TicTok Turmoil

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As of February 2023, the social video app TikTok said it had approximately 150 active monthly million users in the United States. This number is projected to increase by over five percent year-over-year, reaching 107.8 million users in 2024. Extremely popular with younger digital audiences, TikTok is one of the fastest-growing social media apps in the United States. The United States has the largest TikTok audience of any country. And that scares the hell out of many, including the members of Congress.

The concerns stem from TikTok’s Chinese owner, a company named ByteDance, and a 2017 Chinese law that requires companies to share data with the ruling Communist Party if requested. The fear is that this could allow user information like locations, private messages, and biometric data to potentially be handed over to Chinese authorities. There are some cases where social media information has been used to pressure or even blackmail. TikTok has already faced several lawsuits related to data privacy violations. In one, a class-action lawsuit alleges the app collects biometric data from users without proper consent and shares it with third-party companies.

“TikTok is essentially a tool for China’s totalitarian surveillance state, putting our kids’ private data at risk,” argued Brendan Carr, a Republican commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission who wants to ban TikTok from the U.S. Congress has now agreed. In April, Congress approved a bill known as the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” that gives ByteDance two options, sell TikTok to an approved buyer or face a ban in the United States. The bill passed on a 352-65 vote. President Joe Biden signed this legislation into law.

TikTok swiftly filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C. The company arguing the bill violates constitutional protections of free speech. TikTok says the law represents an “unprecedented violation of the First Amendment. This dispute presents a series of novel issues. I would hesitate to predict the eventual outcome, which might take several years to materialize. TikTok contends that banning the app infringes upon users’ right to free speech. By preventing Americans from accessing TikTok, the lawsuit states, the law restricts their ability to express themselves on the platform.

TikTok also asserts that it has taken steps to protect American users’ data. The company emphasizes its commitment to safeguarding user privacy and argues that the ban is unnecessary. But TikTok in some ways undermines its argument by supplementing its legal efforts with a massive public relations push, appealing directly to its American members to lobby their legislators on the company’s behalf. It has aggressively recruited small-business owners and influencers to advocate for preserving TikTok as a vital part of their lives. Members of Congress reported they had been inundated by these appeals.

Strictly on First Amendment grounds I would be inclined to side with TikTok, even though the Chinese would never permit an American company to operate in China the way TikTok operates in the United States. But this issue goes well beyond the First Amendment. Going back to FCC Commissioner Carr, he referred to TikTok as a “clear and present danger to America’s national security”. Carr says the new legislation is based on TicToc’s “malign conduct, not its content.” Carr argues that TikTok’s content acts as a “sheep’s clothing” concealing a “sophisticated surveillance app” underneath. According to him, TikTok gives the Chinese government a major tool for influencing American public opinion.

I am also disturbed that Chinese children see at home a different TikTok than the freewheeling unedited forum American children see. To me that is an admission by the Chinese that they use TikTok to influence opinion in the United States, particularly among its youngest and most vulnerable citizens. Over and above ByteDance’s Chinese ownership and China’s track record of alleged data theft and espionage in recent years, I have concerns TikTok’s recommendation algorithm could be manipulated to promote disinformation or propaganda. Americans already have enough disinformation.

As a matter of law, the fusion of economic and national security considerations has led to increased scrutiny of cross-border investments. The phenomenon of “national security creep” has expanded the scope of review and regulation in such transactions, emphasizing the delicate balance between economic interests and safeguarding national security.

This will be an interesting case to watch.

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This is NOT 1968

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Embed from Getty Images, David Dee Delgado.

Today, Holocaust Remembrance Day, Columbia University, reacting to the continuing protests on campus, capitulated and cancelled its main graduation ceremony. Small, school-level ceremonies will still be held. In this Columbia follows a pattern already set by USC. Other schools will be heard from in the days ahead.

I have noted among the chattering crowd a tendency to romanticize the current campus protests, ostensively in support of the Palestinian people and in reaction to the war in Gaza. There have been many references to past campus demonstrations. Some going all the way back to demonstrations in support of civil rights in the 1950s and in particular demonstrations against the Vietnam war in 1968.

I find nothing romantic about today’s crop of protesters. They are not peaceful and pro-Palestinian. They are violent, anti-American, and pro-Hamas.

What distinguishes these protests from previous demonstrations is that in many cases these target members of the campus community. They use language specifically directed at Jewish students, faculty, and staff.

