Things Musk (and Trump) Did... 04-11-25 | Blog#42
Captain Chaos and his merry band of contrarian messengers
Yesterday's post
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Yesterday’s news worth repeating
Trade shake-up: Bessent leads on trade as Lutnick plays ‘bad cop’ — and Navarro is sidelined
The Treasury secretary has emerged as a soothing presence and a voice of reason amid this week’s tariff fracas.
President Donald Trump this week upended not just his tariff strategy but his trade team
Former hedge fund manager and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — the White House’s main conduit to beleaguered financial markets — is now at the helm, with populist Peter Navarro relegated to the sidelines and Wall Street punching bag Howard Lutnick recast into the role of “bad cop,” according to three people close to the White House, granted anonymity to speak frankly about internal dynamics.
The diminished roles of Lutnick, the Commerce secretary who for weeks had been the administration’s point person for foreign leaders on tariffs, and Navarro, Trump’s trade adviser, reflect this week’s turmoil over Trump’s trade policy and a shift toward the “fair trade” policies Bessent has been advocating. One of the people, who is close to both Trump and Navarro, said the trade hawk still has the ear of the president, adding that Trump respects Navarro’s aggressive populism, but that “doesn’t mean he’s at the center of it.” A second person said the White House believes it can leverage Lutnick’s difficult personality in negotiations.
Two of the people added that Elon Musk, who has been vocally advocating against the president’s tariff regime, has not been a factor in the discussions or that his name had not been mentioned to them.
Continue reading at Politico
DOGE fills power vacuum at IRS
LATEST: ELON MUSK is still kicking … for now. During today’s Cabinet meeting at the White House, President DONALD TRUMP was joined by Musk and all but four members of his Cabinet, where many took the opportunity to kiss the ring. Trump had some head-scratching comments about Musk: “I don’t need Elon for anything other than I happen to like him,” the president said. “This guy did a fantastic job.” (Note the use of “did.”)
When asked for an update on DOGE’s progress, Musk said he is expecting “savings in fiscal year 2026 from reduction of waste and fraud by $150 billion.” Musk has previously pledged that DOGE would save between $1 trillion and $2 trillion.
And mark your calendars, folks. Next week may be huge, according to Musk. “We’re working hard to get the Trump gold card operational hopefully in the next week or so,” he said, referring to the $5 million card that would allow legal status for wealthy foreigners. “That’ll be really exciting,” the president responded.
WHO COMETH FOR THE TAX MAN: The Internal Revenue Service is undergoing a seismic transformation as DOGE accelerates its consolidation of power within the agency following the resignations of four top officials, including Acting Commissioner MELANIE KRAUSE, in protest of a controversial data-sharing agreement with the Department of Homeland Security.
Krause, the third commissioner to exit the agency in nearly three months, will leave her role as soon as next month. Chief Privacy Officer KATHLEEN WALTERS, Chief Financial Officer TERESA HUNTER and Chief Risk Officer MIKE WETKLOW are also on their way out.
The departures leave a gaping leadership vacuum at the nation’s tax collector, where DOGE is quickly moving in to push forward on its digital transformation agenda and aggressive personnel cuts, according to a person familiar with DOGE who, like others in this report, was granted anonymity to discuss internal dynamics.
A chief focus for DOGE leaders has been the IRS’ outdated technology, which has frustrated multiple presidential administrations and a bipartisan group of lawmakers. But the extent of the changes and, particularly, the push for data-sharing throughout the government, has raised alarm bells at an IRS that has long prioritized guarding taxpayer confidentiality, according to one former and two current IRS employees.
“As we focus on IT modernization and re-organize the agency to better serve the taxpayer, we are also in the midst of breaking down data silos that for too long have stood in the way of identifying waste, fraud, and abuse and bringing criminals to justice,” a Treasury spokesperson said in a statement to POLITICO.
At the center of this upheaval are 25-year-old GAVIN KLIGER, a former startup engineer, and SAM CORCOS, DOGE lead at the Treasury Department and CEO of health-tech company Levels. As a special adviser to Treasury Secretary SCOTT BESSENT, Corcos also has a direct line to the head of the department, which houses the IRS.
Since their arrival at the IRS in February, Kliger has pushed for sweeping access to internal systems, court documents show, and the pair has focused on cutting contracts and licenses and drilling in on why repeated attempts to modernize the IRS’ IT systems since the 1990s have failed or stalled.
Continue reading at Politico West Wing Playbook newsletter
The US brain drain has begun
The White House appears hell-bent on destroying not just economic and political paradigms, but a higher education system that really did make America great.
John Kampfner is a British author, broadcaster and commentator. His latest book “In Search of Berlin” is published by Atlantic. He is a regular POLITICO columnist.
Every empire, real or imagined, builds monuments to progress.
The Nazi regime was developing a colossal science center as part of Hitler’s great Germania project for Berlin, only for war to intervene. It was buried in rubble under an artificial hill, where the victorious Allies eventually built a listening post instead.
In 2010, the Skolkovo Foundation built a glistening tech hub in the west of Moscow, as the Kremlin’s answer to Silicon Valley. Much of it now lies empty, with the war in Ukraine and economic sanctions putting paid to that dream.
Political power has been projected through science since the time of the ancients. But when scholars’ ability to work freely is threatened, they depart — as happened under Nazi rule, during the Soviet period and, in recent years, as President Vladimir Putin has consolidated his stranglehold over the Russian Federation.
Over the 20th and early 21st century, most of these scholars fled to the U.S. — a land that encouraged research without fear or favor. No matter its other failings, people from all over the world flocked there to take up opportunities at unrivaled universities. But now, thanks to President Donald Trump and his rapid-fire assault on the country’s higher education institutions, a reverse brain drain has begun.
And much of it is headed for the continent he seemingly abhors — Europe.
These scholars aren’t leaving just out of choice. As funding is summarily removed, home-grown scholars and researchers are finding themselves out of jobs, and entire departments are closing. Meanwhile, foreign academics, many who have made the U.S. their home, are being kicked out or refused entry, often on spurious grounds, or are in fear it will happen to them.
Continue reading at Politico Europe
Yellen: Trump ‘has taken a wrecking ball’ to economy with trade war
Former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who served under former President Biden, said President Trump “has taken a wrecking ball” to the economy.
“President Trump inherited an economy where growth was very strong, the labor market was functioning very well, with low unemployment, an outstanding record of job creation,” Yellen said on CNN International’s “One World,” in a clip posted to the social platform X Thursday.
“So, we had a very well-functioning economy and President Trump has taken a wrecking ball to it,” Yellen added later.
Much of Yellen’s criticism centered on Trump’s tariffs, which caused stock markets to slide last week.
Continue reading at The Hill
The return of Erik Prince: How a notorious military contractor maneuvered his way back inside Trump’s orbit
In late January, Erik Prince, a long-time ally of President Donald Trump and a notorious private security contractor, gathered a meeting of executives in Washington, DC, to discuss ways their own private security firms might help the new administration deport millions of undocumented migrants.
One proposal in particular caught Prince’s attention: the idea of sending migrants with criminal records for detention in another country as they awaited transit to their countries of origin.
In the months leading up to Trump’s victory in November, Prince had struck up a working relationship with El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, which not everyone at the meeting knew. Trump officials had also been having separate conversations with Bukele about accepting undocumented migrants from the US.
Prince eventually excused himself from the group, telling those gathered that he planned to pitch the detention idea directly to Bukele.
The next week, Bukele stood beside Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the presidential residence in San Salvador for a major announcement:
Not only would El Salvador accept and jail potentially hundreds of thousands of violent undocumented immigrants currently in the US, it would also take in “dangerous American criminals in custody in our country, including those of US citizenship and legal residents.”
Continue reading at CNN.com
A growing wave of House members is grasping for higher office
Representatives who are confirmed or potentially seeking other offices in 2026
As of April 10, 2025
The cohort of House members eyeing higher offices keeps expanding, with at least three dozen lawmakers now actively running or considering bids for Senate and governor.
Why it matters: The dynamic could complicate things for both Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) as they try to maximize attendance to thwart each others' plans.
In Jeffries' case, he's already dealing with two vacancies caused by deaths and another member, Rep. Donald Norcross (D-N.J.), in intensive care.
But Jeffries told Axios he is not worried, saying House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) "has done a tremendous job; we've had complete attendance, absent a handful of medical emergencies."
What we're hearing: Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) signaled he could run for Senate or governor, telling Axios he is "running for reelection to my seat as far as I know, but I'll look at statewide offices. I'm not taking anything off the table."
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) is "99.9%" of the way to a gubernatorial run, a source familiar with her thinking told Axios.
Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) isn't ruling out a run for governor or Senate, saying in a statement to Axios he will "continue my service to the people of Georgia at whatever level they choose in the future."
The intrigue: Some House members, asked about their reported ambitions in interviews with Axios, demurred.
Continue reading at Axios
Note from Rima: This includes Democrats and Republicans leaving Congress
Today's news
Democratic News Corner
Democrats see an opening on the economy after Trump’s trade war wreaks havoc on global markets
Party strategists say a relatable message on the economy could be the way out of the wilderness for Democrats.
Democrats are targeting Donald Trump’s weakened standing on the economy — even after the president paused his far-reaching reciprocal tariff policy that reverberated across global markets.
In interviews with more than a dozen Democratic lawmakers, congressional staffers and media strategists, many in the party see a prime opportunity to attack Trump on a key campaign promise they argue he’s failing to deliver — a message likely to be featured prominently in political ads if the economy continues to falter. Some candidates are already hitting tariffs in campaign launch ads, while the party is planning to capitalize on anger over the economy, among other issues, in upcoming town halls.
It’s an opportunity for Democrats on the economy, a major point of strength for Trump in his presidential campaign last year, even as they conceded the economic crisis had eased somewhat after the president paused some — but not all — tariffs on most countries. On Thursday afternoon, Trump clarified that the combined tariffs on Chinese goods is now at 145 percent. Most other nations will be subject to the 10 percent baseline tariff the administration levied last week. The markets reacted accordingly, with stocks plummeting at the end of the day.
Now, Democrats are banking on rising panic in worldwide markets and fears of a recession to knock Republicans down.
“We heard for five freaking months going into the last election, people beating up Biden and Harris about inflation, and the price of fucking eggs,” said longtime Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher, who worked on both of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns. “So why the hell would we make [ads] about tariffs, as opposed to making it about the economy?”
He said Trump is presenting one of the most favorable gateways to Democrats in recent history, imploring Democrats not to squander the week of earned media about a near-global market implosion.
“There is an opportunity here, of historical proportions, given the advantage on the economy writ large that Republicans have had for decades,” he added. “You see Trump underwater on handling the economy and fighting inflation and bringing down costs – that is a major opening and a historic way for Democrats to take away what has been a major positive for Republicans.”
Continue reading at Politico
Bennet launches campaign for Colorado governor
His seat in the Senate is not up until 2028.
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) officially launched his bid for Colorado governor on Friday, making him the front-runner to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Jared Polis in the blue state.
Bennet, who has represented the state in the Senate since 2009, touted his work at the federal level to expand the Child Tax Credit, cut costs of prescription drugs and protect large swaths of Colorado’s public lands in his campaign announcement.
The longtime senator had grown increasingly frustrated with Washington politics, telling POLITICO late last month that the “answer to that over the next decade is as likely to come from the states as it is from Washington.”
He echoed that sentiment in his campaign launch video, in which he bashed President Donald Trump for “taking a wrecking ball to our economy and our democracy.”
“Our best solutions to these challenges will not come from the broken politics practiced in Washington,” Bennet said, but instead from the state level.
Continue reading at Politico
Democrats go all in on unproven insider trading allegations as they target Trump’s tariffs
Chuck Schumer is the latest top party leader to raise concerns following Wednesday’s sudden U-turn.
Congressional Democrats are raising increasingly pointed concerns about potential financial malfeasance by President Donald Trump and his allies surrounding his dramatic recent tariff moves, despite a lack of evidence of wrongdoing.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Friday joined the growing number of Democrats formally calling for investigations zeroing in on the wild swings in the stock market amid Trump’s escalating trade war. It’s one of the central messages the party has coalesced around in the 48 hours since Trump partially reversed his implementation of sweeping trade barriers.
Trump on Wednesday morning posted to Truth Social that it was a “GREAT TIME TO BUY” despite the chaos within the financial markets. Hours later, Trump announced he was pausing the most sweeping global tariffs for 90 days, causing a temporary but dramatic stock market rally.
Some Democrats quickly questioned whether there was financial gain to be had amid the market whiplash, though no evidence has emerged of insider trading or other wrongdoing, and top party leaders have now followed suit.
In the latest salvo, Schumer joined Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Schumer in requesting SEC Chair Paul Atkins to launch an investigation into where Trump or those around him “engaged in insider trading, market manipulation, or other securities laws violations.”
“It is unconscionable that as American families are concerned about their financial security during this economic crisis entirely manufactured by the President, insiders may have actively profited from the market volatility and potentially perpetrated financial fraud on the American public,” the senators said in the letter.
Continue reading at Politico
National Security
Pentagon fires Greenland base commander after she criticized JD Vance visit
Actions to “subvert President Trump’s agenda will not be tolerated,” U.S. military warns.
The U.S. military announced Thursday it had removed Col. Susannah Meyers, commander of its Pituffik base in Greenland, stating it would not tolerate any pushback against President Donald Trump’s agenda.
Meyers sent an email to base personnel on March 31 distancing herself from U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s visit three days prior, according to the independent news organization Military.com.
In her message, Meyers said she had spent the weekend reflecting on how Vance’s remarks might have affected those stationed at the base, amid a pressure campaign from the White House directed toward acquiring the massive Arctic island from Denmark.
"I do not presume to understand current politics, but what I do know is the concerns of the U.S. administration discussed by Vice President Vance on Friday are not reflective of Pituffik Space Base," Meyers wrote in the email.
"I commit that, for as long as I am lucky enough to lead this base, all of our flags will fly proudly -- together," the message added.
Late Thursday in the U.S., the Pentagon's chief spokesperson Sean Parnell announced that Meyers had been removed from her post, explaining that “actions to undermine the chain of command or to subvert President Trump’s agenda will not be tolerated.”
Continue reading at Politico Europe
Hegseth announces $5.1B in Defense Department spending cuts
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a memorandum Thursday outlining $5.1 billion in cuts to Department of Defense spending through terminated contracts.
The Pentagon leader said the contracts amounted to “nonessential spending” on third-party consultants for services “more efficiently” performed by the department’s workforce using existing resources.
