Things Musk (and Trump) Did... Day 73 | Blog#42
As Trump fiddles, he burns the world
Yesterday’s post
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Yesterday’s news worth repeating
National Security Agency and Cyber Command chief Gen. Timothy Haugh ousted
The director of the NSA, the powerful wiretapping and cyber espionage service, was fired Thursday, according to U.S. officials.
The director of the powerful wiretapping and cyber espionage service, the National Security Agency, was fired Thursday, according to two current and one former U.S. officials.
Gen. Timothy Haugh, who also heads U.S. Cyber Command, was let go along with his civilian deputy at the NSA, Wendy Noble, according to the officials.
Noble was reassigned to a job within the Pentagon’s Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. The NSA is part of the department.
Haugh, who assumed his dual position just over a year ago, was traveling on Thursday and could not be reached for comment. Sean Parnell, a spokesman for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, did not respond to a request for comment.
The current and former officials said they did not know the reason for Haugh’s dismissal or Noble’s reassignment.
Continue reading at the Washington Post
Note from Rima: This is on the same day news came out about Laura Loomer meeting with Trump in the Oval Office. What to know about Loomer
Clothing prices could surge if these tariffs stick
Chart: Origins of clothing and shoes sold in the U.S., 2024
The clothes you buy stand to get a lot more expensive after President Trump announced new sky-high tariffs on imports from around the world, including from China, Vietnam and Bangladesh.
Why it matters: The U.S. imports nearly all of its clothing and shoes, with more than half from those three countries alone.
If these tariffs take effect as planned, the price of apparel would soar.
Increases will be especially painful for low- and middle-class Americans, who are already set to take a disproportionate hit from these duties.
Investors are feeling it, too, with shares of apparel companies like Nike and retailers like Walmart plunging on the news.
Zoom out: A big part of the reasoning behind the tariffs is to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. If it becomes prohibitively expensive to import things, companies will decide to make them here, the thinking goes.
Continue reading at Axios
Note from Rima: I wrote an opinion piece on this very topic
DOGE drove layoff announcements to their third-highest-ever level in March
CNN —
More than 275,000 layoffs were announced last month, reaching a level not seen since the pandemic, according to a new report published Thursday.
The biggest culprit was one particular employer: The federal government.
The federal government announced plans to axe 216,215 jobs, accounting for nearly 80% of the 275,240 layoffs announcements made by US employers in March, according to Challenger Gray & Christmas’ latest report. It’s the third-highest monthly total behind April 2020 (671,129) and May 2020 (397,016).
The Department of Government Efficiency has run roughshod on the federal government, slashing funding, scrapping contracts and laying off droves of federal workers.
“Job cut announcements were dominated last month by [DOGE] plans to eliminate positions in the federal government,” Andrew Challenger, senior vice president for the global outplacement and coaching firm. “It would have otherwise been a fairly quiet month for layoffs.”
Of the remaining 59,025 cuts announced outside of the federal government, the biggest share was in technology and retail, according to the report.
The March announcements mark a stark 60% jump from February, which saw a spike of its own, and they’re up 205% from the 90,309 cuts announced in March 2024.
The DOGE-driven job cuts aren’t expected to hit the labor market data and the economy in one fell swoop. While some federal employees have been laid off immediately, others are serving out a paid notice period where they essentially quit but won’t be unemployed weeks or even months from now.
Continue reading at CNN.com
Trump and DOGE Defund Program That Boosted American Manufacturing for Decades
President Donald Trump says taxing imports will strengthen domestic manufacturing. Hours before announcing new tariffs, his administration cut support for centers that help US firms do just that.
At the height of the US trade war with Japan in the 1980s, Congress established a nationwide network of organizations to advise small American manufacturers on how to survive and grow in what was then a particularly difficult environment. Decades later, there is now at least one Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) center in all 50 states, and they continue to provide taxpayer-subsidized consulting to thousands of businesses, including makers of ovens, printers, tortillas, and dog food.
But on Tuesday, shortly before the president announced sweeping tariffs on global imports, Trump administration officials informed members of Congress that it was withholding funding for some MEP centers because their work no longer aligns with government priorities.
The Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which administers the program to help manufacturers, emailed lawmakers to say that it would not be paying out nearly $12.9 million that had been due overall this week to MEP centers in 10 states, according to Democratic staff of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology who spoke on on the condition of anonymity.
Continue reading at Wired
Today’s news
Democratic News Corner
Senate Dems to target vulnerable Republicans in overnight voting marathon
Senate Democrats are planning to set some traps for moderate Republicans during Friday's "vote-a-rama" on the mammoth budget reconciliation bill.
Why it matters: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) wants Democrats to hit six themes in their amendments during the vote-a-rama.
1. Medicaid cuts; 2. tax cuts; 3. tariffs; 4. veterans and national security; 5. corruption; and 6. Social Security.
Zoom in: Democrats used a similar strategy in February, when Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) voted for a handful of Democratic amendments. Dems are also closely watching Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who has a tough 2026 race.
Democrats have filed 20+ amendments related to Social Security and the service cuts the Trump administration is eyeing for the program.
Continue reading at Axios
Scoop: Sen. Ruben Gallego's hefty fundraising debut
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) had one of the best-ever fundraising debuts for a Senate Democrat, pulling in more than $1 million in his first quarter.
Why it matters: Gallego's victory in purple Arizona last year has positioned him as one of the party's most intriguing young voices in Congress.
Gallego's campaign raised $850,000 in Q1, according to numbers first shared with Axios. His leadership PAC raised around $385,000.
That puts his campaign just behind Sens. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) for the party's most prolific freshman fundraising debut. If Gallego's fundraising PAC is included, it's the top total.
The big picture: The Democrats' wipeout loss last year has opened a window for fresh voices in the party.
Continue reading at Axios
Kamala Harris: ‘I’m not going anywhere’
Former Vice President Harris made a surprise appearance at a leadership summit for Black women in California on Thursday, previewing her political future after losing the 2024 election to President Trump.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Harris said during her nearly 8-minute speech at the Leading Women Defined gathering.
Harris, who represented the Golden State in the Senate from 2017 until becoming vice president in 2021 under former President Biden, is widely thought to be mulling a run for California governor in 2026. She’s expected to make a formal decision by the end of the summer.
Continue reading at The Hill
Trump, Musk protest organizer praises Booker, knocks Schumer
Ezra Levin, an activist who has organized demonstrations protesting President Trump and his close ally billionaire Elon Musk, praised Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) for breaking the record for the longest speech in Senate history and knocked Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), arguing the longtime Democrat is not delivering for constituents.
Levin co-founded the progressive organization Indivisible, one of the partners backing Saturday’s nationwide anti-Trump protests. He said that while Musk, the president and the “Make America Great Again” movement are the primary targets of the demonstrations, Democrats like Schumer are also in their crosshairs.
“People like Chuck Schumer, who surrender to the Republicans in Congress, aren‘t giving their constituents what they want. We saw Cory Booker stand up in the Senate and break the record for the longest filibuster ever, ever given,” Levin said during his Friday morning appearance on CNN. “Why did he do that? Why did he do that? He told us why. He told us why. He said that he heard from his own constituents that they want to see him fight back. And he got creative. He did it.”
For that reason, Levin argued, the U.S. needs “ more Cory Bookers and fewer Schumers.”
Continue reading at The Hill
‘Screaming from the rooftops’: Democrats jump on Trump’s tariffs with an eye on the midterms
Democrats are hoping to use Trump’s tariff repercussions to intensify attacks on the administration and build party support ahead of 2026.
A Democratic Party still searching for a response to President Donald Trump is homing in on a midterm message: Trump, with the blessing of congressional Republicans, is running the economy into the ground.
Global financial markets spiraled this week after Trump doled out sweeping tariffs on foreign trading partners using a formula that economics experts bashed as nonsensical. Investors have borne the brunt of the fallout, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average still plummeting on Friday after a day of major losses on Thursday.
Democrats have struggled to unify on party messaging after losing the White House in November. But lawmakers and strategists say Trump’s “Liberation Day” gives the party an opening to whack the president and his party on what has traditionally been his strong suit: the economy.
Democrats immediately latched onto the fallout of Trump’s economic policies — and the lack of real efforts from Republican electeds to stop it — saying they plan to use the economic chaos as a tool to rally their base in preparation for next year’s midterms.
“I think that the party as a whole needs to be screaming from the rooftops,” Alejandro Verdin, a Chicago-based Democratic strategist, said of his party’s response to Trump’s economic policies.
Continue reading at Politico
Democrats named their members to the board of a congressional ethics office — but it’s still stalled, awaiting Republican appointees
The full board hasn’t been formally appointed by the Speaker, meaning it can’t operate.
House Democrats have submitted the names of their appointees to serve on the board of a key congressional ethics office, according to a person granted anonymity to share the development.
It’s an important step in the process of getting the Office of Congressional Conduct, formerly known as the Office of Congressional Ethics, up and running.
The nonpartisan independent entity — established in 2008 to receive outside referrals of ethics allegations against House members and staff, investigate the charges and pass along credible complaints to lawmakers — has been lapsed since the start of the new Congress. The board of the office needs to be populated by six members, evenly divided between the two parties, though it can operate with as few as four members, as stipulated by official rules.
Speaker Mike Johnson also must formally approve all board picks to reconstitute the office for the 119th Congress — but so far, he hasn’t selected his people, said another person granted anonymity to speak freely.
Johnson’s spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment about his intentions, though Republicans have, since the office’s founding, been deeply critical of its function and numerous times have sought to cut its funding through the appropriations process.
Continue reading at Politico
Former Atlanta mayor plans run for Georgia governor
Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) is preparing to launch a 2026 gubernatorial bid in Georgia, according to a Friday report from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Bottoms served as a city council member and spent three years in the White House as a senior adviser during the Biden administration. She was also a close confidante of former Vice President Kamala Harris throughout her 2024 presidential campaign.
Reports of Bottoms’s candidacy come days after Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Ga.) announced she would pause her exploratory bid for Georgia governor to focus on her husband’s ongoing cancer battle.
Since Trump’s return to Washington, Bottoms has pledged to lean in to progressive politics, launching the Georgia Promise PAC to support her candidacy and hired a string of staffers ahead of her formal announcement to become the state’s leader.
“Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded us that there is a ‘fierce urgency of now,’” Bottoms told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “For the people of Georgia, that includes having leaders who aren’t blindly following Trump off a moral and economic cliff but focused on the pressing needs in our communities.”
Continue reading at The Hill
Democrats slam Trump for golf event amid tariff turmoil, dignified transfer of US soldiers’ remains
The president attended a “LIV Dinner” on Thursday night.
President Donald Trump went to one of his Florida golf courses on Friday amid international turmoil triggered by his tariff announcement, drawing sharp condemnation from Democrats.
The international economic order has been upended since Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement earlier this week, triggering a bubbling trade war among both foreign friends and adversaries. U.S. stocks plummeted Thursday and Friday, with a better-than-expected jobs report released Friday morning not stemming the dip.
And now, Democrats in Congress are taking notice. “Recession fears are rising. The stock market is tanking. But don’t worry, Donald Trump is golfing,” Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), wrote on X, along with a picture of the president on a green.
Trump arrived at Trump International Golf Club West Palm Beach Friday morning. He participated in a “LIV Dinner” for the LIV Golf tour on Thursday at his Trump Doral club on Thursday, according to his public schedule.
Trump has injected himself into negotiations between the Saudi-backed LIV and PGA Tour, as the two competing tours try to broker a ceasefire to a long-running feud. Trump-branded courses have hosted a number of LIV events, and he told reporters on Thursday that he was still involved in the negotiations.
He’s also set to attend a fundraising dinner for an allied super PAC on Friday night at Mar-a-Lago.
Continue reading at Politico
National Security
CISA braces for deep staffing cuts
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is looking to push out as much as a third of the agency's total headcount, in addition to contract personnel from a major threat hunting team, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
Why it matters: The cuts are likely to impact "every single part of the agency," one of those sources told Axios — dealing a huge blow to the country's cybersecurity posture following earlier rounds of layoffs and contract cuts.
Zoom in: CISA is expected to start reducing its workforce through a second "Fork in the Road" email, two sources told Axios.
That email could go out as soon as this weekend, but the specifics of the cuts keep changing, the sources said.
Depending on how many people take the offer, the agency could then send out "reduction in force" notices at a later, unspecified date, the sources added.
CBS reports that the agency plans to cut as many as 1,300 employees.
Continue reading at Axios
Top Democrats denounce reported firing of NSA chief
Top congressional Democrats on Thursday night spoke out over reports that Gen. Timothy Haugh has been fired as National Security Agency director.
The big picture: The Washington Post first reported that Haugh had been removed from the NSA role and as U.S. Cyber Command chief, along with his civilian deputy Wendy Noble, citing a former U.S. official and two current ones.
Several National Security Council members were fired earlier Thursday after conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer visited the Oval Office and pressed President Trump to oust specific NSC staffers, Axios first reported.
What they're saying: Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, posted on Bluesky that Haugh had "served our country in uniform, with honor and distinction, for more than 30 years."
At a time when the U.S. faces "unprecedented cyber threats, as the Salt Typhoon cyberattack from China has so clearly underscored, how does firing him make Americans any safer?" he wrote.
"It is astonishing that President Trump would fire the nonpartisan leader of the NSA while still failing to hold any member of his team accountable for leaking classified information on Signal — even as he apparently takes staffing direction from a discredited conspiracy theorist in the Oval Office."
Meanwhile, House Intelligence Committee ranking member Jim Himes (D-Conn.), in a statement posted to X, said he's "deeply disturbed by the decision to remove" Haugh from the NSA.
Continue reading at Axios
Trump fires NSC officials a day after far-right activist raises concerns to him about staff loyalty
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Thursday that he’s fired “some” White House National Security Council officials, a move that comes a day after far-right activist Laura Loomer raised concerns directly to him about staff loyalty.
Trump downplayed Loomer’s influence on the firings. But Loomer during her Oval Office conversation with Trump urged the president to purge staffers she deemed insufficiently loyal to his “Make America Great Again” agenda, according to several people familiar with the matter. They all spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive personnel manner.
“Always we’re letting go of people,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he made his way to Miami on Thursday afternoon. “People that we don’t like or people that we don’t think can do the job or people that may have loyalties to somebody else.”
Continue reading at the AP
Economics
China tariffs, Powell inflation warning worsen stock market skid
After having their worst day in five years Thursday, U.S. stock markets sank again Friday, as China launched tough retaliation to President Trump's tariffs and the Fed signaled it wouldn't come to the rescue.
Why it matters: As opposed to Trump's first term, when sharply negative market moves often influenced him to pull back policy, the second Trump administration is taking a far less flexible stance.
By the numbers: The S&P 500, the tech-heavy Nasdaq and the small-cap benchmark Russell 2000 all fell around 4% in midday trading.
The Russell closed in a bear market Thursday, down 20% from its recent highs, and the Nasdaq marked the same decline in early trade Friday.
That followed a sharp sell-off in Europe, with the pan-continental Stoxx 600 down more than 5%.
Energy and financial stocks broadly led the decline, while high profile "Magnificent 7" names like Tesla and Nvidia fell more than 7%.
Driving the news: China announced a major escalation of the trade war Friday morning, levying a 34% tariff on imports from the U.S. that will take effect on April 10.
That news accelerated the overnight decline in stocks.
It got worse when Fed chair Jerome Powell gave a speech warning of higher inflation and slower growth, but also indicating the central bank was holding steady on interest rates, dashing any market hopes for relief.
