Things Musk (and Trump) Did... Day 75 | Blog#42
Racism never sleeps
Yesterday’s post
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Yesterday’s news worth repeating
Justice Department lawyer who argued deportation case is put on paid leave
Erez Reuveni expressed misgivings about the government’s unwillingness to seek the return of a man who was erroneously deported.
A Justice Department attorney who publicly expressed misgivings about the government’s response to the erroneous deportation of a Maryland man to a high-security prison in El Salvador has been put on administrative leave, a DOJ official said Saturday.
Erez Reuveni represented the Trump administration Friday at a federal court hearing where lawyers for Kilmar Abrego Garcia successfully obtained an order requiring the government to secure his return to the U.S. after he was deported last month in what immigration officials described as a clerical error.
Reuveni was noticeably unenthusiastic about the government’s position in the case, telling U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis that he had urged his “clients” to take steps to bring Abrego Garcia back. The lawyer also said he’d been rebuffed in his attempts to get more information to offer the court about why officials deemed him to be a member of MS-13.
Abrego Garcia entered the United States illegally in 2012, authorities say. An immigration judge ordered in 2019 that Abrego Garcia could not be deported to El Salvador, his home country, because he faced a legitimate risk of persecution there. That judge’s order remained in effect when the Trump administration sent him there last month.
Toward the end of Friday’s hearing, Reuveni pleaded with Xinis to hold off her ruling for 24 hours so he could beseech the government to change its position. The White House has argued that the judge lacks the authority to order Abrego Garcia’s return.
“I would ask the court to give us, the defendants, one more chance to do this,” Reuveni said. “That’s my recommendation to my client, but so far that hasn’t happened.”
Continue reading at Politico
‘The Terror Is Real’: An Appalled Tech Industry Is Scared to Criticize Elon Musk
A huge swath of Silicon Valley is horrified by what Elon Musk is doing — but they’re increasingly afraid to say so.
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.
In both Washington and in California, a narrative has quickly emerged about Musk’s assault on the federal government: This is what happens when you bring the Silicon Valley playbook to D.C. As Musk’s young lackeys rifle through sensitive databases, conk out in makeshift bedrooms set up in government buildings and gut entire agencies, the implication seems to be that this is how it’s done in tech. And there is obviously a very loud corner of the tech sector that agrees.
Continue reading at Politico Magazine
New York public schools reject Trump DEI orders
The New York State Education Department officials said Friday, “We understand that the current administration seeks to censor anything it deems ‘diversity, equity & inclusion.’
“But there are no federal or state laws prohibiting the principles of D.E.I.,” Daniel Morton-Bentley, counsel and deputy commissioner of New York’s Department of Education, said in a Friday letter to the DOE that was obtained by The Hill.
Morton-Bentley wrote in the letter that state education officials are “unaware” of any jurisdiction DEO has to ax funding with an administrative process taking place.
The Hill has reached out to the DOE for comment.
Continue reading at The Hill
From India to US detention: Trump's campus crackdown sends warning to foreign students
Indian academic Badar Khan Suri met his Palestinian wife during a humanitarian mission to Gaza in 2011. More than a decade later, his lawyers say his wife’s identity led to his arrest, part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on anti-Gaza war protesters on US campuses. It sends a chilling message to international students eyeing US university degrees.
She was a translator in Gaza. He was an academic from New Delhi on a humanitarian visit to the Palestinian enclave. Their meeting and marriage made headlines in India, where newspapers described the “Indo-Palestinian love story” as “the stuff of Bollywood movies”.
But the narrative took a bad turn in the USA last month. This time, the headlines were terrifying. The Indian academic, Badar Khan Suri, now a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University in Washington DC, was arrested on March 17 outside his home in Virginia. His wife, Mapheze Saleh, a US national of Palestinian origin, was in their apartment when she received a call from Suri around 9pm, asking her to come outside because he was being arrested.
“When I came downstairs, I saw three uniformed, masked agents who were in the process of handcuffing Badar and placing him in a large black SUV,” Saleh told a Washington DC local radio station.
Suri’s detention came a week after Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student activist at Columbia University, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in New York, part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on international students in US universities.
In a post on X three days after Suri’s arrest, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary at the US Department of Homeland Security, said the Georgetown scholar was detained for his "close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, a senior adviser to Hamas".
