Good morning. It's March 31st. March is going out like a lamb in New York City. If being a lamb involves brief periods of mildness among 25 or 30 degree temperature swings, and this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news.

In Gaza-remember Gaza? CNN reports that the bodies of 15 aid workers, a mix of people from the Red Crescent Society, civil defense staffers, and one UN agency employee, have been recovered from a mass grave where they had been buried along with the crushed remains of ambulances and UN and civil defense vehicles. According to the head of the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, they appeared to have been massacred by Israeli forces on March 23rd, and then buried by military bulldozers. CNN writes that a UN-supplied video shows several bodies still wearing vests from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. 

Elon Musk did travel to Wisconsin and did appear to hand out million dollar checks to reward people for supporting the right wing candidate in tomorrow's state Supreme Court election. The state courts declined to issue an injunction against it and no one brought any charges. 

In France, meanwhile, a court convicted Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far right National Rally Party of embezzlement, sentenced her to two years of house arrest and barred her from running for president in 2027 as she had planned. The National Rally, CNN reports, was ordered to pay 2 million euros in fines for the 4.1 million euros that it was accused of embezzling through a scheme to direct European Parliament staffing funds to the National Rally.

Back here in the United States, Donald Trump told NBC over the weekend that he is not joking about his interest in seeking an unconstitutional third term and that there are “methods by which you could do it.” The New York Times put that news, the news of the president embracing the idea of lawlessly continuing an office on page A20 this morning. 

Trump does get the lead spot on the front. In a single column with the headline, “TRUMP IS MAKING EXCEPTION TO BAN OF MOST REFUGEES / ‘MISSION SOUTH AFRICA’ / Program Aimed at White Afrikaners Is Being Called Racist.” 

“Almost immediately after taking office,” the Times writes, “President Trump began shutting down refugee resettlement programs, slashing billions of dollars in funding and making it all but impossible for people from scores of countries to seek haven in the United States, with one exception. The Trump administration has thrown open the doors to white Afro-Connors from South Africa, establishing a program called ‘Mission South Africa’ to help them come to the United States as refugees, according to documents obtained by the New York Times. Under phase one of the program, the United States has deployed multiple teams to convert commercial office space in Pretoria, the capital of South Africa, into ad hoc refugee centers, according to the documents. The teams are studying more than 8,200 requests expressing interest in resettling to the United States and have already identified 100 Afrikaners who could be approved for refugee status. The government officials have been directed to focus particularly on screening white Afrikaner farmers.” Obviously, this is not just being called racist. is entirely racist in every aspect of its conception. 

It is a layered program of racism seeking to import not just white people, but white people notorious for their own political racism. But on top of that, it's essentially a racist phantasmagoria. The reason that there are only 100 people so far is that the idea that white South African farmers are have no choice but to flee the country is an American idea. A piece of right-wing propaganda used to whip up panic among easily frightened American white people, such as the president of the United States, about the grave peril of race war in this country.

The Afrikaners don't want to leave South Africa because their entire ethnic and political identity is built on the premise that they own South Africa and have the right to dominate the majority there. 

Next to that on page one is a pair of stories about how Trump policies are landing on various people of the kind the Times perceived as regular Americans, both in Minnesota, first, “In Iron Range, Trump’s Tariffs Cast a Shadow / ‘Joined at the Hip’ to a Remaking of Policy.”

It's a look at how already economically beleaguered iron mining communities are uniquely exposed to disruption from Trump's interference with trade. “The iron range,” the Times writes, “should in theory benefit from the expanded tariffs on imported steel that Mr. Trump announced in February, but it is also sensitive to shifts and uncertainty in the auto market, and a trade war with Canada could upend many businesses in the region, which is closer to the Canadian border than to Minneapolis, and raise the price of an array of goods and services, including electricity and dairy products.” 

Next to that is a long profile of a VA worker, a disabled veteran herself, who got fired from her job, then had her termination rescinded and was put on administrative leave, then was ordered to return to her job again, as the lawsuits against the Trump administration's arbitrary firings advanced through the courts. 

In other Trump-firing news, all the way down at the bottom of page A16, the headline is, “In unusual move, White House directly fires prosecutors in Memphis and LA.” Here what “unusual” means is, as the story says, “in recent days, the prosecutors in Los Angeles and Memphis were dismissed abruptly, notified by a terse one-sentence email stating no reason for the move other than that it was on behalf of the president himself. The ousters,” the Times writes, “reflected a more aggressive effort by the White House to reach deep inside U.S. attorney offices across the country in a stark departure from decades of practice. While it is commonplace and accepted for senior political appointees at the Justice Department to change from administration to administration, no department veteran could recall any similar removal of assistant U.S. attorneys. The Los Angeles prosecutor,” the Times notes, “was working on a case against Andrew Wiederhorn, the founder of Fatburger, according to two people familiar with the events, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. Mr. Widerhorn is fighting charges of wire fraud and other crimes related to his company. Given that the case has drawn headlines recently and that Mr. Widerhorn has donated to political action committees supporting Mr. Trump, his colleagues suspected that may have played a role in his dismissal.” 

All of this happened after, at the end of last week, Trump issued a set of pardons of convicted fraudsters. Trevor Milton, the founder of a fraudulent electric truck company, got pardoned on one count of securities fraud and two counts of wire fraud. The Wall Street Journal writes, “during the trial, prosecutors portrayed Milton as a con man who duped investors, including in podcasts and on social media, about the company's sales and the capabilities of its vehicles. In one instance, prosecutors said he created a video of what appeared to be a truck driving normally, but it was really an inoperable prototype rolling down a hill. Campaign finance records,” the Journal writes, “show that Milton and his wife donated more than $1.8 million to a Trump fundraising committee in October.” The story notes that Trump has been pardoning people convicted by the US Attorney's office in Manhattan. “On Friday,” the Journal writes, “he pardoned the three founders of crypto exchange BitMEX, once one of the world's biggest crypto exchanges. They had pleaded guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act.” He also commuted the sentence of media fraudster Carlos Watson of Aussie media notoriety, he had been convicted by the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's Office. 

And back on page one of The Times, on the left-hand side, the headline is, “CUTS TO U.S. AID IMPAIR RESPONSE TO EARTHQUAKE DISASTER IN MYANMAR / Global Rivals Rushing In to Assist in America’s Striking Absence.” 

“China, Russia, and Vietnam,” The Times writes, “have dispatched emergency teams and supplies to earthquake-ravaged Myanmar. So have Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. The United States, the richest country in the world and once its most generous provider of foreign aid, has sent nothing. Chinese search and rescue teams complete with dogs trained to sniff out trapped people” The Times writes, “are already on the ground in Mandalay, Myanmar's second largest city and one of the places most deeply affected by the quake. China has pledged $14 million for Myanmar quake relief, sending 126 rescue workers and six dogs, along with medical kits, drones and earthquake detectors. On Sunday,” the Times writes, “the U.S. Embassy in Myanmar announced on its website that the United States would provide up to $2 million in aid disbursed through humanitarian groups based in Myanmar. But many of the systems needed to funnel American aid to Myanmar have been shattered.” CBS News, citing AFP, citing the military junta in Myanmar, says that the death toll there is currently 2,056. 

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 in if you're able. And if nothing unexpected gets in the way, we will talk again tomorrow.