Continue reading at Axios
Fed's Powell steady on rates, warns on inflation as Trump demands cut
Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said Friday that bigger-than-expected tariffs will translate into higher inflation and slower economic growth — and that the higher inflation could be persistent, not temporary.
Why it matters: Powell's remarks suggest that the Fed will offer no imminent relief from plunging markets and scrambled supply chains.
The fear of lasting inflation will make the Fed will wary of cutting rates even if the economy falters.
Just moments before Powell's speech, President Trump said on Truth Social that "This would be a PERFECT time" for Powell to cut rates.
What they're saying: "While uncertainty remains elevated, it is now becoming clear that the tariff increases will be significantly larger than expected," Powell said at a conference of business journalists, according to a prepared text.
"The same is likely to be true of the economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth," Powell said.
"While tariffs are highly likely to generate at least a temporary rise in inflation, it is also possible that the effects could be more persistent."
State of play: That mix of slower growth, inflation, and high uncertainty has put the Fed's interest rate policy on indefinite hold, as Powell affirmed.
Continue reading at Axios
Fed’s Powell warns on tariffs: Fallout likely to be ‘significantly larger than expected.’
The Fed chief’s words will be taken as a particularly important signal as financial markets continue their convulsions over the new tariffs.
In his first remarks since Trump announced new duties on countries around the globe, the Fed chief said there is a high risk of both greater unemployment and more inflation.
“While uncertainty remains elevated, it is now becoming clear that the tariff increases will be significantly larger than expected,” Powell said at an event hosted by the business journalism group SABEW. “The same is likely to be true of the economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth.”
Those simultaneous risks are dangerous territory for the central bank, which doesn’t have tools to fight both of them simultaneously: A slowing economy would call for lower interest rates, while rising prices could call for rates to stay high — or go higher. They also heighten the political risk for Powell himself, as Trump has said on multiple occasions this year that rates should go lower.
Powell’s assessment will be taken as a particularly important signal as financial markets continue their convulsions over the ripple effects of the new tariffs, which begin to take effect Saturday. His words matter both because investors are listening closely for signs of how and when the Fed might intervene to help the economy, and because the central bank takes a technocratic rather than partisan approach to assessing the outlook.
Powell, a frequent target of Trump’s criticism, underscored that he doesn’t see the central bank’s role as commenting on administration policies, but to assess their effects and respond appropriately.
Trump does not hesitate to comment on Fed policy. He did so again Friday morning, saying in a post on Truth Social that it would be a “PERFECT time” for Powell to cut rates.
“He is always ‘late’, but he could now change his image, and quickly,” Trump wrote. “CUT INTEREST RATES, JEROME, AND STOP PLAYING POLITICS.”
Continue reading at Politico
US added 228K jobs in March, jobless rate stays flat
The U.S. economy added 228,000 jobs in March and the unemployment rate stayed roughly even at 4.2 percent, according to data released Friday by the Labor Department.
The monthly federal jobs report showed the labor market holding strong in March after another month of rising concern about the impact of President Trump’s economic agenda.
March employment data came in well above economists’ expectations of 135,000 new jobs and an unemployment rate of 4.1 percent, according to consensus estimates.
The March report comes at the end of a tumultuous week for the U.S. economy and financial markets, which have plunged in the wake of Trump’s sweeping new tariffs.
Continue reading at The Hill
America’s largest port is struggling to navigate Trump’s tariffs
Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka discusses the pain tariffs could bring to the American economy.
LOS ANGELES — The head of America’s largest port is trying to navigate through the Trump administration’s trade war.
Gene Seroka is executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, which — combined with the Port of Long Beach next door — handles roughly a third of the United States’ overseas imports and exports. That means Southern California is uniquely positioned for economic pain after Trump imposed 10 percent tariffs on all imported goods Wednesday, and even higher rates on trading partners like China, Japan and the European Union.
Seroka is now tasked with managing a complex network of international companies, mom-and-pop businesses and thousands of workers, all while he says there’s a complete information vacuum from the administration about its plan.
“You’ll see folks that have to scramble pretty quickly to keep their jobs and keep food on the table,” he said. “It’s going to be disruptive.”
Seroka spoke with POLITICO about how soon tariffs could disrupt the American economy, the potential impact on jobs in California and the information vacuum the trade world is operating in.
Continue reading at Politico
Behind the Curtain: You gotta believe
President Trump is betting his presidency on the biggest instant, unilateral, by-choice-not-necessity economic mandate in U.S. history.
Why it matters: He's gambling that generations of politicians, economists, CEOs, small-business owners, academics and even some of his own staffers are wrong — and that he's right.
And he's doing it with an issue that hits every American.
For Trump to be right, you gotta believe...
[…]
That recession forecasts by major financial institutions are wrong. And that the Dow, S&P and NASDAQ (U.S. stocks off $3 trillion Thursday — the biggest one-day drop since March 2020) are all wrong — or wildly overreacting.
The big picture: Trump feels wholly confident he'll be vindicated — if not instantly, then soon. Officials tell us he's never felt more confident and happy than in pushing maximal tariffs, a lifelong aspiration.
Hell, he was so sanguine after the announcement that he took an Oval Office meeting with Laura Loomer, a notorious conspiracy theorist, to hear her pleas to fire national security officials she deemed disloyal.
The president feels like a real estate mogul with a full inventory of mansions under his sole control, insiders tell us.
Despite public comments, Trump sees this as maximal leverage to work the phones for weeks or months — cutting deals to force better terms for the U.S.
But what if he's wrong? This is the first issue he has tackled that literally hits every American, especially his working-class base. It comes right after this week's three special elections showed the first tangible signs of unease with his governing.
Trump's done listening to critics.
Everyone around him — from top staff to top Republicans in Congress — fear disagreeing with him. Even if they had the stones to confront him, they seem convinced it'd be futile. They're as all-in on Trump as Trump is on tariffs.
So for this to work, you gotta believe he's right.
Continue reading at Axios
China retaliates with 34% tariff on U.S. goods
China will impose 34% tariffs on all U.S. goods and also restrict exports of critical minerals, the nation's finance minister said on Friday.
Why it matters: It's a steep escalation in the U.S-China trade war, following President Trump's reciprocal tariffs on one of America's largest trading partners.
Financial markets plunged on the news in early trading on Friday, extending the prior day's drop — which was the worst for U.S. stocks since 2020.
Most U.S. indices indicated at least a 3% decline at the open.
Catch up quick: Trump announced an additional 34% tariff on Chinese imports on Wednesday — bringing duties on all Chinese goods to 54%, including the previous 20% tariffs previously slapped on imports.
Driving the news: China said the tariffs are effective on April 10, one day after the U.S.-ordered tariffs go into effect, Reuters and Bloomberg reported.
China also said it would restrict exports of rare-earth materials, effective immediately.
The world's leading producer of rare earths, Chinese exports are critical for a number of technologies, including electric vehicles.
By the numbers: The U.S. exported nearly $144 billion in goods to China in 2024, per the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
Continue reading at Axios
Stock market poised for another sell-off on Trump tariffs, China retaliation
After having their worst day in five years Thursday, U.S. stock markets were poised to sink again Friday, as President Trump's tariff plan and Chinese retaliation weighed on investors.
Why it matters: As opposed to Trump's first term, when sharply negative market moves often influenced him to pull back policy, the second Trump administration is taking a far less flexible stance.
By the numbers: The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq were both indicated about 3% lower in pre-market trading.
That followed a sharp sell-off in Europe, with the pan-continental Stoxx 600 down 4.6%.
Driving the news: China announced a major escalation of the trade war Friday morning, levying a 34% tariff on imports from the U.S. that will take effect on April 10.
Market losses accelerated sharply on the news.
Continue reading at Axios
In photos: Deadly storm system slams U.S. South and Midwest
A powerful multi-day storm system that's lashing the U.S. South and Midwest has killed at least seven people as it unleashes tornadoes and flooding rains.
The big picture: The storm that ramped up Wednesday has brought a "life-threatening, catastrophic," flash flood event to the Lower Ohio Valley and Mid-South. The National Weather Service said more "significant severe weather" was "expected from the Mid-South through the Ozarks and ArkLaTex," with "very large hail and strong tornadoes possible."
Continue reading at Axios
UAW president stresses ‘excess capacity’ in US amid tariffs, auto layoffs
United Auto Workers (UAW) Shawn Fain stressed that there is an “excess capacity” in the auto industry within the United States amid President Trump’s tariffs and layoffs at certain manufacturers.
Fain joined CNN’s “The Source” on Thursday, just a day after the Trump administration’s import tariffs went into place and following the news that Stellantis was halting production at plants in Canada and Mexico and had plans to lay off 900 U.S. employees.
“There is excess capacity all over this country right now, and Stellantis has excess capacity right in Warren, Michigan, where they’re laying people off again, they can move Ram truck production there, in very short order, by producing Ram Trucks,” Fain said.
Stellantis produces Ram, Jeep, Chrysler and other cars. Fain noted that he took CNN’s interview from Chattanooga, Tenn., where a Volkswagen manufacturing plant is. Volkswagen produces 75 percent of their cars in Mexico, he said.
“There’s excess capacity right here at this plant,” he said, pointing to how Trump’s tariffs on other countries could help auto manufacturers domestically.
Continue reading at The Hill
Double-whammy of trade wars and OPEC barrels sends crude plunging
Chart: Brent crude oil prices
Oil prices slid to their lowest levels since 2021 Friday after China unveiled steep retaliatory tariffs, adding to Thursday's plunge on news of the White House trade war and more OPEC+ supply.
Why it matters: The swirling forces bringing the steep drop serve one White House goal (lower energy prices) while further impeding another (drill baby drill).
Driving the news: China will impose 34% tariffs on all U.S. goods, the nation's finance minister said Friday.
On Thursday, OPEC+ said it would speed up the unwinding of some production curbs.
The stated reason for adding 411,000 barrels per day in May, instead of 135k as planned, is healthy fundamentals (a debatable observation).
Add trade battles that are bearish for demand and OPEC+ adding more barrels and you get Brent prices at $64.40 Thursday morning.
Between the lines: On OPEC+, RBC Capital Markets also sees internal politics to discourage some members including Kazakhstan and Iraq from overproduction as one reason behind the decision.
Continue reading at Axios
Canada to Europe: US relationship will ‘never be the same again’ after Trump’s trade war
Ottawa’s Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly says tariffs would ultimately be a tax on the American people.
BRUSSELS — Canada’s Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly issued a stark warning Friday to her European counterparts after U.S. President Donald Trump hit allies with huge tariffs.
“We know that the relationship will never be the same again,” Joly said at NATO headquarters, where she was attending a meeting of allied foreign ministers. “That's my message to Europeans, the relationship with the U.S. will never be the same.”
Trump dumped the EU in the worst category of America’s trade partners this week, hitting the bloc with a 20 percent tariff on all imports.
Trump’s announcement puts the 27-nation bloc on the trade naughty step along with major economies such as China, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. His move threw up U.S. trade barriers unseen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Joly said Trump's goal was to do "a global reset on trade," which had started with Canada.
“We buy more from the U.S. than the U.K., France, China and Japan combined," Joly told reporters. "When you treat your best client, the way we've been treated ... it means that you want fundamentally to change the way you're operating.”
Continue reading at Politico Europe
UK regrets ‘return to protectionism’ as Trump’s tariffs spark trade war
Foreign Secretary David Lammy says Britain “believes in open trade” — and refuses to rule out retaliatory tariffs.
BRUSSELS — The U.K.'s top diplomat said Friday that U.S. President Donald Trump's support for protectionism by imposing huge worldwide tariffs was regrettable.
Speaking at NATO headquarters, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy told reporters that America's aversion to free trade was not his preferred policy, in tepid criticism of the White House.
“The United Kingdom, like France, is a great maritime nation," Lammy told reporters. “We are a nation that believes in open trade, and I regret the return to protectionism in the United States, something that we’ve not seen for nearly a century."
The British government is attempting to strike an economic agreement with the U.S. that would remove the 10 percent tariffs on exports.
Continue reading at Politico Europe
Vance: I thought market reaction to Trump tariffs ‘could be worse’
Vice President Vance said he thought the market reaction to President Trump’s tariff plan would have been worse, saying that the White House team is feeling good about the rollout.
“We’re feeling good. Look, I frankly thought, in some ways, it could be worse on the markets, because this is a big transition,” Vance told Newsmax in an interview on Thursday.
“You saw the president said earlier today, it’s like a patient who was very sick. We did the operation and now it’s time to make the patient better, and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” he added. “We have to remember that for 40 years, American economic policy has rewarded people who ship jobs overseas. It’s taxed our workers, it’s made our supply chains more brittle and it’s made our country less prosperous, less free and less secure.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average opened with a loss of more than 1,100 points on Friday after a nearly 1,700 point decline on the day prior.
Continue reading at The Hill
K-File: ‘The policy may very well fail’: JD Vance doubted Trump’s first-term trade policies, previously bashed tariffs
(CNN) — Vice President JD Vance applauded in the front row of the Rose Garden as President Donald Trump announced a massive new round of tariffs on Wednesday – an economy-rattling policy he promised would bring back manufacturing jobs.
But for years before joining Trump’s ticket, Vance argued the opposite.
Between 2016 and 2019, Vance said repeatedly that American manufacturing jobs were lost for good, and that “protectionist” trade policies would do little to bring them back.
Vance’s comments are another example of his transformation from a self-described “Never Trump guy” to a full-fledged MAGA backer in the Senate and on Trump’s ticket, a change he has attributed to seeing the successes of Trump’s policies in his first term.
“Vice President Vance has been crystal clear in his unwavering support for revitalizing the American economy by bringing back manufacturing jobs and sticking up for middle class workers and families since before he launched his U.S. Senate race, and that is a large part of why he was elected to public office in the first place,” said Taylor Van Kirk, spokesperson for the vice president.
Continue reading at CNN.com
Rubio says markets will recover after Trump tariff announcement
Rubio said Friday during a press conference in Brussels that businesses “just need to know what the rules are.”
“Once you know what the rules are, they will adjust to those rules. So I don’t think it’s fair to say economies are crashing. Markets are crashing because markets are based on the stock value of companies who today are embedded in modes of production that are bad for the United States,” the U.S.’s top diplomat said on Friday while in Brussels for a meeting with NATO foreign ministers.
On Wednesday, Trump reset the U.S. trade agenda by announcing a 10 percent flat-rate tariff on all goods coming into the country. He also rolled out targeted reciprocal tariffs for scores of other countries, with duties going as high as 54 percent.
Continue reading at The Hill
Trump tells investors to buy low: ‘This is a great time to get rich’
President Trump on Friday called on investors to buy low as markets plunge in response to an escalating trade war that intensified Thursday, one day after Trump imposed massive tariffs on much of the world.
Markets fell on the news, but Trump said that represented an opportunity for people on Friday.
“TO THE MANY INVESTORS COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES AND INVESTING MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF MONEY, MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE. THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO GET RICH, RICHER THAN EVER BEFORE!!!” Trump said on Truth Social.
On Friday morning, investors did not appear to be responding positively to Trump’s message.
Continue reading at The Hill
Trump says China ‘panicked’ with tariff response
President Trump on Friday chastised China after Beijing responded to major U.S. tariffs with equal duties of its own on U.S. goods.
“China played it wrong, they panicked – the one thing they cannot afford to do!” Trump posted on Truth Social.