I never expected to hear that kind of language used in the United States. I never expected to hear it used anywhere in the 21st century world except coming out of the mouths of a handful of Islamic radicals. It is corrosive and dangerous.

I admit I paint with a broad brush. The degree of hostility varies from campus to campus. I have degrees from three Ivy class universities and teach at a fourth. I have visited two of the campuses since the protests began. I have close connections to the other two and have heard firsthand descriptions and seen videos I am convinced are true. I am worried.

Some of the demonstrators are calling for something categorically different from an end to the Netanyahu government or even the Gaza war. Some of them are suggesting, implicitly, that there is no place for Jewish life between the river and the sea. I have heard protesters chant “Brick by brick, wall by wall, Israel has to fall” and “Intifada Revolution.” In the intifada Israel saw buses blown up by suicide bombers and mass shootings in city centers, terrorist attacks that killed many innocent civilians in the name of an “Intifada Revolution.”

Recently, a video surfaced of a student leader at Columbia saying, “Zionists don’t deserve to live.” On campus, an individual stood in front of Jewish students with a sign reading “Al-Qassam’s next targets.” In the encampment itself, before Columbia had the New York Police Department clear it out, signs hung with small red triangles. Hamas uses that icon to indicate Israeli targets.

I know most of the student protesters are peaceful and some Jews are participating in the demonstrations. But most is not all. And what’s significant is that many students on campus minimize or ignore extreme or violent rhetoric.

The romanticized view tends to emphasize the positive aspects of past protests, such as the commitment to social change and the fight against injustice. However, it’s important to note that these events were also marked by serious confrontation and at times, violence. The Columbia protests in April 1968, for example, were a significant and contentious event, with students taking over buildings and the administration calling in the police, resulting in over 700 arrests and more than 100 injuries.

There is also a double standard being employed in these protests. Consider the reaction if, instead of Jews, the protesters were wearing white robes and directing their rage at Black Americans? Consider the reaction if, instead of Jews, the protests were directed at the LGBTQ community? There would be general outrage. For some reason, you don’t get the same reaction when Jews are involved. There are fewer than sixteen million Jews in a world of eight billion people. Israel occupies 0.02% of the world’s land. It occupies, in its 1973 borders, 7.8% of the original British Mandate territory. Why is this tiny minority not protected as such?

After talking to many, my impression is that this current generation of protestors see themselves as having the best of intensions. They believe they are expressing moral outrage at perceived injustices playing out on the world stage. The current Gaza protests have galvanized student activists decrying the civilian suffering and loss of life, particularly among Palestinians. Likewise, the 1968 anti-war protests were fueled by draft-age students denouncing the Vietnam conflict as an immoral, imperialistic overreach that was claiming too many lives through misguided policies.

But I am equally impressed by the pure ignorance of most of the demonstrators. That does not mean just the students. I heard some incredible falsehoods coming from professors as well. They know little of the history of the people of the Mideast or the land they occupy. Few understand the meaning of the words they chant. Or the hurt those words cause. Their schooling has been woefully neglected. Among the protesters I never see a reference to the massacre of Jews on October 7, 2023, when Hamas started this war.

I saw many wearing the black-and-white keffiyeh, the headscarf made famous by the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who twice turned down an offer of an independent Palestinian state. Some wore the scarfs over their faces, others wore medical masks, a majority hiding their faces. I saw two cute young women sporting their keffiyehs along with a crop top showing some bare midriff. I wondered if they knew the morality police would separate their body from their head if they walked that way in the streets of Gaza?

Both the keffiyehs, and the tents, seemed to be mass produced, a bulk order. Someone was organizing this. Nobody seemed to know the meaning or history of the headscarves. Or explain their need for anonymity. Perhaps the universities have allowed their curriculum to focus so sharply that one can study the history of the Palestinians and study the history of the Jewish people without having to confront the shared history of both. They should review their course of study.

When I review the current campus climate 1968 is not the year which comes to mind. I think instead of 1938. That’s the year the Germans escalated their persecution of Jews, writing a series of laws to implement their cleansing process. It began with words, blaming the small Jewish population for the nation’s ills. It moved on to laws expropriating Jewish property, invalidating Jewish passports, forcing Jews without one to adopt “typically Jewish names,” deporting Jews from Poland, torching synagogues in Germany and Austria, and blocking Jewish emigration. The termination program, the “Final Solution,” followed.