“We need this money to spend on better health care for our warfighters and their families, instead of $500 an hour business process consultant,” he said in a statement announcing the cuts. “That’s a lot of consulting.”
Hegseth said a Defense Health Agency contract for consulting services from Accenture, Deloitte, Booz Allen and other firms was discontinued alongside an Air Force contract with Accenture to resell third-party enterprise cloud IT services.
A Navy contract for business process consulting services was also eliminated as was a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s contract for IT helpdesk services was canceled, according to Hegseth.
Continue reading at The Hill
Scoop: Gabbard installs Iran dove to prepare Trump's intel briefing
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has quietly installed William Ruger, a former Charles Koch Institute vice president and skeptic of military action against Iran, into a key position in her department, according to congressional officials.
Why it matters: Ruger's appointment to one of the most important jobs in the intelligence community had led to private concern and public praise among congressional Republicans, reflecting the deep divides in the party on key policy questions, from Iran to Ukraine to China.
"Will is a solid choice by DNI Gabbard," Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told Axios in a statement. "He has honorably served our country and brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table."
"This is the kind of principled leadership we need more of in Washington," he said.
"Donald Trump said no Koch people should serve and at some point he's going to realize that his administration has become littered with them," said a GOP congressional official.
A Gabbard spokesperson declined to comment.
Zoom out: Senate Republicans have outwardly accepted Trump's defense and intelligence nominees, and voted to confirm them.
Continue reading at Axios
U.S. moves Patriot defenses to Middle East with dozens of C-17 flights
The U.S. military shifted a Patriot battalion from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East, requiring at least 73 flights, according to one commander.
Why it matters: The air defenses are a high-profile resource, capable of intercepting missiles and aircraft. They arrive at a volatile moment.
Further, the number of C-17 flights conducted underscores just how stressful materiel moves can be. The Boeing-made aircraft can transport hefty equipment, like tanks.
Context: Indo-Pacific Command boss Adm. Samuel Paparo disclosed the details in a congressional hearing Thursday. He was accompanied by Gen. Xavier Brunson, the commander of U.S. Forces Korea.
Paparo told senators U.S. "lift requirements must be paid attention to." Sustainment, he added, "won World War II."
What they're saying: "The airlift is essential to protect key U.S. bases and partners in the Middle East, which otherwise are much more vulnerable than Israel to Iran's shorter-range missiles," Jonathan Ruhe, director of foreign policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, told Axios.
"In this way, it also bolsters U.S. leverage in upcoming talks with Tehran."
Zoom out: The move comes amid a buildup across U.S. Central Command.
Continue reading at Axios
CNN investigates the rise of extremism in the United States
Economics
Navarro sidesteps question on tariff pause decision, denies insider trading allegations
White House senior trade adviser Peter Navarro sidestepped a question about whether or not he was present for President Trump’s decision to enact a 90-day pause on country-specific tariffs during a heated Thursday interview with CNN’s Kasie Hunt.
“In a straightforward way, were you in the room with the president when he made this decision?” Hunt asked on CNN’s “The Arena”
“So — so that’s the wrong question to ask,” Navarro responded. “Was I part of the process?”
“Were — were you in the room?” Hunt responded, talking over Navarro.
“Hang on,” Navarro said.
“Were you in the room?” Hunt pressed again.
“It’s … you don’t understand how this works,” Navarro responded. “You don’t have to be in the room to …”
“Well, with President Trump you actually often do,” Hunt cut in.
Navarro responded that he does not ever “talk about — and I went to prison for this. I never talk about what happens in there,” adding, “What happens in the Oval stays …” before being drowned out by Hunt.
Continue reading at The Hill
The question about insider trading comes up in the clip below
EU to Trump on tariffs: We’ll retaliate when we’re ready, not when you tweet
Brussels suspended its countermeasures against the U.S. president’s steel and aluminum tariffs before they even took effect. Now the two sides have 90 days to do a deal.
BRUSSELS — The European Union doesn’t really do knee-jerk reactions. And when it comes to trade wars, it prepares its case, builds a consensus among its members — and saves its most painful retaliation until last.
Donald Trump’s unprecedented tariff onslaught is no exception.
Just after the bloc locked in its response on Wednesday to Trump’s month-old steel and aluminum tariffs, the U.S. president announced a 90-day truce on the “reciprocal” tariffs he imposed on “Liberation Day” a week earlier.
Trump had hit the 27-nation bloc with a 20 percent duty on all goods. Under pressure as financial markets melted down, he halved the levy to 10 percent — the baseline he has set in his bid to bring investment and industrial jobs lost to globalization back home.
So it happened that, on Thursday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen suspended EU tariffs on €20.9 billion in U.S. exports before they even took effect. It was the retaliation that never happened. At least not yet.
“We want to give negotiations a chance,” von der Leyen said in a social media post.
That was followed by a kicker: “If negotiations are not satisfactory, our countermeasures will kick in. Preparatory work on further countermeasures continues. As I have said before, all options remain on the table.”
Continue reading at Politico Europe
‘90 days is going to be too short’: Bessent faces perilous path on trade talks
There’s little precedent for completing such a large volume of sweeping, wide-ranging and accelerated trade negotiations.
The former hedge fund manager will take a lead role in negotiating agreements with upwards of 75 governments to stave off economy-roiling tariffs, most of which are on pause for three months. His boss, President Donald Trump, will be breathing down his neck. His Wall Street allies and tariff-skeptical Republican lawmakers will be pinning their hopes on him to bring certainty to financial markets.
Trump said Thursday he could “make every deal in one day,” but there’s little precedent for completing such sweeping, wide-ranging and accelerated trade negotiations. Past trade deals have taken years to complete.
The president’s desire to comprehensively reconfigure its trading relationship with individual countries will be a daunting task. If the U.S. starts demanding that countries make major changes beyond lowering tariffs, such as rolling back food standards to open agricultural markets or eliminating their value added taxes, those conversations could get challenging quickly.
“If he goes down that road then 90 days is going to be too short and they’re going to have these negotiations not ending happily,” said William Reinsch, a former senior U.S. trade official and senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Bessent has offered few public clues about how the administration will approach the task, other than to say he’s “putting a process in place” to work with the Commerce Department and U.S. Trade Representative. He’s said that countries that reached out to the Trump administration quickly, like Japan, will be prioritized. And he said earlier this week that the U.S. can “probably reach a deal with our allies” and then “approach China as a group.” Other White House officials, such as National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, said the administration has gotten “offers on the table” from more than 15 countries.
Continue reading at Politico
Trump tariffs: What just happened ― and what’s Europe’s gameplan?
It was a week when penguins, bonds, the new German coalition, Louisiana soybeans, fossil fuels, the EU’s Digital Markets Act, France’s creaking politics and American bourbon all became one news story. POLITICO explains what got us all yippy.
BRUSSELS ― Crashing markets, tariffs on penguins, recession forecasts and the backflip to end all backflips.
After a breathlessly chaotic week, U.S. President Donald Trump called a temporary truce in his global trade war. We hope you kept up.
While much of the world (apart from tariff-battered China, of course) breathed a sigh of relief after Trump hit pause on his most severe economy-shaking levies, it is watching keenly to see if the president remains true to his word.
So if you didn't keep up, here’s how Trump’s tariff U-turn played out, what it meant, why it happened ― and what, crucially, will happen next. (PS: That's anyone's guess, quite frankly.)
So what was that all about?
In an abrupt about-face Wednesday, Trump announced a temporary cease-fire in his trade war, with so-called reciprocal tariffs on all countries except China paused for 90 days.
The U-turn came after widespread market chaos and diplomatic protests from Berlin to Beijing over his plans to impose punishing worldwide tariffs, ranging from 10 percent to as high as 50 percent.
Though he did not explicitly admit that the financial fallout had prompted him to reverse course, Trump acknowledged Wednesday that the markets had looked "pretty glum” and that people were “getting a little bit yippy.”
While he has backed off on most of his planned tariffs for the time being, Trump said in a post on Truth Social that he would retain 10 percent baseline tariffs on countries across the board — which is still higher than almost any tariff regime ever.
Continue reading at Politico Europe
Trump threatens to hit Mexico with more tariffs in water dispute
President Trump threatened Mexico with more tariffs and sanctions on Thursday over a water dispute at the southern border.
What he's saying: "Mexico OWES Texas 1.3 million acre-feet of water under the 1944 Water Treaty, but Mexico is unfortunately violating their Treaty obligation," Trump said in a Truth Social post, referring to a 1944 agreement that requires Mexico to deliver to U.S. 1.75 million acre-feet of water over a five-year cycle.
"This is very unfair, and it is hurting South Texas Farmers very badly. Last year, the only Sugar Mill in Texas CLOSED, because Mexico has been stealing the water from Texas Farmers," Trump said..
"I will make sure Mexico doesn't violate our Treaties, and doesn't hurt our Texas Farmers. ... we will keep escalating consequences, including TARIFFS and, maybe even SANCTIONS, until Mexico honors the Treaty, and GIVES TEXAS THE WATER THEY ARE OWED!" he added.
Context: By the end of last year, Mexico had only delivered 488,634 AF of water since Oct. 2020, per U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission data.
Continue reading at Axios
Xi says China ‘not afraid’ as Beijing raises tariffs on US goods to 125% in latest escalation of trade war
Hong Kong (CNN) — Chinese leader Xi Jinping has said his nation is “not afraid,” in his first public comments on the escalating trade war with the United States, as Beijing raised tariffs on US goods to 125%.
The tariff hike is the latest in a tit-for-tat battle between the world’s two largest economies, after Trump raised tariffs on China to 145%. However, China has indicated it does not intend to go higher than 125%, saying it would be meaningless to engage in further escalation.
“The successive imposition of excessively high tariffs on China by the US has become nothing more than a numbers game, with no real economic significance,” a spokesperson for China’s Commerce Ministry said in a statement Friday.
“It merely further exposes the US practice of weaponizing tariffs as a tool of bullying and coercion, turning itself into a joke,” the spokesperson added.
The trade war between the world’s two economic superpowers has tanked international markets and fueled fears of a global recession. As other countries scrambled to negotiate with Trump, China has stood firm against what it calls “unilateral bullying” by the US.
Speaking to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in Beijing on Friday before the announcement of the new levies, Xi said: “There are no winners in a trade war, and going against the world will only lead to self-isolation.”
“For over 70 years, China’s development has relied on self-reliance and hard work — never on handouts from others, and it is not afraid of any unjust suppression,” Xi was quoted as saying by state broadcaster CCTV.
The Chinese leader had remained publicly silent on the tariff war until now, but struck a defiant note in his first remarks – doubling down on messages of strength and resilience already broadcast by Chinese officials and state media.
“Regardless of how the external environment changes, China will remain confident, stay focused, and concentrate on managing its own affairs well,” Xi said according to CCTV.
On Wednesday, Trump moved to give the rest of the world, with the exception of China, a 90-day pause on his tariffs. Beijing appeared to take some credit for that decision on Friday.
“We have noticed that, under pressure from China and other parties, the US has temporarily postponed the imposition of high reciprocal tariffs on certain trading partners. This is merely a symbolic and minor step, but it does not change the fundamental nature of the US’s use of trade coercion to pursue its own interests,” the Commerce Ministry spokesperson said.
Continue reading at CNN.com
China ramps up US tariffs to 125 percent in new salvo against Trump
The White House risks becoming a historical “joke,” Beijing warns.
China on Friday escalated tariffs on imports from the United States to 125 percent, in response to U.S. President Donald Trump's punishing regime against Chinese goods.
Beijing's finance ministry said that the U.S. was threatening to become a laughing stock as it jacked up tariffs on Chinese goods higher and higher to 145 percent earlier this week.
“Even if the US continues to impose higher tariffs, it will no longer make economic sense and will become a joke in the history of world economy,” the finance ministry said.
Trump had initially announced a tariff hike to 125 percent, but the White House later corrected it to 145 percent, factoring in an existing 20 percent levy already imposed in response to what it alleges is Beijing’s complicity in the flow of fentanyl to the U.S.
“At the current tariff level, there is no market acceptance for U.S. goods exported to China,” Beijing's economic mandarins added. “If the U.S. continues to play the tariff numbers game, China will ignore it. However, if the U.S. insists on continuing to substantially infringe on China’s interests, China will resolutely counterattack and fight to the end.”
Trump accused China of "ripping off" the United States in a lengthy Truth Social post on Wednesday, declaring that those days are over.
Continue reading at Politico Europe
Xi wants EU-China tag team to resist Trump’s trade onslaught
Chinese leader met Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez, who also promoted closer ties with Beijing.
Chinese ruler Xi Jinping proposed the EU and Beijing work together to resist Donald Trump as the U.S. president wages a global trade war.
"China and the EU must fulfill their international responsibilities, jointly safeguard the trend of economic globalization and a fair international trade environment, and jointly resist unilateral and intimidating practices," Xi said during a meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez in the Chinese capital.
Washington and Beijing have been involved in an escalating tit-for-tat tariff spat, which saw China on Friday morning raise levies on American imports to 125 percent, in response to ever-heightening U.S. tariffs.
While Trump has issued a pause on his most severe tariff regime for other countries around the world ― including the EU ― China is looking for partners to help it counter immense trade pressure coming from the White House.
Sánchez echoed Xi's call for closer ties between the EU and the Asian superpower at a moment when the world is facing "extraordinary challenges."
"The complex global landscape makes it necessary for us to bet on more dialogue, cooperation, and a strengthening of our relations with other countries and regional blocs," Sánchez said, in a veiled reference to Trump's global trade war.
Continue reading at Politico
Xi's counterpunch: How China will ensure the trade war hurts the U.S.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has no shortage of pressure points to ensure Americans feel the pain from President Trump's superpower trade war.
The big picture: China on Friday increased its tariffs to an eye-watering 125% in response to Trump's 145% levies. And ever since trade war 1.0, Beijing has also been developing a wider array of tools that it's now putting to use.
Here are seven ways China can punch back as Trump continues to dial up the pressure.
1. Hit consumers in the wallet
Xi doesn't even need to lift a finger to ensure Americans are hurt by the trade war — Trump's own tariffs may take care of that.
China's factories produce the vast majority of the toys, cell phones and many other products Americans buy. From fast fashion to gaming consoles, things will get more expensive.
Between the lines: Trump has claimed the tariffs will produce a U.S. manufacturing boom that eliminates the reliance on made-in-China products. Even if that's plausible, consumers are likely in for years of pain in the meantime.
However, Trump has also suggested he's open to negotiations with Xi, which could lead to a trade truce much sooner.
