A Continuing Resolution, Canada’s New Leader, & Taking Meta To Court
March 10, 2025
Hello, readers – happy Monday! Today, we’ll be talking about the U.S. budget, Syria’s violence, Canada’s new leader, tuberculosis, Trump and golf, an ICE arrest, and an AI lawsuit.
Here’s some good news: Ambulance crews in Cambridgeshire are piloting the use of finger-prick blood tests to diagnose the deadliest form of stroke, and they appear to be twice as effective as other diagnostic tests. Also, at 27 years and more than 250 days old, Whitetop the llama, who spends his days comforting chronically ill children at a North Carolina camp, has been crowned the world’s oldest llama in captivity.
“Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.” – Lyndon B. Johnson
The House Can’t Keep The Lights On
The Republican party controls the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court. For some reason, though, the GOP is struggling to keep the lights on in Washington. Yesterday, House Republicans put forth a continuing resolution (CR) that will keep the government funded at or below current levels for a few more months. It would increase defense spending and provide additional funding for veterans’ health care while decreasing non-defense spending below 2024 levels.
Despite Republicans’ grip on the entire U.S. government, it’s not clear if Trump’s party can pass this budgeting measure. One group of hardline Republicans is unlikely to vote for the CR because they are opposed to passing stopgap budget measures. Democrats are unlikely to help Republicans out here (why would they?), so House Speaker Mike Johnson has been tasked with forcing his colleagues in line.
Even so, it looks like Johnson is preparing for the worst, saying that Democrats should also back the “clean CR,” but the Dems are not willing to comply. “House Democrats would enthusiastically support a bill that protects Social Security, Medicare, veterans health and Medicaid,” they said over the weekend, “But Republicans have chosen to put them on the chopping block to pay for billionaire tax cuts.” Republicans have until March 14 to get a budget passed.
A New Government – For Better Or For Worse?
Syria’s new interim government is not looking like a great improvement over the Assad regime. Over the weekend, more than 1,000 people were killed in clashes between the interim government’s security forces and former Assad regime loyalists. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, at least 745 civilians were killed in execution-style shootings, with 125 Syrian security forces and 148 Assad loyalists dying in the clashes.
Fighting first started on Thursday, when Assad’s supporters ambushed government forces in western Syria. The government – led by the Islamist Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, an offshoot of al Qaeda – then rallied its allies from across the country to stamp out the rebellion.
The country’s interim president, HTS head Ahmad al-Sharaa, said that the violence was within the “expected challenges” for Syria, and called for national unity. “We have to preserve national unity and domestic peace, we can live together,” he said. “Rest assured about Syria, this country has the characteristics for survival.” Videos of shootings showed HTS-affiliated fighters beating captives and making civilians bark like dogs at gunpoint.
Carney Heads The Party
- Canada’s Liberal Party has selected a new prime minister to replace Justin Trudeau. Economist and former Governor of the Bank of Canada Mark Carney is set to become the new head of Canada’s governing party as the Liberals prepare for upcoming elections. Trudeau is expected to step down within a few days, allowing Carney to take the reins later this week.
- While the Liberals were having a rough time at the polls late last year, things are turning around for them. The party has leaned into nationalist sentiment stirred up by Trump’s trade war against Canada. “We didn’t ask for this fight. But Canadians are always ready when someone else drops the gloves,” Carney said. “The Americans, they should make no mistake, in trade, as in hockey, Canada will win.”
The Symptoms Of Stupidity
- America’s, uh, questionable moves on health policy are creating global consequences. Last week, the World Health Organization warned that the Trump administration’s budget cuts for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) might cause a worldwide resurgence of tuberculosis, as USAID funds about 25% of all tuberculosis services in countries outside America. “Without immediate action, hard-won progress in the fight against TB is at risk,” said the director of the WHO’s Global Programme on TB and Lung Health.
- Besides creating serious shockwaves overseas, the hysteria is also taking hold in the U.S. The CDC is apparently spending resources on studying whether vaccines cause autism (despite multiple past studies proving that there is no connection), in line with the anti-vax positions expressed by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who heads the department of Health and Human Services.
More Mixed Nuts
- China learned from Trump’s first trade war and changed its tactics when tariffs came again (AP)
- Man with a Palestinian flag climbed London’s Big Ben tower and refused to come down (NBC)
- Impeached South Korean president released from prison ahead of insurrection trial (Guardian)
- American Jews who fled Syria ask White House to lift sanctions so they can rebuild in Damascus (AP)
- Israel says it is cutting off its electricity supply to Gaza (AP)
The Golfer-In-Chief Gets Tagged
- Activists with the U.K.-based group Palestine Action targeted one of President Trump’s golf courses in Scotland, painting “Gaza Is Not For Sale” in giant letters on the lawn and vandalizing the clubhouse with red spray paint. The group said it “rejects Donald Trump’s treatment of Gaza as though it were his property to dispose of as he likes.”
- Speaking of Trump and golf…recent analysis estimates that American taxpayers have paid tens of millions of dollars for the commander-in-chief’s golf trips. The demands from the Secret Service to help them protect Trump (and his family and posse) are “substantial,” the Palm Beach sheriff told county commissioners last month.
Another College Crackdown
- Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian graduate student who played a prominent role in protests against Israel at Columbia University, was arrested by ICE on Saturday evening. The ICE agents, who entered Khalil’s apartment, said they were acting on State Department orders to revoke his student visa.
- As of writing, it’s not entirely clear where Khalil is being held – his lawyer was initially told he was transferred to an immigration detention facility in New Jersey, but when his wife tried to visit yesterday, she learned he was not there. Last week, President Trump shared on social media his plan to deport or arrest those involved in the college protests.
More Nuts In America
- Tree loss from hurricane leaves Asheville vulnerable to new climate shocks (Guardian)
- Musk and DOGE try to slash government by cutting out those who answer to voters (AP)
- A 40-day Target boycott began this week. What to know about the protest and its potential impact (AP)
- Secret Service shoots man ‘brandishing’ firearm near White House (ABC)
- Andrew Tate, social media influencer who faces trafficking charges, sits cageside for UFC 313 (AP)
Meting Out Justice For Meta
- A federal judge has sided with authors in their AI-related lawsuit against Meta. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria ruled that a group of authors – including Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Ta-Nehisi Coates – can continue their lawsuit against Meta, which alleges that the tech giant violated copyright laws by using their writing to train its Llama AI models.
- However, Chhabria did throw out a part of the suit regarding the Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act (CDAFA), because the authors did not “allege that Meta accessed their computers or servers — only their data (in the form of their books).” Luckily for the writers, the larger part of their suit – which alleges that Meta actively removed the copyright information from their books in order to hide its copyright infringement – is still standing. Chhabria said there was a “reasonable, if not particularly strong inference” that Meta had actually removed that information, and used that inference to keep the suit alive.
More Loose Nuts
- Warriors star Stephen Curry reaches 25,000 career points (NBC)
- Sole portrait of England’s ‘nine-day queen’ thought to have been identified by researchers (Guardian)
- New DOJ proposal still calls for Google to divest Chrome, but allows for AI investments (TechCrunch)
- Music labels will regret coming for the Internet Archive, sound historian says (Ars Technica)
