Picking up where the last TOTI left off, Vice President JD Vance’s defense of the since-rehired DOGE staffer who was briefly fired for claiming that he was “racist before it was cool” and calling for the normalization of “Indian hate” drew widespread mockery, particularly given his brand as a proponent of strong family values.
Even more worrisome was his tweet over the weekend claiming judges do not have the power to constrain the President’s authority, an obvious response to the multiple instances of federal judges blocking executive orders issued by President Trump and Elon Musk’s attempts to freeze congressionally approved federal spending.
This newsletter has historically supported millennial ascendancy, but I will always make an exception for our worst and most powerful millennial, who is also tweets like a cringe millennial. (#NotAllMillennials)
Meanwhile, shadow president Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency have their eyes set on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency initially proposed by Senator Elizabeth Warren and enacted in 2010 in response to the 2007/08 financial crisis.
As with the gutting of USAID, Trump allies and supporters cheer the destruction of this equally beloved and maligned regulatory agency, while critics on the left point to the illegality of these latest actions. On top of everything else, Elon Musk has explicit plans to turn Twitter/X into a fintech platform, making his apparent authority over this agency a massive conflict of interest. (How quaint.)
Fortunately for the older demographic in the United States that overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump, Musk appears to be turning his attention to the Social Security Administration, demonstrating his typical nuanced understanding of the fundamental systems that power this highly critical agency.
In (finally) (mostly) non-political news, rapper Kendrick Lamar performed a medley of some of his biggest hits at the halftime of Super Bowl LIX. Having teased it earlier in the show, he finally gave the audience what it eagerly anticipated, a performance of his Grammy-winning, Drake-dissing song of the summer, “Not Like Us.” In the song, he accuses Drake of being a “certified pedophile” (a lyric he notably did not rap in full!), a claim he doubles down on with the double entendre: Why you trollin’ like a bitch? Ain’t you tired? / Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A minor.
“Not Like Us” featured a crip-walking Serena Williams, a cameo loaded with symbolic meaning, given her history with both Drake himself and the racial backlash she faced in the white-dominated tennis world.
Not one to avoid politics, Lamar had “Uncle” Samuel L. Jackson emcee the show, which wove both American flag and prison imagery throughout the performance. Naturally, conservatives online took great offense. (At least, those who weren’t too obtuse to even be offended.)
But no Republican was more offended than former U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz, who, well…
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