CHINA SYNDROME: Between official meetings, President Trump bristled online at Xi Jinping’s suggestion that the US is a declining nation, saying, “he was referring to the tremendous damage we suffered during the four years of Sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden Administration, and on that score, he was 100% correct.”

  The President is on Air Force One this morning returning. 

  Trump is President, not Joe Biden, and Xi was speaking to Trump when he warned against falling into the “Thucydides Trap” described by the ancient author as when a declining nation makes the mistake of going to war with a rising power. Xi is saying that he wants possession of Taiwan and Trump better not fight him over it.

  Answering questions on Taiwan aboard Air Force One Trump was vague and nearly incoherent, at times confusing it with the Strait of Hormuz.

  Xi is a man who controls a country of $1.4 billion people with no questions allowed. Trump can’t get a peace deal with a middling military power … Iran … he claims to have defeated.

  Trump also announced that Beijing greed to buy 200 Boeing jets, a major deal, but the Chinese did not echo that announcement. 

THE WAR ROOM: The senior Pentagon officer overseeing combat operations in Iran told the Senate on Thursday that the demolition of an Iranian girls’ school, which Iranian officials said killed 175 people, may have been caused by a US bomb, but the incident is still under investigation.  Admiral Brad Cooper said that the school bombing was the only civilian casualty incident he was aware of in the campaign of more than 13,600 strikes.

  It’s worth pointing out that the Pentagon is quick to announce successful precision hits, but mistakes are unseen or under investigation.

  Cooper suggested that he believes the US record of accuracy in the air strikes that began on February 28^th is near perfect. Human rights groups and news organizations differ, in part because they have access to satellite pictures before, during, and after the bombing campaign. Senators were skeptical of Cooper’s. claims and a human rights group that investigates civilian casualties called it “ridiculous.”

  The NY Times reports that it verified damage to 22 schools and 17 health care facilities. The Iranian Red Crescent Society, the country’s primary humanitarian relief organization, said on April 2nd that at least 763 schools and 316 health care facilities had been damaged or destroyed. 

  The Times said it “confirmed damage by using high-resolution satellite imagery and by verifying footage from state media or social media sites, including X, Telegram, Instagram and Facebook.” 

  New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand asked Cooper, “How do you explain the publicly available information that 22 schools have been hit and multiple hospitals?” Cooper answered, “There’s no way we can corroborate that, No indication of that whatsoever.”

THE SUPREMES: The Supreme Court ruled that the widely used abortion pill mifepristone may continue to be prescribed by telehealth and sent by mail even to patients in states where abortion is illegal. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., the two most conservative justices, dissented.

  The State of Louisiana has been fighting to force women prescribed the drug to see a provider in person. That would make it impossible to get in the state.

  The Court’s order means that the decision by the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals will remain blocked while litigation continues in the lower courts. 

INFINITE SCROLL:

— The Justice Department concluded after a year of investigation that the Yale School of Medicine discriminated in its admissions in favor of Black and Hispanic applicants over Whites and Asians.  The DOJ concluded that, “Yale’s use of race resulted in a Black applicant being as much as 29 times higher odds of getting an interview for admission than an equally strong Asian applicant with similar academic credentials.”

— The Department of Homeland Security is moving forward with plans to convert empty warehouses around the country into immigration detention centers … jails. 

  While Homeland Security expands its holding facilities, the infamous “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida is reported to be shutting down. The detention center built for $608 million of Florida’s money has been open only since last July. Conditions there are reported to be dismal.

  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said, “It was always intended to be temporary, because we were only doing it because the federal government didn’t have the resources to hold these people themselves.” 

— Construction of President Trump’s ballroom is rising into the first floor. A court order blocking above-ground construction was stayed on appeal.

— Secretary of State Marco Rubio, at least to the Chinese, has been in Beijing under an assumed name. A fierce China critic when he was a senator, Rubio was banned from the country in 2020. Now as Secretary of State he had to be allowed in, but the government changed the Chinese spelling of “Rubio” for official purposes. 

THE SPIN RACK:  Cuba continues to suffer power blackouts under the US oil blockade. Russia says it is sending another tanker, but it has not arrived. Cuba is on Donald Trump’s agenda for regime change. —The FBI announced a $200,000 reward for the apprehension of Monica Witt, a former intelligence officer for the Air Force accused of spying for Iran. They say the 47-year-old Witt defected to Iran in 2013. 

BELOW THE FOLD: A little beagle named Merla, a federal employee as part of the Beagle Brigade search dog team, back in February alerted to two unremarkable duffel bags on the baggage carousel at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

  Inside the bags customs officers found 100 illegally imported pork sandwiches from Thailand. Merla was not given one as a reward.

  In that one 10-hour shift Merla discovered beef sausages from Kenya; pork possibly from Serbia; pork sausage and hamburgers from Japan; plant roots from Tanzania; beef sandwiches possibly from Lebanon; and millet from India.

  Good dog, good dog.