Xi certainly has incentives to seek a deal, given the havoc the tariffs will wreak on China's already vulnerable economy. But a long-term trade war could arguably pile more political pressure on Trump than on him.
2. Punish the farmers (and more)
Any American whose livelihood depends on selling into the Chinese market is likely panicking right now — whether the product in question is oil, airplanes or soybeans (three of the top U.S. exports).
Flashback: Trump had to bail out American farmers to the tune of $28 billion during trade war 1.0, when tariff levels were far lower.
Now, the world's largest market for soybeans is already turning away from the U.S. and toward Brazil.
What to watch: Much the same can be expected for other products. While China exports more to the U.S. than vice-versa, China is still the #3 export market for U.S. products.
Continue reading at Axios
Why the mighty bond market spooked Trump
Chart: Yield on U.S. 30-year Treasury bond
A warning from the world's largest and most powerful financial market did what few others could: force President Trump to pivot on a key aspect of his trade agenda.
Why it matters: The U.S. Treasury market is the heart of the global financial system. The rapid selloff fueled by Trump's tariffs was seen as a ticking economic time bomb that risked bringing the world economy to a screeching halt.
Between the lines: The U.S. government funds its $36 trillion national debt with bonds, which it sells to investors around the world — individuals, pension funds, other nations, you name it.
The price they are willing to pay determines the interest rate on government debt, which in turn ripples through to all other forms of borrowing, like home mortgages or corporate lending.
Treasury securities are the bedrock of financial transactions around the globe — a store of value for German banks, Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, and countless other key roles in the underpinnings of the global financial system.
Threat level: There is a reason why the high-flying stock market gets all the headlines. The bond market is boring and unsexy when it is working well.
That was not the case this week. The moves in the Treasury market suggested global investors were becoming less confident in U.S. government bonds, which in turn pushed up borrowing costs across the board.
The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond skyrocketed by as much as 0.6 percentage points since the start of the week. Sound small? It's a magnitude not seen since the pandemic, according to TD Securities.
The big picture: The extraordinary swings suggest a profound shift in financial market dynamics that could hold Trump back in the years ahead, a hurdle he did not face during his first term.
Continue reading at Axios
To fight a trade war, it's nice to have friends
To fight a trade war against China, most foreign policy experts would say that you need allies.
Why it matters: Over the past few months, the White House antagonized pretty much all its friends on the global stage, making it that much harder to carry out what is now a full-blown tariff battle with China.
The big picture: China is a formidable economic force, the second-largest economy in the world, with significant resources like a vast labor supply, manufacturing heft, a growing electric vehicle industry and expanding military might.
"On critical metrics, China has already outmatched the United States," write the authors of a sobering new piece in Foreign Affairs.
Zoom in: The best shot the U.S. has at holding its economic edge is in forging partnerships, they write: "China possesses scale, and the United States does not — at least not by itself."
"Because its only viable path lies in coalition with others, Washington would be particularly unwise to go it alone in a complex global competition."
The intrigue: The authors, Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi, both worked on foreign affairs in the Biden administration, wrote the piece before "Liberation Day."
Continue reading at Axios
When the world sells America
When the rest of the world no longer finds U.S. assets attractive, it starts selling, not over a matter of days but over years.
Why it matters: That's why the falls we've seen in the stock and bond markets, as well as the dollar, could be the start of a long-term trend.
The big picture: What we're seeing in 2025 is setting itself up to be the Reagan revolution in reverse, says David Rolley, a portfolio manager at Loomis Sayles.
President Reagan stimulated the economy with tax cuts, which attracted foreign investors who were broadly underweight the U.S. at the time.
President Trump, by contrast, announced a massive tax hike (tariffs are taxes paid by U.S. importers), while foreign investors are now overweight in U.S. assets in the wake of a decades-long bull market in both bonds and stocks.
Follow the money: In 2024, foreigners owned 17.8% of the shares traded on U.S. stock markets, per the Federal Reserve, an investment of $16.5 trillion.
Compare that to 1980, when foreign shareholdings came to just $75 billion, or a mere 5% of the total market. Overall, foreign holdings of U.S. financial assets rose from 7.9% of the total in 1980 to 14.9% in 2024.
Between the lines: Historically, America's greatest export has been its debt.
U.S. corporations, alongside the U.S. Treasury, issue trillions of dollars of debt every year, much of which is snapped up by foreign investors at very attractive rates to the borrowers.
Continue reading at Axios
EU trade boss heads to Washington amid tariff pause
European Commission reiterates zero-for-zero tariff offer following Trump’s stunning U-turn on import duties.
BRUSSELS ― EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič will travel to Washington on Monday to meet his U.S. counterparts after the bloc promised to suspend its metals retaliation tariffs.
The European Commission's spokesperson for trade Olof Gill confirmed the visit at the daily press briefing in Brussels on Friday.
“Our offer stands to reduce tariffs zero-for-zero with our American friends,” Gill added, referring to the zero-for-zero tariff offer that Commission President Ursula von der Leyen repeated this week.
Šefčovič's visit comes after U.S. President Donald Trump made a stunning U-turn and paused parts of his so-called Liberation Day tariffs and raised tariffs on China to a total of 145 percent. The EU said it would pause its own retaliation by 90 days as well.
The U.S. still maintains a 10 percent overall tariff on global imports, plus 25 percent tariffs on steel, aluminum and cars.
Continue reading at Politico Europe
Stock market volatility brings on more volatility
Chart: Daily S&P 500 return
Where it stands: Investors simply can't work out what stocks are worth in a world dominated by President Trump's trade war. A quick recap here:
Thursday, April 3: Stocks reacted to the "Liberation Day" announcement by opening down 3.14%. At their lows for the day losses reached 4.9%, a big move, but understandable given the magnitude of the news.
Friday, April 4: Stocks dropped another 6%, over and above their losses the previous day.
Monday, April 7: Stocks continued to fall in early trade but then surged 8.5% on a curiously prescient yet apparently false headline about National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett. Then they fell back down.
Tuesday, April 8: With nothing solid to anchor to, stocks dropped 6.8% from the intraday high to the intraday low.
Wednesday, April 9: Stocks close up 9.5% in the wake of Trump pausing most reciprocal tariffs and narrowing his focus onto China.
Thursday, April 10: Stocks fall as much as 6.3% from the previous close, for reasons of a market nature.
TLDR: The quietest day in the markets was the day immediately following the big Rose Garden announcement.
Continue reading at Axios
Bond yields rise as tariffs leave markets uneasy
The bond market sell-off that spurred President Trump’s midweek reversal on tariffs is pushing into Friday, with yields on the 10-year Treasury bond reaching nearly 4.6-percent, the highest level since February.
The 2-year Treasury bond yield was close to 4 percent, the 5-year was above 4.2 percent and the long-term 30-year Treasury stood at just about 5 percent.
The 30-year bond yield moved up at the fastest pace in years, an ascent that economists were paying attention to.
“The 30-year Treasury yield experienced the biggest increase since 1982,” UBS economist Paul Donovan wrote Friday regarding its overnight movements.
Meanwhile, the dollar is losing value against world currencies and the price of gold is increasing.
Continue reading at The Hill
Inflation outlook climbs after new tariffs
The outlook for inflation is increasing in the minds of both consumers and Federal Reserve bankers after President Trump imposed a 10 percent general tariff this week and triple-digit tariffs on top U.S. trading partner China.
New York Fed president John Williams said Friday at the Puerto Rico Chamber of Commerce he expects the tariffs will cause inflation to rise to between 3.5 percent and 4 percent this year.
Inflation currently is increasing at a 2.4 percent annual rate as measured by the Labor Department’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) and a 2.5 percent pace as measured by the Commerce Department’s Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index.
The CPI deflated from February to March, dropping to 2.4 percent from a 2.8 percent increase in February.
Year-ahead inflation expectation also leapt to 6.7 percent in April from 5 percent in the University of Michigan’s bench consumer sentiment survey, released Friday. Sentiment dropped for the fourth consecutive month, sinking by 11 percent.
Continue reading at The Hill
Wall Street execs sound warnings on economic outlook
As the U.S. heads into earnings season, Wall Street executives raised caution Friday over an economy gummed up by economic uncertainty.
Why it matters: Between sliding consumer sentiment and forecasts of slowing economic growth, the latest comments from Big Bank earnings calls add to the emerging picture of an economy on edge.
State of play: Businesses are consumed with how to react to tariff impacts, distracting them from larger strategic priorities, JPMorgan CFO Jeremy Barnum said on the company's call Friday.
Small businesses seem especially challenged, he said. And the scale of the tariff impact is varying widely by sector.
What they're saying: "It's hard [for businesses] to make long term decisions right now. And so we'll see how that plays out," Barnum said.
"Is it bumpier for some clients? Of course, it is," Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick said on the firm's own call Friday morning. "We have to see how they respond to that over the course of the weeks and months to come."
"I think they're trying to figure it out," Wells Fargo's Charles Scharf said of the firm's corporate clients. "Everyone is trying to assess the situation in terms of 'will there be a resolution to some of these things, what does it mean for their business,' and that's not completely clear."
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said, "uncertainty and anxiety about the future of the markets and the economy are dominating each and every client conversation."
The big picture: "A lot of people are not doing things because of this," JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon noted, citing anecdotal conversations with clients.
Continue reading at Axios
Global investors don't trust the U.S.
Chart: U.S. 10-year Treasury yield and U.S. Dollar Index performance since the presidential election
Treasury bonds and other U.S. dollar assets have acted as a global safe haven for generations. This week, global investors woke up to the possibility that they are not particularly safe, and not at all a haven.
The big picture: The last nine days will reverberate through economic history, as the kind of shifts in the global trade order and financial markets that usually play out over years were compressed into each news cycle.
People will write books about April 2025 the way they have about July 1944, August 1971 or September 2008.
The moves in trade policy have been dramatic, with the world's two largest economies now taxing each other's imports at over 100%. If sustained, this would essentially shut down commerce between the U.S. and China.
But it's the curious way bond and currency markets have interacted that gives the most alarm about the trajectory of global confidence in the U.S.-centric financial order that has prevailed since the end of World War II.
State of play: In a week that stocks and other risky assets sold off, so did U.S. Treasury bonds and the U.S. dollar.
This is not normal. In past episodes of extreme tumult, like September 2008 and the early days of the pandemic in 2020, the dollar rallied as global investors sought safety.
Continue reading at Axios
‘Trust is going down’: Why Trump should fear the bond market
“The market now believes that trade policy can change from minute to minute,” said Chip Hughey, a managing director of fixed income securities at Truist.
Bond investors went ballistic when President Donald Trump’s tariffs took effect this week. Consider it a preview for what’s in store.
The sharp sell-off in government debt securities that underpin the global financial system pushed Trump to pause for 90 days his plans to slap gargantuan tariffs on dozens of trading partners. “I was watching the bond market,” he explained. “That bond market is very tricky.”
It won’t be the last time the president’s sensitivity to the market will be tested as his inner circle navigates dozens of bilateral negotiations and ratchets up a trade war with China. And should bond investors continue to balk at what many see as Trump’s unpredictable approach, he’s likely to come under intense pressure to resolve the conflicts.
“The market now believes that trade policy can change from minute to minute,” said Chip Hughey, a managing director of fixed income securities at Truist. “I don’t think the volatility is going anywhere.”
Investors often treat government bonds as a haven during times of market stress. Now, the opposite has occurred. Hedge funds and other investors have dumped Treasury securities even as stocks plunged, pushing up yields that are used to benchmark everything from mortgage rates to corporate loans.
Continue reading at Politico
Oil deals slump as prices fall
Oil prices have fallen so steeply this month that it's no longer profitable for many companies to drill new wells in major U.S. patches.
Why it matters: Deal activity slows dramatically when the underlying economics don't work.
This was true during both the 2014 and 2020 oil price downturns, and comes amidst what already was a weakening environment for energy M&A.
By the numbers: WTI opened this morning at $61.03 per barrel, and was below $60 both yesterday and as of this writing.
According to a Dallas Fed survey of oil and gas firms, WTI must be at least $61 per barrel to be profitable for new wells in the Midland Basin, which is part of the Permian Basin, and only goes up from there.
It's $62 for the Eagle Ford and Permian's Delaware Basin, $63 for other U.S. shale, $66 for U.S. nonshale, and $70 for elsewhere in the Permian.
The profitability thresholds are significantly lower for existing wells, topping out at $45.
Behind the scenes: "An even bigger issue than just lower crude prices is the volatility and policy uncertainty that makes it difficult to negotiate fair value for deals," explains Andrew Dittmar, an analyst with Enverus Intelligence Research.
Continue reading at Axios
Trade war threat sinks consumer confidence, alarms Wall Street
The turmoil is shaking Americans’ confidence, with expectations of spiking prices soaring to their highest level since 1981, one survey showed.
The chief executives of some of Wall Street’s top firms are warning about the precarious state of the U.S. economy as President Donald Trump’s trade war roils financial markets and sparks inflation fears among consumers.
“Uncertainty and anxiety about the future of the markets and the economy are dominating each and every client conversation,” BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said Friday on an earnings call for his company, the world’s largest asset manager.
In an interview with CNBC, Fink said, “We’re very close, if not in, a recession now.”
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said the economy faces “considerable turbulence” as his bank — the biggest in the U.S. — boosted its rainy day fund to cover potential losses from customers defaulting on loans.
“We continue to believe it is prudent to maintain excess capital and ample liquidity in this environment,” Dimon said in a statement. “As always, we hope for the best but prepare the firm for a wide range of scenarios.”
The comments from the Wall Street titans came after a tumultuous week in which Trump imposed massive tariffs on most major U.S. trading partners — then backtracked hours later amid a sell-off in government bonds and stocks. Trump also ratcheted up tariffs on China, setting off a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies, with Beijing responding in kind.
The turmoil is shaking Americans’ confidence. A closely watched gauge of consumer sentiment plunged in April — with expectations of inflation soaring to their highest level since 1981.
Continue reading at Politico
US may already be in recession: BlackRock CEO
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said during a recent interview that the United States may already be in a recession or getting very close to one as a result of President Trump’s sweeping tariffs.
“I think we’re very close, if not in, a recession now,” Fink said during his Friday appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.”
“I think you’re going to see, across the board, just a slowdown until there’s more certainty. And we now have a 90-day pause on the reciprocal tariffs — that means longer, more elevated uncertainty,” the asset management company’s chair added.
The uncertainty around the U.S. plunging into a recession has accelerated after Trump implemented his far-reaching tariffs, instituting a flat 10 percent import tax on all goods coming into the U.S. and higher-tier reciprocal tariffs against dozens of countries.