It began with words.

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The Supremes Vote, Again

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There is no doubt anymore. The conservative majority on the United States Supreme Court is dedicated to electing Donald Trump to a second term.

The Trump justices made that clear last week as they considered his extraordinary claim that a president has an absolute immunity from criminal prosecution. The idea seems absurd on its face. A fundamental principal of the United States is that it is a nation of law. The framers of the Constitution, having overthrown one monarch, had no desire to create a new one. There is no evidence in the historical record that they believed a president should be immune from criminal prosecution. Two lower courts carefully considered Trump’s claim and rejected it completely.

“[W]here, say some, is the King of America?” the patriot Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense, the 1776 pamphlet that convinced British colonists in North America to cut ties with their king and start a new nation. “[I]n America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.”

Yet four of the conservative justices on the Supreme Court, during oral argument in Trump v. United States, seemed willing to put a crown on Trump’s head. The mere thought is appalling. Justice Samuel Alito, let’s call him the “anti-patriot,” stands Paine’s words on their head:

JUSTICE ALITO: If an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement, but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?

In other words, let’s give the president the right to do whatever he pleases and hope he doesn’t rather than rely on the judicial system to treat him fairly under the law. Keep in mind that no president has been charged with a criminal offense in the 235 years since the Constitution was ratified. In every case where incumbents lost their reelection bids, they all left without incident. Until Donald Trump, who continues to falsely contend that he won the 2020 election.

That this comes from a member of the highest court in the land is shocking, until one considers that the source is the same justice who didn’t hesitate to take from American women the right to control their own bodies and enact instead his own Catholic dogma. Alito wrote the Dobbs opinion, overturning the precedent of Roe v. Wade that had stood for fifty years. Then he headed to Rome to take a victory lap.

The Usual Suspects

Joining Alito are the usual suspects. Justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife Gini actively crusaded to overturn the 2020 election and, in her role as lobbyist, was paid a hefty sum to do so, sat on the case in spite of his obvious conflict of interest.

The right-wing judges ignored the details of this case and looked instead to writing rules, something they usually argue should not be done. Justice Neil Gorsuch, who sits in the chair Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell stole from Merrick Garland, said, “I’m not concerned about this case, but I am concerned about future uses of the criminal law to target political opponents based on accusations about their motives.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who likes beer, likes women, and had some major debts disappear in a manner that has never been explained, prompted Trump’s lawyer to add another requirement to holding a former president accountable. Not only must there first be impeachment and conviction in Congress, but the criminal statute in question must also clearly specify in so many words that it applies to the president. None  do, underscoring the absurdity of Kavanaugh’s proposition.

With four votes seemingly willing to give Trump a way out, Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts appear to be the swing votes.

The three liberal justices did what they could to demonstrate the drastic implications for the American Republic if the Trump position is upheld:

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?

D. JOHN SAUER, TRUMP LAWYER: It would depend on the hypothetical, but we can see that could well be an official act.

JUSTICE KAGAN: If a president sells nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary, is that immune?

D. JOHN SAUER, TRUMP LAWYER: …if it’s structured as an official act, he would have to be impeached and convicted first.

JUSTICE KAGAN: … he ordered the military to stage a coup, and you’re saying that’s an official act?

D. JOHN SAUER, TRUMP LAWYER: I think that would depend…

JUSTICE KAGAN: That’s immune?

D. JOHN SAUER, TRUMP LAWYER: I think it would depend on the circumstances, whether it was an official act.

Justice Barrett, appeared troubled by the sweep of Mr. Trump’s arguments. Returning to “Justice Kagan’s example of a president who orders a coup,” Justice Barrett repeated what she understood to be Mr. Sauer’s position, “You’re saying that he couldn’t be prosecuted for that, even after a conviction and impeachment proceeding, if there was not a statute that expressly referenced the president and made it criminal for the president?” Sauer confirmed.

They’ve Already Done the Deed

The simple fact that this hearing took place was a victory for Trump. The Court should have denied review and let the lower court decision stand. The conservatives not only showed their hand by granting this review, they demonstrated their bias by setting the hearing at the end of the argument schedule for the court term.

When some states denied Trump access to their ballots, citing provisions of the Constiutution baring office to insurrectionists, Trump asked for an expedited appeal. The court granted that appeal, and quickly ruled that the states could not deny him ballot access, in spite of the clear language in the Constitution that gives the state’s the right to make that decision.