China’s Finance Ministry announced Friday that it would impose a 34 percent tariff on imports from the United States, matching the 34 percent tariff the Trump administration announced on China earlier in the week as part of sweeping tariffs on more than 100 countries.
The retaliatory measure from Beijing escalates the risk of a global trade war as Trump digs in on his tariff policy. China is the second largest provider of imports to the United States and its third largest market for exports.
Continue reading at The Hill
Steel company president calls tariffs ‘step in the right direction’
An American steel manufacturer said Thursday that President Trump’s sweeping new tariffs on imports will ultimately be a boon to the industry and workers in the U.S.
“I think it’s a step in the right direction,” Stephen Capone, president of Massachusetts-based Capone Iron Corporation, said during an interview on NewsNation. “I think once all the dust settles, that people will realize that they’re going to be buying steel from American mills.”
Trump formally announced his long-discussed reciprocal tariff plan during a White House ceremony late Wednesday. The news sent the markets reeling Thursday and set off recession concerns, as world leaders responded to new heavy tariffs on nearly every nation exporting products to the U.S.
But Capone said he thinks that the tariffs will help American companies tackle foreign competitors, which has been one of the factors cited by Trump and his supporters for the hikes.
Continue reading at The Hill
USDA cuts hit small farms as Trump showers billions on big farms
The dollars helped schools and food banks buy from small farmers, boosting the local food system.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture grant program that allowed schools and food banks to buy fresh products from small farms helped her forge new business relationships. It allowed her to spend more with local feed mills and butchers, and was starting to build a stronger supply chain of local foods.
But now that the Trump administration has yanked the funding, she worries that rural economic boost might end too.
“With the razor-thin margins on both sides, those partnerships are just really hard, if not impossible, to sustain,” she said.
The co-owner of Over the Moon Farm, Pesek said her operation was never entirely reliant on the local food programs; it represented about 10% of her business. While she knew the federal money wouldn’t last forever, she was planning on the funding lasting through 2028 — but then the Trump administration last month nixed more than $1 billion for local food programs.
The federally funded Local Food Purchase Assistance and the Local Food for Schools programs, both begun during the pandemic, focused on small, local farms in aims of building stronger domestic food supply chains. Grants allowed schools and food banks to buy meat, dairy and produce from small farms — including many healthy products that are often too expensive for those institutions.
USDA’s local food programs specifically aided some of the nation’s most disadvantaged farmers and ranchers, including newcomers, small farmers and those who have faced racial discrimination.
The local food programs were initially funded by 2021’s American Rescue Plan Act but were later expanded by the Biden administration. The Trump administration, though, has cut the funding that went to thousands of small farms, saying that it’s instead “prioritizing stable, proven solutions that deliver lasting impact.”
Pesek noted that the federal government has subsidized commodity agriculture like corn and soybeans for more than a century.
“It’s not a novel idea, right? This is how the relationship between the federal government and farmers has looked,” she said. “And so all this program did was allocate some of the funds to go to different kinds of farmers versus just commodity farmers.”
Continue reading at Stateline.org (A Pew Research Foundation-affiliate)
Farmers are no strangers to trade wars. But this time may be worse.
Facing higher inflation and economic uncertainty, farmers have less cushion to face tariffs than they did during the first Trump administration.
The farm economy has shifted dramatically since 2018. Higher inflation has sent prices for fertilizer, seed and other inputs soaring and increased interest rates for farmers’ annual operating loans to as high as 8 percent this year. Prices for major crops like soybeans and corn have plummeted roughly 40 percent since 2022 — partly because Trump’s first trade war reshaped the global market for soybeans, with Brazil and Argentina emerging as major competitors to the U.S.
And though Trump is starting to explore another bailout, the fund he used to assist farmers the first time is now nearly depleted.
“We have an example of what happened in the past, and it’s a very similar situation, except the farm economy at that time was much stronger than it is now,” said Caleb Ragland, president of the American Soybean Association and a Kentucky farmer. “We don’t have any margin for error. ...We’re going to lose a generation of young farmers.”
Farmers have been Trump’s most loyal constituency and overwhelmingly backed him in the 2024 election. Now they could be one of the groups hardest hit by his trade war, potentially forcing a political reckoning in red states as small- and mid-sized farms struggle to stay afloat and big farms lose their export markets.
Continue reading at Politico
Trump says tariff policies ‘WILL NEVER CHANGE’ amid plunging stocks, Chinese response
The president’s sweeping tariff plan has thrown markets into chaos and risks sparking a global trade war.
President Donald Trump insisted Friday that “MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE,” doubling down on his aggressive tariff policies amid plummeting U.S. stock markets.
“TO THE MANY INVESTORS COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES AND INVESTING MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF MONEY, MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO GET RICH, RICHER THAN EVER BEFORE!!!”
Trump on Wednesday meted out tariffs on U.S. global trading partners, sending a shock wave through financial markets and drawing the nation into a massive trade war with affected countries pledging retaliatory measures. Already on Friday, China said it would hit U.S. imports with a 34 percent tariff starting April 10. Other major economies, like the European Union, are likely to follow.
The president was quick to chastise Beijing for its retaliatory measures, writing on Truth Social that “CHINA PLAYED IT WRONG, THEY PANICKED - THE ONE THING THEY CANNOT AFFORD TO DO!”
Trump has painted his tariffs as a forceful effort to reset American trade relationships that he says have resulted in the U.S. being “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike.” Though tariffs imposed by the U.S. in the distant past have had disastrous results for the American economy, the president has insisted that his widespread import taxes will entice companies to bring manufacturing jobs back to American shores.
Continue reading at Politico
Stock market sinks again on Trump tariffs, China retaliation
After having their worst day in five years Thursday, U.S. stock markets sank again Friday, as President Trump's tariff plan and Chinese retaliation weighed on investors.
Why it matters: As opposed to Trump's first term, when sharply negative market moves often influenced him to pull back policy, the second Trump administration is taking a far less flexible stance.
By the numbers: The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq both fell around 3% in early trading, while the small-cap benchmark Russell 2000 plunged about 7%.
The Russell closed in a bear market Thursday, down 20% from its recent highs, and the Nasdaq marked the same decline in early trade Friday.
That followed a sharp sell-off in Europe, with the pan-continental Stoxx 600 down more than 4%.
Driving the news: China announced a major escalation of the trade war Friday morning, levying a 34% tariff on imports from the U.S. that will take effect on April 10.
Continue reading at Axios
Gavin Newsom angles for California exemptions to Trump trade war
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday he is pursuing agreements with other countries to ensure California is exempted from retaliatory tariffs aimed at the U.S.
Why it matters: President Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs spurred global blowback. Newsom — a reported 2028 presidential hopeful — is looking to insulate his state from the fallout.
Driving the news: "Donald Trump's tariffs do not represent all Americans," Newsom said in a video message Friday.
California, whom he touted as "the tentpole of the U.S. economy," aims to maintain "stable trading relationships around the globe," he added.
"I've directed my administration to look at new opportunities to expand trade and to remind our trading partners around the globe that California remains a stable partner."
The other side: "Gavin Newsom should focus on out-of-control homelessness, crime, regulations, and unaffordability in California instead of trying his hand at international dealmaking," White House spokesperson Kush Desai told Axios Friday.
Continue reading at Axios
Tariffs cause new tumult for dealmakers
This has been a whipsaw week for understanding deal trends.
The big picture: On Tuesday we got first-quarter data, which showed a 15% increase in global M&A over Q1 2024 and a 14% decline for U.S. M&A.
Digging a bit deeper, however, showed that both the global and U.S. markets got busier as the quarter progressed. Particularly when it came to large mergers.
That means we entered Q2 with momentum. Not the raucous energy that many dealmakers expected after Trump got elected, but still up and to the right.
State of play: Wednesday may have changed everything.
It's way too early to know if we're at the start of a protracted trade war that wrecks global economies, or what will prove to be a short-lived skirmish.
Such tumult, however, becomes a brick wall for many companies planning long-term investments like acquisitions. Plus, sellers may hold back while their valuations plunge.
Continue reading at Axios
Colonial Pipeline being sold for $9 billion
Brookfield Infrastructure Partners on Friday agreed to acquire the Colonial Pipeline, which stretches 5,500 miles from Houston to New York, for around $9 billion (including debt).
Why it matters: Scarcity. There are tons of government hurdles to building new pipelines in the U.S., despite Trump's all-in energy policies, and tariffs could make new construction even more daunting.
Zoom in: The deal formally is for the midstream asset portfolio of Colonial Enterprises, which includes Colonial Pipeline.
Continue reading at Axios
Trump made all beer more expensive — and no one knows why
A 25 percent U.S. tariff meant for aluminum is now hitting all imported beers — bottled or canned.
BRUSSELS — Donald Trump may not drink beer, but this week he messed up a lot of people’s pints.
Beer was quietly added Wednesday to a list of aluminum-linked products now subject to a 25 percent U.S. import duty. The move, buried in a bureaucratic annex and part of a broader trade war unleashed by the Trump administration, has left European brewers fizzing with confusion — and drinkers foaming with rage.
The uncertainty goes beyond cans. The customs code used — “beer made from malt” — appears to cover all beer, no matter how it’s packaged: cans, bottles or kegs. That’s been especially frustrating for brewers, given that most other European food and drink exports were hit with a lower 20 percent tariff — making beer one of the hardest-hit agri-food categories.
“The way it is phrased, it is all beer that is in, regardless of the container, but we are seeking clarifications,” said one industry insider. “It’s not as if beer is the only product that comes in cans.”
European beer exports to the U.S. topped €1.1 billion last year, with Guinness, Heineken and Stella Artois among the bestsellers. About a fifth of that trade, by value, is shipped in cans. The customs code applies globally — so even top exporters like Mexico, which supplies over 60 percent of U.S. beer imports, are hit.
Continue reading at Politico Europe
‘People Get Used to It’: A Car-Dealing Congressman Predicts ‘Shock’ Then Acceptance for Trump’s Tariffs
Rep. Mike Kelly says this is a long overdue ‘wake-up call’ about America’s job-killing trade imbalance.
Rep. Mike Kelly has a stack of Monroney stickers on his desk — the labels legally required on every new car that include details on where a car and its parts were made. As President Donald Trump’s 25-percent tariffs on imported automobiles and auto parts are set to go into effect, Kelly thinks we’re in for a “shock.”
The Pennsylvania Republican, who owns five car dealerships and was first elected to Congress in 2010, represents a district that stretches from the suburbs north of Pittsburgh to the shores of Lake Erie. His constituents supported Trump by more than 27 percentage points in 2024, as Trump campaigned on lowering prices. But when Kelly goes to the grocery store on the weekends, he says people approach him with concerns about some of the Trump administration’s potential cuts to government benefits and the consistently high prices they’re paying for food.
Kelly, whose car business has grown from a family Chevrolet dealership back in the 1950s, is bracing for more complaints about prices as tariffs on automobiles and auto parts go into effect. Studies have found those prices could go up by $6,400 or even $10,000.
“There’ll be a shock,” Kelly said in an interview in his Capitol office with POLITICO Magazine. “And then there’ll be people, the more they see it, the more they become accustomed to it and say, ‘OK, fine, I see what we’re trying to do here.’”
That’s because Kelly thinks Trump is delivering a much-deserved “wake-up call” that will stop America from losing businesses and jobs to its allies overseas.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Continue reading at Politico
Budget experts of all stripes howl about Senate Republicans’ price tag ‘abuse’
Following the private complaints of several Senate Republicans, a dozen off-Hill budget experts warn GOP leaders against a strategy to “fabricate” the cost of their party-line package.
Senate GOP leaders claim they have the power to assert their own price tag for their “big, beautiful bill” to pass President Donald Trump’s agenda. Off Capitol Hill, unlikely allies are sounding the alarm.
It’s not often that someone from the liberal Center for American Progress teams up with someone from the fiscally conservative Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. But top budget experts from those groups, along with 10 others, penned a one-page warning Friday to Senate Republicans, who are on track to adopt a new budget framework during an all-night voting spree expected to spill into Saturday morning.
The bipartisan letter warns that Senate GOP leaders have signaled their intent to “abuse” longstanding budget law to “fabricate their own scores on the spot,” and that the tactic would “significantly undermine what’s left of budget enforcement.”
The cautionary missive follows the private complaints of several Republican senators. On Thursday night, Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), John Curtis (R-Utah) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) met with Senate Majority Leader John Thune to raise concerns about the GOP plan to sidestep input from the Senate parliamentarian on how to tally the cost of policies Republicans are trying to enact this year along party lines. Those policies include tax cuts, which Congress’ official scorekeepers say would increase the federal deficit by trillions of dollars.
Continue reading at Politico
Newsom to ‘fight back’ on Trump tariffs, asking countries to spare California retaliation
The blue state governor says “California is not Washington” in a bid to other world leaders.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he will “fight back” against President Donald Trump’s latest tariffs on Friday, instructing the state to forge “strategic” alliances with countries eyeing retaliatory measures on U.S. goods — and to press hard for California-made products to be spared.
“To our international partners: As the fifth largest economy in the world, the Golden State will remain a steady, reliable partner for generations to come, no matter the turbulence coming out of Washington,” the governor said in a statement. “California is not Washington, D.C.”
Trump’s tariff plan, which he announced Wednesday, establishes a baseline 10 percent tariff for every nation and much steeper rates for dozens of countries targeted for his belief that they have lopsided, unfair trade relationships with the U.S.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai dismissed Newsom’s plan, writing in an email that “Gavin Newsom should focus on out-of-control homelessness, crime, regulations, and unaffordability in California instead of trying his hand at international dealmaking.”
Fox News first reported Newsom’s announcement.
Why it matters: Newsom said California has more to lose because it leads the nation in so many areas, including agriculture, manufacturing, high-tech, venture capital and new business starts. It boasts more Fortune 500 companies than any other state, including Republican havens Texas, and Florida. And its manufacturers have built everything from aircraft to electronics to electric vehicles — while its farms feed the world with crops like almonds.
Continue reading at Politico California
Market meltdown over Trump tariffs sparks fear of future recession
The negative forecasts are a stunning turnaround for the president, who swept into office pledging to unleash a Golden Age of prosperity.
When President Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term, concerns about a possible recession were barely a whisper. Now, they’re starting to roar.
“There’s a very clear message coming out of the markets. It’s coming out of stocks, bonds, oil, the dollar,” said Mohamed El-Erian, the chief economic adviser at Allianz. “Suddenly, there’s a real fear about a recession.”
Since Trump announced punishing tariffs on U.S. trading partners, economists and top strategists at major Wall Street banks have begun downshifting forecasts for future growth. Analysts at UBS said they expect the move to lead to two quarters of negative growth, a common measure of a recession. EY Parthenon Chief Economist Gregory Daco said stagflation — a noxious mix of weaker economic output and higher inflation — is now his base case, but that “a significant adverse financial market reaction would exacerbate these shocks and push the U.S. economy into a recession.”
JPMorgan Chase Chief Economist Bruce Kasman said the odds of a recession in the next year climb to 60 percent if the tariffs remain in place.
The negative forecasts are a stunning turnaround for Trump, who swept into office pledging to unleash a new Golden Age of prosperity for the economy. While tariffs were always a part of the equation, the trade barriers he announced Wednesday were far more severe than most anticipated, prompting economic oddsmakers to dial up the likelihood of a recession in the early days of his presidency.
Continue reading at Politico
Trump urges Fed to cut rates as tariffs cause stock plunge
In a Friday post on his Truth Social messaging platform, Trump accused Fed Chair Jerome Powell — a fellow Republican — of refusing to cut interest rates for political reasons.
