Good morning. It is April 23rd. It is a sunny morning in New York City and the forecast high for the day keeps inching upward and This is your indignity morning podcast. I'm your host Tom Scocca taking a look at the day and the news. 

President Donald Trump, sometimes you just need to defamiliarize yourself step back and say, President Donald Trump. Anyway, President Donald Trump issued a string of words from his mouth yesterday that seemed to indicate he was backing down from the most aggressive front of his global trade war, saying that the tariff of 145 % that he had imposed on China is very high and it won't be that high. It won't be anywhere near that high. It'll come down substantially, but it won't be zero. CNN notes that Trump delivered those comments in a media session in the Oval Office after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, CNN writes, “said at a private investment conference hosted by JP Morgan Chase that the trade war with China is unsustainable and he expects the battle to deescalate in the very near future.” This is how the fate of the world economy is being decided, by the interplay between closed door remarks at a private conference of financiers, and the public riffing by the capricious and senescent man who sits at the desk in the White House. The markets have gone up on that news because the people doing the investing are now conditioned to treat a fleeting whim pointing in the right direction as the equivalent of actual positive stable news. 

On the front of this morning's New York Times, well, actually, let's go to the front of the business section, where down at the bottom of the page, in the right hand corner, the story is “Top Producer is Quitting 60 Minutes.” The Times writes, “in an extraordinary declaration, Bill Owens, only the third person to run the program in its 57 year history, told his staff in a memo that, ‘over the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for ‘60 Minutes,’ right for the audience.’”

“‘So, having defended this show — and what we stand for — from every angle over time with everything I could, I am stepping aside so the show can move forward.’” This is apparently about Donald Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against CBS, a random collection of grievances about unfairness that nevertheless has to be treated as real and almost rational despite its absurdity. The Times writes, “Paramount's controlling shareholder, Sherry Redstone, is eager to secure the Trump administration's approval for a multi-billion dollar sale of her company to Skydance, a company run by the son of the tech billionaire Larry Ellison. She's expressed a desire to settle Mr. Trump's case, which stems from what the president has called a deceptively edited interview in October with Vice President Kamala Harris that aired on 60 Minutes.” 

“Stems from” is the news writing way to try to reconcile Donald Trump's imaginary theories of causation with actual causes and effects. “Legal experts,” the Times writes, “have dismissed that suit as baseless and far-fetched. Many journalists at CBS News, the former home of Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace, believe that a settlement would amount to a capitulation to Mr. Trump over what they consider standard issue gripes about editorial judgment.” The story says that Sherry Redstone also “complained to CBS executives in January about a 60-minute segment on the war between Israel and Hamas. And a day later, the company appointed a veteran CBS producer Susan Zirinsky, to a new role overseeing the news division's journalistic standards. In that capacity, Ms. Zirinsky reviewed 60 Minutes segments that were deemed sensitive, including politically-focused ones, before they are aired. Just a little extra supervision. What could possibly be wrong with that? 

In a matching story about how things work these days, on page A22 of the front section, the headline is, “3 Adams Case Prosecutors Resign Rather Than Express Regret to Justice Dept.,” the pullquote/subhead is “We will not confess wrongdoing when there was none,” 

The Times writes, “Three Manhattan federal prosecutors who worked on the corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams of New York City said Tuesday that they would resign rather than admit wrongdoing by their office after it refused to abandon the case, according to an email obtained by The New York Times.”

“In the email, the prosecutors — Celia V. Cohen, Andrew Rohrbach and Derek Wikstrom — said that Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, had placed a condition on reinstating them: “that we must express regret and admit some wrongdoing by the office in connection with the refusal to move to dismiss the case.” Then comes that pull quote, “we will not confess wrongdoing when there was none.” They also wrote that “the department has decided that obedience supersedes all else, requiring us to abdicate our legal and ethical obligations in favor of directions from Washington.” 

Right below that, in another story about the terms on which people are and aren't allowed to do their jobs, the headline is “Measles outbreak in Southwest is largest since 2000.” 

