Things Musk (and Trump) Did... 04-18-25 | Blog#42
Yesterday's post
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Yesterday’s News Worth Repeating
Populist Democrats rake in cash: 5 fundraising takeaways
The FEC reports underscore how the 2026 midterms are already underway as Democrats look to flip the House and as states like Georgia and North Carolina tee up some closely watched Senate races.
Here are five takeaways from the fundraising reports:
Populist Dems rake in money
In the last few weeks, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have been crisscrossing the country to meet with voters in their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, drawing in some cases tens of thousands of attendees.
Their FEC reports for this past quarter suggest that enthusiasm isn’t waning anytime soon. Sanders posted a whopping $11.5 million between January and March, while Ocasio-Cortez brought in $9.6 million during that same period. It’s an extraordinary amount of money for either a senator or House member to raise in one quarter, especially since it’s an off-cycle year.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), seen as a rising star within the party who has pushed for a more populist platform, also posted an $8 million haul. Progressive Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), floated as a potential 2028 contender, raised $3.7 million.
Continue reading at The Hill
Abdul El-Sayed launches Michigan Senate campaign
El-Sayed is drawing an early distinction with other candidates over support for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
A new Michigan Senate candidate is setting himself apart from Democrats seeking to cast aside Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
“Anybody who tells you that they’re going to unilaterally oppose one potential candidate without knowing who the alternative is, is either unnuanced or unsophisticated,” said Abdul El-Sayed, who officially launched his bid for Senate on Thursday. “So I want to know who is available, who is actively seeking the leadership. I’ll make a decision from there.”
It’s a tacit rebuke of state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and other Democratic candidates who have said recently that they would oppose Schumer amid an intraparty fight over his handling of a GOP-backed government funding bill.
El-Sayed, who had served as the director of Wayne County’s Department of Health, Human, and Veterans Services, is joining a crowded race to succeed retiring Sen. Gary Peters that includes McMorrow, who’s already launched her campaign. Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) and former Michigan state House Speaker Joe Tate are also expected to join the field in the coming weeks.
El-Sayed took up the left lane during a 2018 bid for governor, when he was endorsed by progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), but he lost to now-Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. This time he said he’d eschew labels but would run a campaign “focused on workers.”
Continue reading at Politico
David Hogg ignited a ‘circular firing squad’ inside the DNC
He’s telling Democrats he’s prepared to lose his DNC post if it comes to that.
When newly elected Democratic National Committee officers gathered in late March at a Washington hotel, the agenda included a brief but robust discussion of a pledge not to intervene in party primaries, according to two people who attended the meeting and a third who was briefed on it.
But there was one official, David Hogg, who never signed onto the DNC’s pledge, and he told a DNC staffer he had concerns because the group he co-founded gets involved in open primaries, according to a fourth person familiar with the conversation.
Three weeks later, Hogg called his fellow DNC officers to warn them that Leaders We Deserve, the group he co-founded, would be funding primary challenges to “asleep-at-the-wheel” Democrats in safe-blue seats.
His announcement on Tuesday, pledging to spend $20 million on its efforts, triggered a wave of criticism and concern from some Democrats, including members of Congress, DNC members and Democratic strategists, many of whom expressed frustration over Hogg’s dual roles as an activist and party representative. Some took to social media to vent while others, including House members, called Hogg directly on Wednesday, trying to get clarity on his position.
The unprecedented move by a DNC official to spend money against Democrats is exacerbating intra-party tensions that have wracked the party in the second Donald Trump era.
Continue reading at Politico
Today's news
Democratic News Corner
House Democrats fume at David Hogg's plan to oust lawmakers
Democratic National Committee vice chair David Hogg's plan to spend $20 million to primary older Democratic incumbents in Congress has sparked intense anger from some lawmakers.
Why it matters: House Democrats told Axios that, while Hogg is not targeting battleground-district members, they believe he will divert attention and resources away from their races and the fight to retake the House.
"What a disappointment from leadership. I can think of a million better things to do with twenty million dollars right now," swing-district Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-Mich.) told Axios.
"Fighting Democrats might get likes online, but it's not what restores majorities," she added.
Another vulnerable House Democrat, speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer candid thoughts about a top party official, called the plan "very counterproductive and counterintuitive" and said "it would sure be nice to have some of that financial support."
State of play: Hogg told the New York Times that his outside group, Leaders We Deserve, will spend $20 million to elect younger primary challengers to older incumbents in safely Democratic districts.
Continue reading at Axios
David Hogg isn’t backing down. But he’s trying to make nice with Dem leaders.
The organization he co-founded kicked in $100,000 to the DCCC.
David Hogg is trying to make nice with Democratic Party leaders.
The organization he co-founded, Leaders We Deserve, donated $100,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee on Thursday, according to a person familiar with the donation and granted anonymity to discuss it. It’s an olive branch, but a tiny fraction of the $20 million the Democratic National Committee vice chair vowed this week to put toward primaries against safe-seat incumbents — a push he isn’t backing down from.
The donation to the DCCC, which generally doesn’t get involved in safe seats, comes after Hogg ignited a firestorm of criticism in the party by announcing his plans to oust Democratic incumbents, an unprecedented move for a party officer. Many in the party had criticized the effort as running counter to the DNC’s credibility as a neutral arbiter.
Hogg, the now 25-year-old who first gained national stature as an outspoken survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, has stressed that his effort would not target Democrats in purple districts nor take on some Democrats facing challenges like Reps. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.). Instead, he said, it is aimed at bringing younger leaders into the fold in deep-blue seats, while also putting money toward flipping the House.
Hogg has drawn praise from some Democrats. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) posted Thursday night on social media that he’d spoken to Hogg and that “Dems should embrace a new generation of leadership & competition!”
Continue reading at Politico
Barbara Lee wins Oakland mayor’s race
Former Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) was projected to win a special election to become the next mayor of Oakland, according to Decision Desk HQ, in what became a closer-than-expected race amid growing voter dissatisfaction over the direction of the city.
Lee won the nonpartisan ranked-choice election over a field of more than a half dozen candidates, with the most prominent being former City Council member Loren Taylor, who was the runner-up to now-former Mayor Sheng Thao (D) in the 2022 mayoral race and emerged as this election’s dark-horse contender.
Taylor had the initial lead after the first batch of votes were tallied Tuesday night with 48.2 percent of the vote, about 1,200 votes ahead of Lee, who had 45.7 percent.
Continue reading at The Hill
"We need to do something": David Hogg on gun violence and future of the Democratic Party
'He hasn't won an election since I was born': Gen Z Dem fundraiser hits back at Carville
National Security
Putin tests Trump's patience by slow-walking ceasefire talks
The Trump administration's informal end-of-April deadline for Russia to agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine is drawing near without any commitments from the Kremlin.
Why it matters: U.S.-Russia talks have shown little clear progress and President Trump's promise of a swift peace deal appears nowhere near fruition. Still, he insisted Thursday that a ceasefire was getting closer and that he'd be "hearing from Russia this week."
Driving the news: Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday that Trump was prepared to abandon peace talks altogether within a "matter of days."
"We're not going to continue to fly all over the world and do meeting after meeting after meeting if no progress is being made," Rubio said.
He did not blame either side or say whether the U.S. would impose any costs before walking away.
In response, the Kremlin argued that progress had already been made but said no further contacts with the U.S. were planned for this week.
Behind the scenes: White House envoy Steve Witkoff met Russian President Vladimir Putin for more than four hours last Friday in St. Petersburg.
Continue reading at Axios
DOD says it sought resignation of official at center of DEI overhaul
Former top Pentagon spokesperson John Ullyot "was asked to resign," a Defense Department official said in an emailed statement on Thursday evening.
Why it matters: Despite this announcement, Ullyot maintains he offered his resignation, telling Axios late Thursday that "DoD officials who hide behind anonymous statements clearly resent that they did not have the access or relationship to Secretary [Pete] Hegseth that I enjoyed under President Trump's leadership."
He added in his emailed statement: "Their sour-grapes anonymous spin is as inaccurate as it is laughable." Representatives for the Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment in the evening on Ullyot's statement.
Ullyot's resignation comes during a staffing overhaul at the Pentagon that saw three politically appointed senior aides to Hegseth placed on administrative leave amidst an investigation into Defense Department leaks.
The big picture: Politico first reported on Wednesday that Ullyot would leave the Pentagon on Friday and AP first reported on Thursday's announcement and the former Pentagon press secretary's denial that he was asked to resign.
Continue reading at Axios (see yesterday’s post for Politico’s writeup)
Trump taps Mark Levin, Henry McMaster to ‘revamped’ Homeland Security council
President Trump announced Thursday that he has picked Fox News contributor Mark Levin, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) and other conservative allies to serve on a “revamped” Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC).
“Under Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s leadership, HSAC will work hard on developing new Policies and Strategies that will help us secure our Border, deport Illegal Criminal Thugs, stop the flow of Fentanyl and other illegal drugs that are killing our Citizens, and MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social, noting HSAC “is comprised of Top Experts in their field, who are highly respected by their peers.”
Trump didn’t elaborate on how the group will be “revamped” from its past iterations dating back to former President George W. Bush’s administration. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) didn’t immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment.
Levin, the host of Fox News’s “Life, Liberty & Levin,” responded to the news on the social media platform X: “What an honor! Thank you, Mr. President!” he wrote.
Trump has also tapped former New York Police Department detective Bo Dietl and Florida state Sen. Joseph Gruters, who is an officer of the Republican National Committee (RNC) for his overhauled panel, he said.
