YOU’LL FEEL A LITTLE PINCH: Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that he’s shedding an additional 10,000 employees from Health and Human Services in addition to the 10,000 who have already retired and accepted buyouts at the urging of the Trump administration.

  That will reduce HHS employment from 82,000 to 62,000.  The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control are expected to lose roughly 20 percent of their people.

  “We’re going to do more with less,” Kennedy said, uttering the standard cliché of budget cutters and admitting  that it would be “a painful period for HHS.”

  The CDC, which handles big health issues including HIV/AIDS, tobacco control, maternal health and the distribution of vaccines for children, would return to its “core mission” of infectious disease.

  The reorganization will also cut 3,500 jobs from the FDA, which approves medications and oversees food safety.

CHAT ROOM: Federal Judge James Boasberg in Washington ordered all the agencies whose leaders participated in the online chat about attacking Houthi militants to preserve their messages exchanged on the Signal app from March 11 to March 15. That order includes officials like Michael Waltz, the national security adviser; Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth; Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence; and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

  Boasberg, the same judge who ordered a temporary halt to the deportations of suspected Venezuelan gang members, was careful to say that he was not saying anyone did wrong, just that he wants the record preserved. The judge according to procedure was chosen at random to oversee both cases.

  The case to preserve the records was brought by a group called American Oversight which says destruction of the messages would be a violation of the Federal Records Acts.

OH CANADA!: Coming off President Trump’s announcement of 25 percent tariffs on all foreign made cars, Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney, said his country will move quickly to establish trade with other countries and that the US is “no longer a reliable partner.”

  The tariffs set to go into effect April 3^rd would include US brand cars assembled out of the country. Trump’s tariff announcement sent waves of shock through the world auto industry and set off talk of a global trade war. Shares in the car companies took a dive on worldwide markets.

  Hardly any international relationship has been friendlier than the one between the US and Canada. But Carney said, “Nothing is off the table as we defend our workers and our country.” 

  President Trump posted a late night threat in response, saying, “If the European Union works with Canada in order to do economic harm to the USA, large scale Tariffs, far larger than currently planned, will be placed on them both in order to protect the best friend that each of those two countries has ever had!” 

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE:

— Attorney general Pam Bondi said there will not be a Justice Department investigation into the leak of classified information during that unsecured  conversation on the Signal app. Bondi said the focus should be on the success of the mission, which is not her job.

  “If you want to talk about classified information, talk about what was in Hillary Clinton’s home,” she said. “Talk about the classified documents in Joe Biden’s garage, that Hunter Biden had access to.”

  And while we’re playing “Whattabout?” … Donald Trump.

— President Trump withdrew his nomination for congresswoman Elise Stefanik to be ambassador to the United Nations and asked her to remain in the House of Representative to help preserve the narrow Republican majority. 

  Some reports speculated that the Republicans might have lost a special election to replace Stefanik in her bedrock Trump district.

— Masked and unidentified immigration agents this week detained a Turkish graduate student and Fulbright Scholar from Tufts University on a Boston street for supporting Palestinian rights.  Running for president, Donald Trump promised mass deportations of illegal immigrants and criminals, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement is also targeting individual foreigners in the US who say or do the wrong thing.

  The student, 30-year-old Rumeysa Ozturk, was sent to a detention facility in Louisiana.

  A lawyer in New Britain, Connecticut related that he was driving a Polish client from court when his car was boxed in by several pickup trucks and SUVs carrying Federal agents in ski masks, arresting and accusing his client of overstaying his visa

  Secretary of State March Rubio said yesterday that the visas have been revoked for as many as 300 people legally in the US. 

— The President last night issued an executive order intended to eliminate “corrosive” and “divisive narratives” from the Smithsonian Institution’s museums and restore “monuments, memorials, statues, markers” that have been removed over the past five years.

  Trump’s order denounces “a revisionist movement” that seeks to “undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”

— Trump moved to punish the former law firm of Robert Mueller, who ran the infamous Trump-Russia investigation, furthering his campaign of retribution. He ordered the cancellation of all government contracts with the firm, WilmerHale, and suspension of its employee security clearances. The order also bars WilmerHale employees from federal buildings, bans them from communicating with government employees, and prevents them from being hired at government agencies.

THE SPIN RACK: A massive earthquake in Myanmar has killed at least 20 people so far and caused the collapse of  buildings. Four spans of a major bridge dropped. — Authorities arrested a 36-year-old man in the firebombing attack on vehicles at a Tesla dealership in Las Vegas.

BELOW THE FOLD:  The Chicago White Sox, who lost 121 games last season earning the title of worst team in baseball, beat the Los Angeles Angels  8-1 on opening day putting them in first place … at least for a day.

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