Suri denies the allegations. In a Virginia district court filing, his lawyer stated that Suri was targeted because of his wife's Palestinian identity and “the constitutionally protected speech of his wife on behalf of Palestinian human rights".
Continue reading at France 24
Trump administration cancels more than a dozen international student visas at University of California, Stanford
The Trump administration has canceled more than a dozen international student visas at California campuses, including UCLA, UC San Diego and Stanford.
“The federal government has not explained the reasons behind these terminations,” said UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep Khosla.
The California cancellations came as universities across the country reported similar actions. Last month, the government canceled visas of several foreign students involved in pro-Palestinian protests that it accused of supporting terrorism. Those students say their free speech rights in support of Palestinians are being trampled.
Continue reading at the Los Angeles Times
McConnell calls out Trump for hiring ‘amateur isolationists’ at Pentagon, firing NSA director
Former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is questioning President Trump’s decisions to pick “amateur isolationists” for senior policy jobs at the Pentagon and to fire Gen. Timothy Haugh, the head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, without explanation.
“If decades of experience in uniform isn’t enough to lead the N.S.A. but amateur isolationists can hold senior policy jobs at the Pentagon, then what exactly are the criteria for working on this administration’s national security staff,” McConnell said in comments to The New York Times.
“I can’t figure it out,” he said.
McConnell and other Senate Republican defense hawks have signaled their concern about the Trump administration’s decisions to hire Michael DiMino to serve as deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East and Andrew Byers to serve as deputy assistant secretary of defense for South and Southeast Asia.
DiMino has come under scrutiny by pro-Israel advocates because of his past statements that the U.S. doesn’t face vital or existential threats in the Middle East.
Continue reading at The Hill
Today’s news
Democratic News Corner
Democrats see growing number of young progressive challengers
At least three long-serving members of the House — including former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — have already drawn younger primary opponents, with more potentially on the way. The developments come amid growing speculation that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) could challenge Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).
The primary challenges shine a fresh light on Democrats’ frustration with their leaders following the party’s losses last year, and they point to a potentially volatile campaign season leading up to the midterms.
“It’s what you’re seeing kind of across the country,” Jake Rakov, a former Capitol Hill staffer who recently launched a primary bid against his former boss Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), said in reference to the campaign against Pelosi. “In terms of the new administration, the elected representatives have not matched where the voters are.”
Pelosi, who has represented California in the House for nearly four decades, faces a challenge from tech millionaire Saikat Chakrabarti, a veteran of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) 2016 campaign and a former chief of staff to Ocasio-Cortez.
“I respect what Nancy Pelosi has accomplished in her career, but we are living in a totally different America than the one she knew when she entered politics 45 years ago,” Chakrabarti, 39, said in his launch for the 11th Congressional District.
Continue reading at The Hill
National Security
Nothing to see here, yet
Economics
Trump administration to markets: Don't expect a rescue
Why it matters: Investors lost more than $6 trillion Thursday and Friday as stocks sank on President Trump's sweeping new tariff plan.
Major investors like hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman fear markets could be dire on Monday if Trump doesn't do something beforehand to ease up on the trade levies.
Yes, but: Trump's economic team made clear no one should count on any last-minute relief from the reciprocal tariffs that are set to be imposed Wednesday.
"The tariffs are coming. He announced it and he wasn't kidding. The tariffs are coming, of course they are," Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on CBS's "Face the Nation."
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent sounded the same note on NBC's "Meet the Press," when asked if Trump was open to negotiating tariffs.
"No. No, no, no. I think that we are going to have to see the path forward. Because, you know, after 20, 30, 40, 50 years of bad behavior, you can't just wipe the slate clean," Bessent said.
Zoom out: The administration's unified stance Sunday — from Lutnick, Bessent, National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett and senior trade adviser Peter Navarro — was that everyday Americans are less concerned about market fluctuations than the media.
"Americans who want to retire right now, Americans who have put away for years in their savings accounts, I - I think they don't look at the day-to-day fluctuations of what's happening," Bessent said.
Continue reading at Axios
Bessent: "No reason" for markets to price in recession
Americans will benefit more from lower energy prices and interest rates than they will be hurt by falling stock prices as a result of President Trump's tariffs, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday.
