This is not new. But I at least hadn’t heard any of these dots connected. I wasn’t even aware of the dots. A friend mentioned to me over the weekend that he’d heard about Wall Streeters buying up the rights to tariff refunds from big corporate importers. So the idea is that a Wall Street firm goes to an importer and says, you’ve now paid $10 million in tariffs. I’ll pay you $2 million right now for the right to collect the refund if courts ever end up deciding the tariffs were illegal. My friend had also heard that one of the most aggressive buyers was Cantor Fitzgerald, the firm until recently headed by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and now run by Lutnick’s sons. Twenty-something Brandon Lutnick, pictured above on the left in a 2016 photo, is the current chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald. (He must be hella talented!)

GOP Rep. Jeff Hurd of Colorado was apparently just a no-show at his own town hall on Wednesday. Technically it wasn’t a town hall but rather a public meeting in which Hurd would meet with members of the Montezuma County Commission. Point being, it wasn’t one of these things where Democrats put on a town hall because the member won’t call one. It was one he was involved in organizing. Anyway, apparently Hurd found out shortly before arriving that more than a hundred people had shown up because just after the event began, Montezuma County Commission Chair Jim Candeleria announced that Hurd wouldn’t be able to make it because an aide he was traveling with had a “medical emergency”.

No word on how the dog is doing after it ate Hurd’s homework.