Continue reading at The Hill
Trump is shifting cybersecurity to the states, but many aren’t prepared
Only 22 of 48 states in a Nationwide Cybersecurity Review met recommended security levels.
For the first half of his career in law enforcement, working as a police officer in South Florida, Chase Fopiano did not think cyberattacks on police agencies were a serious threat.
Many of his law enforcement colleagues were under the same impression — that since they were the most likely to investigate the attacks, there was no way cybercriminals would go after them.
By about 2015, as technology advanced and hackers became more creative, that changed, Fopiano said. Now, from the U.S. Secret Service to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, there are thousands of attempts to compromise networks or organizations every day, he said.
“A lot of those [attempts] are toward government or even police, especially because they know that we’re not as prepared as we should be,” said Fopiano, who now oversees cybersecurity as part of a regional task force.
Spanning health care facilities to court systems, states and local communities are facing a rise in cyberthreats. They include threats to critical infrastructure, increased activity from foreign actors, continued ransomware attacks and more, according to a recent report from the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center.
But President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order shifting some of the responsibility from the federal government to states and localities to improve their infrastructure to address risks, including cybercrimes. And federal cuts have reduced resources for state and local officials, including a cybersecurity grant program and a key cybersecurity agency.
States and localities are taking steps to address the problems, such as establishing new penalties for tampering with critical infrastructure, centralizing state IT personnel and setting standards in areas from elections to health care.
But the Trump order and federal funding cuts, a shortage of IT experts at the local level and an overall lack of preparedness could weaken their efforts.
Continue reading at Stateline Daily
Defense secretary’s chief of staff to leave top job in wake of DOD turmoil
Other Defense Department officials were placed on leave earlier this week.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, will leave his role in the coming days for a new position at the agency, according to a senior administration official, amid a week of turmoil for the Pentagon.
Senior adviser Dan Caldwell, deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll, Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg’s chief of staff, were all placed on leave this week in an ongoing leak probe.
Continue reading at Politico
U.S. slashing military presence in Syria
The U.S. will shrink its military footprint in Syria over the coming months, bringing troop levels below 1,000.
Why it matters: President Trump tried to pull all American forces from the war-ravaged country during his first term.
Along with Turkey, Iran and Russia, the U.S. is one of several foreign powers with a foothold in Syria as the country rebuilds after the fall of dictator Bashar al-Assad.
The latest: Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell announced the reduction Friday afternoon, citing "the significant steps we have made toward degrading ISIS' appeal and operational capability regionally and globally."
Zoom in: Three small operating bases in northeast Syria will be shuttered, the New York Times reported Thursday.
Continue reading at Axios
Partisan divide widening on US support for NATO: Pew
A partisan divide is widening among Americans on the country’s support for NATO, with Democrats being more likely to have a positive opinion of the military alliance than Republicans, according to a Thursday survey.
The Pew Research Center poll found 66 percent of respondents think the U.S. benefits from NATO, though the figure has dropped by 5 points since 2021. Another 32 percent said the country does not benefit much or at all from the strategic partnership.
Among party lines, Democrats’ opinion about NATO being beneficial to the U.S. has largely stayed the same, but this view has dropped off by 6 points among GOP respondents.
Half of Republicans or GOP-leaning independents in the poll think the nation does not benefit much or at all from the military alliance that counts 32 countries as members, while 49 percent said the U.S. benefits a great or good amount.
Among Democrats, 83 percent said the country reaps the rewards of being in NATO, while 16 percent said the country does not benefit much or at all from the membership.
Continue reading at The Hill
Russia-Ukraine talks reach pivotal moment for Trump
U.S. efforts to mediate peace talks between Russia and Ukraine are reaching a pivotal moment, with President Trump saying both sides need to quickly show progress or his administration will exit the negotiations.
Trump, in remarks from the White House, didn’t lay out a specific timeline for a U.S. exit but said it could happen quickly.
“If for some reason one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say you’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people and we’re going to just take a pass,” Trump said.
It’s not clear exactly what that would mean, though it would seem to risk U.S. support for Ukraine.
“I’m not going to say that, because I think we’re going to get it done,” Trump said, referring to reaching a peace deal. On the campaign trail, he vowed to strike such a deal in his first 24 hours in office.
Continue reading at The Hill
Trump ranted to aides about washing his hands of Russia-Ukraine
Several days before President Trump and members of his administration said publicly that they were prepared to wash their hands of Russia-Ukraine diplomacy, Trump ranted in private about his frustrations that the negotiations were going nowhere.
Why it matters: After promising a deal within 24 hours of taking office, then kicking off weeks of negotiations, Trump said Friday that he was about ready to give up. He hasn't set a deadline or said whether he would take any further action beyond walking away.
If either side continues to block a deal, "we're just going to say, 'You're foolish, you're fools, you're horrible people,' and we're going to just take a pass," Trump said Friday.
Behind the scenes: Trump made his frustrations clear a few days earlier in an impromptu conversation about the ceasefire push with several of his top advisers, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and diplomatic envoy Steve Witkoff.
That's where Trump raised the idea that if a deal isn't reached soon he could simply move on to other foreign policy issues, a U.S. official briefed on the issue said.
Driving the news: By Friday, Trump's rant had turned into a public policy statement.
Continue reading at Axios
National Security Daily
Can Witkoff beat the odds?
Can STEVE WITKOFF seal the deal?
We posed this question to seven administration officials, conservative foreign policy experts and GOP senate aides, as DONALD TRUMP’s favorite diplomatic troubleshooter prepares to head to Rome this weekend for a second round of high-stakes nuclear talks with Iran.
The broad consensus is somewhere between a “probably not” and a resounding “no” — but no one is faulting Trump or Witkoff for trying.
It’s clear Witkoff faces steep hurdles. The most obvious one is that no one in GOP circles believes Iran will negotiate in good faith, and it is likely to drag out negotiations as long as possible to buy time to reconstitute its military muscle in the region.
Then there’s the fact that, unlike other types of diplomacy, nuclear negotiations are highly technical. The Obama-era Iran nuclear deal took many experts to craft and years to hash out. Trump has set a deadline of 60 days for Witkoff’s talks with Iran to bear fruit — though the Trump team may extend the deadline with an interim agreement or progress toward one if both sides prove to be flexible and serious about negotiating.
The Trump administration also faces behind-the-scenes pressure to move quickly from Republican hawks on Capitol Hill and Israel, Washington’s key Middle Eastern ally.
Iran has lost some of its most powerful military and deterrence capabilities in recent months. Its key ally in Syria is gone and the proxy militant groups it used to strike out at Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah, are militarily crippled. Iran is also grappling with a weak economy and could fear the effects of more U.S. sanctions. This means Iran hawks see a window of opportunity for either negotiations — or as Israel reportedly wants, military strikes — to end Iran’s nuclear program.
“This really has put Iran into a position where I think they believe they definitely have to talk to the United States,” said FRED FLEITZ of the American First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank, noted. “The problem I’ve heard so far is that they’re not serious about an agreement. But maybe this weekend they’ll say something else.”
Continue reading the Politico National Security Daily newsletter
Pentagon turmoil deepens: Top Hegseth aide leaves post
“There is a complete meltdown in the building,” one official said.
Joe Kasper, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s chief of staff will leave his role in the coming days for a new position at the agency, according to a senior administration official, amid a week of turmoil for the Pentagon.
Senior adviser Dan Caldwell, Hegseth deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll, the chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg, were placed on leave this week in an ongoing leak probe. All three were terminated on Friday, according to three people familiar with the matter, who, like others, were granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue.
The latest incidents add to the Pentagon’s broader upheaval in recent months, including fallout from Hegseth’s release of sensitive information in a Signal chat with other national security leaders and a controversial department visit by Elon Musk.
Caldwell, Carroll, Selnick and Kasper declined to comment. Two of the people said Carroll and Selnick plan to sue for wrongful termination. The Pentagon did not respond to a request of comment.
Kasper had requested an investigation into Pentagon leaks in March, which included military operational plans for the Panama Canal, a second carrier headed to the Red Sea, Musk’s visit and a pause in the collection of intelligence for Ukraine.
But some at the Pentagon also started to notice a rivalry between Kasper and the fired advisers.
Continue reading at Politico
Economics
A rapid unraveling: Global economic leaders echo Trump on trade imbalances
Pro-globalist, free trade institutions have an awkward admission: President Trump is right.
Why it matters: The era of America as the world's biggest customer looks like it might be over.
Leaders of major international organizations now warn the world has relied too much on the U.S. for economic growth, echoing White House calls for the rest of the globe to pick up the slack.
What they're saying: "Countries should renew their focus on internal and external macroeconomic imbalances," Kristalina Georgieva, the head of the International Monetary Fund, said yesterday.
"[E]xternal surpluses and deficits can create fertile ground for trade tensions," Georgieva said in a speech titled "Toward a Better Balanced and More Resilient World Economy."
The World Trade Organization had a similar message this week.
"Over-concentration — whether it's where we buy from or where we sell to — leads to over-dependence, making economies more vulnerable to shocks and fostering a sense of unfair burden sharing," Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the group's director, told reporters.
Continue reading at Axios
The Dow's Thursday tumble, explained
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 527 points on Thursday, despite the fact that 20 of its 30 components actually rose in price. The culprit: UnitedHealth Group, whose $131 fall was singlehandedly responsible for an 805-point decline.
Why it matters: A single highly-priced stock, if it falls far enough, can now create a greater point drop in the Dow than the 508-point plunge that triggered panicked headlines around the world in 1987.