Continue reading at The Hill
Freak sell-off of ‘safe haven’ US bonds raises fear that confidence in America is fading
NEW YORK (AP) — The upheaval in stocks has been grabbing all the headlines, but there is a bigger problem looming in another corner of the financial markets that rarely gets headlines: Investors are dumping U.S. government bonds.
Normally, investors rush into Treasurys at a whiff of economic chaos but now they are selling them as not even the lure of higher interest payments on the bonds is getting them to buy. The freak development has experts worried that big banks, funds and traders are losing faith in America as a stable, predictable, good place to store their money.
“The fear is the U.S. is losing its standing as the safe haven,” said George Cipolloni, a fund manager at Penn Mutual Asset Management. “Our bond market is the biggest and most stable in the world, but when you add instability, bad things can happen.”
That could be bad news for taxpayers paying interest on the ballooning U.S. debt, consumers taking out mortgages or car loans — and for President Donald Trump, who had hoped his tariff pause earlier this week would restore confidence in the markets.
Continue reading at the AP
Bond market finishes one of worst weeks in decades
The U.S. Treasury bond market finished one of its worst weeks in decades on Friday after a chaotic series of days that saw President Trump announce a pause on his widest ranging tariffs yet.
The most attention-grabbing statistic was with the 30-year bond yield, the amount that purchasers make for the bond they bought. The yield saw its largest one-week increase of any point since 1982, finishing the week at 4.87 percent after having peaked just above 5 percent earlier Friday.
The 10-year bond yield also experienced a significant increase, settling just under 4.5 percent for its largest weekly increase since 2001. Yields for bonds of other lengths of time also saw significant increases this week.
The bond market spooked economists even more than the stock market did in its reaction to Trump’s tariffs, which were set to impose higher varying rates on about 60 countries beyond the baseline 10 percent tariff that is still in place on all countries around the world.
Continue reading at The Hill
Honey prices to surge as honeybee populations decline
Hive thefts soaring, causing pollination shortages and higher prices
Fewer honeybees leads to lower crop yields, driving up produce costs
Honeybees contribute $17B annually to US agriculture
As honeybee populations decline at unprecedented rates, honey prices are expected to rise.
Honeybees play a critical role in agriculture. Beekeepers describe the decline as catastrophic, and some experts warn the crisis could affect both honey and produce prices well beyond the summer.
California hive theft up 87% since 2013
Colonies could decline by 60 to 70% this year due to a dangerous combination of mites, pesticides, habitat loss and hive theft.
Trader Joe’s new tote bags reselling for hundreds
In California, hive theft is up 87% since 2013, with 10,000 hives stolen — worth more than $3.5 million.
Thefts are most common during almond season, when farmers pay between $185 and $300 per hive.
Honeybees pollinate 35% of world’s crops
Prices for popular summer produce — such as almonds, apples, strawberries and avocados — are expected to increase.
Honeybees pollinate roughly 35% of the world’s food crops, so fewer bees mean lower yields and higher prices for fresh produce, jams, jellies and baked goods.
Continue reading at The Hill
Lighthizer gives private trade-war advice to Canada’s conservatives
The pro-tariff former USTR told Canadians to spend more on defense and partner with the U.S. against China.
OTTAWA — An architect of President Donald Trump’s aggressive trade policy told a closed-door Canadian audience Friday that the two neighbors can recover from this period of unprecedented tensions.
Robert Lighthizer, the pro-tariff former U.S. trade representative during Trump’s first term, told a conference of Canadian conservatives in Ottawa that their country can help mend the tattered relationship by spending more on defense, helping the White House deal with China and negotiating a new North American free trade deal.
“In the final analysis, the relationship between the United States and Canada is going to be as good or better than it has ever been, and the business relationship will be fine,” Lighthizer said, according to a recording of the closed-door event obtained by POLITICO.
The former trade representative has no role in the current Trump administration but his views were welcomed and hotly anticipated in a country looking for clues on how to counter the economic threats from its closest neighbor and top trading partner.
“He is still relevant. I would view him as the godfather of American trade policy for this administration,” said Jason Easton, who was a trade adviser to former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and was at the event.
Lighthizer’s 2023 book, “No Trade is Free,” has now likely surpassed Trump’s own “Art of the Deal” as essential reading for Canadian politicians and policy makers trying to steer their country through its current economic crisis over Trump’s tariffs, Easton said.
“His book is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the current state of affairs with America in trade, whether you agree with Ambassador Lighthizer or not,” he said.
In his remarks at the conference, Lighthizer justified the global disruption caused by Trump’s tariffs, while at the same time suggesting that the president’s trade strategy could have benefits for Canada as well.
“Canadian industry and Canadian workers have suffered from this international system in much the same way ours have,” he said.
Continue reading at Politico
POLITICO Nightly
Waiting for someone to blink in the U.S.-China trade war
RATCHETING UP — The trade war between the United States and China just keeps escalating. So does the war of words.
Today, China said it would raise tariffs on American goods to 125%, set to take effect Saturday. That move came after the Trump administration clarified Thursday that its own tariffs on Chinese goods now stand at 145%.
In a Truth Social post that sent markets skyrocketing Wednesday due to Trump’s announcement of a 90-day pause on other tariffs, the president also chose to further amp up his rhetoric against China. He said he was raising China’s tariff rate once again based on their “lack of respect.”
“At some point, hopefully in the near future,” Trump said. “China will realize that the days of ripping off the U.S.A., and other Countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable.”
A spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Commerce didn’t mince words responding today, stating plainly that Trump’s tariff policies have “become a joke”. The Chinese government says “there is no market acceptance for U.S. goods exported to China” at the current level of U.S. tariffs.
Trump still remains “optimistic” he’ll be able to cut a deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping, said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt in today’s press briefing, even as U.S. consumer sentiment fell to its second-lowest level ever since the Great Recession and 10-year Treasury yields rose to 4.5 percent, furthering concerns over the U.S. bond market.
The escalating tariffs stand to damage the two biggest economies in the world, as both are increasingly interconnected. American companies rely on China for manufacturing, and China imports billions of dollars worth of agricultural products from the U.S. every year.
To understand what’s at stake and how far down the path of a costly trade war Trump and Xi are willing to go, Nightly spoke to POLITICO’s China correspondent Phelim Kine. This interview has been edited.
How inclined is China to cave in to Trump on tariffs?
Continue reading at Politico Nightly newsletter
France 24: What if no one blinks?
Health and Science News
1 big thing: Pharma's volatile reality
This week has definitely been a bad one for investors and pharmaceutical companies, but disruptions stemming from the Trump administration's policies could end up having huge implications for American patients as well.
Why it matters: The future of the pharmaceutical industry is looking — at least for now — pretty bleak, thanks to a growing pile of threats.
Driving the news: President Trump said this week that pharmaceutical tariffs are still coming, and the prevailing consensus among analysts and investors seems to be that if they do, it'll be chaos. Wednesday, he seemed to signal in remarks to reporters that such tariffs could range from 50% to 200% — much higher rates than generally expected.
"We're going to put tariffs on the pharmaceutical companies and they're going to want to come back," Trump said.
But don't forget what this newsletter was about last week: the potential impact of massive cuts to HHS on medical innovation, and the fear that FDA and NIH reductions in particular could ultimately mean fewer breakthrough therapies coming to market.
In Vitals this week, you read about the pending threat to the FDA user fee system, which president of HPS Group Steven Grossman called an "existential threat."
At the end of last week, the administration announced it's dropping the Biden administration's proposed rule that would have allowed Medicare to cover anti-obesity drugs, a move praised by budget-minded observers but ultimately a blow to GLP-1 manufacturers and, arguably, the patients who need them.
And then there's the steady stream of ominous news about Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s vaccine actions and opinions, though he allayed some concerns in the past week when he acknowledged that vaccines are "most effective way to prevent the spread of measles."
[…]
2. On an island
Today's multithreat environment is the culmination of decades of building anti-pharma animus, said Tevi Troy, deputy secretary of HHS in the Bush administration and a presidential historian.
And it's notable where many of the threats are coming from. Until fairly recently, Republicans defended the industry, whereas now a Republican administration is leading the charge on many of these policies.
"They don't have one party that is reliably defending them. That might be why this potential moment might be worse," Troy said. "They definitely are challenged from the friends department."
Troy recently wrote an essay titled "In Praise of Big Pharma," published in Commentary.
Yes, but: Even those sympathetic to the industry admit it brought at least some of this political isolation on itself, either through questionable business tactics or a lazy approach to political engagement.
Between the lines: Any one of today's threats to pharma would be cause for alarm from the industry on its own — look no further than the freakout over the IRA when it initially passed, despite how watered-down the policy had become from the original version.
Industry-brought lawsuits against the Medicare negotiations are still working their way through the courts.
[…]
3. About those pharma tariffs ...
Yes, Trump delayed the big reciprocal tariffs this week, which pharmaceuticals were already exempt from. But sector-specific tariffs seem to very much still be on the table.
Why it matters: See above re: the long-term threat to new therapies coming to market. But tariffs could also sow a lot of chaos in the shorter-term, which could be felt by millions of patients.
Where it stands: The Trump administration has said the pause doesn't apply to sectoral tariffs, and it's been very clear about pharmaceutical tariffs being on the horizon.
Trump said on Tuesday that a pharmaceutical tariff announcement is coming "very shortly." U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told lawmakers the next day that the administration plans to launch an investigation "to see what's appropriate in terms of tariffs," Politico reports.
Although an investigation could take a while, "we believe the pharma tariffs will be announced in a dual-track approach," Leerink analysts wrote in an investor note yesterday, meaning some could be announced soon while others are announced after an investigation.
Between the lines: The Trump administration's stated intent of imposing pharma tariffs is to bring more drug production back to the U.S., a process that some companies have already initiated.
But reshoring on a large scale will take years at best and would be very expensive.
That's led to lots of economists and analysts trying to game out the impacts of tariffs across various time horizons — and who will bear the brunt of those impacts.
The intrigue: As readers of this newsletter know, the drug market is by no means a monolith, and one of the most important distinctions — at least when it comes to tariffs — is between branded and generic products.
Read the Axios Future of Healthcare newsletter
“Not Just Measles”: Whooping Cough Cases Are Soaring as Vaccine Rates Decline
Reporting Highlights
Vaccine Hesitancy: Texas’ measles outbreak has been blamed on vaccine hesitancy. But parents are not getting their children other vaccines as well.
Not Just Measles: Vaccine rates for other childhood diseases have fallen, contributing to rising cases of whooping cough and other illnesses.
Government Failure: The Trump administration’s cuts to public health jobs and funding make it harder for agencies to fight outbreaks and prevent disease with vaccines.
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
In the past six months, two babies in Louisiana have died of pertussis, the disease commonly known as whooping cough.
Washington state recently announced its first confirmed death from pertussis in more than a decade.
Idaho and South Dakota each reported a death this year, and Oregon last year reported two as well as its highest number of cases since 1950.
While much of the country is focused on the spiraling measles outbreak concentrated in the small, dusty towns of West Texas, cases of pertussis have skyrocketed by more than 1,500% nationwide since hitting a recent low in 2021 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Deaths tied to the disease are also up, hitting 10 last year, compared with about two to four in previous years. Cases are on track to exceed that total this year.
Continue reading at ProPublica
Republicans tee up Medicaid cuts
ALL EYES ON MEDICAID — House Republicans have passed a budget resolution that paves the way for President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” — and for GOP lawmakers to propose Medicaid savings to the tune of $880 billion.
With the approval of the budget framework, House and Senate Republicans will now be tasked with writing the behemoth package to enact Trump’s domestic agenda, which includes tax cuts, military spending, energy policy and border security. But that process will likely be a challenge as some in the party are already at odds over proposals to deeply cut Medicaid — the safety-net program covering more than 70 million low-income Americans.
The blueprint tasks the House Energy and Commerce Committee with finding $880 billion in overall budget cuts over 10 years — most of which would likely come from Medicaid. Some Republicans have expressed concern that the mandate could lead to benefit cuts, while conservative hardliners maintain they want to reform the program by rooting out fraud and waste.
Ahead of the vote Thursday, House Speaker Mike Johnson said Republicans want to pare down the budget deficit by at least $1.5 trillion while protecting “essential programs” like Medicaid. But Democrats have argued it would be impossible to make the cuts the GOP has proposed without affecting benefits.
Background: Republicans have said they can find the savings in the program through fraud, waste and abuse, but it’s unclear how the committee would meet the $880 billion threshold without reforms that would impact benefits. GOP leaders have floated a number of proposals, including reducing the enhanced federal match rate that Medicaid expansion states receive and slashing a tax that states levy on providers to generate Medicaid revenue.
Those changes could force states to make cuts to their Medicaid programs — and prompt blowback from state leaders. On Wednesday, former Republican Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett warned the GOP against major cuts to Medicaid.
What’s next: Insurers, providers and advocacy groups have launched large-scale campaigns to prevent Congress from gutting Medicaid, and they’ll be ramping up their efforts now that the blueprint has been approved. Some groups have pushed the message that cuts to the program could be politically perilous for Republicans, especially for ones representing large populations of enrollees — and as Medicaid cuts are largely unpopular among Trump voters.
“The message is crystal clear from a majority of Trump voters and two-thirds of swing voters — an overwhelming majority of the electorate: now is not the time to cut Medicaid,” said Federation of American Hospitals President and CEO Chip Kahn in a statement on Thursday.
On Thursday, hospital and patient advocacy group the Coalition to Strengthen America’s Healthcare launched a national ad highlighting the impact of potential Medicaid cuts on the more than 30 million children who rely on Medicaid, part of its ongoing seven-figure campaign to prevent Medicaid cuts.
Continue reading Politico Pulse newsletter
‘Stretchable’ toothpaste-like battery offers flexible future for gadgets
Rigid, bulky batteries could one day be replaced by soft, flexible ones, a new paper argues.
Scientists at a Swedish university have created a new form of a soft, fluid-based battery that can be shaped to meet any form, according to findings published Friday in Science Advances.
“The texture is a bit like toothpaste,” co-author Aiman Rahmanudin said in a statement.
That flexible quality means the ability to 3D-print the battery in any form — opening up the way for “a new type of technology,” Rahmanudin added.
In its current form, the battery is far from ready for industrial use. It can store just under 1 volt — less than 8 percent of the voltage of a standard car battery.
Continue reading at The Hill
Musk calls Trump’s looming NASA cuts ‘troubling’
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is one of the agency’s largest contractors.
