BANKS MAY NOW VERIFY CITIZENSHIP, PANIC CONFIRMED

In the latest episode of “As the Bureaucratic World Turns,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says the proposed bank order demanding citizenship information is still “in process,” which is reassuring in the same way a smoke alarm is reassuring when it keeps saying it’s “thinking about” sounding off. The logic, apparently, is that if banks can ask who you are, maybe they should also ask who your ancestors were and whether your shoelaces have ever attended a foreign policy summit. Bessent argued it’s only reasonable to know who’s in the banking system, citing his UK apartment’s resident checks as if global finance were just concierge service with a side of national security theater. Meanwhile, Republicans are applauding the idea of turning bank accounts into a citizenship pop quiz, with Sen. Tom Cotton declaring access to American banking a privilege for law-abiding people, which is exactly the sort of sentence that sounds stern enough to print on a plaque and vague enough to launch a thousand extra forms.