Follow the money: S&P Dow Jones Indices confirmed to Axios that the fall on Thursday represents the largest point impact for the DJIA on record.
Continue reading at Axios
Strange sell-off in the dollar raises the specter of investors losing trust in the US under Trump
NEW YORK (AP) — Among the threats tariffs pose to the U.S. economy, none may be as strange as the sell-off in the dollar.
Currencies rise and fall all the time because of inflation fears, central bank moves and other factors. But economists worry that the recent drop in the dollar is so dramatic that it reflects something more ominous as President Donald Trump tries to reshape global trade: a loss of confidence in the U.S.
The dollar’s dominance in cross-border trade and as a safe haven has been nurtured by administrations of both parties for decades because it helps keep U.S. borrowing costs down and allows Washington to project power abroad — enormous advantages that could possibly disappear if faith in the U.S. was damaged.
“Global trust and reliance on the dollar was built up over a half century or more,” says University of California, Berkeley, economist Barry Eichengreen. “But it can be lost in the blink of an eye.”
Since mid-January, the dollar has fallen 9% against a basket of currencies, a rare and steep decline, to its lowest level in three years.
Many investors spooked by Trump don’t think the dollar will be pushed quickly from its position as the world’s reserve currency, instead expecting more of a slow decline. But even that is scary enough, given the benefits that would be lost.
Continue reading at the AP
Trump wants Powell out of the Fed. Waiting in the wings is Kevin Warsh
CNN previously reported that Warsh was again on Trump’s shortlist to become Fed chair this time around, once Powell’s time is up. In fact, Trump’s selection of Scott Bessent to lead the Treasury Department was seen by many as a way to leave Warsh open for an eventual appointment as Fed chair.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Bloomberg earlier this week that the administration will start interviewing candidates for Powell’s successor “sometime in the fall.”
And with speculation swirling over whether Trump will try to oust Powell before his term ends, Bessent said that “monetary policy is a jewel box that’s got to be preserved.”
But who is the man who might soon lead one of the world’s most powerful financial institutions?
The man who could be the next Fed chairWarsh, 55, was a vice president and executive director at Morgan Stanley in the company’s mergers and acquisitions division before serving as a special assistant to then-President George Bush for economic policy and as executive secretary at the National Economic Council.
Continue reading at CNN.com
Manufacturers brace for pain amid Trump tariffs
Manufacturers expect dismal business conditions that could plunge the sector back into a recessionary-like state.
Why it matters: President Trump's trade war is intended to revitalize domestic factories by discouraging the consumption of foreign-made goods.
But for the moment, surveys show manufacturers expect the opposite: less expansion, plummeting sales, job cuts and higher prices. It's a signal that they see high hurdles and economic pain as the White House aims to delink the U.S. manufacturing sector from the rest of the world.
Driving the news: Regional Federal Reserve banks regularly poll manufacturers about their economic outlooks. Those surveys, including some releaesd this week, have turned uniformly gloomy.
New York factory owners turned "pessimistic about the outlook, with the future general business conditions index falling to its second lowest reading in the more than twenty-year history of the survey," according to the New York Fed's Empire State manufacturing survey.
Continue reading at Axios
Live updates: Federal judge to pause the Trump administration’s plans for mass layoffs at the CFPB
A federal judge who blocked the Trump administration from dismantling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has ruled that the agency can’t go forward immediately with plans to fire hundreds of employees.
Continue reading live updates at the AP
Wall Street Journal defends Powell from Trump attacks
The Wall Street Journal editorial board has Jerome Powell’s back following President Trump’s blistering social media criticism of the Federal Reserve chair this week after he offered negative economic predictions over Trump’s tariffs.
“The problem for Mr. Trump is that Mr. Powell spoke the truth,” the conservative-leaning board wrote in an editorial published Friday. “The main lesson from Trump vs. Powell is that the central bank can’t make up for the economic policy errors of politicians.”
Trump bashed Powell, whom he appointed to the position during his first term in 2018, in a Truth Social post early Thursday morning, writing “Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough!”
“If I want him out, he’ll be out of there real fast, believe me,” Trump told reporters later that day. “I’m not happy with him. I let him know it.”
Continue reading at The Hill
Hassett says ‘more than 15’ potential tariff deals on the horizon
National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said Friday the White House has more than 15 trade deals on the horizon in the wake of President Trump’s tariffs on foreign exports.
Hassett offered no specific details of any deals but described them as “really big, big steps forward.”
Trump put a 90-day pause on “reciprocal” tariffs across all countries except China last week, a bid to give foreign trading partners three months to negotiate deals with the United States and eliminate the need for tariffs this summer.
Last week, Hassett said several deals were close to closing but needed legal approval before being processed.
“There’s a bunch of offers that are really sensible offers, and they’re coming from our top trading partners,” Hassett told CNBC last Thursday.
“It’s some of the most progress in trade negotiation that — I think probably the most progress that we’ve ever seen,” he added.
He suggested that if other countries remove tariffs on the United States, Trump would do the same.
Continue reading at The Hill
Trump opens national marine monument to commercial fishing
The Trump administration is opening a national marine monument to commercial fishing, it announced Thursday.
The White House issued an executive order that allows for commercial fishing within the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, a nearly 500,000 square mile area — double the size of the state of Texas — in the central Pacific Ocean.
The monument, first established by former President George W. Bush and later expanded by former President Obama, contains coral reef and island habitats. Thousands of species can be found there, including coral reefs, sea turtles, whales, dolphins, sharks and manta rays.
In a separate executive order, President Trump indicated more monuments could similarly be opened to commercial fishing in the future. That order directed the leaders of the Commerce and Interior departments to review all other marine monuments and recommend whether commercial fishing would also be allowed within their boundaries.
Continue reading at The Hill
Trump economic chief predicts tax bill will pass by summer
National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said he expects to “finalize the president’s thoughts on the tax agenda” by next week.
National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said Friday that he expects the GOP tax bill to pass Congress by early summer.
“The hope is that the tax bill will be passed by the summer, early summer and so things are moving very, very quickly,” Hassett told reporters at the White House. “We expect probably to finalize the president’s thoughts on the tax agenda, at least first thoughts, opening salvos, by sometime next week.”
The timeline set by Hasssett lines up approximately with House Speaker Mike Johnson’s aspirations to pass President Donald Trump’s policy agenda by Memorial Day. It’s a very ambitious goal, though, given that there are major outstanding differences between how Senate and House Republicans have proposed extending trillions of dollars in expiring tax cuts from Trump’s first term.
The GOP legislation also aims to deliver on Trump’s campaign promises to eliminate taxes on tips, overtime pay and Social Security benefits, among other new tax cuts. The tax provisions are part of the “one big beautiful bill” Trump wants, along with energy, border and defense policies — and potentially large spending cuts that could dig into Medicaid.
House Republicans approved a budget blueprint for the legislation last week, following the Senate, before heading out of Washington for recess.
Continue reading at Politico
Trump on egg costs: ‘If anything, the prices are getting too low’
President Trump weighed in on the cost of eggs around the country, claiming Friday at the White House that the prices are “getting too low.”
Trump praised Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins for doing a “great” job and then asserted that egg prices are “down 87 percent, but nobody talks about that.”
“You can have all the eggs. You watch, we have too many eggs. In fact, if anything, the prices are getting too low. So I just want to let you know that the prices are down,” the president said Friday after Dr. Mehmet Oz had been sworn in as the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
On Friday, the average wholesale price of eggs was $3.13, a slight uptick from the previous week, Department of Agriculture data shows. The prices have dropped since February, and retail prices are also beginning to drop.
“Price levels to the consumer have eased considerably from early-year highs but remain at levels not yet conducive to more than normal purchases needs,” the Agriculture Department wrote.
Continue reading at The Hill
Note from Rima: I was at the store today and looked at the price of eggs. A dozen, no matter the brand, could not be purchased for less than $7.99 a dozen. Whole Foods was late to raise their prices and now sell their 365 brand for $5.79
Health and Science News
Video shows doctor with measles treating kids. RFK Jr later praised him as an ‘extraordinary’ healer
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A Texas doctor who has been treating children in a measles outbreak was shown on video with a measles rash on his face in a clinic a week before Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. met him and praised him as an “extraordinary” healer.
Dr. Ben Edwards appeared in the video posted March 31 by the anti-vaccine group Kennedy once led, Children’s Health Defense. In it, Edwards appears wearing scrubs and talking with parents and children in a makeshift clinic he set up in Seminole, Texas, ground zero of the outbreak that has sickened hundreds of people and killed three, including two children.
Continue reading at the AP
Trump swears-in Mehmet Oz as CMS administrator
At the swearing-in ceremony held in the Oval Office, Trump lauded Oz as an “internationally acclaimed heart and lung surgeon,” quipping “how convenient” it was that Oz attended Harvard University. The Trump administration has been engaged in an escalating back-and-forth with the university over its refusal to heed the White House’s demands in exchange for federal funding.
“We’re delighted to swear in Dr. Mehmet Oz as the next Administrator of the Centers for Medicine and Medicaid Services, which is a big deal,” said Trump, misnaming the full title of CMS.
“As CMS administrator, Dr. Oz will work tirelessly to strengthen and protect Medicare for our nation’s seniors and Medicaid for the needy, just as I promised. There will be no cuts. We’re not going to have any cuts. We’re going to have only help,” he added.
The Senate voted 53-45 along party lines to confirm Oz earlier this month.