Elon Musk said reports that President Donald Trump’s budget proposal would drastically cut NASA’s science funding were “troubling,” the latest public break between the president and his close adviser.
Musk’s Friday morning comments mark his second major public split with Trump in areas that impact the entrepreneur’s companies, amid reports that Musk will soon step back from his role at the Department of Government Efficiency.
The billionaire has also appeared to diverge from the party line on tariffs — repeatedly targeting Peter Navarro, one of the public faces of Trump’s trade agenda — as the administration launched sweeping duties on global trading partners, causing major market volatility and resulting in billions of dollars of losses for Musk’s Tesla.
Musk’s latest swipe at the administration’s policies comes as reports of cuts to NASA funding surfaced Friday. Musk’s SpaceX is one of the agency’s largest contractors.
The SpaceX CEO replied to a report from technology news outlet Ars Technica that the Office of Management and Budget’s draft budget proposal for NASA would cut roughly 20 percent of the agency’s overall budget, and 50 percent of its science agency funding, calling the news “troubling.”
“I am very much in favor of science, but unfortunately cannot participate in NASA budget discussions, due to SpaceX being a major contractor to NASA,” he added.
Continue reading at Politico
White House outlines plan to gut NOAA, smother climate research
The agency’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research would be “eliminated as a line office,” according to a memo from the Office of Management and Budget.
The Trump administration wants to effectively break up NOAA and end its climate work by abolishing its primary research office and forcing the agency to help boost U.S. fossil fuel production, budget documents show.
The move, outlined in a memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget, carries forward President Donald Trump’s broader goals of slashing federal spending, gutting climate research and unleashing U.S. energy production.
But it also represents a dramatic shift in NOAA’s mission.
NOAA has long served as the nation’s preeminent climate and weather agency, and the new marching orders would downsize those functions in the pursuit of a “leaner NOAA,” the memo says.
It calls for a sharp spending cut at the agency.
NOAA would get about $4.5 billion in its next budget, down from roughly $6.1 billion in its 2025 enacted budget. Key to the cutback is the elimination of NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, which facilitates studies of the planet’s oceans, atmosphere, climate, weather patterns and other Earth systems.
Continue reading at Politico
Microsoft signs deal on carbon removal from pulp and paper mill
Microsoft inked a multimillion-ton CO2 deal with CO280, a startup that says it has cracked the code to scaling large-scale removal tethered to pulp and paper mills.
Why it matters: CO280's offtake deals with Microsoft and other buyers could advance integration of carbon removal into huge, incumbent industrial sectors.
Driving the news: Microsoft's deal is for 3.7 million tons over 12 years. It follows CO280's smaller, $48 million deal with the Frontier consortium to remove 224,500 tons of CO2 between 2028 and 2030.
How works: The startup is working with a Gulf Coast pulp and paper mill owned by a big public company — it's not yet saying which one.
The project would be a joint venture with the paper company to attach carbon capture to the mill's boiler stack and pipeline the CO2 to sequestration sites.
OK, that's CCS. The removal part is that CO2 absorbed by the trees is never re-emitted at the plant when biomass waste is combusted.
"The trees do the heavy lifting. They absorb the CO2," CEO and co-founder Jonathan Rhone tells Axios.
Continue reading at Axios
RFK Jr. says Deep State ‘is real,’ called FDA employees ‘sock puppet’ of industry
The HHS secretary’s remarks shocked staffers at the Food and Drug Administration, prompting some to walk out.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s visit to the FDA Friday was supposed to introduce him as a trusted leader to agency employees. It did anything but.
Over the course of 40 minutes, Kennedy, in largely off-the-cuff remarks, asserted that the “Deep State” is real, referenced past CIA experiments on human mind control and accused the employees he was speaking to of becoming a “sock puppet” of the industries they regulate.
He touted his work for the Special Olympics but shocked several FDA employees when he said he spent 200 hours in high school working at the “Wassaic home for the retarded.”
By the end of the event, billed as a welcome from the new commissioner, Marty Makary, several FDA staffers had walked out of the rooms where the speech was being broadcast at the agency’s headquarters in White Oak, Maryland, according to two employees granted anonymity for fear of retaliation.
“President Trump always talks about the Deep State, and the media, you know, disparages him and says that he’s paranoid,” Kennedy said, according to a transcript and audio of his remarks obtained by POLITICO. “But the Deep State is real. And it’s not, you know, just George Soros and Bill Gates and a bunch of nefarious individuals sitting together in a room and plotting the, you know, the destruction of humanity.”
He said “every institution that’s created by human beings” is inevitably captured by powerful interests, and urged FDA employees to take advantage of a four-year period under his leadership where he vowed that the Department of Health and Human Services would not be subjected to undue influence and would listen to “dissidents.”
Continue reading at Politico
CMS tells states Medicaid funds cannot be used for gender-affirming care
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is urging states to not use Medicaid funds for gender-affirming care for minors, specifically gender reassignment surgeries or hormone treatments.
“As a doctor and now CMS Administrator, my top priority is protecting children and upholding the law,” Mehmet Oz, the recently confirmed agency head, said in a statement Friday.
“Medicaid dollars are not to be used for gender reassignment surgeries or hormone treatments in minors—procedures that can cause permanent, irreversible harm, including sterilization,” he continued. “We have a duty to ensure medical care is lawful, necessary, and truly in the best interests of patients.”
The CMS sent a letter to state Medicaid agencies Friday notifying them of their responsibility to make sure program payments are “consistent with quality of care” and that covered services are in the best interest of the patient.
The letter, signed by CMS Deputy Administrator and Director Drew Snyder, claims both surgery and hormone treatments lack evidence to support that they offer long-term benefits for transgender minors and that these interventions can cause “long-term and irreparable harm.”
Continue reading at The Hill
What HHS told House staff about RFK Jr.’s overhaul of the agency
The secretary could soon agree to testify before a key committee.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is expected to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on his agency’s budget in the coming weeks, but HHS officials told committee staffers that he might not be able to speak on his department’s sweeping overhaul, a Democratic aide for the panel said Friday.
According to the aide, granted anonymity to share details of a private meeting, the agency officials argued in a closed-door briefing that because of the sweeping reduction in force — which aims to cut 10,000 of the department’s workers — Kennedy won’t be able to discuss the matter for 60 days. Those officials cited U.S. Office of Personnel Management statutes.
“If he comes on day 58 and cites to that as a reason that he can’t [speak to it], that is not consistent with the new era of transparency that has been promised,” the Democratic aide said.
The aide also said that during the bipartisan staff briefing, HHS officials didn’t offer an accounting of how many people were laid off from the department — which had surprised members of both parties and led to the staff briefing being scheduled — and insisted the layoffs were conducted “with a scalpel” and “nuance.”
A spokesperson for Energy and Commerce Republicans said they would defer to HHS for comment. A spokesperson for HHS didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Continue reading at Politico
Autism Society says RFK Jr.’s comments ‘unrealistic and misleading’
Leadership at The Autism Society of America is pushing back against Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s recent pledge to find the cause of autism spectrum disorder.
Kennedy promised to launch a “massive testing and research effort” on Thursday to figure out what has caused the “autism epidemic” by September.
“We find that unrealistic and misleading,” President and CEO of The Autism Society of America Christopher Banks told The Hill.
Banks and The Autism Society of America’s Chief Marketing Officer Kristyn Roth agreed that there is a “significant need” for more investment and credentialed research to better understand autism spectrum disorder.
But the lack of transparency around Kennedy’s proposed effort is concerning, they said. It is unclear who will lead the new testing and research effort and what methodology will be used in the process.
Continue reading at The Hill
Polling- Surveys
Young Americans' favorite podcasts reveal a stark partisan split
Young people are starkly divided by who they vote for, what they do for fun and where they get their news and information, according to new Axios-Generation Lab polling.
Why it matters: Gen Z and young millennials exemplify how social media, news and podcasts have fragmented America into competing realities.
Zoom in: Their favorite podcasts cover a vast range from comedy to true crime to daily news.
But patterns — and partisan splits — emerge when honing in on the audiences of MAGA and MAGA-adjacent media stars like Charlie Kirk and Joe Rogan, according to the poll of 18- to 34-year-olds nationwide.
By the numbers: 27% of young people who voted for President Trump say they listen to "The Joe Rogan Experience" at least once a month, compared with 6% who cast their ballots for former Vice President Harris.
19% of Trump voters say the same about "The Charlie Kirk Show," and 18% tune into "The Ben Shapiro Show." Among Harris voters, it's 3% for each.
Podcasts from Barstool Sports, founded by Trump supporter Dave Portnoy, are the most popular among young people who voted for Trump.
34% of young Trump voters say they listened to a Barstool Sports podcast in the last month, compared with 9% of Harris supporters.
The intrigue: A few podcasts are roughly equally popular among Gen Zers on the right and left, including "The Daily" (13% of Harris voters and 14% of Trump voters), TED Talks Daily (17% of Harris voters and 23% of Trump voters) and "Call Her Daddy" (9% each).
Continue reading at Axios
Focus groups: Pennsylvania swing voters voice tariff confusion
Most Pennsylvania swing voters in our latest Engagious/Sago focus groups stuck by President Trump through this week's drama over tariffs and the stock market, but say he must better explain his strategy and how long Americans should prepare for pain.
Why it matters: Just two of these 13 Biden-to-Trump voters said Trump has made a good case for tariffs since he returned to the White House; 11 said he hasn't articulated enough or that they aren't sure of the end game.
Many are prepared to put up with months of strain if it makes the country safer, brings jobs back to the U.S. or helps their long-term finances — but they want a clearer understanding of what will happen and why.
The day after the focus groups, amid severe reactions from the markets, CEOs and some of his political allies, Trump announced a three-month pause on reciprocal tariffs — while escalating rates on China.
Driving the news: Six of the 13 supported and one opposed Trump's "Liberation Day" rollout and reciprocal tariffs on dozens of trading partners, while the other six said they didn't know enough to formulate an opinion.
Continue reading at Axios
US consumer sentiment plummets to second-lowest level on records going back to 1952
WashingtonCNN —
Americans are rarely this pessimistic about the economy.
Consumer sentiment plunged 11% this month to a preliminary reading of 50.8, the University of Michigan said in its latest survey released Friday, the second-lowest reading on records going back to 1952. April’s reading was lower than anything seen during the Great Recession.
President Donald Trump’s volatile trade war, which threatens higher inflation, has significantly weighed on Americans’ moods these past few months. That malaise worsened leading up to Trump’s announcement last week of sweeping tariffs, according to the survey.
“This decline was, like the last month’s, pervasive and unanimous across age, income, education, geographic region and political affiliation,” Joanne Hsu, the survey’s director, said in a release.
“Sentiment has now lost more than 30% since December 2024 amid growing worries about trade war developments that have oscillated over the course of the year,” she added.
Continue reading at CNN.com
Most in new poll now view Trump unfavorably
A poll has found President Trump’s approval is sliding as his second term ramps up with new global trade policies.
Just more than half — 51 percent — of Americans surveyed in the Economist/YouGov poll said they disapprove of Trump’s job performance, while 43 percent said they approve, giving him a net approval of negative 8 points.
The same poll conducted two weeks earlier found opinions of Trump were near evenly split — 48 percent were favorable, and 49 percent were unfavorable.
Trump is still more popular than at some points in his first term. He was at negative 8 points at this exact point in his first term, but would drop to negative 21 points later in his first year in office.
In the two weeks that passed between the two latest polls, Trump unveiled a sweeping plan to levy massive tariffs on products coming to the U.S. from other countries. Many countries have balked at the tariff scheme, including China, which has responded with its own massive import tax hikes.
Continue reading at The Hill
The Courts
Law students say they want to work for the firms standing up to Trump
Law students are weighing whether to take jobs at firms that have either capitulated to Trump or are fighting him in court.
President Donald Trump’s attacks on major law firms have divided the legal community all the way down to its newest members: law students considering their futures.
As summer approaches, law firms are heating up their campus recruiting efforts among the nation’s first-year law students, looking to hire for future summer associate positions that can lead to full-time offers with starting salaries greater than $200,000 after graduation.
For many current law students, firms that have challenged Trump’s executive orders in court or publicly signaled their support of those lawsuits now seem more appealing destinations than those that have struck deals with the administration, according to students, recruiters and lawyers involved in firm recruitment efforts interviewed by POLITICO.
And it’s not just 1Ls reconsidering where they want to work this summer. Some third-year law students, weeks away from graduating, who have already secured offers from firms that capitulated to the president are reconsidering their options, two people involved in hiring and recruiting at major firms said.
“I’ve never seen that happen,” a partner at a firm challenging its executive order, granted anonymity to speak candidly about hiring, said.
Standing up for the legal profession and the rule of law has given certain firms a big boost in visibility with students, said Bryson Malcolm, a legal recruiter based in New York.
Continue reading at Politico
Immigration advocates are overwhelmed by Trump’s flood-the-zone strategy
Activists have been fighting Trump’s immigration agenda case by case. But his administration is gaining momentum as the cases reach the Supreme Court.
Immigration advocates are fighting the Trump administration’s policies one by one in court. But after scoring some early wins, activists say they’re overwhelmed as the Trump administration’s flood-the-zone approach gains momentum — and reaches the Supreme Court.
Activists have launched what are likely to be long-drawn-out court battles against President Donald Trump in his second term. But many fear what the administration will do next to enact his immigration agenda, especially as these cases make their way to the nation’s highest court.
“This is just devastating, I mean it’s just horrible,” said Nicolette Glazer, an immigration lawyer and advocate who’s been following the legal challenges. “It’s just going to be a complete massacre.”
Since taking office, Trump has instituted a broad crackdown on immigration by ending Biden-era programs and sending a deportation message that advocates say has chilled and terrified communities across the country. The sweeping moves are part of Trump’s promise to enact the largest mass deportation in U.S. history, following his 2024 victory that telegraphed the country moving further to the right on immigration.
Continue reading at Politico
12 pro-Palestinian protesters at Stanford face felony charges
A group of pro-Palestinian protesters at Stanford University were charged with felonies Thursday after taking over a campus building last year.
The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office announced it has charged 12 people, ranging in age from 19-32, with felony vandalism and felony conspiracy to trespass.
The office said the demonstrators did hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage after they broke windows and furniture, splashed fake blood and disabled security cameras during their takeover of the facility.
“Dissent is American. Vandalism is criminal,” District Attorney Jeff Rosen said. “There is a bright line between making a point and committing a crime. These defendants crossed the line into criminality when they broke into those offices, barricaded themselves inside, and started a calculated plan of destruction.”