In this case prosecutors asked that Trump’s appeal on the immunity issue be heard on an expedited basis. The Court denied that request and took its time to schedule a hearing. The court will issue its ruling sometime between now and early July. The slow speed with which the Court has handled this matter almost guarantees that the criminal federal cases pending against Trump will NOT be tried before the election. That delay deprives voters of a valuable piece of information, if a jury of his peers finds Trump guilty of a crime.

More Delay Likely

Based on the questioning during the oral argument, it appears a majority of the conservative justices will draw a distinction between “private” and “official” activities of the president to allow for a qualified immunity. Even though no constitutional provision, law, or precedent case does so. I expect the conservative majority will find the distinction to be a determining factor on the issue of immunity. The court is unlikely to define the distinction itself, instead returning the case to Judge Tanya Chutkan, of the Federal District Court in Washington, for further proceedings.

Judge Chutkan’s eventual determination on immunity, probably on a count-by-count basis, could then be appealed. This makes it unlikely Trump will come to trial until 2025. By then, Trump could once again be president and in a position to order all federal cases pending against him be dropped. Or to pardon himself, ending matters.

The Supreme Court has once again placed its vote in a presidential election. It has voted for authoritarianism over democracy. For the sake of democracy, voters must overrule it in November.

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A Proportional Response

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Photo: Iranian missiles over Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, courtesy of Mehr News Service under a Creative Commons 4.0 license.

There was significant activity on the military front in the Mideast last week. The events changed the calculus for diplomacy in the region and could lead to new opportunities for peace, if the principals are willing to consider them.

It started on Saturday when Iran launched an unprecedented retaliatory attack on Israel, primarily from its own soil, but also by Iran-backed groups in several other countries. Here are some details:

  • Missiles and Drones: Iran fired hundreds of missiles and drones from its own territory.
  • Saturation Strategy: The assault aimed to saturate Israeli and U.S. air defenses with drones and cruise missiles, clearing the way for Iran’s ballistic missiles.
  • Alerts and Intercept: Alerts began sounding across Israel at about 2 a.m. local time on Sunday (7 p.m. Eastern on Saturday, April 13). Virtually everything fired at Israel was intercepted before entering the country’s territory.
  • Drones: Iran launched 170 drones at Israel from Iran. Israeli Air Force jets shot down dozens of them, and U.S. aircraft operating from bases in Saudi Arabia and Jordan shot down between 70 and 80 more.
  • Cruise Missiles: None of the more than thirty cruise missiles fired by Iran crossed into Israeli territory.
  • Ballistic Missiles: Of the 120 ballistic missiles fired at Israel from Iran, only five got through Israeli and U.S. air defenses and hit Israeli territory. Roughly half of the ballistic missiles failed on launch or crashed in flight.
  • Targets: Four missiles hit Israel’s Nevatim Air Base, where Israeli F-35s are based. Another ballistic missile appeared to have been aimed at a radar site in northern Israel but missed its target.
  • Bases: According to Iranian authorities, underground missile bases or silos exist in all provinces and cities of Iran. These bases contain road-mobile transporter erector launcher trucks and other hardware.

The attack had been expected. It followed an April 1 Israeli strike on a building in Syria which killed seven officers from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards, including two generals. Israel claims the building was used by the Iranian military and the generals had directed the October 7 slaughter of 1,200 Israeli civilians. They claimed the Iranians were in Syria to meet with Iran’s proxies Hamas and Hezbollah to plot new attacks on Israel.

Iran said the building that was targeted was part of the Iranian embassy and complained an attack on a diplomatic mission violated international law. That’s more than a little pathetic when you consider that on November 4, 1979, Iranian thugs broke into the U.S. embassy in downtown Tehran, captured virtual every American working there and held ninety-eight of them hostage for 444 days. Irony is apparently lost on the Iranians. But as we see repeatedly there is a double standard when it comes to international law, one for the United States and Israel, another for Iran and its terrorist proxies.

Iran’s “Firsts”

Iran’s attack marks several “firsts” in this conflict. It was the first time Iran struck Israel directly. It was also the first time a “state” actor adopted the ways of the terrorists. Iran’s aerial bombardment was also indiscriminate, designed to terrorize civilians and inflict mass casualties. The picture above shows Iran’s rockets over the Al-Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques, which Muslims constructed on the site of the two Jewish Temples built on Mount Moriah. the Temple Mount. The mosques are under the custodianship of Jordan and are protected by the Israeli military. They are considered holy to Muslims. Clearly the Iranians don’t care if they are destroyed by falling debris from their missiles.