Continue reading at The Hill
White House pushes COVID lab leak theory with new website
The Trump administration recast the White House's COVID information website on Friday to declare a virus leaking from a Chinese lab as the "true origins" of the pandemic.
Why it matters: President Trump has pushed the lab leak theory since 2020 when he downplayed masking, testing and other measures to prevent the spread of COVID during his first term while his approval rating cratered.
Experts say the continued debate over whether the virus jumped from animals to humans or spread after a lab accident distracts from preventing both scenarios from occurring in the future.
Driving the news: "By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced," the White House website said. "But it hasn't."
Zoom in: The website alleges with no evidence that the Biden administration "engaged in a multi-year campaign of delay, confusion and non-responsiveness" to hide evidence.
It also said the World Health Organization's response to the pandemic was an "abject failure because it caved to pressure from the Chinese Communist Party and placed China's political interests ahead of its international duties."
The website criticizes Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, for pushing a "preferred narrative."
Continue reading at Axios
RFK Jr.'s medical skepticism goes beyond vaccines
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s vaccine skepticism may be the hallmark of his public persona, but his and his followers' questioning of the medical and pharmaceutical establishment goes much deeper.
Why it matters: In recent weeks, it's become pretty clear that Kennedy's views haven't changed all that much from his pre-HHS days. That could have implications that go far beyond vaccines and put him at even greater odds with the industries he's charged with regulating, let alone mainstream science.
If his past views hold up, antidepressants, ADHD medication and drugs that use mRNA technology — both those on the market and those under development — could end up as his next targets.
In fact, some of his words and actions since being nominated and confirmed as the nation's top health official suggest they're already on his list.
Driving the news: Kennedy may not have mentioned vaccines at Wednesday's press conference on autism, but that's where many people's minds went because of the way he's consistently linked the two.
He notably contradicted CDC researchers about why autism diagnoses are rising, pointing to what he called toxins in the environment, not better diagnostics (another familiar talking point).
Continue reading at Axios
Montana reports first measles cases since 1990
Montana public health officials have found five cases of measles in Gallatin County, the first cases of the disease in the Treasure State in more than three decades.
Gallatin County is home to the state’s fourth most populated city — Bozeman — and is the second most populated county in the state.
A handful of children and adults contracted the disease while traveling outside of Montana, according to the state’s Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHH), leading to the state’s first measles cases since 1990. All of them are isolating at home and are either unvaccinated or their measles vaccine status is unknown, according to officials.
“While it is unfortunate to have cases of measles after 35 years of disease inactivity in Montana, we have been working diligently with our local partners to prepare,” Maggie Cook-Shimanek, DPHHS’s public health physician, said in a statement.
“We are confident that our public health and clinical partners will work together and address this situation as quickly as possible,” she added.
Continue reading at The Hill
American doctor receives email from immigration officials telling her to leave the country immediately
Dr. Lisa Anderson, 58, was born in Pennsylvania and is a U.S. citizen.
A doctor born in the United States says she received an email from federal immigration authorities demanding that she leave the country immediately.
Lisa Anderson, a physician from Cromwell, Connecticut, told NBC Connecticut on Wednesday that she recently received a letter from the Department of Homeland Security telling her, “It is time for you to leave the United States."
Immigration authorities have been pushing noncitizens to leave of their own volition, or “self-deport,” as the number of deportations remains at similar levels to last year.
But Anderson, 58, was born in Pennsylvania and is a U.S. citizen.
Continue reading at NBC News
Trump’s War on Measurement Means Losing Data on Drug Use, Maternal Mortality, Climate Change and More
More children ages 1 to 4 die of drowning than any other cause of death. Nearly a quarter of adults received mental health treatment in 2023, an increase of 3.4 million from the prior year. The number of migrants from Mexico and northern Central American countries stopped by the U.S. Border Patrol was surpassed in 2022 by the number of migrants from other nations.
We know these things because the federal government collects, organizes and shares the data behind them. Every year, year after year, workers in agencies that many of us have never heard of have been amassing the statistics that undergird decision-making at all levels of government and inform the judgments of business leaders, school administrators and medical providers nationwide.
The survival of that data is now in doubt, as a result of the Department of Government Efficiency’s comprehensive assault on the federal bureaucracy.
Reaction to those cuts has focused understandably on the hundreds of thousands of civil servants who have lost their jobs or are on the verge of doing so and the harm that millions of people could suffer as a result of the shuttering of aid programs. Overlooked amid the turmoil is the fact that many of DOGE’s cuts have been targeted at a very specific aspect of the federal government: its collection and sharing of data. In agency after agency, the government is losing its capacity to measure how American society is functioning, making it much harder for elected officials or others to gauge the nature and scale of the problems we are facing and the effectiveness of solutions being deployed against them.
The data collection efforts that have been shut down or are at risk of being curtailed are staggering in their breadth. In some cases, datasets from past years now sit orphaned, their caretakers banished and their future uncertain; in others, past data has vanished for the time being, and it’s unclear if and when it will reappear. Here are just a few examples:
The Department of Health and Human Services, now led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., laid off the 17-person team in charge of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which for more than five decades has tracked trends in substance abuse and mental health disorders. The department’s Administration for Children and Families is weeks behind on the annual update of the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, the nationwide database of child welfare cases, after layoffs effectively wiped out the team that compiles that information. And the department has placed on leave the team that oversees the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, a collection of survey responses from women before and after giving birth that has become a crucial tool in trying to address the country’s disconcertingly high rate of maternal mortality.
Continue reading at ProPublica
Thousands of Urine and Tissue Samples Are in Danger of Rotting After Staff Cuts at a CDC Laboratory
Workers who recently lost their jobs at the National Institute for Occupational Safety say they’re concerned that there’s no plan for managing biological samples tied to research projects.
Seven federal workers who abruptly lost their jobs in recent weeks say they are worried that thousands of biological samples—from human urine to frozen rodent organs—may be left to rot in a government laboratory in West Virginia. The workers left behind the samples, which they say include lungs, spleens, and brains collected from rats and mice, after the Trump administration laid off or placed on administrative leave about two-thirds of the staff working at facilities managed by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) earlier this month.
The NIOSH researchers collected the tissue samples as part of experiments to determine how Americans may be impacted by chemicals and other substances they are exposed to at their jobs. Some of the samples are stored in a refrigerator that needs to be kept at -112 Farenheit at all times, while others are stored in liquid nitrogen. Unless someone inside the federal government continues to ensure the liquid nitrogen doesn’t totally evaporate, the samples will eventually defrost and begin to rot, according to three staff researchers who work with such materials.
“You can't really store them very long in a regular freezer—they won't be viable,” says Kyle Mandler, a toxicologist at the Morgantown NIOSH facility who was placed on administrative leave during the recent so-called reduction in force at the agency. “That clock is ticking, and every day is closer.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has historically overseen NIOSH, referred WIRED’s questions about the fate of the samples to the Department of Health and Human Services. HHS declined to comment on the record. But hours after WIRED contacted the agency, a current NIOSH staffer said that some remaining employees were abruptly told by higher-ups that the liquid nitrogen levels were being “monitored.”
One NIOSH researcher who lost their job tells WIRED that if the samples aren’t left to rot, they will probably be destroyed—a process that would involve placing them into biohazard bags and paying a third-party company to incinerate them. It’s unclear what may happen to other materials in the lab, such as chemicals used in experiments. The researcher said that a large shipment of chemicals had arrived the morning of the layoffs.
The Morgantown facility also houses historical tissue samples, including what the CDC describes as a “‘time capsule” of diseased human lungs from black lung victims. Current and former NIOSH employees who spoke to WIRED say they are not aware of any plans for these samples. “I have seen and held those samples in my hands,” Mandler tells WIRED. “There is nothing like that tissue bank anywhere in the world.”
Continue reading at Wired
Anti-Vaxxers Are Grifting Off the Measles Outbreak—and Claim a Bioweapon Caused It
Activists affiliated with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are selling a “measles treatment and prevention protocol” for hundreds of dollars, including supplements supposedly formulated by AI.
Anti-vaccine activists with close ties to US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are falsely claiming that the measles public health crisis in Texas is caused by a “bioweapon” targeting the Mennonite community. These activists are now trying to sell their followers a range of pseudoscientific cures—some purportedly powered by artificial intelligence—that supposedly prevent customers from contracting measles.
The claims were made in a webinar posted online last week and hosted by Mikki Willis, an infamous conspiracy filmmaker best known for his Plandemic series of pseudo-documentaries. These helped supercharge Covid-19 disinformation online and were, Kennedy has said, funded in part by Children’s Health Defense (CHD), an anti-vaccine group Kennedy founded. Willis also created a video for Kennedy marking the announcement of his independent run for the presidency.
“I’m not going to be careful by calling it a virus,” Willis said in the measles webinar. “I’m going to call it what it is, and that is a bioweapon, and my belief after interviewing these families is that this has been manipulated and targeted towards a community that is a threat because of their natural way of living.” (Measles is not a bioweapon. It is a viral infection that can be easily prevented by getting a vaccine.)
The webinar was hosted by Rebel Lion, the supplement company that Willis cofounded. On the website, and prominently featured under the webinar, Willis sells and recommends a “measles treatment and prevention protocol” full of supplements and tools on the site. On the webinar, Willis claimed the protocol will help parents “get prepped for, if God forbid this does get out, and their children get sick.” Together, purchasing the full protocol costs hundreds of dollars.
Continue reading at Wired
Polling- Surveys
These are the top workplace fears for U.S. employees right now
At the start of the year, a survey from workplace platform Modern Health identified that a huge 75 percent of the American workforce said they were experiencing some form of low mood.