Why it matters: Economists broadly fear a global recession, perhaps even a dire stagflationary environment of rising prices and slowing growth, after Trump's sweeping attempt to re-order the world's economy.
What they're saying: "Oil prices went down almost 15% in two days, which impacts working Americans much more than the stock market does. Interest rates hit their low for the year, so I'm expecting mortgage applications to pick up," Bessent told "Meet the Press" host Kristen Welker.
By the numbers: Stocks fell more than 10% Thursday and Friday, wiping out more than $6 trillion in investor assets. But Bessent was adamant the economy will hold up.
"I see no reason that we have to price in a recession," he said.
He also insisted that the day-to-day gyrations of the market weren't relevant over the long term, even for people nearing retirement now.
Continue reading at Axios
Note from Rima: See Bessent’s appearance on Meet The Press in the Video Features section below
Musk hopes US, EU get to ‘zero-tariff situation’
Just days after Trump launched his trade war, Musk envisions a transatlantic free-trade zone ‘at the end of the day.’
Musk's comments, made in a video-streamed interview at a congress organized by Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini and his far-right League party, followed Trump's imposition of a 20 percent tariff on all imports from the EU.
"At the end of the day, I hope it is agreed that both Europe and the United States should move ideally in my view to a zero-tariff situation, effectively creating a free-trade zone," Musk said.
It's a sign of dissent from Musk with the current U.S. administration policy. Musk has been leading cost-cutting efforts in the U.S. government through his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and is a close Trump adviser. POLITICO on Wednesday reported that Trump has told his inner circle that Musk would step away from his government role in the coming weeks.
Musk's Tesla has been underperforming in recent months, and the carmaker's share price has almost halved since December. The company last week posted a far steeper-than-expected decline in car deliveries in the first quarter, with sales collapsing in several European markets — a sign that Musk's political activities could impact his companies.
The Tesla CEO lost billions in the wake of Trump’s Tuesday tariff announcement. Telsa relies on imported parts from China, which Trump slammed with a 34 percent tariff.
In Saturday's interview, Musk also said he wanted "more freedom of people to move between Europe and North America."
Musk also attacked Europe's regulatory burden and said it was kept in place to protect some very large companies.
Continue reading at Politico Europe
France suggests targeting Big Tech’s data use in response to US tariffs
France is also considering taxing digital services, French Economy and Finance Minister Eric Lombard tells Le Journal Du Dimanche.
French Economy and Finance Minister Eric Lombard has suggested striking back against U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs broadside by more strictly regulating U.S. Big Tech's use of data.
"We may strengthen certain administrative requirements or regulate the use of data," Lombard said in an interview with Le Journal Du Dimanche.
He added that another option could be to "tax certain activities," without being more specific.
A French government spokesperson already said last week that the EU's retaliation against U.S. tariffs could include “digital services that are currently not taxed."
Continue reading at Politico Europe
Trump’s tariffs hit a sour note in landmark NYC emporium of sweets
NEW YORK (AP) — Economy Candy’s shelves brim with sweets from around the world – gummies from Germany, lollipops from Spain, chocolates from Japan and a panoply of candies from across the U.S.
Standing amid it all, columns of bright jellybeans to his left and exotic Kit Kats to his right, owner Mitchell Cohen is quick with his assessment of how many of this shop’s 2,000-plus items are affected by the historic round of tariffs announced by President Donald Trump.
“I think all of them,” Cohen says at his store on New York’s Lower East Side.
Few corners of the American economy are untouched, directly or indirectly, by the sweeping tariffs being imposed by Trump. Even a little store like Economy Candy.
Cohen had just begun to feel a barrage of inflation-driven price increases from suppliers ease when the tariff threats arrived. For a business with a name like Economy Candy, he wants to remain affordable but fears how high some prices may have to climb in the coming months.
Continue reading at the AP
Trump’s Tariffs Are Threatening the US Semiconductor Revival
While the White House carved out a narrow exemption for some semiconductor imports, President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs still apply to GPUs and chipmaking equipment.
Silicon Valley let out a sigh of relief on Wednesday when it learned that President Donald Trump’s tariff bonanza included an exemption for semiconductors, which, at least for now, won’t be subject to higher import duties. But just three days later, some US tech companies may be finding that the loophole actually creates more problems than it solves. After the tariffs were announced, the White House published a list of the products that it says are unaffected, and it doesn’t include many kinds of chip-related goods.