“The spread of measles in the Southwest,” the Times writes, “now constitutes the largest single outbreak since the United States declared the disease eliminated in 2000. Federal scientists told state officials in a meeting on Monday. The New York Times obtained a recording of the meeting. Until now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had not publicly described the outbreak in such stark terms. As of Thursday,” the story says “the CDC had reported 800 measles cases nationwide, but the current tally is likely to be higher because it takes time for the agency to collate state reports.” 

In yet more routine government business that's no longer allowed to be routine, on page A9, the Times reports “U.S. tells Vietnam envoys to skip events marking 50 years since war's end.” April 30th is the anniversary of the end of the war. And the Times writes “for U.S. officials, who insisted on anonymity to describe sensitive diplomatic decision-making, said that Washington had recently directed senior diplomats, including Mark Napper, the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, to stay away from activities tied to the anniversary. Veterans returning to Vietnam,” the Times writes “have also been told they're on their own for public discussions they organize on war and reconciliation and anniversary events.” The piece goes on to say, “a half dozen people with knowledge of the directive said it was not clear where it originated or why it had been issued. April 30th is the 100th day of Mr. Trump's second term. Some U.S. officials speculated that a Trump appointee or State Department leader feared drawing attention away from that milestone with events that might highlight America's defeat in a war that Mr. Trump managed to avoid.” 

And the personality-based presidency also manifests itself on page one, below the fold. “Companies Beg For Carve-Outs On Their Tariffs” is the headline. “When President Trump's steep tariffs threatened to send the price of iPhones soaring,” the Times writes, “Apple's chief executive, Tim Cook, called the White House and soon secured a reprieve for his company and the broader electronics industry. Almost immediately, top aides to Mr. Trump insisted they had not strayed from their promise to apply import taxes across the economy with minimal, if any, exceptions. But the carve-out still caught the attention of many businesses nationwide.” Right, because it was a carve-out for some of the most valuable exports from the country with which we were supposedly waging the most intense part of the trade war. Anyway, “the carve-out still caught the attention of many businesses nationwide, igniting a fresh scramble for similar help in the throes of a global trade war. Top lobbying groups for the agriculture, construction, manufacturing, retail, and technology industries have pleaded with the White House in recent days to relax more of its tariffs, with many arguing that there are some products they must import simply because they are too expensive or impractical to produce in the United States.” 

Right, that's the concept of global trade, which the White House is against. But the White House is in favor of doing favors. So good luck to all those sectors. 

The lead news story on page one, two columns wide, is “Chaos Builds at Pentagon Under Hegseth’s Control / Ousted Advisers, Screaming Matches and Growing Mistrust of Senior Officers.” After a rundown of the recent upheaval, under grossly unqualified Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The story gets around to the fact that the structural impossibilities of the Trump administration extend far beyond one possibly booze-addled lightweight in a position of grave responsibility. “Adding to the dysfunction, the story says, Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency has set a loose target of slashing as many as 200,000 jobs from the Pentagon civilian workforce of 750,000. A level of cuts Mr. Hegseth has warned would cripple some critical functions within the department, three current and former defense officials said.” Even Pete Hegseth is standing in the breach against something even worse, trying to force its way in. 

The rest of the top of the page is pictures of people mourning Pope Francis, and a single column retrospective by Jason Horowitz, “As Ears Closed, Pope Amplified Those Unheard / Lonely Moral Message in a Changing World.”

“The death of Pope Francis on Monday morning,” the story says, “has now deprived the world of a persistent advocate for the downtrodden. As mass deportations become the norm, authoritarianism expands, and the alliances that govern the post-World War II era are turned upside down, it is clear that Francis has left behind a world quite unlike the one he joined as Pope in 2013. Throughout his pontificate,” the story goes on to say, “Francis both appealed to and criticized leaders for policies that he said visited suffering on regular people who became caught up in others brutal pursuit for geopolitical and financial power. It was a message that held until the end.” 

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 Socca-Ho. You, the listeners, keep us going through your paid subscriptions to Indignity and your tips. Keep sending those along if you are able. And if nothing unexpected gets in the way, we will talk again tomorrow.