Unsurprisingly, politics and current events are the key drivers of U.S. workers’ worries.
Workers’ mental health is taking a beating as a result, with 74 percent saying they want mental-health resources specifically addressing global political turmoil.
For many employees, things are as bad as they’ve ever been. Almost half of the survey respondents said life was easier during the COVID-19 pandemic than it is now.
“American employees are struggling with their mental health, with global political turmoil and current events taking a particularly dire toll, and it’s detrimental to how employees are showing up in the workplace,” says Alyson Watson, founder, and CEO of Modern Health.
Those factors are bad enough, but another piece of research identifies that a majority of Americans are also concerned about the prospect of losing their job this year.
Job losses loom
Another study, conducted by My Perfect Resume, outlines growing fears among workers.
Continue reading at The Hill
California’s frustration with homelessness is boiling over, poll finds
A survey from POLITICO and the UC Berkeley Citrin Center asked registered voters if they supported an aggressive approach to clearing encampments.
SAN FRANCISCO — California voters have grown so frustrated with the blue state’s failure to reduce homelessness that well over a third of the electorate now supports local laws that allow police to arrest people camping outside if they refuse shelter.
About 37 percent of voters support arresting homeless people if they refuse to accept shelter, according to a poll from POLITICO and UC Berkeley’s Citrin Center that surveyed registered voters as well as political and policy professionals for the first time about the contentious approach to the homelessness crisis. Another 24 percent of voters surveyed “somewhat” agree with that approach, and 38 percent oppose the idea.
“If I were a policymaker, I would read this as people expressing frustration that homelessness hasn’t decreased in absolute terms,” said Jason Elliott, a veteran Democratic consultant and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s former deputy chief of staff. “Californians are right to be frustrated.”
The poll also found that addressing housing and homelessness was far and away the biggest shortcoming of state government — and the most pressing issue facing California, which has the nation’s largest homeless population and notoriously high housing costs. The finding on encampments comes as a handful of cities pursue more aggressive policies, including a proposal by San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, a moderate Democrat, that would allow the Bay Area city to arrest people who repeatedly decline shelter.
Even cities with less draconian ordinances, including San Francisco and Sacramento, have seen a sharp uptick in the number of homeless people arrested for refusing to move their camps. Such arrests have surged in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling last summer, Grants Pass v. Johnson, that granted local officials broad powers to outlaw public camping, including by jailing people.
Continue reading at Politico
Trump’s first quarter approval rating sits at 45 percent: Poll
President Trump’s approval rating in the first quarter of his second term is sitting at 45 percent — an increase from the same timeframe in his first term, according to a recent Gallup survey.
Trump touted a 41 percent approval rating during his first administration, which measures 19 percentage points below post-World War II presidents, the pollster noted. The average first quarter approval rating for U.S. presidents from 1952 to 2020 is 60 percent.
The latest approval score comes as Americans have felt the pressure of Trump’s recent tariff announcement amid economic uncertainty sparked by market changes and the potential impact of the president’s trade war on consumer prices.
Continue reading at The Hill
The Courts / Legal
Judge orders Tufts University student in detention case to be brought to Vermont
A U.S. district judge said he would hear Rumeysa Ozturk’s request to be released from detention.
A federal judge on Friday ordered that a Turkish Tufts University student detained by immigration authorities in Louisiana be brought to Vermont by May 1 for a hearing over what her lawyers say was apparent retaliation for an op-ed piece she co-wrote in the student newspaper.
U.S. District Judge William Sessions said he would hear Rumeysa Ozturk’s request to be released from detention. Her lawyers had requested that she be released immediately, or at least brought back to Vermont.
The 30-year-old doctoral student was taken by immigration officials as she walked along a street in the Boston suburb of Somerville on March 25. After being taken to New Hampshire and then Vermont, she was put on a plane the next day and moved to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Basile, Louisiana.
Continue reading at Politico
Deportations under Alien Enemies Act are ‘imminent,’ ACLU says
Attorneys for Venezuelan immigrants told federal courts that deportations might begin as soon as Friday night, and that some may have already been “loaded on to buses.”
The Trump administration is preparing to deport another group of Venezuelan immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act, attorneys for the immigrants told federal courts Friday.
The move by the administration — which ACLU attorneys warned could happen as early as Friday evening — comes as President Donald Trump has made deportations to a Salvadoran prison the highest-profile piece of his immigration policy.
The administration is embroiled in several legal fights over its efforts to rapidly expel noncitizens to El Salvador’s terrorism confinement center with little or no due process. Democrats and legal scholars have warned that the administration’s attempts to defy court orders related to the deportations are escalating into a constitutional crisis.
In an emergency motion in a Texas lawsuit, lawyers said dozens of Venezuelan men have been given notices indicating that they are at “imminent risk” of deportation from Bluebonnet Detention Center in Anson, Texas.
Continue reading at Politico
Wrongly deported Ábrego García traumatized at El Salvador's CECOT megaprison: Van Hollen
Kilmar Ábrego García, mistakenly deported from the U.S., was moved from CECOT to a detention center in Santa Ana, El Salvador, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said on Friday.
The big picture: Ábrego García said he was traumatized at the Salvadoran megaprison.
"He said he's sad every day," Van Hollen said at a news conference after returning from El Salvador. Ábrego García's wife, mother and brother were present.
Context: Van Hollen met with on Ábrego García on Thursday after the senator spent days working to meet with him.
The Trump administration has confirmed that he was mistakenly deported and has defied a Supreme Court order to facilitate his return to the U.S.
Zoom in: Ábrego García said his prison cell at CECOT had about 25 prisoners, and he was not afraid of them.
Continue reading at Axios
Trump's United States of Emergency
In his first 100 days, President Trump has declared more national emergencies — more creatively and more aggressively — than any president in modern American history.
Why it matters: Powers originally crafted to give the president flexibility in rare moments of crisis now form the backbone of Trump's agenda, enabling him to steamroll Congress and govern by unilateral decree through his first three months in office.
So far, Trump has invoked national emergencies to impose the largest tariffs in a century, accelerate energy and mineral production, and militarize federal lands at the southern border.
Paired with his assault on the judiciary, legal scholars fear Trump is exploiting loosely written statutes to try to upend the constitutional balance of power.
How it works: The president can declare a national emergency at any time, for almost any reason, without needing to prove a specific threat or get approval from Congress.
The National Emergencies Act of 1976, which unlocks more than 120 special statutory powers, originally included a "legislative veto" that gave Congress the ability to terminate an emergency with a simple majority vote.
But in 1983, the Supreme Court ruled that legislative vetoes are unconstitutional — effectively stripping Congress of its original check, and making it far harder to rein in a president's emergency declarations.
The big picture: Since then, presidents have largely relied on "norms" and "self-restraint" to avoid abusing emergency powers for non-crises, says Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program.
Continue reading at Axios
Trump’s claims about Abrego Garcia’s gang ties largely rely on 1 confidential tip
The Trump administration’s argument that the mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13 is based largely on a confidential tip he and his family have long disputed.
The Trump administration’s claims rely on the findings of an immigration court judge who declined to release Abrego Garcia on bond after an arrest, determining he could be a danger to the community.
But a review of court records supplied by both the Trump administration and Abrego Garcia’s attorneys show a more complex picture, one in which the same judge said that various representations given by police were “at odds” with one another.
Abrego Garcia’s immigration troubles began in 2019, when the Salvadoran national was arrested outside of a Maryland Home Depot while soliciting work alongside three other men. The officer who pulled over to question them described them as loitering.
Attorneys for Abrego Garcia, who had no prior criminal record, said he stood next to two men he recognized from previously seeking work outside the store, but “he had never interacted with them in any other context.”
Continue reading at The Hill
Judge further limits DOGE's access to Social Security data
A federal judge on Thursday issued new restrictions on Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, extending a ban on its access to Americans' personal data in Social Security Administration systems.
Why it matters: The Social Security database contains sensitive personal information about every American, and DOGE's claim it was rooting out fraud threatens to disrupt critical services for millions.
The big picture: U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander temporarily blocked Musk and DOGE from accessing American's personal data in the SSA system last month, but the ban was set to expire Thursday, per Reuters.
Hollander issued a temporary injunction Thursday extending the ban.
The Trump administration had failed to prove why DOGE needed "unprecedented, unfettered access to virtually SSA's entire data systems in order to accomplish" its goals, Hollander wrote.
Continue reading at Axios
Appeals court halts Boasberg’s contempt proceedings against Trump administration
A divided federal appeals court panel on Friday temporarily halted U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s contempt proceedings against the Trump administration over its deportation flights to El Salvador last month.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit indicated its order is intended to provide “sufficient opportunity” for the court to consider the government’s appeal and “should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits of that motion.”
But for now, it prevents Boasberg from moving ahead with his efforts to hold administration officials in contempt. The judge on Wednesday found probable cause for contempt, calling the government’s refusal to turn around the March 15 deportation flights “a willful disregard” for the court’s order.
The three-judge D.C. Circuit panel split 2-1. The two Trump appointees, Judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao, ruled for the administration. Judge Cornelia Pillard, an appointee of former President Obama, dissented.
“In the absence of an appealable order or any clear and indisputable right to relief that would support mandamus, there is no ground for an administrative stay,” Pillard wrote in a brief explanation.
Continue reading at The Hill
Schumer wants to block Trump’s nominee for a top federal prosecutor. Trump may have a workaround.