That means only a small number of American manufacturers will be able to continue sourcing chips without needing to factor in higher import costs. The vast majority of semiconductors that come into the US currently are already packaged into products that are not exempt, such as the graphics processing units (GPUs) and servers for training artificial intelligence models. And manufacturing equipment that domestic companies use to produce chips in the US wasn’t spared, either.
“If you are a major chip producer who is making a sizable investment in the US, a hundred billion dollars will buy you a lot less in the next few years than the last few years,” says Martin Chorzempa, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Continue reading at Wired
Trump just blew up America's China policy
A bipartisan consensus on how to compete with China that took shape in President Trump's first term has exploded at the start of his second.
Why it matters: Nearly everyone in Washington agrees that to win the battle for the 21st century, the U.S. needs to strengthen its alliances in Asia, shift supply chains to friendlier countries, and convince the world Washington is a more dependable partner than Beijing. Nearly everyone, that is, except Donald J. Trump.
Driving the news: It's not that Trump is taking it easy on China. He just increased tariffs on Chinese goods to a staggering 54%.
China, which retaliated on Friday, faces sharp near-term economic pain.
But this time, the trade war is global and so is the backlash.
"China is on the move, and they're going to press their advantage and try to appear as the stable, pro-trade, pro-globalization global power," says Elizabeth Economy, a China expert at the Hoover Institution and former Commerce Department official.
Breaking it down: "Trump helped create the bipartisan consensus on China but was never really part of it — even in his first term," argues Rush Doshi, a key architect of former President Biden's China strategy.
Trump's first administration laid the foundation Biden built upon: tariffs, export controls on critical technologies, pressing allies to take stronger action on China and leaning on platforms like the Quad (U.S., Australia, Japan and India).
But Trump returned to office with a different team and a clearer sense of his own foreign policy powers and priorities.
Continue reading at Axios
Trump tariffs based on massive error, conservative think tank says
The formula used by the Trump administration to levy reciprocal tariffs contains a serious math error that over-inflates the impact by about a factor of four, economists at the American Enterprise Institute said.
Why it matters: The conservative think tank says the error led to tariff rates massively higher than they should have been to achieve the goals the administration sought.
Catch up quick: After announcing the tariffs last Wednesday the Trump administration released a complicated-looking formula, which it said was developed with the Council of Economic Advisers, used to determine how to set the rates.
It turns out the formula is simply the U.S. trade deficit with each country, divided by the value of the goods the U.S. imports from that country.
Two other variables in the equation cancel each other out, rendering them effectively meaningless.
Yes, but: AEI's economists Kevin Corinth and Stan Veuger say they shouldn't cancel each other out, because Trump's team used the wrong level for one of them.
How it works: One of the variables relates to the "elasticity of import prices with respect to tariffs," which is to say, how much import prices move as tariffs are applied.
Continue reading at Axios
Trump economic adviser defends tariffs: Not ‘big effect’ on US consumer
National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett defended President Trump’s sweeping global tariffs that have stoked concerns about the United States economy.
During a Sunday interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Hassett said he doesn’t believe there will be a “big effect on the consumer in the U.S.,” noting that over 50 countries are also “coming to the table” to negotiate.
“So the fact is, the countries are angry and retaliating — and, by the way, coming to the table,” he said. “I got a report from the [U.S. Trade Representative] last night that more than 50 countries have reached out to the president to begin a negotiation, but they’re doing that because they understand that they bear a lot of the tariff.”
“I don’t think that you’re going to see a big effect on the consumer in the U.S., because I do think that the reason why we have a persistent long-run trade deficit is these people have very inelastic supply,” Hassett added.
Continue reading at The Hill
Ackman warns of "economic nuclear winter" from Trump's tariffs
The world faces an "economic nuclear winter" if President Trump doesn't immediately pause his sweeping reciprocal tariffs, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman said Sunday night.
Why it matters: The billionaire Ackman, a staunch Trump supporter, put the market's fears about the fate of the global economy in the starkest terms possible.
What they're saying: "The President has an opportunity on Monday to call a time out and have the time to execute on fixing an unfair tariff system. Alternatively, we are heading for a self-induced, economic nuclear winter, and we should start hunkering down," Ackman wrote in a lengthy post to X.