The incident happened last June at Building 10 when the activists broke in and barricaded themselves inside. Items found on the protesters included food, an electric grinder, hammers, crowbars, chisels, screwdrivers, goggles, numerous straps and cables.
Continue reading at The Hill
Habba opening investigation into top New Jersey Democrats
Alina Habba, the acting U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, said Thursday that she would launch an investigation into the Garden State’s top Democrats who reportedly refused to issue arrest warrants for immigrants illegally living in the country.
Habba’s comments, made during an appearance on Fox News’s “Hannity,” came after a local outlet reported that law enforcement agents in New Jersey were instructed by Gov. Phil Murphy (D) and Attorney General Matthew Platkin (D) not to enforce the Trump administration’s civil immigration statutes.
“Unfortunately, I will announce on your show tonight, Sean — and I want it to be a warning for everybody — that I have instructed my office today to open an investigation into Gov. Murphy, to open an investigation into Attorney General Platkin, who has also instructed the state police not to assist any of our federal agencies that are under my direction, the FBI, the DEA,” Habba, who previously served as counsel to President Trump, told host Sean Hannity.
She argued they were trying to press individuals “who are trying to clean up our streets” not to cooperate with the Trump administration.
Continue reading at The Hill
Judge scolds DOJ for demanding delay in mistakenly deported man case
The federal judge who ordered the Trump administration to try to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man mistakenly deported to El Salvador, scolded the Justice Department for demanding more time to update the court on next steps.
Following the Supreme Court’s ruling Thursday evening that upheld the thrust of U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis’s order, she scheduled a Friday hearing in her Greenbelt, Md., courtroom at 1 p.m. EDT.
The Justice Department asked Xinis to postpone the hearing until next Wednesday and delay a Friday morning deadline to provide a written update, saying the timeline was “impracticable.”
The judge agreed to give the government two additional hours to provide the written update but declined to move the hearing, chastising the Justice Department for its demand.
“First, the Defendants’ act of sending Abrego Garcia to El Salvador was wholly illegal from the moment it happened, and Defendants have been on notice of the same,” Xinis wrote.
She went on to say that the government’s suggestion that it needs “time to meaningfully review a four-page Order that reaffirms this basic principle blinks at reality.”
Continue reading at The Hill
Trump admin reviewing case against former FBI informant who fabricated Biden bribery story
The Justice Department is reconsidering its case against a former FBI informant who was indicted for fabricating a claim that former President Biden and his son Hunter Biden accepted a bribe.
The admission came in a filing in the case of Alexander Smirnov, who pleaded guilty last year to lying to the FBI about the detail that was central to the House Republican impeachment investigation into the then-president.
Thursday’s filing asks for Smirnov’s release from prison so that he can seek medical treatment for a “chronic eye condition.” The former informant had been sentenced to six years in prison.
But the filing nods to broader plans by the Trump administration to reevaluate the case.
“The United States intends to review the government’s theory of the case underlying Defendant’s criminal conviction,” officials wrote in the filing.
Smirnov’s prosecution was one of two major cases handled by former special counsel David Weiss.
Continue reading at The Hill
Titans of Big Law cut deal with Trump
Kirkland & Ellis and Latham & Watkins, two of the nation’s top firms, cut a deal with the administration.
Two of the titans of Big Law have signed a deal to stave off punishment from the Trump administration, as the legal community splinters between the firms who are battling the administration in court and those that are folding.
Kirkland & Ellis and Latham & Watkins — the first and second-largest law firms in the nation by some measures — became the latest to cut a deal with the administration, President Donald Trump announced on Friday.
Trump has raged against the legal community that he believes has weaponized the law to unfairly target him. He’s launched executive orders targeting specific law firms across the country that have supported his perceived enemies, and directed the Justice Department to investigate and potentially sanction more firms.
Kirkland and Latham agreed to millions of dollars in pro bono work and free legal services for “causes that President Trump and the Law Firms both support,” Trump announced on social media on Friday. They will also commit to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion practices and not deny legal services to potentially controversial, “politically disenfranchised groups and Government Officials.”
That agreement was also signed by transatlantic firm A&O Shearman and New York firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. The D.C. law firm Cadwalader signed a separate but similar agreement Friday.
Continue reading at Politico
Immigration judge allows Mahmoud Khalil deportation effort to proceed
A judge in former Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil’s case ruled in favor of the federal government on Friday, allowing Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) to move forward with its deportation case against him.
Jamee Comans, an immigration judge in Louisiana, found the government met the standard of evidence to move forward.
The ruling comes after Khalil, the former lead negotiator of the pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia, has been in a Louisiana detention center for over a month after he was arrested on March 8.
His arrest kicked off a battle between foreign students and the Trump administration, which is aggressively targeting those who participated in last year’s campus demonstrations amid Israel’s war in Gaza.
Federal officials have not accused Khalil of committing any crime, but they say his behavior justifies terminating his legal immigrant status.
Continue reading at The Hill
Trump administration refers Maine to DOJ over transgender athletes
The Department of Education on Friday referred a Title IX investigation into Maine schools to the Justice Department after the state failed to reach a resolution with the Trump administration over a finding that it violated federal anti-discrimination law by allowing transgender students to participate in girls’ sports.
“The Department has given Maine every opportunity to come into compliance with Title IX, but the state’s leaders have stubbornly refused to do so, choosing instead to prioritize an extremist ideological agenda over their students’ safety, privacy, and dignity,” said Craig Trainor, acting assistant Education secretary for civil rights.
The Education Department in its announcement said it will also initiate administrative proceedings to determine whether to terminate federal K-12 education funding for Maine’s state education department, including formula and discretionary grants.
“The Maine Department of Education will now have to defend its discriminatory practices before a Department administrative law judge and in a federal court against the Justice Department,” Trainor said. “Governor [Janet] Mills would have done well to adhere to the wisdom embedded in the old idiom — be careful what you wish for. Now she will see the Trump Administration in court.”
Continue reading at The Hill
White House responds to Supreme Court ruling on mistaken deportation
The White House on Friday responded to the Supreme Court’s ruling that the Trump administration must “facilitate” the return of a Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador, rather than “effectuate” the return.
“The Supreme Court made their ruling last night very clear that it’s the administration’s responsibility to facilitate the return, not to effectuate the return,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.
Leavitt had been asked whether President Trump wants the leader of El Salvador to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national who was deported from the U.S. to a prison in his home country, with him when he visits the White House next week.
“I believe the Department of Justice just filed another brief in the lower board. I would defer you to that for any updates,” Leavitt said.
As Leavitt was briefing reporters, the federal judge overseeing the case in lower court tore into the Justice Department at a hearing for refusing to comply with her order for more information about the man mistakenly deported to El Salvador.
Continue reading at The Hill
Military contractors pitch unprecedented prison plan for detained immigrants
Erik Prince wants to cut a deal to skirt immigration laws and transport detainees from the US to El Salvador
Former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince and a team of defense contractors are pitching the White House on a plan to vastly expand deportations to El Salvador — transporting thousands of immigrants from U.S. holding facilities to a sprawling maximum security prison in Central America.
The proposal, exclusively obtained by POLITICO, says it would target “criminal illegal aliens” and would attempt to skirt U.S. immigration laws by designating part of the prison — which has drawn accusations of violence and overcrowding from human rights groups — as American territory.
It’s unclear how seriously the White House is considering the plan by Prince, who has drawn scrutiny for his firm’s role in a deadly massacre in Iraq two decades ago. But it would give Prince’s group an unprecedented and potentially highly lucrative role in an expanded version of a transnational operation that has elicited its own web of controversies, in part because it has swept up immigrants who do not have criminal records in the United States.
Continue reading at Politico
DHS ends protections from deportation for Afghanistan, Cameroon
Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem has stripped protections from deportation for Afghans and Cameroonians in the U.S., calling into question the ability of some Afghan evacuees to remain in America.
Citizens of both countries have been protected by Temporary Protected Status (TPS) since 2022, protecting anyone already in the U.S. from being sent back to either country due to dangerous conditions and instability.
While courts have blocked similar efforts by Noem for other countries, the move nevertheless creates uncertainty for those set to lose the status.
“The secretary determined that Afghanistan no longer continues to meet the statutory requirements for its T.P.S. designation and so she terminated T.P.S. for Afghanistan,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the agency.
Continue reading at The Hill
Tufts student from Turkey details arrest, crowded detention conditions in new court filing
A Tufts University doctoral student from Turkey is demanding her release after she was detained by immigration officials near her Massachusetts home, detailing how she was scared when the men grabbed her phone and feared she would be killed.
Rumeysa Ozturk, 30, who has since been moved to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Basile, Louisiana, provided an updated account of what happened to her as she walked along a street on March 25, in a document filed by her lawyers in federal court Thursday.
Ozturk is among several people with ties to American universities whose visas were revoked or have been stopped from entering the U.S. after they were accused of attending demonstrations or publicly expressed support for Palestinians. On Friday, a Louisiana immigration judge ruled that the U.S. can deport Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil based on the federal government’s argument that he poses a national security risk.
Continue reading at the AP
Inside the DOGE immigration task force
The taskforce, led by Musk confidante Antonio Gracias, is providing the technical infrastructure for a sweeping set of actions aimed at revoking parole and terminating visas.
DOGE’s bread and butter has been slashing headcounts but it is now wielding its influence deep inside the nation’s immigration system — an initiative led by one of Elon Musk’s closest friends, three Trump administration officials granted anonymity to discuss internal dynamics told POLITICO.
Antonio Gracias, a Musk confidante whose history with the billionaire goes back more than 20 years, is quietly heading up a specialized DOGE immigration task force that’s embedded engineers and staffers across nearly every nook of the Department of Homeland Security, two of the people said. The task force is also working with DOGE operatives stationed at other agencies like the Social Security Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services, which house sensitive data on undocumented immigrants.
With Musk’s trusted friend and fixer at the helm, the task force marks a significant expansion of DOGE’s portfolio — from primarily working on agency-wide layoffs to executing the president’s most hardline immigration policies. It’s also a test for how far DOGE’s reach can extend.
Key DOGE engineers now embedded at DHS include Kyle Schutt, Edward Coristine, (aka “Big Balls”) and Mark Elez, according to their government email addresses. At least two others, Aram Moghaddassi and Payton Rehling also have access to DHS data, as DOGE fingerprints are spread throughout DHS, including Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure and Security Agency.
They are providing the technical infrastructure for a sweeping set of actions aimed at revoking parole, terminating visas, and later on, reengineering the asylum adjudication process, according to the officials.
Continue reading at Politico
Who are some of the people mentioned in this article?
Forbes profile:
Antonio Gracias
Real Time Net Worth $2.2B
$24M (1.10%)
From the Editor
Antonio Gracias is the founder and CEO of Chicago-based growth equity firm Valor Equity Partners, which has $16 billion in gross assets.
In 1995, Gracias was in law school at the University of Chicago when he founded Valor's predecessor, MG Capital.
A major Musk loyalist, Gracias met Musk through a mutual friend around 2000; Valor became one of Tesla's first institutional investors in 2005.
Gracias also appears in this NPR article
How DOGE may have improperly used Social Security data to push voter fraud narratives
The staffer, Antonio Gracias, made the claims as part of larger misleading statements about the SSA's enumeration-beyond-entry, or EBE program, which streamlines the process for granting Social Security cards to certain categories of eligible immigrants.
Gracias said in an April 2 appearance on Fox and Friends that "5-plus million" noncitizens who "came to the country as illegals" received Social Security numbers "through an automatic system" and proceeded to "get into our benefit systems."
"And just because we were curious, we then looked to see if they were on the voter rolls. And we found in a handful of cooperative states that there were thousands of them on the voter rolls and that many of them had voted," Gracias said.
State-level audits of voter data have found few examples of noncitizens voting, which is a federal crime punishable with prison and deportation.
Later that week, Gracias furthered his claims on a podcast. "I think this was a move to import voters," he said, echoing a conspiracy theory that Donald Trump and Musk elevated during the 2024 campaign season and Republican lawmakers are invoking to push for stricter voting policies.
Continue reading at NPR
Judge rules Menendez brothers’ bid for freedom through resentencing can continue
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Erik and Lyle Menendez’s resentencing hearings can continue despite opposition from the Los Angeles County district attorney, a judge ruled Friday.
They were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole at ages 18 and 21 after being convicted of murdering their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, in their Beverly Hills home in 1989.
Former Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón asked a judge last year to change the brothers’ sentence from life without the possibility of parole to 50 years to life. That would made them immediately eligible for parole because they committed the crime when they were younger than 26.
But Gascón’s successor reversed course. Nathan Hochman submitted a motion last month to withdraw the resentencing request.
Hochman’s office said they could not support the brothers’ resentencing because they had not admitted to lies told during their trial about why they killed their parents and did not “fully recognize, acknowledge, and accept complete responsibility” for their crime.
Continue reading at the AP
Luigi Mangione asks judge to block Bondi from seeking death penalty
Luigi Mangione, who is accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last year, asked a federal judge to block Attorney General Pam Bondi from seeking the death penalty against him.
Mangione’s lawyers said Bondi has violated the defendant’s due process rights and the government’s actions have “corrupted” the grand jury process, arguing the U.S. government “intends to kill” to Mangione as a “political stunt.” It points to Bondi’s previous statement that the death penalty would “carry out President Trump’s agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again.”
“We appreciate, and will address, the province and discretion of the Executive Branch of government, and how, in the usual course, courts defer to the Executive’s established procedures,” Mangione lawyers Karen Agnifilo and Avi Moskowitz wrote in a motion filed Friday in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York.
Continue reading at The Hill
North Carolina’s top court clears path for some ballots to be tossed in contested state Supreme Court race
The ruling from a Republican majority could open a path for a GOP candidate to overturn an apparent loss.
North Carolina’s top court cleared the way for some voters’ ballots in a contested state Supreme Court race to be tossed months after the election, opening a path for Republican Jefferson Griffin to potentially overturn an apparent narrow loss.
However, the extraordinary decision from the Republican-controlled court — which drew angry rebukes from Democrats and a sitting GOP justice in the state — still may see more litigation in federal court.
Griffin, a state appellate judge, has for months been challenging his apparent loss to incumbent Democratic Justice Allison Riggs in November, in which Griffin finished fewer than 1,000 votes behind. But after his loss, Griffin argued that roughly 65,000 votes in the state were improperly cast and should be thrown out.
Griffin argued three categories of votes should be tossed: Voters who were registered to vote with incomplete voter registration data; military and overseas voters who did not meet the state’s voter ID requirements; and overseas voters who have never lived in the state or expressed an intent to do so, a small category of voters who are generally family members of expats or service members.