“This would be a PERFECT time for Fed Chairman Jerome Powell to cut Interest Rates. He is always “late,” but he could now change his image, and quickly,” Trump wrote Friday.
Trump then claimed the prices of several food and energy products had already fallen since he took office, even as inflation as remained close to 3 percent.
“A BIG WIN for America. CUT INTEREST RATES, JEROME, AND STOP PLAYING POLITICS!” Trump wrote.
Trump’s Friday post is a major escalation of his pressure on the Fed to cut interest rates, which could ease pressure on the stock market as investors brace for the impact of the president’s tariffs.
Continue reading at The Hill
Trump tariffs hit Nintendo
The video game company delayed the pre-order date for its new Switch 2 console to “assess the potential impact of tariffs.”
The video game company Nintendo said Friday that the pre-orders for their highly anticipated new console, Nintendo Switch 2, will be delayed due to President Donald Trump’s announcement of global tariffs.
“Pre-orders for Nintendo Switch 2 in the U.S. will not start April 9, 2025 in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions,” Nintendo said in a statement on Friday. The company added its early June launch date remains unchanged.
The delay by Nintendo for purchasing the system is one of the highest profile consumer-facing reactions to the president’s tariff rollout, highlighting its far-reaching effects around the world — even into the gaming industry.
Nintendo announced their pre-order date in a press event on Wednesday, the same day as Trump’s “Liberation Day” when he levied a minimum 10 percent tariff across the board — sending shock waves around the world.
But as tech stores and game sellers across the country prepared for the onslaught of pre-orders for the new Switch, U.S. markets were tumbling and U.S. stocks suffered their worst day since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020.
Continue reading at Politico
Axios Macro
1 big thing: The Fed's not coming to the rescue
Fed chair Jerome Powell's big message in this morning's speech is simple: The cavalry isn't coming.
That isn't remotely what Trump wants to hear.
Why it matters: Powell raised the prospect that the inflation surge generated by the trade war could prove "persistent," which implies the Fed has less flexibility to cut interest rates in response to faltering economic growth.
In other words: no imminent relief from plunging markets and scrambled supply chains.
Moments before the speech, Trump went on Truth Social to demand rate cuts. "This would be a PERFECT time for Fed Chairman Jerome Powell to cut Interest Rates," Trump wrote.
[…]
2. Jobs snapshot: Solid hiring, low layoffs
If Trump's trade policy weighed on the economy last month, it was not evident in the March jobs report.
Why it matters: In normal times, the gain of 228,000 payrolls last month and a still historically low unemployment rate might be sufficient proof to quiet recession fears.
These are not normal times. The strong jobs report shows the economy is in a better position than feared, but that might be fleeting.
A new suite of tariffs takes effect next week, while huge trade partners — including China this morning — plan to hit back at U.S. exporters.
What they're saying: "If tariffs were not in the picture, this report would point to continued economic expansion," Brean Capital economists wrote in a note.
Continue reading the Axios Macro newsletter
Foreign visits into the U.S. fell off a cliff in March
Chart: Year-over-year change in passengers passing through U.S. customs
Foreign arrivals into major U.S. airports tumbled in mid-to-late March compared to the same time last year, based on customs pass-through data.
Why it matters: The findings suggest a sudden reluctance to visit the U.S. isn't a purely Canadian phenomenon and should sound alarm bells for the country's $1 trillion-plus travel industry.
Driving the news: The number of foreigners passing through customs at the 10 busiest U.S. airports fell by over 20% year over year toward late March, based on a seven-day rolling average.
A sight uptick followed, but the number was still down 18.4% as of March 28 versus the same time last year.
Compare that to the number of U.S. citizens returning to the country, which was up nearly 14% by late March from the year earlier.
Between the lines: Trade wars, a volatile economic and political climate and fears of detainment or harassment may be dissuading foreigners from visiting the U.S.
Continue reading at Axios
Thune faces GOP divisions on critical budget resolution
Republican Senate leaders intend to adopt a controversial current-policy baseline that would enable them to claim that extending the 2017 tax cuts won’t add to the deficit and open the door to making a signature Trump first-term accomplishment permanent.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) says he’ll go along with the current-policy baseline, but if it’s used he wants the cost of extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which expires at the end of this year, “paid for” with either spending cuts or other revenue-generating measures.
“You can use it, I just want it paid for it,” he said of the current-policy baseline. “We’ve got an incredible problem with our national debt.”
But paying for an extension of the tax cuts with big spending cuts or other deficit-reducing strategies would appear to defeat the purpose of using the current-policy baseline in the first place, which is to make it easier for Republicans to permanently extend the expiring tax cuts without needing to include offsets within the bill.
Continue reading at The Hill
Trump spares drugmakers from tariffs; costs could still go up
The White House listed pharmaceuticals as exempted from the tariffs in Trump’s order signed Wednesday and set to take effect Saturday. Other exempted goods included copper, semiconductors and lumber articles.
But pharmaceutical products aren’t produced in a vacuum and the cost of another class of goods that haven’t even been exempted could very well be passed on to the production of generic drugs, which account for 90 percent of prescriptions in the U.S.
According to Tom Kraus, vice president of government relations at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, the fact that bulk chemicals — the starting materials for drugs — have not been exempted from Trump’s tariffs means generics could still be impacted.
“There’s still a risk here. There’s still questions about what applies, and at a minimum, it looks like the key starting materials are still subject to tariffs,” Kraus noted. “So, you know, from our perspective, that creates risk, particularly in the generic market.”
Continue reading at The Hill
‘Everyone is terrified’: Business and government officials are afraid to cross Trump on tariffs
While lobbyists, business leaders, and lawmakers are worried about Donald Trump’s tariffs, there’s a culture of fear in Washington preventing many from speaking out.
Republican lawmakers are signaling they’re willing to tolerate the pain for now, despite the economic fallout back home. Lobbyists, who are quietly prodding the same lawmakers to defend their interests, don’t want to have a target on their back — or their clients’. Even some Trump world confidantes, alarmed about the tariffs’ impact, are hoping someone else intervenes.
“There is zero incentive for any company or brand to be remotely critical of this administration,” said a public affairs operative, who, like others interviewed for this story, was granted anonymity to speak freely. “It destroys your ability to work with the White House and advance your policies, period.”
An official in the energy industry echoed that sense of fear. “Hearing angst and frustration from all quarters,” the official said via text message, “but no one wants to be first out of the box saying anything negative about Trump’s decision-making.”
The paralysis reflects the broader mood of Trump’s second administration, in which he’s targeted and threatened to destroy institutions that cross him, including law firms, universities, and more. With his tight grip on Washington, Trump has faced no meaningful resistance to policies that are upending the global economy, tearing up America’s relationships with its closest allies and making deep, unilateral cuts to the federal government. Leaders have quickly learned that however harmful they think a Trump policy might be, publicly contradicting the president could be worse. Now with the Trump administration doubling down on tariffs and trying to sell the country on short-term pain for long-term gain, it’s unclear what the breaking point will be for officials and lobbyists representing the most-impacted constituencies.
“There is absolutely a sense that the administration is keeping a list, and no one on K Street wants to be on it,” said one executive at a trade group downtown.
Continue reading at Politico
Dow Jones drops more than 2,100 points as stock market rout deepens
Stocks are tumbling for a second straight day, extending a steep slide triggered by President Trump's announcement of sweeping new tariffs on U.S. imports earlier this week.
The S&P 500 fell 291 points, or 5.4%, to 5,106 as of 2:35 p.m. EST. The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 2,150 points, or 5.3%, and the Nasdaq Composite slid 5.8%.
The free-fall carried over from Thursday, when the indexes recorded their biggest one-day drop since 2020, with more than $2 trillion in investor wealth erased from the S&P 500. The Dow and S&P 500 each sank more than 4% yesterday, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq plunged nearly 6%.
Continue reading at CBS News
House Republican moves to rein in tariff powers
Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon’s bill mirrors a bipartisan Senate bill introduced Thursday.
Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon said he plans to introduce a companion bill to the bipartisan Senate legislation aimed at reclaiming Congress’ authority over tariffs, becoming the first House Republican to openly challenge the powers President Donald Trump is using to launch a massive global trade war.
Bacon confirmed his plans to POLITICO on Friday as market losses continued to pile up and rattle Republicans on Capitol Hill.
The Senate bill introduced Thursday by Sens. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) would limit a president’s power to impose tariffs, including allowing Congress to vote to end any tariff at any time. It would also require the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of imposing any duty and for Congress to explicitly approve any new tariffs within 60 days. Four additional Republicans have signed on as co-sponsors to that bill.
Bacon’s move is a rare step in the deeply Trump-loyal House Republican conference. Speaker Mike Johnson has no plans to bring any legislation limiting Trump’s tariff authority to the House floor, and House Republicans voted for a measure several weeks ago that effectively barred any lawmaker from trying to force a vote to end the president’s emergency declaration he’s used to implement tariffs.
Continue reading at Politico
More Republicans back bill giving Congress a say on tariffs
A bipartisan bill to give Congress a vote on new tariffs is gaining notable GOP backing.
Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Jerry Moran of Kansas signed on as cosponsors of the bill, introduced Thursday by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.).
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) will also cosponsor the measure, according to a press release Friday from the office of Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who is on board as well. Tillis told reporters Thursday he would be “inclined” to support it and “there’s something to be said for having congressional review.”
Continue reading at Politico
Budget forecasters ratchet up projected interest costs if GOP tax cuts aren’t paid for
Republicans lawmakers are considering an accounting move to zero-out the cost of extending tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year.
The projected cost of Republicans failing to pay for their tax cuts is going way up.
If lawmakers decide to tack the cost on to the deficit, the interest payments on the additional debt will be more than 40 percent higher than anticipated, a new government report shows.
The fresh numbers will add more grist to the debate over the cost of the GOP’s tax plans, which include extending tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of this year and adding new cuts pushed by President Donald Trump. Lawmakers are deeply divided over how far they need to go to defray the cost to the government.
The analysis, of a slate of soon-to-be-expired tax cuts that largely tracks what Republicans have said they want to extend, shows interest payments would run $871 billion through 2035. That compares with the $605 billion, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted last May.
The increase partly reflects an assumption that interest rates will be higher for longer than anticipated.
Debt service expenses would quickly snowball, the analysis shows. In 2027, interest payments would run $25 billion. By 2035, they’d climb nearly sixfold to $172 billion.
Republicans aren’t talking about not paying for any of their tax cuts, but they disagree on how deeply they need to cut the budget elsewhere to make up the cost.
Continue reading at Politico
Deal or no deal? Trump ends some of the mystery on tariff compromise.
He’s ready to talk, though maybe not quite ready to cut deals.
Washington, Wall Street and global leaders have spent two days fretting whether President Donald Trump is open to compromise on his new tariffs or whether they are as final as the White House has been making them out to be.
Trump ended some of the mystery on Friday: He’s ready to talk, though maybe not quite ready to cut deals.
In a post on Truth Social Friday morning, Trump announced that he had just spoken with Vietnam’s leader To Lam about the country’s offer to eliminate all tariffs as part of an agreement with the U.S., adding that he looks “forward to a meeting in the near future.” And a White House official, granted anonymity to speak candidly about behind the scenes discussions, confirmed that multiple countries have reached out.
The acknowledgements that the president is even entertaining offers from other countries confirms the growing consensus both at home and abroad that the tariffs Trump announced in Oprah-like fashion during a Rose Garden ceremony on Wednesday are open to negotiation. White House officials have, however, been cautious in their wording, noting that hearing offers from other countries is not the same as actively negotiating with them.
Continue reading at Politico
Mortgage rates sink on Trump tariffs, but other costs may deter buyers
Chart: Average U.S. 30-year fixed mortgage rate
Mortgage rates plunged on Thursday following President Trump's tariff announcement.
Why it matters: It's a silver lining for homebuyers as the sweeping tariffs announcement otherwise portends a dire state for the global economy.
By the numbers: The average 30-year fixed rate fell to 6.55% from 6.75% on Wednesday, according to Mortgage News Daily. In January, the rate was as high as 7.26%.
What's happening: Mortgages rates are falling along with their benchmark, the 10-year U.S. Treasury, where yields are being driven down this week by spooked investors seeking the relative safety of the Treasury market.
The big picture: When mortgage rates decline, homebuyers have more purchasing power.
But today, the broader state of the economy — as well as the impact of tariffs on construction costs — could make it difficult for would-be buyers to capitalize on lower mortgage rates.
Continue reading at Axios
Stocks post worst week since pandemic on tariff chaos
U.S. stocks finished their worst week in five years with a historic two-day rout, as the realities of President Trump's tariff plan left investors stunned and fearing what comes next.
Why it matters: As opposed to Trump's first term, when sharply negative market moves often influenced him to pull back policy, in the second Trump administration markets are on their own.
By the numbers: The S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq both fell about 6%, while the small-cap benchmark Russell 2000 dropped around 4%.
In percentage terms, it was the fifth-largest two-day decline for the S&P 500 in the index's history.
The Russell closed in a bear market Thursday, down 20% from its recent highs, and the Nasdaq did the same Friday.
Energy and financial stocks broadly led the decline.
Continue reading at Axios
Health and Science News
RFK Jr. drops plan to have Medicare, Medicaid cover weight loss drugs
The health secretary says better diet and exercise will keep Americans trim.
Medicare and Medicaid will not cover blockbuster drugs such as Ozempic to treat obesity, the Trump administration announced on Friday.
The Biden administration in November proposed allowing the public insurance programs to expand coverage of the anti-obesity medications but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services now says that is “not appropriate at this time.”
More than 7 million people would have gained coverage to the medicine, CMS said when it proposed the rule.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has criticized the class of weight loss drugs known as GLP-1s, arguing the obesity problem can be solved by improving Americans’ diets and encouraging exercise. Kennedy said in a Fox News interview in October that pharma companies are counting on selling the drugs to Americans because “we’re so stupid and so addicted to drugs.”
CMS had estimated the policy change would cost Medicare $25 billion and Medicaid $15 billion over 10 years. The drugs do not cure obesity and most patients must take them continually to sustain weight loss.
But Dr. Mehmet Oz, whom the Senate confirmed Thursday to lead CMS, has supported the drugs. “For those who want to lose a few pounds, Ozempic and other semaglutide medications can be a big help,” he posted on Instagram in 2023.
Continue reading at Politico
Trump admin won't let Medicare cover anti-obesity drugs
The Trump administration on Friday scrapped a Biden administration proposal to have Medicare cover anti-obesity drugs, including GLP-1s.
Why it matters: The decision sidelines a politically popular idea that had big implications for the program's finances.
Driving the news: A Medicare payment rule issued Friday would maintain a long-standing prohibition on covering drugs for weight loss.
The Biden administration argued that reinterpreting the existing policy would have made the drugs more accessible to millions of Americans and potentially lower the prevalence of obesity-related illnesses.
Medicare administrators may revisit the policy in the future, according to a fact sheet on the rule.
Catch up quick: Requiring Medicare and Medicaid to cover GLP-1s like Wegovy for weight loss would have cost the government nearly $40 billion over 10 years.
Continue reading at Axios
15 Signs of Hypothyroidism You Can See
— Fatigue, dry skin, weight gain, and other visible signs of disease
[Video of interview]
Following is a partial transcript of the video (note that errors are possible):
Deshauer: There's a small gland in your neck that could be responsible for your fatigue, dry skin, and weight gain. When it's not working properly, everything falls apart, including your hair, nails, and skin. It's called the thyroid gland and millions of people have an underactive thyroid without even knowing it. Today, I'm going to show you the top 15 signs of hypothyroidism, so you know exactly what to watch out for.