"May cooler heads prevail."
Zoom out: Ackman's Sunday post follows another Saturday where he suggested the world would be better off with a pause on Wednesday's reciprocal tariffs, warning of a "potentially severe" recession otherwise.
Sunday's rhetoric, though, raised the stakes.
Between the lines: Ackman's new post acknowledged the administration's position that decades of unfair trade practices by other nations disadvantaged the U.S.
Continue reading at Axios
Stock futures drop sharply; Jim Cramer warns of new ‘Black Monday’
U.S. stock futures dropped sharply on Sunday evening as markets continued to signal a sell-off in the wake of President Trump’s massive reciprocal tariffs on trading partners.
Dow Jones futures were down more than 1,700 points on Sunday evening at 6 p.m., pointing to what could be a disastrous day on Wall Street when markets open Monday morning at 9:30 a.m.
The Dow and other markets have already suffered through a brutal Thursday and Friday as they took in Trump’s tariff regime, and the prospect of retaliation from other countries. The Dow lost nearly 4,000 points over the two days.
CNBS host Jim Cramer even warned of a “Black Monday” like event, a reference to the market collapse of 1987, if Trump sticks to his tariff plans. That event saw the Dow drop 22.6 percent in one day.
“If the president doesn’t try to reach out and reward these countries and companies that play by the rules, then the 1987 scenario… the one where we went down three days and then down 22% on Monday, has the most cogency,” Cramer said on his show Saturday, per The New York Post.
Continue reading at The Hill
Trump denies engineering market sell-off, says you have to "take medicine"
President Trump on Sunday denied engineering a stock market sell-off, and likened the pain of re-ordering the global economy to taking medicine for an illness.
Why it matters: After plunging Thursday and Friday, global markets sank even further Sunday night, threatening one of the worst three-day routs in history.
Investors who spent all weekend hoping for some kind of policy reversal on tariffs realized that none was coming, and sold off across asset classes in earnest.
What they're saying: "I don't want anything to go down. But sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something," Trump told reporters on Air Force One, heading back to Washington, D.C.
Continue reading at Axios
Trump’s presser on Air Force One, Sunday 4/6/25
No state has axed its income tax on wages in 45 years. Now 2 Southern states are on a path to do so
About 45 years have passed since a U.S. state last eliminated its income tax on wages and salaries. But with recent actions in Mississippi and Kentucky, two states now are on a path to do so, if their economies keep growing.
The push to zero out the income tax is perhaps the most aggressive example of a tax-cutting trend that swept across states as they rebounded from the COVID-19 pandemic with surging revenues and historic surpluses.
But it comes during a time of greater uncertainty for states, as they wait to see whether President Donald Trump’s cost cutting and tariffs lead to a reduction in federal funding for states and a downturn in the overall economy.
Some fiscal analysts also warn the repeal of income taxes could leave states reliant on other levies, such as sales taxes, that disproportionately affect the poor.
Continue reading at the AP
Alarm as Florida Republicans move to fill deported workers’ jobs with children: ‘It’s insane, right?’
Governor Ron DeSantis leads push to loosen child labor laws as immigration crackdown leads to workforce shortage
Beneath the smugness of Ron DeSantis, at Florida leading the nation in immigration enforcement lies something of a conundrum: how to fill the essential jobs of the scores of immigrant workers targeted for deportation.
The answer, according to Florida lawmakers, is the state’s schoolchildren, who as young as 14 could soon be allowed to work overnight shifts without a break – even on school nights.
A bill that progressed this week through the Republican-dominated state senate seeks to remove numerous existing protections for teenage workers, and allow them, in the Florida governor’s words, to step into the shoes of immigrants who supply Florida’s tourism and agriculture industries with “dirt cheap labor”.
“What’s wrong with expecting our young people to be working part-time now? That’s how it used to be when I was growing up,” DeSantis said at an immigration forum with Donald Trump’s “border czar”, Tom Homan, in Sarasota last week.
“Why do we say we need to import foreigners, even import them illegally, when teenagers used to work at these resorts, college students should be [doing] all this stuff.”
Unsurprisingly, the proposal has alarmed immigration advocates and watchdog groups concerned about child labor abuses and exploitation.