Trump could try to rely on a rarely used provision to bypass Senate confirmation for Jay Clayton, his choice to be Manhattan U.S. attorney.
NEW YORK — President Donald Trump is installing his pick for the top federal prosecutor job in Manhattan on an interim basis despite Sen. Chuck Schumer’s effort to block the nominee’s confirmation in the Senate.
And in the long term, Trump may rely on a little-known legal provision to try to keep his nominee, Jay Clayton, in the influential prosecutorial post for the duration of Trump’s second term without ever confronting the confirmation process.
The playbook: First, appoint Clayton as interim U.S. attorney, allowing him to fill the role for up to four months without Senate confirmation. Then, when that window expires, count on the federal judges in Manhattan to appoint Clayton to the position indefinitely.
Trump has already implemented the first step. Earlier this week, he said in a social media post that Clayton, the former chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, would become the interim head of the Manhattan prosecutor’s office, known as the Southern District of New York.
Clayton is expected to begin work on Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Continue reading at Politico
Supreme Court temporarily pauses deportations under Alien Enemies Act
Washington, DC (CNN) — The Supreme Court early Saturday morning paused the deportation of immigrants potentially subject to the Alien Enemies Act, freezing action in a fast-developing case involving a group of immigrants in Texas who say the Trump administration was working to remove them.
The court’s brief order drew dissents from conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.
Attorneys for the Venezuelans at issue in the case filed an emergency appeal at the high court on Friday, claiming they were at immediate risk of being removed from the country and had not been provided sufficient notice to challenge their deportation.
Continue reading at CNN.com
Anti-DEI-Whitewashing
Nothing to see here, yet.
General News
Democrats want Elon Musk out of government. He might stay in their campaign ads.
The party is debating whether the bureaucracy-slashing billionaire will still have political resonance come 2026.
Democrats want to make Elon Musk the main character in their midterm messaging. They’re just not sure their bogeyman will be around long enough for it to matter.
Emboldened by their Wisconsin Supreme Court win and recent polling that puts Musk’s favorability underwater, Democratic candidates and operatives are more convinced than ever that there’s political advantage in attacking President Donald Trump’s partner in slashing government programs.
But there’s already concern inside the party that Musk may not stay center-stage long enough to make him an effective target all the way through 2026. Trump has told those close to him that Musk will soon hang up his hatchet and has recently taken steps to rein in his special adviser’s authority. And over the past two weeks, the controversies surrounding Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have been swamped by the drama over Trump’s global tariff threats.
That has top Democratic messaging mavens reluctant to commit to a firm strategy this far in advance.
“As long as he’s there using a chainsaw to all the programs that people back home rely on and need to make ends meet, of course we’re going to make him a central character,” Massachusetts Rep. Lori Trahan, who co-chairs House Democrats’ messaging committee, said in a recent interview.
But “at some point, he will become a liability for the president, and they will sever ties,” Trahan said. “And we will adjust as we head into the midterms.”
Continue reading at Politico
US could abandon Ukraine ceasefire talks in ‘days’ if progress stalls, Rubio warns
“We are now reaching a point where we need to determine whether this is possible or not,” the top American diplomat says about talks with Moscow and Kyiv.
PARIS — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Friday that the Trump administration is ready to walk away from Ukraine ceasefire talks in the coming days if it becomes clear that a deal is impossible.
"We are now reaching a point where we need to decide and determine whether this is even possible or not," Rubio told reporters at the airport before leaving Paris, where he had traveled to coordinate with allies.
"I'm talking about a matter of days, whether or not this is doable over the next few weeks," he added. "If it is, we're in. If it's not, then we have other priorities to focus on."
Rubio's remarks are another sign of growing impatience in the U.S. administration. During his election campaign, U.S. President Donald Trump promised to bring Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine to a swift end, but talks between Washington and Moscow have stalled in recent weeks.
The secretary of state added that while the United States is "prepared to do whatever we can to facilitate that and make sure ... that [the war] ends in a durable and just way," if that is "not possible, if we're so far apart that this is not going to happen, then I think the president is probably at a point where he's going to say, well, we are done."
Rubio had traveled to the French capital alongside special envoys Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg for ceasefire talks on Thursday with French President Emmanuel Macron and high-level delegations from Germany, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.
Continue reading at Politico Europe
Rubio’s firing of Marocco ignites a MAGA world meltdown
When Marco Rubio fired the man in charge of dismantling USAID, he made enemies inside the MAGA movement.
Peter Marocco, the Trump administration official in charge of dismantling USAID, left a meeting at the White House last week to return to his office at the State Department. But when he arrived, Marocco could not enter the building: security told him he was no longer an employee there, according to a person familiar with the situation.
Word of Marocco’s firing quickly tore through the Republican Party and MAGA ecosystem, startling President Donald Trump’s loyalists who viewed the aide as part of an elite cohort of administration true believers. Loud voices on the right piled on Secretary of State Marco Rubio, accusing him of undermining their disruptive agenda.
Yet Marocco’s abrupt termination, which has not been fully reported until now, was not an impulsive dismissal or a case of Rubio going rogue. This report was based on conversations with five people, including administration officials and allies, all of whom were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters. Four of the people said Rubio fired Marocco. They gave varying explanations: one administration official said Rubio and others wanted Marocco out due to what they saw as his bulldozer operating style and failure to work effectively with colleagues; others pointed to substantive disagreements between Rubio and Marocco over how to dismantle USAID. Meanwhile, Marocco allies viewed Rubio and his team as insular, controlling and obstructionist to the DOGE agenda ordered by the president.
One White House official said Rubio went to a senior White House aide for clearance to remove Marocco after tensions reached a boiling point last week. They described Marocco’s firing as “the first MAGA world killing from inside the White House.”
Marocco did not respond to requests for comment.
Continue reading at Politico
Trump’s Most Important Relationship Is Ending. And the Break-Up Isn’t Pretty.
For a half-century Trump and the mainstream media have mutually benefited from a stormy symbiosis. Why is he trying to kill the institution that made him?
Michael Kruse is a senior staff writer at POLITICO and POLITICO Magazine.
In late 1999, in New York in a van in the speeding, sirens-blaring motorcade of President Bill Clinton, Associated Press White House reporter Ron Fournier got an unexpected call. The voice on the other end of his phone was vaguely familiar. “This is Donald Trump.”
Fournier, like most of the rest of his colleagues, was focused on the last year-plus of Clinton’s scandal-scarred second term and the pair of party primaries taking shape. Here, though, was Trump, a 53-year-old real estate developer known for his glitzy, eponymous skyscraper, his garish Atlantic City casinos and his cameos in movies and his leading roles in assorted titillations in the tabloids, dialing out of the blue one of the nation’s highest-profile political journalists. “I’m thinking seriously of running for president,” Trump said. “Why aren’t you writing about me?”
“He knew that you couldn’t be a serious presidential candidate in this country at that time unless your name showed up in every newspaper in the country,” Fournier told me. “And if the AP wrote about you, that’s what would happen,” he said.
“He needed the AP.”
Trump used to court the AP. Today he’s in court with the AP — key members of Trump’s administration defendants in a lawsuit filed by the flagship wire service after he booted its reporters from the Oval Office and Air Force One for not following his order to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. It might sound like some farcical sitcom plot, but it’s also the deadly serious front line of what’s become Trump’s all-out war on the mainstream media. And in his long, hyper-public life, this marks in Trump’s means of ascent nothing short of a massive shift.
Because his relationship with the media is his most important relationship. More than his three wives — more than any business partners — Trump’s symbiotic relationship with the media helped him craft an identity that has fueled every other achievement. For going on 50 years — from mass media’s heyday of the late 20th century to the fragmented rage bait of the early 21st, from network television to reality television, from gossip columns to Twitter and Truth Social, from talk shows to talk radio to the podcasts of the “bros” of the “manosphere,” from news to entertainment and back until whatever was left of a distinction almost ceased to matter — the media has played many roles for Trump: confidant, foil and tacit (and sometimes not so tacit) partner. “I use the media,” as he himself once put it, “the way the media uses me — to attract attention.” He got the publicity he craved. They got the readers and ratings they sought. A “mutually profitable two-way relationship,” in Trump’s words — “we give each other what we need.”
Continue reading at Politico Magazine
Trump Looks Willing to Write Off an Entire Continent
Administration officials say African countries can’t just invoke “China” and get aid.
Nahal Toosi is POLITICO’s senior foreign affairs correspondent. She has reported on war, genocide and political chaos in a career that has taken her around the world. Her reported column, Compass, delves into the decision-making of the global national security and foreign policy establishment — and the fallout that comes from it.
Many presidents have promised to fundamentally change the U.S. relationship with Africa, focusing more on trade and less on aid.
President Donald Trump might actually make that shift happen.
At first glance, Trump’s recent moves look like a sudden — and very messy — breakup with a whole continent. From dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development to considering banning visitors from many African countries, the U.S. appears to be abandoning these nations to deal on their own with challenges ranging from battling AIDS to weak education systems. The U.S. is also expected to close several embassies in Africa, and some reports suggest that Trump wants to scale back America’s military operations on the continent.
While the Trump administration is retrenching globally and imposing tariffs all over, no region appears to matter less to the White House than Africa.
Continue reading at Politico
We want French nukes, Polish president says
“I believe we can accept both solutions,” Andrzej Duda says about hosting both U.S. and French warheads on Polish soil.
France’s nuclear arsenal could indeed help protect Poland, Polish President Andrzej Duda said in remarks published Friday.
