else) is the company’s No. 1 priority in the next few years. It churns out 2 million of the individually wrapped sticks a day on average, but that’s not even close to fulfilling the demand from US consumers currently obsessed with on-the-go protein.” Bloomberg (Gift Article): Two Million Meat Sticks a Day Isn’t Enough for Chomps’ CEO. (In retrospect, maybe I shouldn’t have searched Meat Stick on the internet…)