Continue reading at The Guardian
Florida debates lifting some child labor laws to fill jobs vacated by undocumented immigrants
New YorkCNN —
Florida has been working for years to crack down on employers that hire undocumented immigrants. But that presented a problem for businesses in the state that are desperate for workers to fill low-wage and often undesirable jobs.
Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state legislature have a potential solution: children.
The state’s legislature on Tuesday advanced a bill that would loosen child labor laws, allowing children as young as 14 years old to work overnight shifts. If the new law is passed, teenagers would be able to work overnight jobs on school days. They are currently prevented from working earlier than 6:30 am or later than 11 pm per state law.
The bill passed through the Florida Senate’s Commerce and Tourism committee on Tuesday with five votes in favor of the loosened child labor restrictions and four against them. The bill will pass through two other relevant committees before being put to a vote with the full Florida Senate.
DeSantis is supportive of the law and has been vocal of cracking down on immigration, echoing President Donald Trump’s rhetoric. However, economists have warned that could backfire, sparking further inflation and labor shortages.
“Why do we say we need to import foreigners, even import them illegally, when you know, teenagers used to work at these resorts, college students should be able to do this stuff,” DeSantis said last week at a panel discussion with border czar Tom Homan, as first reported by the Tampa Bay Times.
Continue reading at CNN.com
Updated: Asian markets plunge as Japan’s Nikkei 225 index dives nearly 8% after the big meltdown on Wall St
Updated 6:20 PM PDT, April 6, 2025
BANGKOK (AP) — Asian shares nosedived on Monday after the meltdown Friday on Wall Street over U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff hikes and the backlash from Beijing.
U.S. futures also signaled further weakness. The future for the S&P 500 lost 4.2% while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 3.5%. The future for the Nasdaq lost 5.3%.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index lost nearly 8% shortly after the market opened. An hour later it was down 7.1% at 31,375.71.
South Korea’s Kospi lost 5.5% to 2,328.52, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 tumbled 6.3% to 7,184.70.
Oil prices sank further, with U.S. benchmark crude down 4%, or $2.50, at $59.49 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, gave up $2.25 to $63.33 a barrel.
Currencies also saw big moves.
The U.S. dollar fell to 145.98 Japanese yen from 146.94 yen. The yen is often viewed as a safe haven in times of turmoil. The euro rose to $1.0967 from $1.0962.
BANGKOK (AP) — Japan’s share benchmark nosedived on Monday after the meltdown Friday on Wall Street over U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff hikes.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index lost nearly 8% shortly after the market opened and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 tumbled more than 6%.
South Korea’s Kospi lost 4.4%.
U.S. futures signaled further weakness. The future for the S&P 500 lost 4.2% while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 3.5%. The future for the Nasdaq lost 5.3%.
Continue reading at the AP
Trump’s tariffs to hit €380B of EU goods, first estimates show
Seventy percent of European exports to the U.S. are at risk of being affected by tariffs, an EU official said.
The European Union estimates that Donald Trump's sweeping global tariffs would apply to around 70 percent of the bloc’s exports to the United States, in a first analysis.
“Taken together, some 70 percent of EU exports will be affected by tariffs, which reflects a volume of €380 billion,” said a senior European Commission official, who was granted anonymity to discuss the internal estimates.
The figure combines the 20 percent reciprocal tariff Trump announced Wednesday and the 25 percent tariff on cars, car parts and steel and aluminum disclosed last month.
In an attempt to distance itself from the Trump administration's approach to calculating the tariffs, the Commission is conducting a thorough analysis of their effects.
While Commission President Ursula von der Leyen vowed that the EU stands ready to retaliate, and a few national ministers and prominent members of the European Parliament also called for action, the Berlaymont did not announce any immediate measures on Thursday.
Europe will have to hold its breath a while longer to see if the bloc's so-called trade bazooka will actually be used to target banks or tech, or if Brussels will stick to the realm of Harley-Davidson motorbikes and bourbon.
Continue reading at Politico Europe
Health and Science News
RFK Jr. consoles Texas family: MMR vaccine ‘most effective’ way to stop measles spread
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. touted the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine as the “most effective” way to prevent the spread of measles during a visit to Texas with the family of an 8-year-old girl who died from the disease.