Duda, who has called for Poland to host some of the United States’ nuclear weapons on its soil to deter Russian aggression, said French warheads could also bolster Polish defenses.
“I believe we can accept both solutions,” the president told Bloomberg in an interview in Warsaw. “These two ideas are neither contradictory nor mutually exclusive.”
French President Emmanuel Macron has suggested extending France’s so-called nuclear umbrella over its European allies, amid fears an aggressive Russia could one day turn its sights from Ukraine, which it invaded in 2014 and again in 2022, to the European Union’s eastern flank.
With around 300 nuclear warheads, France is the only EU member country to possess such weapons, and one of three NATO members along with the U.S. and the U.K.
Continue reading at Politico Europe
Google tries to reassure staff after antitrust ruling
Google wants employees to focus on their work and not fret about the company's loss of "parts of" its online advertising monopoly case, it said in a memo to employees Thursday.
Why it matters: The court's ruling, which Google said it would appeal, could fundamentally reshape the giant's advertising business, depending on the remedies, or penalties, the judge determines.
Advertising represents the vast majority of Google's revenue. It fuels the company's ability to invest in new technologies, like AI and cloud servers.
Zoom in: In a note to staff, Google VP of regulatory affairs Lee-Anne Mulholland said it's important for employees to"continue to focus on our users and customers by building amazing products that help people around the world."
Google, she noted, plans to appeal the ruling, arguing it "incorrectly suggests a company like ours has a legal obligation to do business with competitors."
"This is contrary to past Supreme Court decisions," she asserted.
Between the lines: Mulholland also sought to clarify the outcome of the case by noting that the court delivered a mixed ruling.
"It rejected key parts of the DOJ's case," she said. "The court found our advertiser tools don't harm competition and our acquisitions of DoubleClick and AdMeld were not anticompetitive. But it agreed with the DOJ's claims about one of our publisher tools. In other words, we won half, lost the other half."
Go deeper: Here's the full text of Google's memo:
Continue reading at Axios
DOGE Has Access to Sensitive Labor Department Data on Immigrants and Farm Workers
Three DOGE associates have been granted access to systems at the Department of Labor housing sensitive information on migrant farm workers, visa applicants, and more.
Operatives from Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) at the Department of Labor (DOL) have access to systems that house sensitive data pertaining to immigrants, sources tell WIRED. This access comes as President Donald Trump’s administration has continued its crackdown on immigrants around the US, and DOGE has played a key role in collecting personal data on them.
WIRED previously reported that Miles Collins, Aram Moghaddassi, and Marko Elez are all DOGE operatives embedded at the Labor Department.
Collins has access to the DOL’s National Farmworker Jobs Program (NFJP) system, according to sources with direct knowledge. This program offers funding to organizations that work with migrant and seasonal farmworkers, as well as organizations working on the state level to support job training for low-income farm workers. Last year, the program disbursed $90 million in grants. Anyone legally allowed to work in the United States and who meets the program’s criteria is eligible for support.
“When I say ‘migrant and seasonal farm workers,’ that does not mean somebody who just arrived from Venezuela or something. It means essentially people who are authorized to work in the United States,” says a DOL employee familiar with the program. “Maybe there's some misunderstanding even among the DOGE guys.”
According to the source, access to the NFJP’s system could provide the Social Security numbers of every person who is a beneficiary of the program, as well as what kind of services a beneficiary received. (Social Security numbers are assigned to US citizens as well as immigrants legally residing and working in the country.)
This kind of data, says the source, is normally “very, very controlled.”
Continue reading at Wired
The CFPB Has Been Gutted
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau terminated the positions of 1,400 of the agency’s 1,700 employees; medical debt and student loans will now be deprioritized.
More than 1,400 Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) workers were terminated from their positions on Thursday amid a broader Trump administration shakeup at the independent government agency, sources tell WIRED. There were around 1,700 employees in total at the CFPB.
The mass reduction in force, or RIF, comes nearly a month after a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order barring the Trump administration from removing probationary employees at the CFPB and other agencies. On Friday, an appeals court ruled that the CFPB could begin terminations again so long as “individual assessments” were conducted for each terminated employee. Around 200 employees will be left at the CFPB, effectively gutting the agency Elon Musk has previously said should be ‘deleted.’
In an email sent to CFPB staff on Wednesday, CFPB chief legal officer Mark Paoletta announced that the agency would be shifting its focus away from its supervisory roles and towards “tangible harm to consumers.” Medical debt, student loans, consumer data, and digital payments have all been identified as topics the CFPB will “deprioritize,” according to the document.
Continue reading at Wired
Trump revamps "Schedule F," making it easier to cut federal workers
The Trump administration on Friday will announce that it's moving ahead with a new rule, previously known as "Schedule F," that will make it easier to remove federal employees it believes are undercutting President Trump's agenda.
Why it matters: By stripping civil service protections from about 50,000 people — roughly 2% of the federal work force — Trump is continuing his far-reaching effort to trim the federal bureaucracy and make it more answerable to him.
The Office of Personnel Management's new rule — dubbed "Schedule Policy/Career" — will allow many career civil servants to be classified as "at will" employees, making them easier to remove.
Trump aides argue they need greater flexibility to fire civil servants who are underperforming, engaging in misconduct or undermining Trump's policy plans.
Zoom in: Such civil servants in nonpartisan roles traditionally have had job protections that shielded them from the political whims of whoever was in the White House.
But Trump and many of his backers have long believed that a "deep state" of Washington bureaucrats was undercutting his agenda.
Toward the end of his first term, Trump signed an executive order establishing a Schedule F category for federal employees.
Continue reading at Axios
What to know about Trump's efforts to replace federal workers under Schedule F
The Trump administration announced Friday that it would move forward with mass firings of more federal workers under the auspices of a new rule, previously known as "Schedule F."
Why it matters: The plan will allow Trump to gut civil service protections from a large swath of federal workers, paving the way to replace them with loyalists.
The big picture: Beneath the layer of political appointees every president can nominate, the federal government is staffed by large numbers of civil servants in nonpartisan roles that come with protections that shield them from politically-motivated firings.
During his first term, President Trump issued an executive order known as "Schedule F," which took aim at these protections.
Even before Trump officially launched his second presidential run, reports abounded that he planned to resurrect Schedule F during his second term.
During his campaign, Trump vowed to slash the size of the "deep state" federal government and fire "rogue bureaucrats and career politicians."
What is the new rule?
The new rule, dubbed "Schedule Policy/Career," will reclassify many career civil servants as "at will" employees, making them easier to remove from their posts.
This new rule will impact workers involved in policymaking, two White House officials familiar with the plan told Axios.
Flashback: Weeks ahead of the 2020 election, Trump issued an executive order known as "Schedule F" that would have reclassified tens of thousands of federal workers whose roles involved policy-making functions.
Continue reading at Axios
Trump envoy quietly met Israeli officials ahead of Iran nuclear talks
Two top Israeli officials had an unannounced meeting in Paris on Friday with White House envoy Steve Witkoff to discuss the U.S.-Iran nuclear talks, three Israeli sources familiar with the meeting tell Axios.
Why it matters: Ron Dermer and David Barnea, Israel's strategic affairs minister and the director of the Mossad intelligence agency, slipped into Paris for the low-profile meeting with Witkoff to try to influence the U.S. position ahead of the second round of talks in Rome on Saturday, the officials said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is concerned the U.S. will reach a deal with Iran that's similar to the one the Obama administration signed in 2015, and President Trump himself abandoned.
The Israeli Prime Minister's Office and a spokesperson for Witkoff declined to comment.
Witkoff was in Paris for meetings on Russia and Ukraine before traveling to Rome for the Iran talks.
Between the lines: During those meetings, Witkoff stressed that the Trump administration's goal on Iran is to resolve the nuclear crisis with through diplomatic means and ensure Iran will no longer enrich uranium.
Continue reading at Axios
Wisconsin governor can lock in 400-year school funding increase using a veto, court says
Wisconsin is the only state where governors can partially veto spending bills by striking words, numbers and punctuation to create new meaning or spending amounts.
The Democratic governor of Wisconsin’s creative use of his uniquely powerful veto can lock in a school funding increase for 400 years, the state Supreme Court ruled Friday.
The 4-3 ruling from the liberal-controlled court affirms the partial veto power of Wisconsin governors, which is the broadest of any state and has been used by both Republicans and Democrats to reshape spending bills passed by the Legislature.
Wisconsin is the only state where governors can partially veto spending bills by striking words, numbers and punctuation to create new meaning or spending amounts. In most states, governors can only eliminate or reduce spending amounts.
The court’s four liberal justices ruled Friday that the state constitution allows the governor to strike digits to create a new year or to remove language to create a longer duration than the one approved by the Legislature.
“We are acutely aware that a 400-year modification is both significant and attention-grabbing,” Justice Jill Karofsky wrote for the majority. “However, our constitution does not limit the governor’s partial veto power based on how much or how little the partial vetoes change policy, even when that change is considerable.”
Continue reading at Politico
Playbook
Playbook PM: Trump pushes for a Ukraine deal
UKRAINE LATEST: The U.S. is ramping up the pressure to end the war in Ukraine, with various top officials playing good cop, bad cop and laying out a plan for peace.
The proposal: In Paris talks yesterday, the U.S. presented a proposal that would basically institute a ceasefire to freeze the conflict along the current front lines, keeping Russia in charge of all the Ukrainian territory it has invaded, Bloomberg’s Alberto Nardelli, Alex Wickham and Daryna Krasnolutska scooped. The broad framework of the plan would also lift some sanctions on Russia and remove the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO — key Moscow demands — while providing security guarantees to Ukraine and stopping Russia’s attacks.
