Good morning! March Madness began yesterday with the "First Four" pre-tournament games. The full 64-team tourney kicks off tomorrow afternoon. Best of luck with your socially obligated, randomly filled-in bracket based on which team has the cooler name.

Don’t get your hopes up on getting it right, though. Nobody has ever filled out a bracket 100% on the money. The odds of randomly guessing every single winner are 1 in 9.2 quintillion. You’re literally 30 billion times likelier to win the lottery.

COURTS

🏛️ Texas immigration ping pong

It’s court season. From now until June, expect a continuous rash of Supreme Court decisions. Some big. Most small. Yesterday, in a 6-3 decision (split along ideological lines), the justices allowed a controversial Texas immigration law to go into effect.

Texas's law (called S.B. 4) makes it a state crime to cross the U.S.-Mexico border into Texas illegally.

• Previous courts have ruled that immigration law is the exclusive domain of the federal government.

• So the feds are suing Texas to overturn this law.

Huge lawsuits like this take a lot of time at every level — a federal district court, an appeals court, and possibly the Supreme Court. This decision doesn’t approve of the law or decide whether it’s constitutional. It merely allows it to be enforced while the lawsuit works its way through the system.

• Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent that the law would “disrupt sensitive foreign relations.”

Just kidding! Late last night, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals again stopped this law from going into effect. This seems odd, but it’s consistent with the Supreme Court’s order.

• We’re basically dealing with two different types of temporary orders.

• The Supreme Court decision was temporary-temporary — only until the circuit court makes the final-temporary call.

• The circuit court froze the law again because they will decide this morning whether to freeze it (or allow it) on a longer-term-temporary basis. While the lawsuit works its way through the system.

Clear as mud?

Elsewhere, a lower federal court ruled in favor of a migrant charged with illegal gun possession. Federal law gun ownership amongst people (like this defendant) in the country illegally. The judge ruled that gun ownership rights under the Constitution’s Second Amendment apply to people in the U.S. illegally.

POLITICS

⚪ Joe Biden and Donald Trump continued their glide paths to their party nominations yesterday by winning another handful of presidential primaries. In Ohio, wealthy car dealer Bernie Moreno (R) won the Republican Senate nomination. He'll take on longtime Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) in November. Brown is perhaps the most endangered Senate Democrat. Since he was first elected in 2006, Ohio has turned strongly against his party.

🔵 The Biden campaign wants to expand the electoral map this year. The Biden-Harris ticket is pushing into Trump-leaning states like Florida, Texas, and North Carolina. Democrats might see this and think “Wow, we must be killing it if we’re campaigning in Texas.” Republicans might think “Biden’s losing Michigan so badly, he’s pinning his hopes on Texas.” Another likely explanation? The Biden camp has money to burn.

🔴 Transition planning is already underway as Donald Trump and his campaign work out possible Cabinet picks. Their list includes North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum as Secretary of Energy. They want either Sen. Mike Lee or Sen. Ted Cruz as Attorney General. Sen. Marco Rubio is a possible Secretary of State. And Trump is considering former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy as White House Chief of Staff. Transition planning like this is commonplace these days for major party nominees so they can hit the ground running if they win.

🔴 Donald Trump might have to sell parts of his real estate empire to pay his $454 million civil judgment in New York. He recently lost a fraud lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. Most of Trump's estimated $3 billion net worth is tied up in real estate rather than easily accessible cash. If he doesn't pay by Monday, the state could begin trying to seize his properties.

🔵 Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) is forcing state agencies to refund various permit fees if the permits aren’t issued on time. The policy’s working, too. The environmental building permit backlog has dropped by 41%. Shapiro also reopened a highway bridge last year less than two weeks after it collapsed. Look for him to make a strong push for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028.

TRIVIA

The Pentagon headquarters of the Department of Defense lies just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. It is the second-largest office building in the world. Two questions:

1. In what year was it built?

2. How many square feet is it?

WORLD

🇭🇰 Hong Kong: Since being returned to China by the British in 1996, Hong Kong has slowly drifted toward a pro-mainland stance. The slide became rapid in 2020 with the passage of a security law. The government has now built on that with Article 23, which expands the definitions of crimes like treason and espionage. Critics say it will violate the civil liberties of innocent people. But the government claims it’s a necessary security measure.

🇭🇹 Haiti: More than a dozen people died in the latest gang violence rampage in Haiti's capital of Port-au-Prince. Neighborhood vigilantes are now teaming up to fight off the gangs and, in many cases, kill suspected gang members. The U.S. says a transitional council to name a new prime minister is close to being finalized. Former Prime Minister Ariel Henry resigned last week.

🇬🇧 United Kingdom: Former President Barack Obama visited Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at the PM’s official residence, 10 Downing Street. He was in town for a meeting of his non-profit Obama Foundation. The two spoke for an hour over tea. UK elections are expected in October, but must legally be held by next January.

BRIEFS

• Ex-Trump White House trade advisor Peter Navarro reported to prison to begin his four-month sentence for contempt of Congress

• U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken promised “ironclad” defense cooperation with the Philippines to help counter Chinese influence

• Trump said the U.S. would "100 percent" stay in NATO if European members pay their "fair share" of defense spending

• YouTube now requires creators to disclose if AI was used to alter or create realistic people, places, or events in uploaded videos

• Japan's central bank, the Bank of Japan, ended years of (literal) negative interest rates and raised rates for the first time since 2007

• Two former generals blamed State Department failures for the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal that killed 13 U.S. service members

• Donald Trump is suing anchor George Stephanopoulos and ABC News over an alleged misstatement of his E. Jean Caroll civil verdict

• Two former “Goon Squad” Mississippi sheriff’s deputies will spend ~20 years in prison for torturing two Black men

• Michigan Rep. Dan Kildee’s nephew was arrested in connection with yesterday’s fatal shooting of Kildee’s brother

QUOTE

SNACKS

🤵 James Bond: A widely reported story originating with (untrusted) British tabloid The Sun claims actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson has been cast as the next James Bond. Studio sources refute the story. Unrelated trivia: Aaron Taylor-Johnson is 33. His wife is 57.

📺 Star Wars: Disney dropped the first teaser trailer for their upcoming Star Wars show, “The Acolyte.” The show is set about 100 years before the events of “Episode I.” It debuts on Disney+ in June.

🐍 Python Hunters: Are you crazy and looking for a new career? Move to Florida and become a state-funded python hunter. In just one day last month, a team removed 500 pounds of invasive Burmese pythons. These snakes are responsible for an up to 99% reduction in some animal populations.

ANSWER

The government began construction on the Pentagon in 1941. It was completed in 1943 right in the middle of World War II. Its total floor area is over 6,600,000 square feet. Until a huge renovation was completed in 2011, the entire building only had one elevator (for the secretary of Defense). Everyone else either took the stairs or walked up humongous ramps between floors. The weird ramp thing came about due to steel shortages during the war — the Pentagon was built mostly out of concrete.