“I came to Gaines County, Texas, today to comfort the Hildebrand family after the loss of their 8-year-old daughter Daisy,” Kennedy said in a post on the social platform X. “My intention was to come down here quietly to console the families and to be with the community in their moment of grief.”
Kennedy said he offered Texas health officials the federal government’s resources and touted the MMR vaccine.
“The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine,” Kennedy wrote in his post. “I’ve spoken to Governor Abbott, and I’ve offered HHS’ continued support. At his request, we have redeployed CDC teams to Texas. We will continue to follow Texas’ lead and to offer similar resources to other affected jurisdictions.”
Continue reading at The Hill
Kennedy announces support for measles vaccine amid outbreak
The statement is a surprising turn for the health secretary and comes amid reports of a second child’s death.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who spent years promoting debunked theories and sowing doubts about the safety of vaccines, on Sunday promoted the measles shot.
“The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine,” Kennedy wrote on the social media website X.
His post comes amid a resurgence of measles cases and reports that a second child with measles died from the virus. She was not vaccinated and had no underlying health conditions, according to the Texas Department of State Health. The health department reported the first child death of the year on Feb. 26, also in Texas.
The U.S., before this year, had not recorded a measles-related death in a decade.
“As of today, there are 642 confirmed cases of measles across 22 states, 499 of those in Texas,” Kennedy said on social media platform X.
As recently as last month, on television and in an op-Ed, Kennedy was warning people of the alleged dangers of the measles vaccine.
“It does cause deaths every year,” Kennedy said about the MMR vaccine on Fox News. “It causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes, encephalitis and blindness, etcetera. And so people ought to be able to make that choice for themselves.”
Continue reading at Politico
California town reports third fatality related to rare virus linked to death of Gene Hackman’s wife
A third person in the remote California town of Mammoth Lakes has died of hantavirus, the sometimes-fatal illness that authorities say Betsy Arakawa, the wife of actor Gene Hackman, died of earlier this year.
In a statement shared Thursday, Mono County Health & Human Services confirmed that a young adult had died from the illness.
“We don’t have a clear sense of where this young adult may have contracted the virus,” Dr. Tom Boo, the county’s public health officer said. “The home had no evidence of mouse activity. We observed some mice in the workplace, which is not unusual for indoor spaces this time of year in Mammoth Lakes. We haven’t identified any other activities in the weeks before illness that would have increased this person’s exposure to mice or their droppings.”
Hantavirus, found throughout the world, is spread by contact with rodents or their urine or feces. It does not spread between people. There is no specific treatment or cure, but early medical attention can increase the chance of survival.
An infection can rapidly progress and become life-threatening.
Continue reading at The Hill
Key safety hotlines disrupted by HHS cuts
Teams manning government hotlines for reporting adverse events from foods, supplements and cosmetics, and call centers that provide other essential safety information, were among the thousands of Health and Human Services Department employees laid off last week.
The big picture: Though the department is hurriedly calling some workers back, the episodes show how information blackouts are becoming a feature of the Trump administration's efforts to reorganize the health bureaucracy.
"Very important offices that were directly involved with food safety and public health were axed," one FDA employee, who requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation, told Axios.
Zoom in: The Food and Cosmetic Information Center fields tens of thousands of calls annually from consumers and industry representatives about recalls, nutritional information and food business requirements, along with unintended health consequences from using FDA-approved products.
It also operates a toll-free number for information about the Food Safety Modernization Act, the law that regulates the production and distribution of food.
Reports about health-related problems with cosmetics, infant formula, meat, poultry, restaurants and more can be made through online portals or over the phone.
But communications and outreach staff within the FDA's Human Foods Program that operates the center were caught up in the workforce cuts that began last Tuesday.
Continue reading at Axios
RFK Jr. plans Texas trip after possible second measles-related death there
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. late Saturday was planning a hastily arranged visit to Texas after the state informed his department that a second child's death there could be linked to measles.
The death that triggered Kennedy's trip is under investigation.
Driving the news: The child involved was a member of the same Mennonite religious community that in February reported the death of an unvaccinated 6-year-old girl who had had measles.
Zoom in: Kennedy has been sharply criticized for downplaying the risk of the virus and the efficacy of vaccines for them. He's not expected to echo mainstream medical experts who are worried about his leadership at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Continue reading at Axios
Polling- Surveys
Nothing to see here, yet.