Let's start by looking directly at the thyroid gland. For this test, you need a mirror and a glass of water. Your thyroid gland is located low on the neck, just above the collarbones, and when you swallow, it moves up and down, making it easier to see. So take a sip of water and hold it in your mouth, then tilt your head back a little bit, and swallow while looking at the base of your neck. And a pro tip, don't get confused by the thyroid cartilage in the middle of the neck. For men, that's the Adam's apple. Your thyroid gland will be below that.
If you can't exactly see where the thyroid is, that's actually completely normal. Some people with healthy thyroids, who are really slim and have a long neck, might be able to make it out of the mirror. But usually, if it's big enough to see, that means your thyroid is enlarged and that's called a goiter. People with hypothyroidism can develop a huge goiter and the physiology is actually pretty cool.
Basically, your brain monitors how much thyroid hormone is circulating in your body and it sends a signal to your thyroid gland when it needs to produce more. That signal is called thyroid stimulating hormone or TSH for short. As the name suggests, TSH stimulates the production of thyroid hormone and also tells it to get bigger and stronger. But if there's a problem with the thyroid or a nutritional deficiency like iodine deficiency, no matter how big the thyroid gets, it just can't physically produce enough thyroid hormone. This becomes a vicious cycle, where the brain keeps releasing more TSH and the thyroid gland just keeps getting bigger and bigger. At a certain point, the thyroid will become so large that it will compress important structures in the neck, making it difficult to swallow and even hard to breathe.
Transcript
Continue reading at MedPageToday
Texas measles outbreak approaches 500 cases
The total number of cases has gone up to 481, the Texas Department of State Health Services said Friday in a new update. On Tuesday, the total was only 422.
Officials in the Lone Star State also revealed that there’s been one fatality — a school-aged child who did not have known underlying conditions and was not vaccinated.
Still, the largest number of confirmed cases is in Gaines County, Texas, with 315, according to the data, an area where the outbreak began two months ago.
The total number of cases hit a record 400 in the state last Friday, increasing by 20 percent since the prior update. The viral infection has also been spreading in other states.
New Mexico has so far detected 54 cases, according to the state’s department of health, with six new cases tallied over the course of this week. Nearly all cases, 52, were confirmed in Lea County and there has been one death so far.
Continue reading at The Hill
Judge halts HHS plan to kill $11B in public health grants
A federal judge in Rhode Island froze a Trump administration plan to cut more than $11 billion in public health grants to state and local health departments that Congress allocated during the pandemic.
Why it matters: The Health and Human Services Department said the move was on the grounds that the pandemic was over. But it cast doubt on states' ability to contain infectious diseases, ensure access to vaccines and continue substance use disorder programs, among other efforts.
Driving the news: Judge Mary S. McElroy granted a temporary restraining order Thursday in response to a lawsuit filed by 23 states and the District of Columbia.
The states had argued HHS "arbitrarily" stopped the funding without advance notice.
"This funding provides essential support for a wide range of urgent public health needs," they wrote.
The cuts endanger the public and violate the Administrative Procedure Act by exceeding the agency's regulatory authority, they wrote.
HHS declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation.
Continue reading at Axios
Democratic states sue NIH, RFK Jr. over canceled medical research grants
In a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, the coalition challenged the administration’s “abrupt, unjustified, and illegal decision to revoke these funds,” as well as NIH’s suspension of the grant approval process.
“Massachusetts is the medical research capital of the country. Not only do our public research institutions rely on NIH funding for their groundbreaking research, job creation and academic competitiveness, but our residents depend on these studies to propel lifesaving medical advancements,” Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell said in a statement. “I won’t allow the Trump Administration to take unlawful actions that play politics with our public health.”
By law, NIH provides much of its support for scientific research and training in the form of grants to outside institutions. Since January, however, the administration has “engaged in a concerted, and multi-pronged effort to disrupt NIH’s grants,” the lawsuit alleges.
Continue reading at The Hill
Canceled contract means NOAA research websites slated to go dark
The early cancellation of an Amazon web services contract means that a slew of NOAA websites are slated to go dark beginning at midnight, sources told Axios.
Why it matters: This mainly would affect NOAA's research division, and will make numerous websites and data sets inaccessible to the public.
It's another example of how the administration has been taking data offline across the government, said current and former NOAA staff members, who spoke to Axios on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation.
Zoom in: The Commerce Department is requiring NOAA — and possibly all department agencies — to cut its IT budget by 50% across the board.
This is resulting in cloud services contracts being cut — and, potentially more significantly, agency networks that transmit weather and climate information.
Some of the websites slated to go down include the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL), the Climate Program Office, the home website of NOAA research and the Earth Prediction Innovation Center, which maintains a cloud-based weather forecasting system developed as a public-private partnership.
The NSSL outage may affect some programs, such as the Hazardous Weather Testbed, that the NWS uses for severe weather forecasting.
Bloomberg first reported the impending NOAA IT outages, and Axios independently confirmed them.
Continue reading at Axios
RFK Jr.’s staff cuts leave health workers scrambling
Employees who survived mass firings this week say management hasn’t provided an accounting.
The survivors of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s mass firings are taking stock of the damage and trying to figure out what remains of their agencies.
Kennedy hasn’t released an accounting of the purge. Amid an information blackout from the administration, workers are tallying the losses in shared Google documents, spreadsheets, and notes. They say middle managers have shared some information in hastily scheduled meetings but are hesitant to put anything in writing. Unions representing workers have requested, but not received, an official count. They are trying to cobble together estimates by crowdsourcing, but remain largely in the dark about the scope of the cuts.
Workers say the process has been jarring and speaks to the unprecedented nature of the administration’s move. In past agency downsizings, affected employees received months of notice, allowing them to finish projects or hand them off to others. The way Kennedy did it, said one Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staffer granted anonymity for fear of retaliation, “reveals an intention to create chaos and misery.”
At the CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, “they wiped out our chain of command in one fell swoop,” said Micah Niemeier-Walsh, the vice president of a local union affiliate that represents workers in the agency’s Cincinnati’s office. “It’s not just an attack on NIOSH employees — it’s a direct attack on all workers.”
At the CDC, employees are working together to figure out who lost their jobs and circulating lists of which offices were terminated, according to screenshots shared with POLITICO by another employee granted anonymity for fear of retribution.
Continue reading at Politico
States are losing billions in federal childhood vaccine funding
Map: HHS childhood vaccination funding cuts
States and cities are losing over $2 billion in childhood immunization and vaccination funding as part of broader cancellations of pandemic-era federal public health spending, per government data.
Why it matters: Federal money helps fight preventable and sometimes deadly diseases like measles, which is now spreading in several parts of the country.
Driving the news: A 42-page U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) document lists a sweeping variety of recently terminated public health grants, with about six pages dedicated specifically to awards for "immunization and vaccines for children."
Of those grants, just over $2 billion of an originally awarded $6.6 billion has been terminated nationally.
Some other terminated grants are also related to childhood vaccination, including some funding vaccine hesitancy research.
Zoom in: South Dakota (about $35,000 cut per 1,000 people), Wyoming ($35,000), and Alaska ($22,000) are losing the most funding on a per-person basis.
Continue reading at Axios
Measles vaccination clinics hit by funding cuts
Measles cases have spread among those who are unvaccinated
Vaccination clinics are being closed due to federal cuts
The outbreak is spreading across the country
As the country faces a deadly measles outbreak, funding cuts under the Trump administration are hitting public health offices that work to track and prevent measles.
Roughly 20 states have reported measles cases, with Texas at the center of the outbreak. Texas, the hardest-hit state, is now seeing the impact of federal cuts.
In Dallas County, three of the funding grants from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have been impacted by a federal funding freeze. Early estimates from officials say that could be in the millions of dollars.
Nationwide, there is an expected loss of about $11.4 billion from community health departments nationwide.
As a result, 50 vaccination clinics in Texas have been scrapped, places that were working to combat the outbreak that has spread largely among those who are unvaccinated.
More than 20 public health workers have also been laid off, including those who administer vaccines and lab staff who are tasked with measles surveillance and prevention.
Continue reading at The Hill
Trump's climate-change avoidance could have dire consequences
President Trump's head-in-the-sand approach to climate change during his second term could put Americans at greater risk of harm from its effects, some analysts warn.
Why it matters: Just three months into his tenure, his administration's actions may not be reversible given how many rollbacks are being pursued and how many scientific programs are being disbanded, some observers say.
Zoom in: Officials are canceling climate research programs, deleting government climate websites and datasets and firing climate scientists from agencies such as the Agriculture Department and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
At the National Institutes of Health, the administration reportedly killed the program researching the health effects of climate change.
At the EPA, where a slew of regulations are being rolled back and the agency's mission repurposed, an entire division of researchers is being considered for cuts.
In addition, the EPA is reconsidering the 2009 greenhouse gas endangerment finding, which held that certain greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare.
Between the lines: "Everything's reversible; it's a question of a certain time scale," said Andrew Dessler, a Texas A&M professor and climate researcher. "As time goes on, it's going to become harder and harder to reproduce it."
Continue reading at Axios
Europe to burned American scientists: We’ll take you in
The EU’s body for scientific research, as well as local, regional and national governments, are mobilizing to poach top U.S. scholars.
Donald Trump is trying to purge United States research institutions of scholars who study purportedly progressive issues.
The European Union is tripping over itself to take them in.
From universities to cities, regions, countries and now the European Commission, the message is loud and clear — Europe welcomes U.S.-based talent and is pulling out all the stops to attract America's best and brightest.
“This global landscape is an opportunity to show the world that Europe will remain a safe space for science and research,” European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation Ekaterina Zaharieva told EU lawmakers on Monday evening. “Europe can and should be the best place to do science ... a place that attracts and retains researchers, both international and European.”
Citing significant cuts to federal research spending in the U.S., as well as coercive measures targeting specific universities and researchers investigating climate science, vaccines and minority and gender issues, the commissioner said the bloc was in a unique position to serve as a refuge for top scientists. She also set out a trove of enticements for researchers hit by Trump's moves.
To enhance Europe’s “pull factor” for top-level talent, Zaharieva said the Commission would enshrine freedom of scientific research within EU law and immediately increase the financial support offered by the European Research Council (ERC), the bloc’s public body for scientific and technological enquiry.
Continue reading at Politico Europe
Unsanitary Practices Persist at Baby Formula Factory Whose Shutdown Led to Mass Shortages, Workers Say
Reporting Highlights
Unsanitary Conditions: Workers at one of the nation’s largest baby formula plants say the Abbott Laboratories facility is engaging in unsanitary practices.
Cardboard Funnel: In one case, workers said an employee used a piece of cardboard from a trash bin to funnel coconut oil, a formula ingredient, into a tank during production.
Federal Response: One worker complained to the FDA, but it’s unclear how the agency will respond. The Trump administration recently cut 3,500 jobs at the FDA in a mass layoff.
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
Workers at one of the nation’s largest baby formula plants say the Abbott Laboratories facility is engaging in unsanitary practices similar to those that led it to temporarily shut down just three years ago, sparking a nationwide formula shortage.
Current and former employees told ProPublica that they have seen the plant in Sturgis, Michigan, take shortcuts when cleaning manufacturing equipment and testing for microbes. The employees said leaks in the factory are sometimes not fixed, a dangerous problem that can promote bacterial growth. They also said workers at the facility do not always take required swabs to check for pathogens while performing maintenance during production. Supervisors have urged workers to increase production and have retaliated against workers who complained about problems, the employees said.
One worker complained to the Food and Drug Administration in February, saying the plant has experienced “persistent leaks” and “unaddressed contamination issues,” according to correspondence between the worker and the agency viewed by ProPublica. Water and chemicals have pooled on the floor, the worker said. In one spot, white sweetener oozed from a pipe and formed a pile like a stalagmite on top of a tank used for blending, the employee said.
The complaints come as the Trump administration is dismantling wide swaths of the federal government — including conducting mass layoffs at the FDA — and filling some key regulatory positions with industry-friendly voices. The new head of the FDA division that oversees baby formula is a corporate lawyer who previously defended Abbott against a lawsuit.
Continue reading at ProPublica
Axios Future of Healthcare newsletter
1 big thing: A surprise inflection point
Any question about whether HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would enter office and fall in line with the status quo has been answered this week, and we're now watching the future of U.S. health care be reshaped by him, DOGE and the rest of the Trump administration in real time.
Why it matters: There are a lot of things the system gets wrong that can and should be fixed. But there are also a lot of things that it gets right, and voices from all corners of the health care world are warning that this week's massive changes to the federal health agencies could have disastrous consequences.
It's been difficult to keep up with the flow of news stories detailing which agencies have been axed or which senior officials were laid off. Almost as numerous have been critical statements in response to the news, condemning the layoffs as chaotic and dangerous.
Interest groups ranging from maternal health advocates to asthma and allergy advocates have warned of the cuts' consequences, reflecting just how much of the health care system could be impacted.
There's also the minority of voices defending the cuts, saying they'll make HHS more efficient and ultimately lead to improvements in Americans' health.
The big picture: Instead of focusing on individual changes to the federal bureaucracy, I wanted to zoom out and look at the past week's news through the lens of this newsletter's original coverage themes.
[…]
2. Medicine's precarious moment
This is what I wrote almost a year ago in one of the inaugural editions of this newsletter: "Extremely promising drugs are making their way onto the market, with more on the horizon, but we have no good way to pay for them all. ... We could be at an inflection point for how society manages people's health, presenting life-altering possibilities with crippling costs."
Where it stands: Perhaps the most-discussed downstream effects of both this week's cuts and earlier actions taken by the Trump administration are on the research, development, commercialization and regulation of new treatments and cures.
The U.S. leads the world in pharmaceutical innovation. (We also lead the world in paying for that innovation, but that's not today's topic.)
But that entire ecosystem is now threatened, experts say, starting from NIH research funding cuts and extending through the elimination of key positions within the FDA.
In other words, forget the costs; some of those promising future treatments and cures may never make it to market now.
Between the lines: Doing world-class research that leads to game-changing new discoveries requires both money and talent.
[…]
3. The fallout from public health cuts
Another huge theme that's emerged from the chaos this past week is the impact on public health initiatives and basic services provided by the federal government.
I've never heard of some of the departments or programs that have been eliminated, let alone written about them. But that's because the beauty of public health is that on a good day, it's super routine and boring.
The work operates in the background, much of it aimed at prevention or managing health and safety issues so that society can chug along less encumbered by them.
But occasionally — as we saw during the pandemic — public health becomes of utmost importance in the face of an emergency. And that's when most of us are grateful for that boring system having been maintained.
We've lived our lives thus far mostly with the assumption that we have the tools — including effective vaccines — we need to protect us against the worst viruses, and that the federal government will at least be able to tell us about new pathogens and take action to protect us against them.
The COVID pandemic may have rattled these assumptions, but even that much-criticized response benefited from the public health infrastructure that was already in place.