Tossing out wide swaths of ballots after the election would be a near-unprecedented decision that voting rights groups, Democrats and even some Republicans condemned as violating voters’ due process rights and changing the rules of an election after it has already been run.
Continue reading at Politico
Trump says he would respect Supreme Court decision to return wrongly deported man
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE — President Trump said Friday he would respect a Supreme Court decision to bring back a Maryland man the administration mistakenly deported to El Salvador.
“If the Supreme Court said bring somebody back I would do that. I respect the Supreme Court,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on his way to Florida for the weekend.
“I have great respect for the Supreme Court,” he added.
The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to lift a judge’s order requiring the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Kilmer Abrego Garcia.
The court’s emergency ruling instructs the lower judge to clarify the language of her order but said she acted properly in ensuring that Abrego Garcia’s case is handled “as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”
Continue reading at The Hill
Anti-DEI-Whitewashing
Hillary Clinton warns women over House GOP voting bill
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act — passed Thursday in a 220-208 vote in the House — would require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections and impose voter roll purge requirements on states.
Clinton, the first woman to lead a major party’s presidential ticket, said the bill could effectively disenfranchise women whose married names don’t match the names on their birth certificates.
“The House just passed the Republican voter suppression measure that threatens voting access for millions of Americans, including 69 million women whose married names don’t match their birth certificates,” Clinton, former secretary of State, wrote on X Thursday.
“Make sure your senators know you expect them to stand against it,” she added.
Ahead of Thursday’s House vote, Clinton posted a similar message, urging women to call their House representatives and encourage them to vote against the bill.
She attached a graphic showing the estimated number of female citizens ages 15 and older in each state whose names don’t match their birth certificates “due to last name change or hyphenation upon marriage.”
Continue reading at The Hill
How the House’s requirement to prove US citizenship could affect the ability to register to vote
Here’s a look at key issues in the debate over a proof of citizenship requirement for voting:
Who would be affected if the bill becomes law?
If it eventually becomes the law, the SAVE Act would take effect immediately and apply to all voter registration applications.
“This has no impact on individuals that are currently registered to vote,” said Rep. Bryan Steil, a Wisconsin Republican who has been advocating for the bill.
Voting rights groups say there is more to the story. The law would affect voters who already are registered if they move, change their name or otherwise need to update their registration. That was acknowledged to some extent by the bill’s author, Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, during a recent hearing on the legislation.
“The idea here is that for individuals to be able to continue to vote if they are registered,” Roy said. “If they have an intervening event or if the states want to clean the rolls, people would come forward to register to demonstrate their citizenship so we could convert our system over some reasonable time to a citizenship-based registration system.”
[…]
What about people who can’t access birth or marriage certificates?
Voting rights group say the list of documents doesn’t consider the realities facing millions of Americans who do not have easy access to their birth certificates and the roughly half who do not have a U.S. passport.
They also worry about additional hurdles for women whose birth certificates don’t match their current IDs because they changed their name after getting married. There were examples of this during local elections last month in New Hampshire, which recently implemented a proof of citizenship requirement for voting.
Republicans say there is a provision in the SAVE Act that directs states to develop a process for accepting supplemental documents such as a marriage certificate, which could establish the connection between a birth certificate and a government-issued ID.
Continue reading at the AP
Trump is trying to quietly wrest control of a top federal civil rights board
He wants to demote the Democratic chair and replace her with a hand-picked Republican
Donald Trump is trying to use a historic federal civil rights commission to advance his agenda on issues like alleged non-citizen voting, antisemitism on college campuses and transgender women in sports.
It would be a dramatic shift for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which was created nearly 70 years ago to investigate discrimination and guide the development and enforcement of the nation’s civil rights laws. Its work was instrumental to the formation of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
To wrest control of the eight-member bipartisan commission, Trump is trying to replace its chair, a Democrat, with a hand-picked Republican: an employment lawyer and conservative commentator named Peter Kirsanow. Kirsanow is an outspoken critic of affirmative action and so-called DEI measures, and he has championed a range of other conservative culture war issues.
In March, commission officials received a two-sentence email saying the White House was “de-designating” the current chair, Rochelle Garza, from her post, and elevating Kirsanow instead.
But Garza says Trump’s move is illegal. She says she’s not stepping down unless a majority of her colleagues vote to replace her.
“This is a way of trying to circumvent our authorizing statute, it’s very clear,” Garza said. “They’ve been relentlessly dismantling every single civil rights agency in the federal government, and this could be the last one standing.”
She added that she is “prepared to challenge any attempt to illegally remove me as chairwoman.”
Continue reading at Politico
Note from Rima: Women, white and women of color, have been systematically purged from high ranking positions throughout the government since the start of this administration. DEI, includes women as a whole.
Air Force Academy no longer considering race in admissions
The Air Force Academy has axed affirmative action in its admissions, the government said in a recent court filing.
Students for Fair Admissions, which won the Supreme Court case in 2023 that took away race-conscious admissions in public universities, sued the military academies after the justices said their ruling does not apply to those institutions.
The Justice Department said in a Thursday court filing for the case that on Feb. 6, acting Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Manpower and Reserve Affairs Gwendolyn R. DeFilippi issued a memorandum stating “quotas, objectives, and goals based on sex, race or ethnicity for organizational composition, academic admission, career fields, or class composition” were eliminated.
The court filing was first reported by Reuters.
The move comes a month after the Naval Academy also ended affirmative action in its admissions process.
President Trump signed an order early in his second term banning all diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs at government institutions.
Continue reading at The Hill
California defies Trump order to certify that all school districts have eliminated DEI
California has refused to follow a Trump order to certify that school districts have eliminated all diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
State education officials said “there is nothing in state or federal law that outlaws” DEI.
Under Trump, the U.S.Department of Education said DEI programs are a form of race-based discrimination.
California on Friday defied a Trump administration order to certify that the state’s 1,000 school districts have ended all diversity, equity and inclusion programs despite federal threats to cut billions of dollars in education funding if the state does not comply.
The U.S. Department of Education has given states until April 24 to collect certifications from every school district in the nation — confirming that all DEI efforts have been eliminated, as it contends such programs are a form of race-based discrimination and violate civil rights laws.
In a letter to school district superintendents Friday, the California Department of Education, or CDE, defended the legality of DEI efforts.
“There is nothing in state or federal law ... that outlaws the broad concepts of ‘diversity,’ ‘equity,’ or ‘inclusion,’” wrote Chief Deputy Supt. David Schapira in the letter to school districts, county education offices and charter schools.
CDE also sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Education about the decision not to comply — and said the federal request was vague.
Continue reading at the Los Angeles Times
General News
Britain announces a surge of Ukraine support as Western backers meet to drum up arms and ammunition
BRUSSELS (AP) — Britain on Friday announced a “surge” of military support to Ukraine, as the war-ravaged country’s Western backers gathered at NATO headquarters to drum up more weapons and ammunition to help fight off the Russian invasion.
Britain said that in a joint effort with Norway just over $580 million would be spent to provide hundreds of thousands of military drones, radar systems and anti-tank mines, as well as repair and maintenance contracts to keep Ukrainian armored vehicles on the battlefield.
On the eve of the meeting in Brussels, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said a key issue was strengthening his country’s air defenses. “Ukraine needs a sufficient number of modern systems like Patriot” missile systems, he said in a post on social media.
“A political decision is needed to supply these systems to protect our cities, towns, and the lives of our people — especially from the threat of Russian ballistic weapons. Our partners have such available systems,” Umerov said.
Continue reading at the AP
Social Security lists thousands of living immigrants as dead to prompt them to leave, AP sources say
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has moved to classify more than 6,000 living immigrants as dead, canceling their Social Security numbers and effectively wiping out their ability to work or receive benefits in an effort to get them to leave the country, according to two people familiar with the situation.
The move will make it much harder for those affected to use banks or other basic services where Social Security numbers are required. It’s part of a broader effort by President Donald Trump to crack down on immigrants who were allowed to enter and remain temporarily in the United States under programs instituted by his predecessor, Joe Biden.
The Trump administration is moving the immigrants’ names and legally obtained Social Security numbers to a database that federal officials normally use to track the deceased, according to the two people familiar with the moves and their ramifications. They spoke on condition of anonymity Thursday night because the plans had not yet been publicly detailed.
Continue reading at the AP
Tariffs activated the conservative old guard. Here’s what one of their top thinkers sees coming.
AEI president Robert Doar is glad that Trump paused on tariffs. He’s also got a plan to ensure that free-market conservatives stay on the White House’s mind.
President Trump’s vice grip on the Republican Party wobbled this week after tariffs turned allies into critics and his agenda’s big budget bill hit a snag with fiscal conservatives on Capitol Hill.
These two setbacks for Trump showed how the old school, Reagan-types in the Republican Party are still alive and able to play spoiler.
One of the most powerful institutions frequently aligned with them is the American Enterprise Institute — a storied think tank where right-leaning captains of industry have long assembled to make their voices heard.
Now, like so many others, AEI’s wired thinkers and donors are trying to adapt to Trump’s new Washington.
POLITICO Capitol Bureau Chief Rachael Bade caught up with AEI’s president, Robert Doar, on Wednesday night for an interview for the Playbook Deep Dive podcast.
They talked about who in the White House is receptive to lobbying for free trade and American global leadership; how they’re trying to influence an administration that’s fixated on podcasters and TikTokers — not conventional policy papers; who the emerging leaders are on Capitol Hill that are carrying their message; and why Doar is so much more optimistic about the future than your average cable TV host.
Watch the interview at Politico’s YouTube channel
Scoop: Trump envoy Witkoff travels to Russia to meet Putin
President Trump's diplomatic envoy Steve Witkoff traveled to Russia and is expected to meet President Vladimir Putin on Friday, according to a source familiar with the trip and FlightRadar data.
Why it matters: This will be the third meeting between Witkoff and Putin as Trump pushes for a ceasefire in the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Friction point: Trump has become frustrated that negotiations haven't made much progress in recent weeks, and said at one point that he was "pissed off" about comments Putin had made on Ukraine.
If no ceasefire is reached by the end of the month, Trump could move forward with additional sanctions on Russia either through executive power or by asking Congress to pass new sanctions legislation, a source familiar with the issue told Axios.
"We will know soon enough, in a matter of weeks, not months, whether Russia is serious about peace or not. I hope they are," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Brussels.
Driving the news: Last week, Witkoff hosted Putin's envoy Kirill Dmitriev in Washington in an effort to break the logjam.
Continue reading at Axios
These states have the most homeowners of color
Chart: 2023 homeownership rates, by race/ethnicity
More people of color have become homeowners over the past decade, but a wide racial gap remains, according to a recent report.
Why it matters: Owning a house is how most people in America build wealth and pass it down to younger family members.
The big picture: Some racial and ethnic groups are seeing faster homeownership gains than others, per the report by the National Association of Realtors (NAR).
Barriers include worsening affordability and unequal credit access, researchers say.
By the numbers: The U.S. homeownership rate for Black households was around 45% in 2023, up from roughly 42% in 2013, NAR's analysis of Census Bureau data shows.
It's still below the rates for white households (72%), Asian households (63%) and Hispanic households (51%).
What they found: Hispanic and Asian American households recorded the biggest jumps in homeownership rates, according to the report.
Continue reading at Axios
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene bought stocks hit hard by Trump tariffs during the market meltdown
NEW YORK (AP) — Give Marjorie Taylor Greene credit where it’s due: As stocks tanked on tariff fears, she showed her faith in the president not just with words but dollar bills.
The Republican congresswoman, an avid supporter of the Trump administration’s trade policies, not only bought stocks last week as others dumped them in a panic — she scooped up some of the biggest losers.
Lululemon, Dell Computer, Amazon, the parent of Restoration Hardware and a few others hit hard by Trump’s tariff threats were down 40% on average late last week when she pounced.
Data from a required three-page financial holdings document doesn’t disclose exactly how much she paid for the stocks, only ranges and dates.
Continue reading at the AP
Playbook: A crisis of confidence
Happy Friday. Zack Stanton in your inbox this morning. Get in touch.
In today’s Playbook …
— Economic tumult continues, with China unveiling new 125% tariffs on the U.S.
— Dems see an opening by tying President Donald Trump to “chaos.”
— SCOTUS intervenes in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
A PULSE CHECK: President Donald Trump gets his annual physical today at Walter Reed at 11 a.m. But the equivalent exam for America’s near-term economic health doesn’t need to wait for doctors: At this moment, the prognosis is negative, and that’s apparent to everyone except the most blinkered observers. While you were sleeping, the tariff-inspired market drop continued. China announced that starting tomorrow, it will impose a 125% tariff on all U.S. goods. The dollar dropped, while the euro and yen strengthened; gold hit a new all-time high. It’s clear now that the bond market freakout that inspired Trump’s 90-day pause in the tariffs isn’t over. Also clear: All of this presents an enormous political opening for Democrats, who, in an act of jiu-jitsu, may be able to use economic performance — arguably Trump’s greatest political strength and inarguably the key to his 2024 victory — into his most potent liability.
Trouble with a capital T: A little more than a day after Trump pared back his tariff plans in response to turmoil in markets for U.S. government debt, the trouble isn’t over, POLITICO’s ace economics correspondent Victoria Guida explained to your Playbook author in a late-night Slack message. “U.S. Treasuries sold off rapidly in trading hours for Asian markets, alongside the dollar, feeding evidence that investors are diversifying away from U.S. assets (and are piling instead into alternatives like the euro).”
A crisis of confidence? “Julia Coronado, founder of MacroPolicy Perspectives, said some investors are viewing this as a temporary move, as policies remain in flux, while others are reassessing their long-term investment strategy toward the U.S.,” Victoria continued. “Regardless, this is a worrying sign for the Trump administration about confidence in investing in America.”
A reminder: That was ostensibly the whole point of these tariffs.
When you phrase it like that: Bloomberg’s Anand Krishnamoorthy reports that the “much-vaunted America-first trade — buying up assets that win when the U.S. outperforms the rest of the world — is reversing” on concerns of a tariff-spurred recession in America. Adds POLITICO’s Sudeep Reddy in a helpful explainer: “Whether a recession arrives depends largely on whether Trump backs down even further in the coming weeks.”
Inside the White House … Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is now indisputably at the helm of the administration’s trade team, POLITICO’s Megan Messerly and Ari Hawkins report. Peter Navarro has been “relegated to the sidelines.” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has been “recast into the role of ‘bad cop.’” (Elon Musk “has not been a factor.”)
