Morning! Today’s lead story by Coral Davenport focuses on the Trump administration’s plan to repeal hundreds of regulations affecting the way we live and prevent ourselves from dying. Or our grannies. Or our miners (such regulations include those requiring medical staff to be on duty in nursing homes and preventing miners from inhaling deadly dust.)

The deregulation is being led by Trump official Russel T. Vought, in partnership with the Department of Government Efficiency under Elon Musk. Vought is a maniacal Christian with a fixation on dismantling “woke” things, and he generally refuses comment to the press. In 2021, Mr. Vought founded his own organization, the Center for Renewing America, which describes itself as dedicated to “God, country and community.”

Shudder.

It used to take years to appeal federal regulations but the Trump administration — which, as we know, is taking a loose approach to following court orders — plans to simply repeal and stop enforcing regulations thanks to a “set of novel legal strategies.”

That sounds like some hardcore b.s. to me. How about you?

The White House theory “relies on Supreme Court decisions, some recent and at least one from the 1980s”, that Trump and his colleagues believe give them basis for the moves.

Last week the Trump administration “directed agencies to bypass a lengthy legal requirement that proposed changes to rules be posted for public comment.”

It’s like they’re all sitting in a room together spitballing on how they can pursue the most radical agenda possible. Then a reconstituted Nazi walks in and accuses them all of being too woke and says “this is how you do it.”

With Zyklon B!

“We have a lot of latitude here and we have the ability to roll back some of these devastating regulations,” said White House spokesman Harrison Fields, sounding like an eager commandant rubbing his hands at Dachau. Honestly this all sounds ghoulish.

Reporter Ms. Davenport has spoken to 14 Trump officials and people involved with DOGE, she reports. The story concludes that there has never been “such an immediate and comprehensive strategy to so quickly erase or freeze this many rules that are woven through so many dimensions of the American economy and daily life.”

If only there were someone willing to say succinctly why this is crazy! Oh, there is.

Others — mostly Trump’s allies — say the review of rules and regulations will “weed out those that slow down the government and the economy.” In other words this is going to make some unscrupulous businesspeople an awful lot of green.

Mr. Trump learned to move at this pace during his first administration, when he found himself frustrated by the pace of efforts to overturn climate change regulation passed by President Barack Obama, peace be upon him. Then the Biden administration reinstated the rules and infuriated Mr. Trump. So this is all, in part, revenge. If only there was a Nazi billionaire willing to use Artificial Intelligence to further the march of all this.

Oh, there is.

White House officials, the article reports, did not respond to emails seeking comment from Mr. Musk “on the matter.” Amazingly it appears the world’s richest man feels he doesn’t need to talk to the press.

The article rounds out with a further litany of regulations the administration plans to cut, including one that requires slaughterhouse workers to move at a certain speed. If slaughterhouse workers are under pressure to move more quickly, it has negative consequences, said a union leader. I mean…obviously.

Thanks for letting me read the newspaper so that you don’t have to.

Say, is there a story on the front page that might make me feel better?

Sure. The author of “Where The Wild Things Are,” Maurice Sendak, died in 2012. Now they’re auctioning off his stuff, including a watercolor based on Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by the visionary poet and artist William Blake, that sat by his bed. It’s drawn estimates of $600k. Sendak suffered with bouts of depression, telling one interviewer, “I’ve been ready to die since childhood.”

Actually I’m not so sure this article cheered me up after all. But it was… different!

Matt Davis lives in Manhattan with his wife and kid.

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