Where it stands: If the reduction or elimination of certain government health initiatives translate into worse health outcomes, that makes a huge difference within several of this newsletters' original themes:
Continue reading Axios Future of Healthcare newsletter
CDC Cancer Team Fired; NIH Ordered to Study Transgender 'Regret'; AI May Help in OUD
— Health news and commentary gathered by MedPage Today staff
The mass layoffs at HHS hit CDC staff studying cancer clusters and childhood lead exposureopens in a new tab or window. (The Hill)
Though when questioned about the lead surveillance firings, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said certain workers and programs would be reinstatedopens in a new tab or window as some cuts were a "mistake." (ABC News)
Others fired included staffers working on the Right to Try Actopens in a new tab or window -- a law passed in President Trump's first term that aims to ease access to investigational drugs for patients with life-threatening diseases -- and workers overseeing the national mental health and substance use hotlinesopens in a new tab or window. (Endpoints News, STAT)
Kennedy once dismissed concern over a previous measles outbreakopens in a new tab or window as "hysteria" drummed up by vaccine makers. (Mother Jones)
Continue reading at MedPageToday
Polling- Surveys
Most Americans Say They Are Tuned In to News About the Trump Administration
Far fewer are hearing about the administration’s relationship with the media than was the case early in Trump’s first term
The second Trump administration has started with a rapid succession of executive orders and policy changes, including tariffs, cuts to government agencies and more. Americans are paying attention, but Democrats and Republicans give different reasons for why they are tuning in, according to a new Pew Research Center survey conducted in late February and early March.
As the president and his allies move to reshape the federal government and U.S. foreign policy, about seven-in-ten U.S. adults say they have been following news about the actions and initiatives of the Trump administration very (31%) or fairly (40%) closely.
That’s about the same share who said they were following news about the presidential election last September (69%), and slightly higher than the percentage who said they were following news about the actions and initiatives of the new Biden administration in 2021 (66%). There is also a gap between now and the early days of the Biden presidency when it comes to the share who are following administration news very closely (31% vs. 22%).
Both partisan coalitions are paying attention to the actions and initiatives of the administration at similar rates. This is different from the first months of the Biden administration in 2021, when Republicans and Republican-leaning independents were less likely than Democrats and Democratic leaners to say they were following the Biden administration’s actions very or fairly closely (60% of Republicans vs. 75% of Democrats).
Now, 74% of Republicans and 71% of Democrats say they are following the Trump administration’s actions at least fairly closely.
Continue reading at Pew Research Foundation
Anti-DEI-Whitewashing Movement
Divided Supreme Court sides with Trump to block teacher grants
A divided Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration by allowing officials to block $65 million in teacher development grants frozen over concerns they were promoting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices.
The 5-4 emergency ruling, for now, lifts a lower order that forced the Education Department to resume the grants in eight Democratic-led states that are suing.
Five of the court’s six conservatives sided with the administration to grant the request. Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s three liberal justices dissented.
The decision is not a final ruling in the case, and the dispute could ultimately return to the Supreme Court. Friday’s order enables the administration to keep the grants blocked until any appeals are resolved.
“Respondents have represented in this litigation that they have the financial wherewithal to keep their programs running. So, if respondents ultimately prevail, they can recover any wrongfully withheld funds through suit in an appropriate forum,” the majority said it its unsigned ruling.
Continue reading at The Hill
General News
Trump admin to pull $510 million in funding from Brown University
The Trump administration intends to pull some $510 million in federal funding from Brown University, a White House official confirmed to Axios on Thursday.
The big picture: The Providence, Rhode Island, school is among five Ivy League universities to have its federal funding reviewed or revoked in recent weeks — alongside Princeton, Columbia, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania.
Brown is one of 60 colleges and universities under investigation for allegations of antisemitic harassment and discrimination.
Continue reading at Axios
Exclusive: Kushner's Abraham Accords institute to merge into Heritage Foundation
The Heritage Foundation is going to acquire the Abraham Accords Peace Institute (AAPI), which was established by President Trump's son-in-law and former senior adviser Jared Kushner, according to a statement shared with Axios.
Why it matters: The move by the conservative think-tank, which is considered highly influential on Trump administration policies, could reenergize the efforts to push for new normalization agreements between Israel and the Arab world — something the president has said he wants to do.
Flashback: The Abraham Accords, signed in September 2020, were arguably Trump's biggest foreign policy achievement and the biggest breakthrough for relations between Israel and the Arab world for 25 years.
Kushner, who negotiated the Abraham Accords, founded the non-profit in May 2021 after he left government. The goal was to develop programs that will help in strengthening the normalization between Israel, the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco.
Driving the news: Robert Greenway who worked at the national security council when the Abraham Accords were signed was the first CEO of Kushner's institute.
Continue reading at Axios
Trump Is Raising Stagflation From the Grave. It Might Bury Him.
The economic crisis of the 1970s was a disaster for multiple presidents. It could be worse for Trump.
In the leadup to President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” on Wednesday — when he announced sweeping new tariffs on all the United States’ international trading partners — economists and financial analysts started using a word that will give hives to those of you over the age of 60.
Stagflation — “the s-word rippling through Wall Street and Main Street,” as Axios put it earlier this week — is a calamitous anomaly whereby the economy manifests low growth and high inflation at the same time. Anyone who remembers the 1970s will recall that it caused an economic crisis in the United States, ushering in a turbulent era of high prices, interest rates and unemployment — and considerable instability and pain.
Today, experts are worried that Trump’s new tariff regime — which is all but certain to raise prices — coupled with a tight labor market could return us to that era. As a researcher at Deutsche Bank recently observed, “The data is continuing to support the narrative of weaker growth and higher inflation, with market-based inflation expectations continuing to rise.” And on Sunday, Richard Clarida, a former vice chair of the Federal Reserve who now advises the Pacific Investment Management Company, told Bloomberg that he already sees a “whiff of stagflation” in the economy.
That’s not just a financial risk for the American people — history indicates it’s also a potentially existential political problem for Trump.
Continue reading at Politico
‘FREE MARINE LE PEN!’ Trump lodges defense of convicted French far-right icon
U.S. president says the embezzlement case on which France’s right-wing figurehead was found guilty sounds “like a ‘bookkeeping’ error to me.”
“The Witch Hunt against Marine Le Pen is another example of European Leftists using Lawfare to silence Free Speech, and censor their Political Opponent, this time going so far as to put that Opponent in prison,” Trump wrote in a long post on Truth Social.
Despite Trump’s assertion, Le Pen will not serve any time behind bars. While she was sentenced to a four-year prison term, two years were suspended and the other two would be served under house arrest. However, her prison sentence has been put on hold as the appeals process plays out.
Trump went on to compare Le Pen’s trial, in which she was found guilty of embezzling EU funds, to his own numerous legal woes.
“It is the same ‘playbook’ that was used against me by a group of Lunatics and Losers, like Norm Eisen, Andrew Weissmann, and Lisa Monaco,” said Trump, calling out some of the prosecutors that worked on cases against him over the years. He was eventually convicted in May 2024 on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up a payment to a porn actress … after which he became the first convicted felon to win the U.S. presidency.
Continue reading at Politico Europe
Elon Musk Appalls Much of the Tech Industry. They’re Just Afraid to Say So.
A huge swath of Silicon Valley is horrified by what Elon Musk is doing — but they fear speaking out.
Mark was poking around in an online forum for tech-company founders recently when he spotted a fawning post about Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
As the founder of a tech company himself, Mark is part of a community of startup types in the Bay Area, and considers his politics to be pretty middle-of-the-road. He understands the instinct to want to modernize government. But Musk’s approach at DOGE — which he saw as a slash-and-burn rampage through the federal workforce — seemed, to him, “absurd.”
He typed up a reply saying as much, arguing that DOGE is a front for purging political opponents, and he figured at least some of the other founders on the forum would agree.
Instead, Mark — who we allowed to use a pseudonym to avoid retaliation — was mobbed. “I was just amazed by the amount of virulence that came back to me,” he said.
Then something else happened: Direct messages started pouring in from people thanking him for saying what they were too fearful to say themselves. One even asked to talk by phone, so long as Mark agreed never to mention his name to anyone or even enter their conversation in his Google Calendar.
Continue reading at Politico
Obama visits college in New York for conversation
Visitors flew in from as far as Europe and stood in a mile-long line with students for hours to listen to Obama speak about current affairs.
“I’m definitely interested in hearing what he’s going to talk about with the current climate and the political climate now, and what’s going to be happening in the future,” senior Seth Tobin said.
Obama spoke with Tepper for over an hour, running over time by nearly 20 minutes, to discuss globalization, the importance of the Paris Agreement, artificial intelligence, the American people’s trust in government, and how to find common ground with one another, despite political affiliation.
“These are things that we’re talking about on this campus, and the chance to have him reflect on them and help us think through them was just amazing,” Tepper said.
Before Obama bid Hamilton College adieu, he advised those who wish to make a difference in the world not to get discouraged because nothing can be fixed all at once.
“I think the word he used was resilience, and resilience means you have to have patience, and you have to know you’re playing a long game,” Tepper said.
Continue reading at The Hill
Trump’s top prosecutor in Washington compares Jan. 6 charges to Japanese internment
Ed Martin says he is expanding a review of obstruction charges against Jan. 6 defendants, which began during the first Trump administration.
The Trump administration’s top prosecutor in Washington, D.C., told staff Friday he is expanding an investigation into the decision by the Justice Department to level felony obstruction charges against hundreds of people who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, a vocal advocate for those defendants before President Donald Trump appointed him, called the decision the “greatest failure of legal judgment” since Japanese internment during World War II, according to an internal email reviewed by POLITICO.
“We have contacted lawyers, staff and judges about this — and sought their feedback,” Martin said in the Friday morning “Dear Colleague” email, adding “We continue to look at who ordered the [obstruction charges] and why.”
Martin indicated early in his tenure that one of his priorities would be to review how the decision to bring obstruction charges against Jan. 6 defendants was made.
Notably, it was the Trump Justice Department that brought the first obstruction charges against Jan. 6 defendants during the final, chaotic days of his first term. Steven D’Antuono, who headed the FBI’s Washington, D.C., field office on Jan. 6, told lawmakers that the decision to label the cases as obstruction of “a proceeding of Congress” came within days of the attack.
Prosecutors under Trump and President Joe Biden would charge several hundred Jan. 6 defendants with “obstruction of an official proceeding,” a crime established in the aftermath of the early-2000s Enron scandal. It carries a maximum 20-year prison sentence, though in practice judges leveled sentences ranging from several months to a few years in prison.
More than a dozen judges appointed by five presidents — including Trump himself — endorsed the decision by federal prosecutors to deploy the obstruction counts against people who stormed the Capitol and sought to derail the transfer of power to Biden.
Continue reading at Politico
Harvard receives Trump administration demands to continue funding
In a Thursday letter, obtained by The Hill, demands similar to the ones asked of Columbia University by the administration were laid for Harvard: mask bans, with some exceptions; more rules on protest; reforms in university leadership; greater accountability against student groups; reforms to admissions and hiring practices; shuttering diversity, equity and inclusion programs; and greater cooperation with law enforcement and the federal government.
While it did not call for an academic receivership over specific departments like at Columbia, the letter said reviews and changes must be made to departments that “fuel antisemitism harassment.”
“Below, you will find several broad, non-exhaustive areas of reform that the government views as necessary for Harvard to implement to remain a responsible recipient of federal taxpayer dollars. We look forward to a meaningful dialogue focused on lasting, structural reforms at Harvard,” the letter reads.
The letter was sent to the president and lead member of the Harvard Corp. by Josh Gruenbaum, the commissioner of the federal acquisition service in the General Services Administration; Sean Keveney, the acting general counsel at the Health and Human Services Department; and Thomas Wheeler, the acting general counsel at the Department of Education.
Continue reading at The Hill
GOP attorneys general demand top law firms disclose DEI practices
A group of Republican state attorneys general are demanding the nation’s top 20 law firms release information on their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies.
In a letter sent to the firms on Thursday, 12 attorneys general cited the recent request by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for any DEI information related to hiring practices.
“EEOC’s letter to your firm flagged potential violations of employment discrimination laws, both at the federal and state levels-specifically, touting hiring practices that include diversity fellowships, setting hiring goals with targets for greater representation of minority groups, and DEI programs that entail unlawful disparate treatment in terms, conditions and privileges of employment,” the letter states.
“These practices indicate possible violations of Title VII and state statutes. They may also violate state laws against deceptive trade practices.”
The attorneys general demand that the firms respond to the EEOC’s letter, as well as their own, by April 15.
Continue reading at The Hill
Education Department, DOJ partnering in Title IX investigations
The Education Department and Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Friday a collaboration to create “Title IX Special Investigations Team (SIT).”
The departments said the teams will “streamline” Title IX investigations as the number of cases is increasing.
The announcement said the goal of the teams is “timely, consistent resolutions to protect students, and especially female athletes, from the pernicious effects of gender ideology in school programs and activities.”
The collaboration comes after the president signed an executive order banning transgender athletes from competing on the sports teams they choose.
“Protecting women and women’s sports is a key priority for this Department of Justice,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “This collaborative effort with the Department of Education will enable our attorneys to take comprehensive action when women’s sports or spaces are threatened and use the full power of the law to remedy any violation of women’s civil rights.”
The teams will be made up of investigators and attorneys from the Office of Civil Rights at the Education Department, case workers from the Student Privacy and Protection Office, a Federal Student Aid enforcement investigator and attorneys from the civil rights division at the DOJ.
Continue reading at The Hill
Federal employee unions sue over Trump bid to strip collective bargaining
A coalition of unions sued the Trump administration Friday over its directive to agencies to terminate their collective bargaining agreements with federal employee unions.
President Trump last week signed an order directing 18 agencies to end the union contracts, citing a provision of the federal civil service law that allows such exceptions for national security agencies.
But the unions argue Trump showed his hand in a fact sheet accompanying the order that complained about “hostile Federal unions” that had “declared war on President Trump’s agenda” by launching numerous suits challenging his policies.
“The vast overbreadth of the list of excluded agencies and the incongruity between the stated rationale of national security and those agencies’ primary functions would itself raise questions that the invocation of national security was pretextual,” the suit states.
“But here there is no need to speculate as to the true rationale behind the Exclusion Order. The White House made clear that it was eliminating federal labor law protections for the vast majority of federal workers in response to constitutionally-protected speech and petitioning activity by Plaintiffs and other federal employee unions in opposition to executive actions by the Trump Administration.”
The suit includes a number of claims, including that the Trump administration violated the First Amendment by targeting unions due to their activities.
Continue reading at The Hill
Rutte smiles and Rubio flees as NATO survives a summit
NATO’s boss insisted that the alliance “remains the cornerstone of European security,” despite worries about Trump.
BRUSSELS — NATO is still alive following this week's meeting of foreign ministers, but despite protestations that the alliance is in fine health, there were signs of trouble in Brussels.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte insisted Friday that "we are united in our commitment to each other in this alliance," and that the "transatlantic relationship remains the cornerstone of European security and of global stability."
“I know there has been some tough language. I know that there have been allies, for example, this side of the pond being worried about the long-term commitment of the U.S. to NATO,” said Rutte, adding: "The Americans have stated again and again, ‘We are committed to NATO. We are committed to Article 5.'"
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the view that the U.S. is disengaging from the alliance "hysteria and hyperbole." His debut was smoother than that of U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who warned in February during his first trip to Europe as Pentagon chief that American troops are not in Europe forever.
Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said U.S. President Donald Trump assured NATO that the alliance’s Article 5 collective defense commitment remains intact and that he will attend a summit of alliance leaders in June in The Hague.
But this week's two-day meeting took place as the world scrambled to react to Trump unleashing a global trade war — with steep tariffs hitting NATO allies in Europe and Canada.
