Elon Musk will for sure rant and rave, but he can be ignored: Richard Hermer has become the first UK cabinet minister to order his department — the Attorney General's Office — to leave X. The Observer reports:

In a stroke of genius, MS NOW decided to livestream the removal of Donald Trump's name from the Kennedy Center. As I write this, some three hours in, there are currently 48,630 viewers.

"Blessed are the peacemakers! But woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth."

-- Pope Leo XIV, speaking in Cameroon on Thursday.

Colby Hall in Mediaite on how we've stopped being stunned by the batshit cabinet meetings hosted by President Trump, one of which was held on Thursday and lasted 98 minutes. Hall:

Here’s what I keep coming back to: if a transcript from this meeting came from the government of Brazil — or Hungary, or any country we cover from a comfortable critical distance — we would not file it as a cabinet meeting. We would write about it as a document. We would ask what it reveals about the man producing it and the institution that has formed around him. We would use different words.

But we don’t use different words for Trump. We stopped a long time ago, so gradually that I’m not sure anyone made a conscious decision to stop. It just became the way the job gets done.

And I say “we” deliberately, because Mediaite runs the clips too. We package the highlights. We write the posts. I’ve written more of them than I care to admit, and I’ll probably write more, as the traffic they generate is part of what keeps the lights on here. So I’m not throwing stones from outside the house. I live in this house. That’s actually why it bothers me.

Kyla Scanlon:

There is an enormous tension for an administration that now claims greatness as isolationism and regularly alienates and insults (and worse) global peers but also cannot finance itself without the support of other countries. These two opposing ideas operate at the center of the American debt story.

That is why “America First” does not make sense financially. The United States will no doubt, for the time being, find buyers of its debt — but the cost and terms of those exchanges are shifting as the rest of the world reconsiders its arrangements with President Trump’s way of doing business.

There are some things that have to be above politics. If there are not, then we have no society to defend.

-- Tory MP Geoffrey Cox in this remarkable speech to the House opposing the Labour Party's plan to abolish trial by jury for some cases, including for some serious offenses.

This from @Geoffrey_Cox was titanic - a truly beautiful speech.

He outshone those sat opposite. They could only watch. And nervously laugh.

This should be seen by every new MP to understand what they do, & every new barrister to understand what we do.pic.twitter.com/ePPZSFWGPA

— Joanna Hardy-Susskind (@Joanna__Hardy) March 10, 2026

From the New York Times:

As well as there being no good reason for it, the newspaper reports, there has also been no effort to pretend there is one:

A part of this difference in support, said Sarah Maxey, an associate professor of international relations at Loyola University of Chicago, is the way previous presidents have taken the time to sell wars to the public.

“Before the Iraq War in 2003, we had a whole year of why this mattered, why we exhausted other operations, why we needed this,” said Ms. Maxey, who studies public opinion around war and foreign conflicts. “We have not had many foreign conflicts without a clear communication strategy beforehand.”

Historically, the First Amendment has limited the reach of consumer law to commercial speech or clear-cut fraud. By treating political bias as a defect in a commercial product, the F.T.C. is claiming the authority to police journalism itself.

-- the Editorial Board of the New York Times: Legally Creative, Democratically Dangerous: Trump’s Plan to Twist the News

Daniel Richman in the New York Times:

Calls for the Epstein files’ release predate the Trump administration. But they are now online and searchable because too many Americans didn’t trust the Justice Department’s leadership with control of them. In the past, departmental leaders could limit suspicions about their motives by conspicuously leaving a matter such as this to career subordinates, rather than political appointees. Seen by so many as having fired or driven out prosecutors and agents who refused to become tools of President Trump’s will, Attorney General Pam Bondi lacked credibility. She couldn’t get away with asking the public to rely on the apolitical and independent judgment of those who remained. The eventual result was the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Read it all: The Epstein Files Should Never Have Been Released

Brandy Zadrozny for MS NOW:

Prosecutors characterize the events that night as an “antifa attack” on the federal government. The defense calls it a protest gone wrong. But the implications of this trial extend beyond the fate of one group of activists: For the first time, federal prosecutors are seeking to convict protesters — most of them American citizens — on charges related to domestic terrorism. The outcome will test whether President Donald Trump’s yearslong campaign to brand leftist activists as terrorists can succeed in the courts.

Read it all: Trump wants to prosecute anti-fascists as terrorists. This Texas trial will test his power.

Nia-Malika Henderson for Bloomberg Opinion on House Speaker Mike Johnson:

Although Johnson’s fundraising numbers are at a record high, with a haul of $82 million in 2025, Nancy Pelosi he is not. As speaker, Pelosi, who is retiring this year, let members vote their districts, even if it ran counter to her party’s position. She was a legislative tactician, helping muscle through landmark legislation in the Barack Obama and Joe Biden administrations, even with a small majority. And more than that, her charismatic personality, the memes and the quips, helped brand the party as a force.

Johnson is not a force. More follower than leader, he has spent much of this year standing back, watching as his power and the power of his chamber are eroded.

It’s no wonder so many Republicans want out.