Next steps: This proposal is not final, and France said talks with the U.S., the U.K. and Germany will continue next week in London. European officials hope the plan — which Bloomberg notes would include Europe refusing to recognize the occupied regions as Russian — will prod Ukraine toward an agreement and put the ball in Russia’s court to accept a ceasefire.
Stark warning: Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s comments early today that the U.S. will soon “move on” from trying to end the war if progress isn’t made left the continent unsettled, as the details remain unclear, WaPo’s Adam Taylor, Robyn Dixon and Ellen Francis note. If Washington abandons peace talks — or stops Ukraine military aid or Russia sanctions — Russia would likely benefit on the battlefield. One U.S. official said that “in the coming days the administration wants to see if there can be an agreement on the framework or those bigger policy decisions are going to have to be made,” CNN reports.
But but but: In Rome, VP JD Vance struck a more positive tone, saying that the situation was starting to shift even in just the past day. “We do feel optimistic that we can hopefully bring this war, this very brutal war, to a close,” he said.
In the Oval: Asked just now whether he was being played by Russia, President Donald Trump said, “Nobody’s playing me. I’m trying to help.” But his comments indicated that he may be hewing closer to Rubio’s warning than Vance’s optimism: “If for some reason one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say, ‘You’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people,’” Trump said, “and we’re going to just take a pass. But hopefully we won’t have to do that.” (The president also reiterated his call for Fed Chair Jerome Powell to lower interest rates and attacked Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) as “fake.”)
Continue reading Politico Playbook PM newsletter
Labor Department sidelines staffers amid DOGE push for immigrant data
DOGE staffers have tried to access to information related to the National Farmworker Jobs Program
Multiple employees at the Labor Department who handle sensitive data related to immigrant workers were placed on leave after run-ins with DOGE members according to five people familiar with the matter.
Those placed on leave include a nearly 20-year veteran of the agency, Steven Rietzke, and at least one other staffer at DOL’s Employment and Training Administration, according to current and former employees who were granted anonymity so they could discuss sensitive information.
“Ths one really came out of the blue,” said one DOL employee.
The development comes as DOGE increasingly looks to repurpose federal agencies’ data and systems in ways that could bolster the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. The Labor Department plays a key role in the process for certain employment-based visas, and ETA is the part of the agency that primarily handles workforce development grants.
In March, DOGE staffer Miles Collins attempted to access some of ETA’s systems, including those related to the National Farmworker Jobs Program, the people said. The program, which totals less than $100 million, funds job training and other services for workers to obtain more stable employment in agriculture or other industries. It is open to those legally authorized to work in the U.S. and includes other eligibility requirements.
Continue reading at Politico
Latest IRS acting chief ousted amid Musk vs. Bessent turf feud
Gary Shapley, the fourth IRS head this year, was tapped for the post just days ago by President Donald Trump.
President Donald Trump is replacing the fourth IRS chief this year amid complaints by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that he was not consulted on the appointment after Elon Musk recommended the person, according to a White House ally and a Trump administration official familiar with the dispute who were granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Bessent also ousted a prominent member of Musk’s DOGE team assigned to the IRS, after a major staff reduction was set in motion at the agency.
Gary Shapley, an IRS criminal investigator and whistleblower in the Hunter Biden tax case, was tapped by Trump only days ago to temporarily lead the agency.
However, according to the people familiar with the situation, Shapley was installed largely at the request of billionaire Musk, and Bessent was left completely in the dark about the decision.
Continue reading at Politico
Top Trump econ adviser says White House is studying ways to fire Powell
Kevin Hassett, chair of the White House National Economic Council, backed away from his previous concerns about Powell’s firing and said the White House was looking for ways to replace the Fed chief.
“The president and his team will continue to study” if Powell can be fired, Hassett told reporters at the White House.
Hassett served as the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers during Trump’s first term, during which the president frequently criticized and threatened to fire Powell.
Trump’s anger with Powell reignited this week after months of the president becoming increasingly critical of the Fed chief.
Continue reading at The Hill
Michigan Democrat backs Trump’s China tariffs, knocks approach as ‘chaotic’
Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) gave credit to President Trump during a CNN interview Friday for “going after a country like China” with his massive tariff overhaul, but the communications chair for House Democrats panned the uncertainty Trump has created with his “chaotic” rollout.
“I don’t want people to think that I think the way that he’s doing this is OK,” she told CNN’s Pamela Brown. “I think we need a tariff strategy, but it needs to be appropriate — not chaotic.”
Trump has been locked in an escalating trade war with Beijing, announcing 145 percent tariffs on most Chinese imports last week. China responded by implementing 125 percent tariffs on American goods and limiting exports of rare earth minerals.
Dingell said she thinks increasing tariffs makes sense and agreed that 145 percent is appropriate.
Continue reading at The Hill
Karl Rove: Trump exhausting many Americans
“We aren’t 100 days into Donald Trump’s second term and many Americans are already exhausted. They’ve had way too much thrown at them,” Rove wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.
He said voters were clear in the 2024 election that they wanted lower prices, the economy energized, the southern border closed and the military strengthened with a strong leader in charge of the Oval Office. He said progress has been made on issues like the border and the military, but Americans aren’t pleased with the state of the economy.
“Mr. Trump’s campaign promise to break inflation has been replaced by a fixation on raising tariffs, which nearly three-quarters of Americans expect to hike prices,” Rove wrote. “We’re also confused: Is the goal getting trading partners to lower their tariffs on U.S. goods and services? Or replacing our income tax with high tariffs on foreign goods?”
Continue reading at The Hill
JD Vance to spend Easter in Rome amid tiff with Pope Francis
The pope has sharply criticized the Trump administration’s mass deportation policies.
Vice President JD Vance is spending Easter weekend in Rome, where he’ll meet with a top Vatican official amid tension with the Catholic Church over the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies.
Vance — the highest-ranking Catholic in the U.S. government — traveled to Rome on Friday, where he met with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni one day after her chummy White House confab with President Donald Trump. He also attended Good Friday service at St. Peter’s Basilica, and he’s set to tour cultural and religious sites with his family and meet with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state.
Vance’s visit to the seat of Catholicism during the Church’s holiest days of the year comes under the shadow of his public tiff with an ailing Pope Francis and in the wake of his virulently anti-Europe comments. And as the White House increasingly leans into its Christian bonafides through its policies and messaging, the visit from the No. 2 in an administration that the Church has starkly opposed on key issues lays bare the complicated relationship between the Trump White House and Catholic Church leadership.
It also sheds light on a broader rift between conservative American Catholics, a majority of whom voted for Trump in 2024, and Francis, who condemned Trump’s mass deportation agenda and is viewed by some conservative Catholics as liberal.
Continue reading at Politico
After traveling to El Salvador, GOP blocks Dems from doing the same
Another House Republican committee chair said Friday he will not grant Democrats' request to lead a congressional delegation to El Salvador to check on the status of deportees being held there.
Why it matters: Republicans sent their own official delegation to the country this week to visit the notorious maximum security prison housing deportees and express their support for President Trump's deportation policies.
Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), the chair of the House Ways & Means Committee, led the delegation, as Axios first reported on Thursday.
At least seven House Republicans were present on the trip, according to a photo posted to X by the U.S. embassy in El Salvador.
Driving the news: House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.), who was not on Smith's CODEL, said in a letter released Friday that he won't let Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) and Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) lead their own.
Citing the two Democrats' "active hostility" to his investigations of the Biden administration's border policies, Comer called the request "absurd."
He also noted that Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) was able to meet Thursday with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an erroneously deported Maryland man whose return to the U.S. has been ordered by the Supreme Court.
"If you also wish to meet with him, you can spend your own money. But I will not approve a single dime of taxpayer funds for use on the excursion you have requested," Comer wrote.
Zoom out: Comer's letter comes after House Homeland Security Committee chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.) refused a similar request from Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.).
Continue reading at Axios
Economic Analysis
Economist Jared Bernstein
Economist Dean Baker
Economist Mike Konczal
When Reality Isn't Bad Enough: Trump’s Fake ‘Private-Sector Recession’ of 2024
In which we dive into the labor market of 2024 and the question of whether an increase in health care jobs is evidence of or justification for a recession.
“Were we in a secret labor market recession in 2024? Was the labor market experiencing a ‘private-sector recession’ as the Trump administration took over? No. But as the reality of Trump's disastrous trade war and the growing threat of an actual recession set in, we’ll hear more of this excuse from Trump officials. It’s wrong—and worse, the Trump team's current actions represent the most harmful response possible to any underlying economic slowdown.”
The Federal Reserve vs. the Tariff Shock: What If It Isn’t Transitory?
As global supply chains fray and the economy veers towards recession, the Federal Reserve faces a different spin on a recent problem — one it can’t fully fix.
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Opinion: Thanks, George! Biden II would, indeed, have been a disaster... | Blog#42
Jake Tapper got himself an interview with George Clooney, the man who single handedly tanked Joe Biden’s bid for reelection last year, so late in the cycle that it is doubtful that any Democrat would have had the time to run a proper campaign. Clooney, an old hand at fundraising for Democrats, must have known it and decided to accuse Biden of what we all knew: old age, thereby forcing the party to turn against him and get him to exit left. Tapper was very delicate with Clooney, never once asking a tough question or getting Clooney to apologize to the rest of us. If anything, Tapper was the googoo-eyed fan boy interviewer.