Continue reading at Politico Europe
UK joined European officials at secret dinner to plot radical rearmament fund
A supranational bank would sidestep the European Commission, involve the British, and allow defense-spending off the balance sheet.
BRUSSELS — British officials met select European allies at a discreet dinner in Brussels last week to hatch plans for a new defense fund designed to sidestep the European Commission, keep a lid on public debt and rearm faster.
The off-the-books gathering brought together senior finance ministry officials from Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Poland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom to float the idea of creating a supranational bank specifically for the purpose of jointly buying weapons and slashing the cost of defense procurement, according to officials familiar with the matter.
The secret gathering was hosted by Poland, according to one EU official, granted anonymity to speak freely about the confidential discussions, like others quoted in this story.
At the center of the pitch was a proposal from the U.K. Treasury, detailed in a discussion paper seen by POLITICO, that would allow participating governments to avoid booking the upfront capital cost of military kit in their national budget, which would be of huge benefit to countries with tight spending rules.
Continue reading at Politico Europe
Rejected by 16 colleges, hired by Google. Now he’s suing some of the schools for anti-Asian discrimination
Stanley Zhong had a 4.42 grade point average, a nearly perfect SAT score, had bested adults in competitive coding competitions and started his own electronic signing service all while still in high school.
When it came time to apply to colleges, Zhong’s family wasn’t overly concerned about his prospects even amid an increasingly competitive admissions environment.
But, by the end of his senior year in Palo Alto in 2023, Zhong received rejection letters to 16 of the 18 colleges where he applied, including five University of California campuses that his father had figured would be safety schools.
Continue reading at the Los Angeles Times
Judge finds FEMA withholding grants in violation of court order
A federal judge Friday ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to disburse millions of dollars of grants to Democratic-led states, finding the administration’s withholding of the funds breached his previous ruling.
“FEMA’s manual review process violates the Court’s preliminary injunction order,” wrote U.S. District Judge John McConnell.
McConnell, an appointee of former President Obama, has blocked the administration from implementing an across-the-board freeze on federal grants as the states’ lawsuit proceeds and has now twice found the administration wasn’t in compliance.
The case began with an Office of Management and Budget (OMB) memo directing the sweeping freeze. Even though it has since been rescinded, the judge’s order prevents the administration from implementing it under any other name.
Continue reading at The Hill
Here’s what to know about Saturday’s ‘Hands Off!’ anti-Trump protests
Nationwide protests are set to take place Saturday in opposition to the Trump administration and its allies, with leaders vowing to stand up to push back against the “most brazen power grab in modern history.”
The “Hands Off!” rallies are taking place in more than 1,000 cities across all 50 states, and nearly 400,000 people have signed up to attend them, according to the progressive organization Indivisible, which is one of the almost 200 groups partnering to organize the movement.
Other partner organizations include the American Civil Liberties Union, the League of Women Voters, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund and various advocacy groups focusing on issues like climate change and voting rights.
“Donald Trump and Elon Musk think this country belongs to them,” the movement’s website states. “They’re taking everything they can get their hands on, and daring the world to stop them. On Saturday, April 5th, we’re taking to the streets nationwide to fight back with a clear message: Hands off!”
Continue reading at The Hill
Pulitzer-winning columnist leaving Washington Post
Longtime Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson is leaving the newspaper, he announced this week.
Robinson informed his Post colleagues of his decision on Thursday, he wrote on the social platform X.
“I’m retiring from my longtime journalistic home but not from journalism, and I’ll keep you posted as I decide what my next chapter will be,” he said.
Robinson has been writing for the Post’s opinion section since 2005 and in recent years has been a regular on MSNBC and other cable news shows.
He won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for his columns on the 2008 presidential race.
He is the latest in a slew of Post opinion writers to leave the news organization as it goes through major changes to its editorial strategy and business under billionaire owner Jeff Bezos.
Continue reading at The Hill
Trump to extend TikTok ban enforcement to continue work on a sale deal
Donald Trump announced on Friday that he will again delay enforcement of the TikTok sale-or-ban law for 75 days, as his staff continues to work on a deal to preserve access to the app in the United States.
“My Administration has been working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK, and we have made tremendous progress. The Deal requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
The announcement comes just one day before the ban was set to go into effect, after Trump delayed by an initial 75 days it when he took office in January.
Continue reading at CNN.com
FEMA chief given lie detector test after leak of private meeting
The Department of Homeland Security tested acting Administrator Cameron Hamilton shortly after he met with DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.
The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency was given a lie detector test by the Department of Homeland Security to determine if he leaked information about a recent private meeting concerning FEMA, two former senior FEMA officials told POLITICO’s E&E News.
The test was given to FEMA acting Administrator Cameron Hamilton after he met March 25 with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski, an adviser to President Donald Trump, those people said. The test was given within two days of the meeting and cleared Hamilton.
DHS acknowledged the test in an email.
“Under Secretary Noem’s leadership, DHS is unapologetic about its efforts to root out leakers that undermine national security. We are agnostic about your standing, tenure, political appointment or status as a career civil servant — we will track down leakers and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law,” Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin wrote.
At the March 25 meeting in DHS headquarters in Washington, Noem discussed dramatically shrinking FEMA and shifting disaster recovery efforts from the agency to states. Noem called the meeting one day after saying at a televised Cabinet meeting, “We’re going to eliminate FEMA.”
E&E News and CNN disclosed the meeting March 26, and other media outlets followed their reporting.
Continue reading at Politico
Maryland man illegally deported to El Salvador must be returned to U.S., judge rules
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis issued the order requiring the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia following an extraordinary hearing during which the government flatly admitted that he’d been deported in violation of federal law.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis issued the order Friday requiring the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia following an extraordinary hearing during which the government flatly admitted that he’d been deported in violation of federal law.
“This was an illegal act,” Xinis told a Justice Department lawyer. “Congress said you can’t do it, and you did it anyway.”
The court’s order that the administration bring the El Salvador-born Abrego Garcia back could produce a direct clash between the judicial branch and President Donald Trump’s White House.
Continue reading at Politico
Trump uses child abuse awareness proclamation to bash transgender people
President Trump's decision to target transgender care in a proclamation declaring April National Child Abuse Prevention Month "betrays" the month's purpose, LGBTQ advocates said.
Why it matters: Framing the trans youth experience as "abuse" further stigmatizes an already vulnerable community, as the Trump administration tries to erase trans people from American life through policies limiting access to health care, careers, sports, education and more.
Driving the news: Trump's Thursday proclamation singled out transgender care, labeling it a form of child abuse without acknowledging the most common risk factors for neglected or abused children.
"It is deeply disingenuous for Trump to use National Child Abuse Prevention Month as a platform to attack and stigmatize the trans community," Ash Lazarus Orr, a spokesperson for Advocates for Trans Equality, told Axios.
Reality check: Gender-affirming care is supported as both medically appropriate and potentially life saving for children and adults by major medical associations, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychiatric Association.
Continue reading at Axios
Judge declines Khalil’s request to block Columbia from giving student records to House committee
A district judge denied a temporary restraining order in Mahmoud Khalil’s case against Columbia University attempting to block the transfer of student records to the GOP-led House Education and the Workforce Committee.
Khalil, the former lead negotiator for Columbia’s pro-Palestinian encampment who has been detained by ICE, sued the school alongside multiple other students to stop it from giving disciplinary records to the lawmakers. The suit also aimed to end the government’s pause of $400 million in federal funding to Columbia and to stop the university from implementing any reforms it had agreed to in an attempt to get the federal money back.
District Judge Arun Subramanian denied the request for a temporary restraining order, citing issues in the plaintiffs’ motion such as not addressing their standing to sue or their risk of irreparable harm from these actions.
“But as plaintiffs all but conceded at last week’s hearing, the current complaint and motion papers fail to address some threshold requirements they need to satisfy to obtain this wide-ranging relief,” Subramanian wrote.
Continue reading at The Hill
Federal judge orders case of Tufts student in ICE custody moved to Vermont
A federal judge issued a Friday order transferring the case involving Rumeysa Özturk, a Tufts University graduate student detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to a jurisdiction in Vermont in the “interest of justice.”
“The government asserts that this Court lacks jurisdiction over the Petition as Özturk, unknown to anyone but the government, was in Vermont, not Massachusetts at the time the Petition was filed and, as of 2:35 p.m. on March 26, 2025, was in Louisiana, where she remains,” U.S. District Judge Denise J. Casper for Massachusetts wrote in her order.
Casper, a former President Obama appointee, ultimately denied the Justice Department’s petition to have the case heard in the Western District of Louisiana and said that her order blocking Özturk from being deported should be upheld unless the transferee court objects to her ruling.
The judge said the Vermont jurisdiction would hear Özturk’s argument alleging that she was detained in violation of her Fifth Amendment right to due process and the Administrative Procedure Act while being targeted for removal in response to speaking out in support of Palestine.
Continue reading at The Hill
North Carolina court opens door to tossing tens of thousands of votes in state Supreme Court election
After a Democratic incumbent appeared to have narrowly won, her Republican challenger sued in a case that has been ongoing since November.
A divided North Carolina appeals court on Friday ruled that tens of thousands of voters in the state needed to verify their identity months after they cast their ballots, opening the door for the votes to be tossed — and for the election results to flip in a contested state Supreme Court election.
Incumbent Democratic Justice Allison Riggs appeared to have narrowly beat back Republican candidate Jefferson Griffin last fall, prevailing by 734 votes out of 5.5 million cast across the state. Griffin protested the election results, arguing that roughly 65,000 already cast and counted ballots should be invalidated on the basis of improper voter registration and identification.
The state board of elections rejected his challenge, but the North Carolina state Supreme Court in January ruled to block certification of the results, allowing for Griffin’s case to continue.
The state appeals court on Friday ruled 2-1 along party lines in Griffin’s favor, with the two Republican judges — John Tyson and Fred Gore — writing in their majority opinion that “the post-election protest process preserves the fundamental right to vote in free elections ‘on equal terms,’” and that “this right is violated when ‘votes are not accurately counted [because] [unlawful] ballots are included in the election results.’”
Continue reading at Politico
How Musk’s influence will endure long after he leaves Washington
Even if Musk no longer holes up in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building or sits in on Cabinet meetings, the billionaire has stocked the government with allies who can stay in their positions for much longer.
In under three months, he’s laid the groundwork for long-term influence in the Trump administration. Dozens of his allies are embedded as long-term political appointees or influential chief information officers at powerful agencies such as the Office of Personnel Management, General Services Administration, the State Department and the Department of Transportation.
There is no sign that senior leaders at the Department of Government Efficiency plan to slow down, even if Musk formally steps away, as POLITICO reported this week that he is likely to do in the coming weeks.
At an all-GSA staff town hall March 20, GSA Acting Director Stephen Ehikian previewed the next phase of DOGE’s strategy: centralize. The goal, he said, is to combine core administrative functions like procurement, IT, and finance across agencies under a single umbrella.
“We’ll be focusing on consolidation,” Ehikian told staff, according to a recording of the meeting viewed by POLITICO. “Right now, we’ve got multiple ticketing systems, finance systems. We’re going to be building the playbook.”
Continue reading at Politico
GOP lawmaker criticizes Trump’s ouster of NSA chief
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) criticized President Trump’s ouster of the director of the National Security Agency (NSA), arguing that Gen. Timothy Haugh’s firing will hinder the country’s Cyber and Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) operations.
“General Tim Haugh is an outstanding leader and was doing a superb job at Cyber Command and National Security Agency,” Bacon said in a Friday morning post on social platform X. “He was fired with no public explanation. This action sets back our Cyber and Signals Intelligence operations.”
NSA chief Haugh, along with his civilian deputy Wendy Noble, were ousted late Thursday, not too long after the administration fired several top White House National Security Council staffers earlier in the day.
Haugh, who has more than three decades of experience in the Air Force, also led the U.S. Cyber Command. His termination drew rebukes from Democrats in Congress.
Continue reading at The Hill
House Democrat demands written explanation for ouster of NSA director
Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) is demanding that the Trump administration provide a written explanation of its rationale for firing the director of the National Security Agency (NSA) alongside its deputy.
Director Gen. Timothy Haugh was ousted late Thursday along with his civilian deputy Wendy Noble, a decision that followed the firing of several top national security staffers earlier that day.
Trump fired at least three senior staffers and two junior officials at the White House National Security Council (NSC) — a day after meeting with far-right activist Laura Loomer. She argued that some within the NSC are not sufficiently loyal to his agenda.
Continue reading at The Hill
TikTok deal pulled after Trump tariff announcement
Trump was poised to sign an executive order approving a deal that would have seen TikTok’s U.S. operations spun off into a new company, allowing the popular social media app to continue operating in the U.S. in the face of a law requiring its China-based parent company ByteDance to divest from the app or face a ban.
However, ByteDance representatives told the White House after Trump’s tariff announcement Wednesday that China would no longer approve the deal without negotiations on tariffs, according to the source.
It had been expected that China would approve a proposed deal that had been in the works for months until the tariffs were announced by Trump on Thursday.
The White House has not publicly commented on the apparent backing out.
Continue reading at The Hill
Meta fact-checking program to officially end Monday
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, will officially end its fact-checking program Monday, a top company official said.
“By Monday afternoon, our fact-checking program in the US will be officially over,” Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, said in a post on social platform X. “That means no new fact checks and no fact checkers.”
“In place of fact checks, the first Community Notes will start appearing gradually across Facebook, Threads & Instagram, with no penalties attached,” he added.
Meta announced broad changes to the company’s content moderation policies in January, including the elimination of its third-party fact-checking program in favor of a community-based program like X’s Community Notes.
“We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the time.
Continue reading at The Hill
Judge blocks Trump’s takeover of Inter-American Foundation
A federal judge blocked President Trump’s takeover of a federal agency that invests in Latin America and the Caribbean, finding Friday that he likely went beyond his authority.
U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan ordered the administration indefinitely reinstate Sara Aviel, the ousted president of the Inter-American Foundation (IAF), and stop various other efforts to gut the foundation as her lawsuit proceeds.
“Because accepting Defendants’ arguments would leave parts of the Constitution in tatters, Ms. Aviel has shown a substantial likelihood of success on the merits,”said AliKhan, an appointee of former President Biden.
Established by Congress in 1969 as a nonprofit corporation, the IAF funds efforts to combat poverty, migration and instability in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The administration began efforts to gut the agency on Feb. 19, when Trump signed an order directing the IAF and several other groups be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.”
Continue reading at The Hill
Scoop: Netanyahu planning to visit White House Monday, sources say
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is planning to visit the White House on Monday, four sources with knowledge tell Axios.
Why it matters: If the visit takes place as planned, Netanyahu will be the first foreign leader to meet President Trump in person to try to negotiate a deal to remove Trump's tariffs. The leaders are also expected to discuss the Iran nuclear crisis and the war in Gaza.
To visit this week, however, Netanyahu would have to ask the judges in his corruption trial to cancel planned hearings during which he was expected to continue his testimony.
The sources said the plan could still change, in large part for that reason.
Driving the news: Israel tried to avoid the tariffs Trump imposed on nearly every country in the world by announcing it would preemptively lift all tariffs on U.S. products. It didn't work.
The 17% rate Trump set for Israel was based on the significant U.S. bilateral trade deficit.
Behind the scenes: Trump called Netanyahu and Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Thursday while the Israeli prime minister was visiting Budapest.
Continue reading at Axios
Senate parliamentarian says lawmakers can’t overturn California car rules — but Republicans may try anyway
The Senate parliamentarian has ruled that lawmakers cannot use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to overturn California’s electric vehicle mandate — but Republicans may defy the arbiter of the Senate’s rules.