Bessent’s challenge … 90 days is not very much time to negotiate a trade deal — let alone 70+ bilateral deals. In a particularly Trumpy flourish, the president said yesterday that he could “make every deal in one day.” But the reality is that trade deals often take years to complete, as POLITICO’s Michael Stratford and Daniel Desrochers report, and “there’s little precedent for completing such sweeping, wide-ranging and accelerated trade negotiations.”
Thought bubble: In pausing the tariffs for 90 days, Trump effectively acknowledged that there was some degree of economic and political pain that was simply intolerable for him to bear. That runs counter to the “madman theory” of negotiations he’s eagerly employed. Knowing now that he isn’t prepared to actually blow up the American economy and global markets, if you’re another major country, why give in to his demands at the negotiating table? Hasn’t he ceded some leverage?
IT’S STILL THE ECONOMY, STUPID: Amid all of this, Democrats “see a prime opportunity to attack Trump on a key campaign promise they argue he’s failing to deliver — a message likely to be featured prominently in political ads if the economy continues to falter,” POLITICO’s Brakkton Booker and Andrew Howard report this morning in a piece about the “salivating” going on among Dem admakers.
Continue reading Politico’s Playbook newsletter
State tells employees to report on one another for ‘anti-Christian bias’
“It’s very ‘Handmaid’s Tale’-esque,” one official said.
The Trump administration has ordered State Department employees to report on any instances of coworkers displaying “anti-Christian bias” as part of its effort to implement a sweeping new executive order on supporting employees of Christian faith working in the federal government.
The department, according to a copy of an internal cable obtained by POLITICO, will work with an administration-wide task force to collect information “involving anti-religious bias during the last presidential administration” and will collect examples of anti-Christian bias through anonymous employee report forms.
The cable was sent out to embassies around the world under Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s name. The instructions also were released in a department-wide notice.
The document says the task force, which was established by the executive order, will meet around April 22 to discuss its initial findings.
The cable encourages State Department employees to report on one another through a tip form that can be anonymous. “Reports should be as detailed as possible, including names, dates, locations (e.g. post or domestic office where the incident occurred,” the cable reads.
Continue reading at Politico
Trump’s Coming Nuclear Age
The threat of U.S. withdrawal has prompted countries around the world — from Germany to South Korea — to talk about building their own nuclear arsenals.
Michael Hirsh is the former foreign editor and chief diplomatic correspondent for Newsweek, and the former national editor for POLITICO Magazine.
Donald Trump has been obsessed with preventing a nuclear holocaust since he was a bumptious boy builder back in the 1980s. Back then Trump reportedly proposed, with typical grandiosity, that if President Ronald Reagan appointed him “plenipotentiary ambassador” he would end the Cold War “within one hour.”
Since then, Trump has rarely stopped talking about mitigating the danger of nuclear weapons. In his first presidential term, shortly before heading off to what would become an infamous 2018 summit with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Trump called nukes “the biggest problem in the world” and summed up for reporters what he hoped to accomplish: “No more nuclear weapons anywhere in the world.” Trump has repeatedly sounded the theme in his second term as well, warning over and over of “World War III.” In mid-February he declared: “There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons. We already have so many.”
So it’s more than a little curious to consider that, in less than three months as president, Trump has already set in motion the opposite trend: potentially the fastest and most dangerous acceleration of nuclear arms proliferation around the world since the early Cold War.
The new nuclear powers aren’t just the rogue nations that have long been the focus of U.S. concern, countries like Iran and North Korea. Increasingly, the nations considering going nuclear are longtime U.S. allies, from Germany to South Korea, Japan to Saudi Arabia. Faced with the threat of U.S. withdrawal from its defense commitments, more and more countries are now openly talking about embracing the bomb — and just as worrisome, actually deploying nukes if hostilities break out.
Nor is there any evidence that in the flurry of activity marking what Trump has called “the most successful” start of any presidency in U.S. history, his administration has even begun reckoning with the implications of these seemingly contradictory policies.
Continue reading at Politico Magazine
Paxton’s challenge isn’t the only one worrying Senate Republicans
The Texas primary challenge to longtime incumbent Sen. John Cornyn prompts a perennial fear for Republicans: Will Trump help them protect their own?Ken Paxton’s entry into the U.S. Senate race in Texas is becoming a major headache for Republicans.
Top GOP senators were maneuvering to undercut the Texas attorney general even before he announced his primary campaign this week against four-term Sen. John Cornyn. Others urged President Donald Trump after Paxton got into the race to endorse the incumbent leadership adviser and former chair of the Senate campaign arm with a deep donor base.
“The best thing would have been to keep Paxton out of the race,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), a close Trump ally. He added that at this point he would tell Trump, if the president asked for his advice, to do “whatever is most helpful for John.”
Notably, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is staying neutral in the matchup between Cornyn and Paxton so far. And two members of the Texas delegation have already backed the challenger.
Paxton is just the start of the party’s primary problems. Republicans are on edge that Trump, if he chooses, could elevate more MAGA-aligned challengers to incumbents in several states, forcing a round of bitterly contested primaries. Senate Republican leaders are working to prevent a Trump-backed primary threat to Sen. Thom Tillis in North Carolina, home to one of the most competitive races next November. And Sen. Bill Cassidy in Louisiana, who voted to convict Trump following his impeachment in 2021’s riot at the Capitol, is facing a challenge from the right.
Continue reading at Politico
Cornyn rakes in nearly $2.5 million in first quarter
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) raised nearly $2.5 million in the first quarter of the year, marking a strong start to what will likely be a contentious reelection bid in 2026.
According to a source familiar with Cornyn’s political operation, the first quarter fundraising total brings the senator’s cash on hand total to $5.7 million.
Cornyn is considered a formidable fundraiser; he’s brought in more than $415 million during his time in the Senate. Last year alone he raised nearly $33 million to help Republicans win the majority in the Senate.
The haul comes after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) launched a primary challenge against Cornyn on Wednesday.
Continue reading at The Hill
US West senators introduce bipartisan wildfire mitigation bill, despite environmentalist opposition
A bipartisan cohort of U.S. West senators introduced legislation Friday aimed at managing forests and mitigating fires, despite ongoing opposition from many environmental groups.
The Fix Our Forests Act, a companion bill to House legislation with the same name, seeks to bolster wildfire resilience by improving forest administration, supporting fire-safe communities and streamlining approvals for projects that defend residents and ecosystems from devastating blazes, according to its authors.
The bill — introduced by Sens. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), John Curtis (R-Utah), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) — resulted from months of negotiations to reach a bipartisan consensus on these strategies and on collaborative efforts among federal agencies, states, tribes and other stakeholders.
“We need to act NOW with the speed required to mitigate wildfires and make our homes and businesses more resilient to these disasters, and to put in place protections for our communities and the environment,” Hickenlooper said in a statement.
Continue reading at The Hill
Ireland probes Musk’s X for feeding Europeans’ data to its AI model Grok
The investigation threatens to stoke further tensions between the EU and U.S. over tech rules.
Ireland's privacy regulator launched an investigation on Friday into how social media platform X has used Europeans' personal data to train its artificial intelligence model Grok.
The move to target the platform owned by Elon Musk, tech billionaire and right-hand man to United States President Donald Trump, is likely to stoke further tensions between the EU and U.S. over Europe's tech rules and regulations.
The probe by Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) looks into how personal data "in publicly-accessible posts" on X were processed to train Grok, the regulator said in a statement on Friday.
Musk's AI startup xAI has been developing a group of AI models under the name Grok, which are used to power things like the AI chatbot available on the X platform.
Grok's gobbling of EU data was already the subject of scrutiny from the Irish regulator last year, when X — after a battle in the Irish courts — agreed to suspend the use of EU citizens' data to train its AI models.
Continue reading at Politico Europe
Justice Dept. fires longtime spokesperson who worked for Robert Mueller and Jack Smith
Peter Carr, a longtime Justice Department spokesman, has been fired by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Carr told CBS News.
Carr did not say why he was terminated, but said it was the deputy attorney general who fired him. Carr was a career employee of the department's office of public affairs. In that role, he served as spokesman for special counsels Jack Smith and Robert Mueller. Smith brought two federal criminal cases against President Trump after the president's first term. And Mueller conducted a 22-month investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, the actions of the Trump campaign and possible obstruction of justice.
Continue reading at CBS News
4 Senate Republicans warn against ‘full-scale’ repeal of energy tax credits
A group of four Senate Republicans warned against a “full-scale” repeal of energy tax credits passed by Democrats in 2022.
“While we support fiscal responsibility and prudent efforts to streamline the tax code, we caution against the full-scale repeal of current credits, which could lead to significant disruptions for the American people and weaken our position as a global energy leader,” wrote Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), John Curtis (Utah), Thom Tillis (N.C.) and Jerry Moran (Kan.).
Their letter, addressed to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), is notable since a bloc of four senators could be enough to block Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill from moving forward.
If all four are willing to hold firm, at least some of the incentives for low-carbon energy projects passed by Democrats in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act could remain in place — though it’s not clear from the letter which incentives they hope to keep or whether they’d be open to reducing some of the credits instead of fully axing them.
Continue reading at The Hill
Prince Harry makes visit to Ukraine, meets with wounded veterans
Prince Harry is touching down in Ukraine, getting a first-hand look at a rehabilitation center in the war-torn country.
The Duke of Sussex visited the Superhumans Center in Lviv on Thursday, a spokesperson confirmed to ITK.
The organization describes its mission as providing a free “modern rehabilitation center” for adults and children who have suffered “life-changing injuries,” including prosthetics, psychological support and reconstructive surgery.
The 40-year-old member of the British royal family, who founded the Invictus Games — an international sports competition for wounded military veterans and personnel — in 2014, wanted to see for himself the rehab services in a country at war, a spokesperson for Harry told ITK.
Harry, along with a group from the Invictus Games Foundation, toured the center and met with patients, medics and veterans during the visit, the spokesperson said.
Continue reading at The Hill
Trump administration adds immigrant Social Security numbers to ‘death list’ in deportation push
The Trump administration directed the Social Security Administration (SSA) to place more than 6,300 migrants on its list for tracking dead people, blocking their ability to work in a move it hopes will encourage them to “self-deport.”
The request from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to place the migrants on the “Ineligible Master File” maintained by the SSA would bar migrants from receiving benefits or being able to work in the United States.
The move targeted those who were legally permitted to enter the country under President Biden and were given taxpayer identification numbers and work authorizations but who have since had their status revoked by the Trump administration.
Continue reading at The Hill
Social Security Administration ‘will be using X to communicate’ moving forward
The Social Security Administration (SSA) unveiled Thursday that it would use the social platform X to make announcements going forward, instead of traditional press releases or memos typically posted to the agency’s website.
“The agency will be using X to communicate to the press and the public — formerly known as Twitter,” Linda Kerr-Davis, SSA Midwest-West regional commissioner told employees in a call Thursday, according to Federal News Network (FNN).
“This will become our communication mechanism,” she told reporters.
The shift comes as communications staff at the agency has dwindled due to reassignments in front-facing roles at field offices across the country. Officials announced that regional SSA offices would no longer have fully staffed public affairs offices as a result.
“If you’re used to getting press releases and Dear Colleague letters, you might want to subscribe to the official SSA X account, so you can stay up to date with agency news,” Kerr-Davis said, as reported by FNN.
Continue reading at The Hill
White House moves Obama portrait for painting depicting Trump assassination attempt
A portrait of President Trump that depicts him raising his fist immediately following the attempt on his life last summer at a Butler, Pa., rally is replacing an image of former President Obama in a prominent spot inside the White House.
Dan Scavino, the White House deputy chief of staff, posted side-by-side photos on social media of the Trump artwork seemingly replacing the Obama painting on Friday at the bottom of the Grand Staircase.
The artwork of the 47th president shows him bloodied with an American flag waving behind him after he survived the assassination attempt last July. A White House spokesperson didn’t immediately return a request for comment about the artist behind the painting.
The image of Trump appeared to take the place of a portrait of Obama that was unveiled at the White House in 2022. The lifelike portrait by artist Robert McCurdy shows the former president sporting a black suit and gray tie in front of a white background.
The white background, the White House said at the time, “allow the viewer to establish a relationship with the subject.”
Continue reading at The Hill
Diplomats see ‘mess’ in Trump’s trade strategy
A POLITICO survey of more than 15 countries, including five key Asian trading partners, suggested confusion about the administration’s approach.
Trump administration officials are negotiating trade deals with select allies, while leaving most countries hit by Donald Trump’s tariffs in the dark about what the president wants from them.
The administration is embarking on a daunting sprint of talks with more than 70 countries in 90 days, amid a turbulent stock market and growing disapproval from Americans.
Trump has opened himself up to just a handful of serious negotiations so far — Vietnam, India, South Korea and Japan — prioritizing existing trading partners that are strategic to countering China, according to two people close to the White House, granted anonymity to discuss the administration’s tactics. A White House official, who was similarly granted anonymity, confirmed the strategy.
That means most countries are stuck, waiting for the attention of the world’s largest economy — all while paying the highest rate on exports to the U.S. in nearly a century. Trump paused some of his highest tariffs earlier this week, but left a 10 percent levy he imposed on all countries on April 2 and left hints that he’s interested in bulldozing other barriers to trade.
A POLITICO survey of more than 15 countries, including five key Asian trading partners, suggested confusion about the administration’s approach.
“We really don’t know what the Trump administration wants,” said one diplomat from an Asian country, who is close to the negotiations. That person, like other officials quoted, was granted anonymity to speak freely about the sensitive discussions.
“We’ve been told literally nothing,” said another official representing an Asian country. They said the lack of clarity from the administration suggests a deal-making process that’s “reactive, with no clear direction.”
Continue reading at Politico
Related discussion on CNN:
‘Browbeating is not a great diplomatic strategy’: CNN’s Jim Sciutto on China-US tariff negotiations
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I publish this daily news post, updated all throughout the day (and night), seven days a week. I publish it free to all because it is more important to me to keep us all informed, but it does take me from 04:00 through the evening to curate the news. I also publish 2-4 opinion pieces per week, also free. I am committed to doing this work for the duration of this administration.
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My Opinion Pieces:
That work wardrobe you need? Fuhget it for the next four years | Blog#42
If you’re a white collar worker, one of the costs of working is having to maintain a work-appropriate wardrobe, and pencilling in time at your favorite department store at your local upscale mall. No matter what kind of work you do, if you have children, you pencil in a trip to the local mall to buy children’s clothing, with time at their favorite restaurant for a burger and dessert.