THE EMPIRE STRUCK DOWN: The Philadelphia Eagles crushed the Kansas City dream of a record third-straight Super Bowl win, dominating the two-time winners by a score of 40-22. It was even worse than the score looks. It was 34-0 before the Chiefs got the ball past the 50-yard line.

  The game was decided in the first half with Philadelphia gaining 179 yards to Kansas City’s 23 and making 13 first downs to just 1 for the Chiefs. 

  Kansas City’s offensive line was a sieve all night, leaving quarterback Patrick Mahomes frequently scrambling or getting crushed in the pocket. The Eagles sacked Mahomes six times. He also threw two critical interceptions in the first half, one of them run back for an Eagles touchdown, the second converted for a touchdown only two plays later.

  It was a bad night for the Chiefs, but not as bad as Kenrick Lamar’s halftime show.

POWER OF THE SHARPIE: President Trump announced yesterday that starting this week he will impose 25 percent “reciprocal” tariffs on all steel and aluminum imported into the US, including from neighboring allies Canada and Mexico. “Very simply, it’s if they charge us, we charge them,” Trump said aboard Air Force One.

 Continuing his campaign against perceived enemies in the government, Trump late Friday fired the head of the National Archives, the government body that demanded the return of secret documents he held as a civilian at his Mar-a-Lago estate, leading to an FBI raid on his property and a federal indictment.

  Colleen Shogan said in a social media post that, “No cause or reason was cited,” and that,  “I absolutely did my best every day for the National Archives and the American people.” Shogan was not head of the Archives when the organization sought return of the documents Trump was holding, but being the boss of an organization despised by the President seemed to be enough reason for her dismissal.

  In other developments, the staff and contractors at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were told that the bureau’s Washington headquarters will be “closed this week” and that they must work remotely.

  President Trump plans to  revoke the security clearances of several law enforcement and top Biden officials, Trump said those officials included former Secretary of State Antony Blinken,  New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, both of whom have brought cases against him Trump. 

  Vice President JD Vance attacked the federal judges who have blocked Trump’s executive orders, including the one that attempts to dispose of birthright citizenship, saying, “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” 

   They are when the orders are clearly unconstitutional. Among the orders blocked by judges are the ones ending birthright citizenship; giving associates of Elon Musk access to the Treasury Department payment system; transferring transgender female inmates to male prisons; and placing on leave thousands of employees at the US Agency for International Development. 

PRESSING ISSUES: Stepping up their campaign against the legitimate press, President Trump and co-President Elon Musk called for the firing of two journalists by name,

  Trump demanded the firing of The Washington Post’s  Pulitzer-winning columnist Eugene Robinson after he wrote that Republican senators have failed to stand up against the President’s blunt-axe approach to cutting government expenses. Trump wrote, “So sad to see him trying to justify the waste, fraud, and corruption at USAID with his pathetic Radical Left SPIN.”

  Musk attacked Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Long after she exposed one of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency employees for racist social media posts. “She’s a disgusting and cruel person,” Musk wrote. The employee in question, 25-year-old Marko Elez, had posted that, “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.”

  The New York Times notes that the Trump administration’s war on the press hearkens back to the days of Richard Nixon, who was feeling powerful following his re-election in 1972. Trump is suing both CBS News and The Des Moines Register newspaper claiming deceptive news coverage. Trump amended his CBS lawsuit to demand $20 billion.

  The administration has threatened the licenses of local television stations that carry the major network newscasts and  is looking to cut funding for the “liberal-slanted” Public Broadcasting system. That’s what Nixon also attempted before the Watergate scandal ended his presidency.

  The administration has switched the seats in briefing rooms at the White House and Pentagon, effectively demoting the status of major news organizations and elevating regime-friendly bloggers. Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters that, “We know for a fact that there have been lies that have been pushed by many legacy media outlets in this country about this president, about his family, and we will not accept that.” She did not delineate the “lies.”

  Behind the scenes, major corporations that own journalistic outlets but don’t care about journalism are bending to power for the sake of money. The Walt Disney Company settled with Trump for $25 million and Paramount, which owns CBS, is looking for administration approval of a giant merger with the lesser-known entertainment company, Skydance.

THE OBIT PAGE: Novelist Tom Robbins, whose comic novels had a cultlike following in the 1970s counterculture, died yesterday in La Conner, Washington at age 92.

  Robbins was in a league with fellow writers  Carlos Castaneda, Richard Brautigan and Kurt Vonnegut. His best known work, “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues,” was about a beautiful young women with huge thumbs who hitch hiked. 

BELOW THE FOLD: While flying to New Orleans for the Super Bowl, President Trump issued a proclamation declaring the day “Gulf of America Day.” As Trump signed the order the captain of Air Force One announced over the PA system that passengers could look out the window and see the “Gulf of America” under its new name “for the first time in history.”

  It’s still the Gulf of Mexico on Google Maps.

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