The parliamentarian’s ruling was first made public by statements from Senate Democrats Friday.
“We’re gratified that the Senate parliamentarian followed decades of precedent showing that California’s Clean Air Act waivers are not subject to the Congressional Review Act,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said in a written statement.
The Congressional Review Act is a law that allows Congress — with the president’s approval — to overturn regulations using a simple majority.
However, the Biden administration’s approval of California’s gas car phaseout was technically issued via a waiver, rather than a federal rule — raising questions about whether the CRA applied to it.
Continue reading at The Hill
Ukrainian refugees mistakenly told they must leave US in email mix-up
Trump has signaled he plans to end temporary parole status for 240,000 Ukrainians, but a DHS official said the protections haven’t been revoked — yet.
Ukrainians living in the U.S legally received an email in error on Friday from the Department of Homeland Security, telling them that their parole status had been revoked and that they must self-deport, according to a Trump administration official.
It wasn’t immediately clear how many people received the email notification, which caused widespread panic among people who fled the Russian invasion and have been on edge since President Donald Trump said last month that he may revoke their temporary legal residency status.
As of yet, the U.S. has not terminated the temporary parole status granted to 240,000 Ukrainians who fled the war under President Joe Biden, said Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokesperson.
The move to reverse it — which has been telegraphed by the White House in recent months — will potentially place hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians on track to be quickly deported.
The email, first reported by Migrant Insider, spurred immediate confusion as lawmakers began to receive calls from constituents about the notifications.
Continue reading at Politico
DACA recipient and Kansas City father of 3 deported to Mexico despite valid documentation
A 39-year-old DACA recipient and married father of three from Kansas City, Kansas, was deported last month after he left the U.S. and traveled to Mexico to visit his grandfather's grave, according to a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday.
Evenezer Cortez-Martinez was detained March 23 at the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport as he was making his way back into the U.S., the lawsuit states.
Martinez traveled to Mexico on March 20. Upon his return he arrived at DFW, where U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents stopped him from boarding his connecting flight home to Kansas City, claiming he had a removal order filed in June 2024, the lawsuit says.
Continue reading at CBS News
Big Law launches a trickle of resistance against Trump’s crackdown
“The judiciary should act with resolve — now — to ensure that this abuse of executive power ceases,” the brief reads.
More than 500 law firms signed on to an amicus brief on Friday backing a law firm targeted by President Donald Trump’s sanctions campaign, one of the first organized moves by major law firms to respond to the pressure.
Trump and the Department of Justice have moved to stifle law firms that Trump perceives have wronged him, with the president issuing multiple executive orders targeting specific law firms. He has also directed the DOJ to open more investigations into lawyers and law firms that could result in punishment and sanctions.
“In recent weeks, the President has issued not one but five executive orders imposing punitive sanctions on leading law firms in undisguised retaliation for representations that the firm, or its former partners, have undertaken, and more may be in the offing,” the brief reads, which was filed in a case from Perkins Coie challenging Trump’s punishments. “Those Orders pose a grave threat to our system of constitutional governance and to the rule of law itself. The judiciary should act with resolve — now — to ensure that this abuse of executive power ceases.”
The brief itself is a show of support from over 500 firms for Perkins Coie, rather than a direct action against the administration. But notable names appear — and are absent — from the list.
Continue reading at Politico
Why Mike Johnson and John Thune are sticking with Trump amid tariff turmoil
The top congressional leaders are tied to the president’s hip as their members air public and private concerns.
Many Republican lawmakers are privately anxious about President Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs. A handful of them have even expressed their alarm publicly. Their top leaders, however, are holding the line.
Two days into Trump’s stunning trade war, Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune are showing no sign they will pressure the administration to change course despite a 10 percent drop in the stock market and stark warnings from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
Instead, the two top leaders say they plan to give the Trump administration time to find more solid economic footing. That’s despite their own free-trade-friendly views and unease they are hearing privately from their members.
Thune, for instance, has long expressed misgivings about tariffs and the effect they’ve had on his home state of South Dakota. On Friday he attended a lunch where he heard about GOP senators’ “hopes, dreams and nightmares” about Trump’s trade strategy, according to Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota.
But he and Johnson are also facing blunt political reality: They need Trump and MAGA-aligned lawmakers to get the GOP’s legislative agenda through their chambers, and there are few advantages to breaking with him.
Continue reading at Politico
Chemical industry asks for blanket exemptions to Biden-era regulations
Two leading chemical industry groups have asked the Trump administration for blanket exemptions to certain Biden-era regulations for all polluters.
The American Chemistry Council and the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers requested that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) exempt all polluters from Biden-era rules that limit their emissions of toxic chemicals.
Just because the trade and lobbying groups are requesting these exemptions, it does not necessarily mean President Trump will grant them.
However, their letter comes after the EPA administrator already indicated that he plans to overhaul a large slate of Biden-era regulations, including those in the chemical groups’ request.
Continue reading at The Hill
Senate vote-a-rama on Trump budget bill kicks off
The lengthy string of amendment votes is set to run past midnight and into the wee hours of Saturday morning.
Democrats are expected to use the opportunity to put Republicans on the record on a host of issues, headlined by Trump’s widespread tariffs that were rolled out earlier in the week and spawned major losses on Wall Street.
“Now, Donald Trump’s agenda is on trial. It’s time now for Republicans to answer,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said shortly before the vote-a-rama kicked off. “Tonight, Democrats will bring amendment after amendment to the floor — one right after another, again and again and again.”
Schumer added that the Democratic amendments will be focused on actions by the Department of Government Efficiency, along with cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid that Democrats say will be in the final bill.
“The choice is theirs,” Schumer said. “Donald Trump has betrayed the American people. Will Senate Republicans join him in this betrayal?”
Continue reading at The Hill
Justice Department seeks 7 year sentence for George Santos
The Department of Justice (DOJ) is reviewing seeking a 7 year sentence for former Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) according to a Friday filing.
Prosecutors said the length of the requested sentence reflects the serious nature of Santos’s “unparalleled” crimes.
“Santos planned and executed an assortment of fraudulent schemes and leveraged them and a fictious life story to enrich himself and capture one of the highest offices in the government of the United States,” DOJ attorneys wrote, according to court documents.
They added that the former congressman’s continued lies made a “mockery” of the U.S. election system. Santos originally denied allegations of wrongdoing when confronted by lawmakers after a scathing report from the House ethics committee but eventually pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft last year.
Continue reading at The Hill
JP Morgan predicts 2025 recession as Trump tariffs rattle market
In a Friday evening note to investors, the company’s chief U.S. economist Michael Feroli said the firm predicts that gross domestic product (GDP) will likely contract “under the weight of the tariffs.”
Feroli added that the recession is also forecasted to “push the unemployment rate up to 5.3 [percent].”
The projection comes after Trump’s Wednesday tariff announcement, which slapped a 10 percent base tax on all goods coming into the U.S. in addition to steeper levies previously placed on Mexico and Canada. Economists have warned of higher retail prices, an economic slowdown and negative effects on jobs as a result of the aggresive move.
“The pinch from higher prices that we expect in coming months may hit harder than in the post-pandemic inflation spike, as nominal income growth has been moderating recently, as opposed to accelerating in the earlier episode,” Feroli added.
Continue reading at The Hill
IRS plans to cut up to 25% of staff, starting with closing its civil rights office, AP sources say
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — The IRS plans to cut as many as 20,000 staffers — up to 25% of the workforce — as part of layoffs that began Friday, two people familiar with the situation told The Associated Press.
The job cuts will begin with the IRS Office of Civil Rights and Compliance, which would be reduced by 75% through layoffs, and its remaining workers would be absorbed into the agency’s Office of Chief Counsel, according to those two people as well as a third person familiar with the matter. Fewer than 200 people work in the Office of Civil Rights and Compliance, formerly known as the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.
The three people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the plans. The Washington Post first reported on Friday’s layoffs at the IRS, which collects revenue and enforces tax laws.
The workforce reductions are part of the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the size of the federal bureaucracy through billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. The administration has closed agencies, laid off probationary employees who have not yet gained civil service protection and offered buyouts through a “deferred resignation program.”
Continue reading at the AP
2 US Border Patrol officers are charged with taking bribes to wave in people without documents
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Two U.S. border inspectors in Southern California have been charged with taking thousands of dollars in bribes to allow people to enter the country through the nation’s busiest port of entry without showing documents, prosecutors said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers Farlis Almonte and Ricardo Rodriguez were assigned to immigration inspection booths at the San Ysidro Port of Entry. They were charged after investigators found phone evidence showing they had exchanged messages with human traffickers in Mexico and discovered unexplained cash deposits into their bank accounts, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Thursday.
Surveillance video showed at least one instance in which a vehicle with a driver and a passenger stopped at a checkpoint but only the driver was documented as having entered the country, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said the officers waved dozens of vehicles carrying people without documents. They said both men were paid thousands for each vehicle they waved through.
Continue reading at the AP
Federal officials are quietly terminating the legal residency of some international college students
WASHINGTON (AP) — A crackdown on foreign students is alarming college leaders, who say the Trump administration is using new tactics and vague justifications to push some students out of the country.
College officials worry the new approach will keep foreigners from wanting to study in the U.S.
Students stripped of their entry visas are receiving orders from the Department of Homeland Security to leave the country immediately — a break from past practice that often permitted them to stay and complete their studies.
Some students have been targeted over pro-Palestinian activism or criminal infractions — or even traffic violations. Others have been left wondering how they ran afoul of the government.
At Minnesota State University in Mankato, President Edward Inch told the campus Wednesday that visas had been revoked for five international students for unclear reasons.
Continue reading at the AP
Drug dealer whose sentence was commuted by Trump is charged with violating his release
NEW YORK (AP) — A convicted New York drug dealer whose 10-year federal prison sentence was commuted by President Donald Trump is back in custody after he was accused of several crimes, including assaulting a toddler.
Jonathan Braun was charged Friday with violating the terms of his supervised release and ordered detained in Brooklyn federal court, according to the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York’s office.
The 41-year-old Long Island resident was arrested at a hotel Friday morning. Judge Kiyo Matsumoto deemed him a danger to the community.
Braun is charged with seven violations of his release stemming from multiple arrests over the past seven months, said John Marzulli, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office.
He said Braun has been charged with assault of an elderly man; assault of his wife; groping his nanny’s breast without her permission; assault of a 3-year-old child and menacing a hospital staffer.
Continue reading at the AP
An AI avatar tried to argue a case before a New York court. The judges weren’t having it
NEW YORK (AP) — It took only seconds for the judges on a New York appeals court to realize that the man addressing them from a video screen — a person about to present an argument in a lawsuit — not only had no law degree, but didn’t exist at all.
The latest bizarre chapter in the awkward arrival of artificial intelligence in the legal world unfolded March 26 under the stained-glass dome of New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division’s First Judicial Department, where a panel of judges was set to hear from Jerome Dewald, a plaintiff in an employment dispute.
“The appellant has submitted a video for his argument,” said Justice Sallie Manzanet-Daniels. “Ok. We will hear that video now.”
On the video screen appeared a smiling, youthful-looking man with a sculpted hairdo, button-down shirt and sweater.
“May it please the court,” the man began. “I come here today a humble pro se before a panel of five distinguished justices.”
“Ok, hold on,” Manzanet-Daniels said. “Is that counsel for the case?”
“I generated that. That’s not a real person,” Dewald answered.
It was, in fact, an avatar generated by artificial intelligence. The judge was not pleased.
Continue reading at the AP
Republicans pass budget bill amendment aimed at protecting Medicaid, Medicare
The amendment, which passed 51-48 and was proposed by Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska.), was the first brought forward as part of the vote-a-rama ahead of a final vote on the bill that will serve as a blueprint for President Trump’s domestic agenda, including extending his tax cuts.
The Sullivan amendment calls for actions related to Medicaid, specifically, that “may include strengthening and improving” the program “for the most vulnerable populations.”
Republicans have been accused of trying to use the budget resolution to gut entitlement programs, headlined by Medicaid, in order to fund the tax cut push and to potentially make them permanent.
The resolution instructs the House Energy and Commerce Committee to reduce the deficit by $880 billion, a target experts say can’t be met without slashing Medicaid.
Some Republicans have maintained that any cuts to the programs would be in the name of rooting out “waste, fraud and abuse,” rather than touching benefits themselves.
But moderate Republicans and those from states where a lot of constituents rely on Medicaid have been nervous.
Continue reading at The Hill
Democrats peel away some Republicans on Trump budget bill amendment votes
Several Republicans have broken with their party and voted for Democratic amendments are part of a marathon series of votes Friday night.
None of the Democratic amendments have passed, but Democrats went into the vote series, known as a vote-a-rama, with the goal of putting GOP lawmakers in a bind on tough issues.
The amendment votes are happening as part of the leadup to the Senate passing a budget resolution early Saturday morning. The resolution will serve as a blueprint to draft a bill containing President Trump’s top domestic priorities.
In the opening batch of amendment, Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) broke with the GOP to back Democratic proposals.
Collins and Murkowski voted alongside each other on four of the amendments, all brought forward by Democrats. The proposals were aimed at protecting government employees’ ability to collectively bargain amid attacks by the Trump administration, preventing cuts to food stamps and to show support for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Ukraine, respectively.
Continue reading at The Hill
IRS nixing 25 percent of staff, starting with civil rights office: Reports
The Internal Revenue Services (IRS) terminated staff members in the Office of Civil Rights and Compliance on Friday ahead of a larger slated reduction in force according to multiple reports.
IRS officials announced they would be eliminating the office dedicated to preventing discrimination in an email to staff after firing roughly 130 of its employees, as reported by the Washington Post.
Those remaining were moved to the Office of Chief Counsel according to an email reviewed by Bloomberg Tax, which first reported the cuts.
Since President Trump returned to Washington, mass layoffs and firings have been encouraged by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which urged the IRS to slash 20 percent of its workforce by May 15 as reported by the publication.
Thousands of terminations have gone out ahead of the tax filing deadline on April 15, which is less than two weeks away.
Continue reading at The Hill
Majority of Americans uneasy over Trump’s economic plan: WSJ poll
Over half of Americans, 52 percent, disapprove of President Trump’s handling of the economy, marking a 12 percent uptick from his approval in October 2024.
In a survey a published by the Wall Street Journal on Friday, just a quarter of people said they approve of Trump’s handling of the economy during his first 100 days in office.
Although the survey was conducted prior to Trump’s announcement of a 10-percent base tax on all goods coming into the U.S. earlier this week, the president has promised to implement sweeping tariffs since his presidential campaign.
Fifty-four percent of voters, per the survey, said they are against the president’s levies on imported goods while 42 percent of survey respondents said they supported the measure.
Friday marked the second day of serious losses on the stock market since Trump announced the tariffs on Wednesday. The Dow plunged more than 2,100 points on Friday alone.
Thirty-five percent of survey participants said short-term strain will lead to financial gains in the long run in contrast.
But more Americans, 48 percent, say consumers will feel little economic pain before seeing improvements from tariffs.
Continue reading at The Hill
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That work wardrobe you need? Fuhget it for the next four years | Blog#42
If you’re a white collar worker, one of the costs of working is having to maintain a work-appropriate wardrobe, and pencilling in time at your favorite department store at your local upscale mall. No matter what kind of work you do, if you have children, you pencil in a trip to the local mall to buy children’s clothing, with time at their favorite restaurant for a burger and dessert.