Good morning. It is March 7th. It is a sunny, windy morning in New York City at the end of an extremely long work week. And this is your indignity morning podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

Elon Musk's SpaceX continued its evolution into being the world's most expensive fireworks company yesterday as it sent another starship rocket tumbling and exploding and raining debris over Florida and the Caribbean. The Weather Channel reports that some of the debris, elegantly enough, came down near Cape Canaveral, and air traffic around Florida had to be paused or rerouted. 

On the front of this morning's New York Times, the lead story is Trump's flailing on tariffs, “TARIFF WHIPLASH AS TRUMP PUTS LEVIES ON HOLD / STOCK MARKETS WAVER / Reprieve for Canada and Mexico on Exports Under Trade Pact.”

Two days, the Times writes, “after imposing sweeping tariffs on Canada and Mexico, President Trump on Thursday abruptly suspended many of those levies, sowing confusion with investors and businesses that depend on trade with the countries.” The American financial class continues to be alarmed and appalled by the person they supported, pursuing the policies that he clearly advocated in a manner fully consistent with his well-established weak and erratic personality and poor decision-making skills.

“The decision to suspend the tariffs,” the Times writes, “did little to calm financial markets, which have been jittery since Mr. Trump ratcheted up his trade war this week. The S &P 500,” the Times writes, “fell 1.8 % on Thursday, taking the slide for the index this week to 3.6 % and putting it on course for its worst week since a banking crisis two years ago that felled some of the country's small lenders.” 

The second news column is about Justice Amy Coney Barrett, “Barrett’s Voice May Be Crucial In Trump Cases / A Justice Breaks Ranks With Conservatives.” The inspiration here is Barrett's refusal earlier in the week, along with Chief Justice John Roberts, to join the further right wing of the court's far-right majority in granting Donald Trump the ability to withhold congressionally appropriated and contractually obligated money. This has, in fact, angered the dominant Republican political faction which wants, or is afraid to say it doesn't want, absolute power for Donald Trump, Amy Coney Barrett remains a cynical ideologue and opportunist who stepped over the still warm body of Ruth Bader Ginsburg while an election was underway to ensure that her political party could tighten its partisan control of the court, regardless of what the voters wanted. And then after the voters, in fact, did vote against Republican rule, went ahead and used her position to revoke the right to an abortion. But this is who passes for a potentially open-minded liberal ally at this point. 

Next to that, the headline is “Trump’s Deportation Pledge Runs Into Reality /  Crossings Down, but Pace of Expulsions Frustrates White House.” After a presidential campaign that insisted on wildly inflating the number of undocumented people in America, it seems the Trump administration is having trouble laying its hands on those people. It also hasn't completely abolished procedural rights for the people that it has grabbed. And so his immigration enforcer, Thomas Homans, is not delivering him the numbers that he wanted. 

Below the fold, there's a picture of Wayne Gretzky in his Edmonton Oilers jersey hoisting the Stanley Cup. “No Longer ‘the Great One’ to Some Canadians / Gretzky’s Ties to Trump Dismay Compatriots.” 

“It is a case,” the Times writes, “of guilt by association. Mr. Gretzky's close ties with President Trump and the perception that he is not standing up for his native country as Canadians feel attacked by their southern neighbor have altered the way Mr. Gretzky is viewed.” Canadians don't feel attacked by their southern neighbor. The president of the United States is starting a trade war with them and won't stop talking about how he wants to annex them outright. As for “guilt by association,” the Times writes, “Mr. Gretzky and his wife, the American actress Janet Jones, they married in Edmonton in 1988, a wedding worthy of royals, celebrated with Mr. Trump at an election night party in November and at January's inauguration. In between, Mr. Trump joked that Mr. Gretzky could become governor of the 51st state of Canada, a taunt that few north of the border find amusing. Amid it all, a photo surfaced of Mr. Gretzky wearing a white and gold ‘Make America great again’ cap.” Right, “guilt by association” just means that because you happen to have some connection to someone people are imputing that person's misdeeds to you. This is just association. Donald Trump is the leader of a political movement that now has hostile designs on Canada. Wayne Gretzky actively supports that political movement. Donald Trump specifically named Gretzky while making a joke about his attacks on Canadian sovereignty. And Gretzky not only didn't defend his native country's sovereignty, but he publicly supported Trump after the remarks. It's not just that he has an unseemly friendship, it's that his status as a public figure was used against Canada. And he responded at best the way a person of weak moral character would. In the latter part of the story, there's a truly amazing expression of the New York Times' worldview. “Americans, the Times writes, might struggle to understand Mr. Gretzky's significance in Canada, or why his political leanings matter, especially since he has not lived in Canada since 1988.” He's Wayne Gretzky. He is the hockey player that Americans have heard of. It's as if a Canadian paper paused to explain to its readers that Michael Jordan is a person of some importance to Americans. 

Gavin Newsom's betrayal of trans people makes it into the bottom left of the page. “Trans Athletes Lose Support From Newsom” is the headline. On the jump page for that story, A16 down at the bottom, it's accompanied by the story, “Maine is accused of breaking the law by allowing transgender athletes on teams.” The lead is “the Trump administration has concluded that Maine is violating federal law by allowing transgender athletes to play on women's teams. The state attorney general's office said on Thursday.”

The story mentions that Donald Trump and Governor Janet Mills argued about trans athletes at a public event, but nowhere in its account of how Trump is accusing Maine of violating anti-discrimination law does the Times include the essential context that what Mills told Trump was that his executive order against trans sports participation was itself illegal under state and federal anti-discrimination law. Instead of explaining that the new accusation from the Trump administration that Maine is violating the law, is its direct response to Maine's accusation that the Trump administration is violating the law, the Times dumps the whole onus of legality onto Maine. When people complain that the paper has a habit of bending over backwards to present both sides of controversies at the expense of plausibility or accuracy, this is not what they've been looking for instead.

On page A7, Donald Trump's preferences for punctuation and capitalization forced their way into a headline. “Free captives immediately, Trump commands Hamas, or else, quote, you are ‘DEAD!’” All caps exclamation point, end quote. That's good. The president is an unhinged freak and news outlets have an obligation to present his unhinged freakish communications as they are.

Whereas on page A11, the headline is “Trump hasn't yet disclosed who donated to transition,” and while the word “yet” may help all those other words fit into a four level stack, is unjustified in any way by the text of the story, which recounts how by rejecting public financing for his transition planning, Trump avoided signing documents that legally obligated him to disclose who the private donors to the transition were.

The transition team, the Times writes, “did promise that donors to the transition will be disclosed to the public. But now, a spokesperson for the General Services Administration, which works closely with presidential transitions, said in a statement that the Trump-Vance transition team is not required to publicly disclose transition related donations since they did not accept the services and funds outlined in the memorandum of understanding that the agency offered the transition last fall.” That would seem to be that. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning Podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Scocca-Ho. You, the listeners, keep us going through your paid subscriptions to Indignity and your tips. Continue sending those if you can. Have a pleasant and long overdue weekend. And if nothing unexpected gets in way, we will talk again on Monday.