And in another first, the Iranian bombardment violated the rule of proportional response, a term of diplomacy. I’ve always had my doubts about the wisdom of a proportional response. The idea behind a proportional response is to avoid an uncontrolled escalation of hostilities and maintain a balance in the conflict. It can be argued that Israel’s response to the Hamas slaughter of October 7 was “disproportional.” For the same reason, Iran’s response to Israeli’s April 1 killing of Iranian generals was “disproportional.” When Iran and its proxies have promised to attack Israel over and over until Israel disappears, and with the Ayatollahs who run Iran extending their pledge to promise the destruction of the entire Jewish people, the idea of responding in a manner proportional to the provocation seems to be a useless exercise.

Everybody Else’s “Firsts”

So, Iran crossed the line. It certainly expected its barrage on Israel would result in mass casulties and great destruction. It would further demoralize a nation still reeling from the damage done on Octover 7. And it would proclaim Iran to be the new power in the Mideast. If you follow Iran’s social media, that’s exactly what happened. Only, it didn’t.

By all measures, Iran’s attack was a complete failure. More than 95% of the incoming missiles and drones were intercepted before they reached Israel. Others were destroyed in unoccupied areas before they could reach the ground and detonate. Much credit is due the Israelis, who have a three-layer defense screen to protect against incoming ordinance. Some of that technology was built on top of American systems and some was developed jointly. But most was home-grown in Israel. It was a dramatic “first” which would give any would-be attacker pause before they tried again.

Israeli’s air force was also active in the skies that night. And they had help. Both American and British ships and planes were engaged helping to shoot down the Iranian fire. And in another remarkable “first,” and at a time when liberal opinion in the U.S. was elegantly wringing its hands about Israeli ruthlessness in Gaza destroying any possibility of Arab-Israeli cooperation, Jordan and Saudi Arabia came to Israel’s defense against the Iranian attacks.

The active participation of two of Israeli’s former enemies is a game changer. Iran must be feeling very isolated right now. And there is a possibility, remote perhaps but real, that the new coalition will provide a glimmer of hope for peace in a region that has not known peace for generations.

There is already evidence that Israel has taken this under consideration in determining a proportional response to this latest round of tit-for-tat. Rather than answer Iran with an equal barrage of missiles, Israel attacked one military base far away from civil population centers. It used air launched missiles. And one of its home-grown supersonic smart bombs easily penetrated Iranian defenses and destroyed an Iranian anti-aircraft battery. Without damaging Iranian nuclear facilities nearby.

A less than proportional response to give Iran much to think about, and to usher in the Passover season.

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133 Souls, 184 Days

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(Interactive Map © 2024 Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project)

There are 133 souls still being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, more than 184 days since Hamas declared war by invading Israel. I thought it necessary to point out this simple fact because most of the rhetoric discussing the six-month anniversary of that barbaric attack takes little note, if any, of the people involved.

This is not a homogenous group. While most are Israeli citizens, the missing include eight Americans, citizens from Germany and France, eight Muslim Arabs, seven Thai Buddhists, two black African Christians, and people from Nepal, people from Mexico, and others from all over the world.

I have not written about this since the week after the attack. While I promised at that time to bear witness, I have never been able to get over my rage. I have read innumerable twists of reality blaming Israel for this disaster. Or blaming the United States. I have heard repeated calls for independent investigations and complaints arguing that Israel is violating international law. I have endured, both in reading, in watching, and in joining events on university campuses, some amazing distortions of history. These come not only from the mouths of students but from many of their teachers as well.

Lest we forget, on October 7, 2023, while Israelis were celebrating the holiday of Simchat Torah, the day Jews dance with the Torah to celebrate the spiritual path given to them by God over three thousand years ago, three thousand armed terrorists from Hamas, which governs the Gaza strip, invaded through the border into Israel. They carried out a devastating massacre, resulting in the deaths of 1,200 people and the capture of more than 250 hostages. Since then, over one hundred hostages have been released as part of temporary cease-fire agreements. However, 132 hostages remain unaccounted for, and there are concerns that many of them may have lost their lives.

