I must admit, I’d heard absolutely nothing about Trump having designated Janette Nesheiwat as his nominee for Surgeon General until the news broke today that he was withdrawing her nomination, the day before her confirmation hearing before the Senate HELP Committee. Seems that Nesheiwat, a 48-year-old who has appeared on Fox News, had repeatedly claimed her medical degree came from the University of Arkansas when it actually came from a medical school on the Caribbean island of Sint Maarten. The new nominee is Casey Mears, a 37-year-old graduate of Stanford Medical School who is described as a “wellness influencer” with close ties to HHS Secretary Kennedy.

The Fed met today for the first time since Trump’s tariff-focused “liberation day” five weeks ago, and declined for the third straight meeting to cut the Fed Funds rate further. In recent weeks Trump has been increasingly critical of Fed Reserve Chair Powell, whose term is set to expire in 2026, for not cutting interest rates more aggressively. On the other hand, Trump’s tariff policy has stoked inflation expectations, creating the possibility that the Fed’s next move might need to be a rate hike rather than a cut. Time will tell.

One of the many ways in which Trump has expanded his business interests into the crypto world since the election is through the launching of a memecoin, $TRUMP, approximately 80% of which is held by two Trump-owned entities. Recently Trump announced a promotion under which the top 220 holders of $TRUMP (as measured in a particular manner over a defined time period, rather than via a snapshot at a point of time) would be invited to a special event later this month with the President at one of his clubs, with the top 25 holders receiving further VIP access. Today crypto-critic Molly White published an analysis in which she estimates that almost three-quarters of the 220, and 23 of the top 25, are foreign entities or persons. She also estimates that “62% of those on the invite list had never purchased a $TRUMP token prior to the announcement, suggesting they were primarily drawn in by the promise of access to Trump rather than any longer term interest in the token itself.” Senator Ossoff recently commented at a town hall that, by “selling access for what is effectively payments to him,” Trump’s promotion in and of itself constitutes grounds for impeachment.

There is reporting today that the Trump administration intends to imminently start deportation flights of various Asian nationals to Libya. (I’m old enough to remember when Libya was a hostile power, labelled “beyond the axis of evil” in 2002 by John Bolton.) The federal district court judge in Massachusetts handling an existing case known as D.V.D. v. DHS issued an order today clarifying that previously issued injunctions would forbid such actions, inasmuch as those injunctions require “all third-country removals to be preceded, inter alia, by written notice to both the non-citizen and the non-citizen’s counsel in a language the non-citizen can understand as well as a meaningful opportunity for the non-citizen to raise a fear-based claim for” protection under the Convention Against Torture.