Following the attack, Israel declared a state of war exists between Hamas and Israel. Those critics mired in citations to international law should note that such a response to an armed invasion is completely justified. It is also justified by the United Nations charter. And the Hamas attack violated a long series of UN Security Council resolutions.

Israel announced two objectives for its subsequent incursion into the Gaza territory. First, free the hostages. Second, dismantle Hamas to prevent it from threating Israel in the future. Neither goal is unreasonable. No other state in the world would be expected to settle for anything less.

If there can be any question of the righteousness of these goals one only has to listen to what the leaders of Hamas, who are mostly hiding out in friendly countries far from Gaza, say about their plans. In a video, Ghazi Hamad, a senior member of Hamas, vowed to continue attacks against Israel until it is destroyed:

In the video, Hamad asserts that Israel has no place on their land and that Hamas will repeat such attacks as many times as necessary until Israel is gone. He says Hamas is ready to pay the price, considering themselves a nation of martyrs. Believe him. Ask yourself if the people of any nation would support a government that did not seek to achieve the same two goals Israel is now fighting to achieve.

That 1,200 Israelis death toll on October 7 is an eerily familiar number. It is about the same as the number of Americans killed on September 11, 2001. It is about the same as the number of Americans killed at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Remember America’s response to those events?

And do not forget the souls still unaccounted for in Gaza.

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Quake

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Give us a break. My California friends have been teasing me over the northeast’s breathless reaction: “Breaking News: Earthquake Shakes New Jersey and Surrounding Areas.” The lede read:

New Jersey, April 5, 2024 — A 4.8 magnitude earthquake sent boredom tremors through the New York City area and parts of New Jersey this morning. The temblor struck at approximately 10:20 a.m. and was centered about 5 miles east of Lebanon, New Jersey.

MSN/USA Today

I felt it, but I wasn’t sure what it was until I saw the bulletins. I did feel a 4.0 aftershock about 6:00 p.m. The only other earthquake I’ve ever felt occurred when I was in Palm Springs.

In California, I am told, it is not unusual to feel a quake every other month and until the Richter scale magnitude of the quake hits seven, there is little to worry about. In fact, reports indicate other than the appearance of a few cracks in an apartment building in Newark, which did not impact the livability of the structure, there was no damage and no injury to people. Still, the event stands out as one of the strongest felt in New Jersey in many years. So, there was a certain “novelty” factor at play.

In asking you to give us a little understanding for our reaction, I ask you to consider that the quake was a welcome break from the boredom of news around here. I don’t know what monopilizes the headlines in other parts of the country, but here in the Northeast it has been a constant parade of Trump. Trump trials. Trump finances. Trump speeches. Trump social media posts. It seems to never end, never change, and it doesn’t respect normal living hours because Trump posts his scathing attacks on anyone who opposes him at all hours of the day and night.

New York is also the home to the criminal hush-money case involving Stormy Daniels. And the civil case accusing Trump and his companies of scheming to dupe banks with financial statements inflating his wealth. And the civil case Trump has already lost to E. Jean Carroll for his continued social media posts about her claims that he sexually assaulted her. He previously lost a New York case for the original assault and defamation.

The quake knocked all this right off the front page, at least for the day. And it occupied hours and hours of cable TV time. It also managed to lead the national television network news. That is not unusual, all but CNN are based in New York City. Since there was really nothing beyond the headline to report the wall-to-wall coverage looked a little silly after an hour or so, but it was a break from our monotony.

So, I ask you to give us a pass and just smile at our overreaction. We got back to the same old same old same old soon enough.

By the time the day had ended Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who famously claimed that Jewish space lasers were the cause of the California wildfires, got religious posting on social media that events should be heeded as an omen from God. “God is sending America strong signs to tell us to repent,” Greene wrote on X. “Earthquakes and eclipses and many more things to come. I pray that our country listens.”

The claim was quickly qualified by the platform’s review community, which wrote that “Monday’s eclipse was predicted hundreds of years ago, it will not have been caused by contemporary actions,” and that “earthquakes occur naturally and happen (on average) more than 30 times a day across the world, although many are too subtle to feel.” But flagging the truth didn’t stop Greene’s theory from gaining traction online and circulating through the far-right ecosystem.

It may be, however, that Green is on to something. I took note that the earthquake’s epicenter was just a few miles from Donald Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

Message from above, maybe?

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