Anti-DEI-Whitewashing
READ: The 381 books removed from the Naval Academy Library
Maya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" was among the 381 books that were recently removed from the U.S. Naval Academy's Nimitz Library, according to a list released by the Navy Friday.
The big picture: As part of the Trump administration's anti-DEI blitz, the president has called for the end of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in schools, threatening funding for colleges and K-12 institutions during the purge.
Trump has zeroed in on military academies as he's sought to root out "wokeness" in the armed forces, ordering the dismissal of Boards of Visitors and prompting clubs to be shuttered in compliance with DEI directives.
Driving the news: The hundreds of books removed from the Maryland library include Janet Jacobs' "Memorializing the Holocaust," which explores the representation of gender in Holocaust memorialization, and Stacey Abrams' "Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America."
Books on gender identity, LGBTQ+ rights, white supremacy and workplace diversity were also among those expelled, according to the Navy's list.
A Navy spokesman told The New York Times last month that the academy "is fully committed to executing and implementing all directives outlined in executive orders issued by the president" and was at the time "reviewing the Nimitz Library collection to ensure compliance."
The Naval Academy did not respond Sunday to Axios' request for comment.
Continue reading at Axios and see the list of removed materials
The soldiers of color who freed concentration camps 80 years ago
U.S. forces liberated Nazi concentration camps 80 years ago this month. Among the liberators were Black, Latino, Asian American and Native American soldiers whose actions today are often forgotten.
Why it matters: The Pentagon recently purged references to soldiers of color from its websites, per an order by President Trump. But civil rights advocates say the liberators warrant recognition for their service at a time when many returned home to discrimination, segregation and racial violence.
The big picture: U.S. forces liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany, on April 11, 1945 — the first of many camps to be freed on the western front from April to May.
It's unclear how many soldiers of color were involved. But evidence collected during the past 25 years indicates that many who helped liberate camps where Jews were imprisoned were themselves in racially segregated military units.
Robert Williams of the USC Shoah Foundation, a group that preserves survivor testimonies of the Holocaust, tells Axios the soldiers' actions at the camps and throughout the war speak volumes today, amid the nation's rising antisemitism and distrust between some groups.
Zoom in: Holocaust museums and civil rights projects have been racing to collect oral histories, memoirs and family statements to piece together this overlooked part of the liberation story.
Continue reading at Axios
General News
US revoking visas for South Sudanese passport holders
The United States is revoking visas for South Sudanese passport holders because the country’s transitional government has not accepted citizens who were expelled from the U.S., according to the Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“As South Sudan’s transitional government has failed to fully respect this principle, effective immediately, the United States Department of State is taking actions to revoke all visas held by South Sudanese passport holders and prevent further issuance to prevent entry into the United States by South Sudanese passport holders,” Rubio said in a statement released Saturday.
Rubio added that the U.S. government will be “prepared to review these actions when South Sudan is in full cooperation.”
The U.S.’s top diplomat accused South Sudan’s government of “taking advantage of the United States.”
Continue reading at The Hill
GOP senators back crackdown on foreign students
International students injected $43.8 billion into the U.S. last year, a key economic influx that has rebounded from a major downturn during the pandemic. California, New York and Texas are the states with the highest rate of foreign students.
But some Republican senators say Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s student visa cancellations, high-profile arrests and push for deportations of student protesters are about protecting American national security, though many of the exact charges are unknown and sealed in the courts.
While Rubio said he has canceled more than 300 visas, it’s unclear how many of those are for foreign students.
“They can be” an asset to the U.S. economy, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said of the students. But he put his full support behind the Trump administration’s rooting out individuals it says are supporting or sympathizing with terrorist organizations, though lawyers and advocates say they are only exercising free speech.
“I hope it has a chilling effect on antisemites and racists and those who would engage in violent harassment from coming to this country,” Cruz said. “I’d like all of them to stay away and those who are here to promptly go home to their own countries and not threaten Americans here at home.”
Continue reading at The Hill
Canadian Export Graydon Carter Talks Trump, Napoleon and Canada’s Election
The former Vanity Fair editor’s long-running feud with Trump is legendary. Now, he’s sounding off on his threats toward his home country of Canada.
In a parenthetical buried in his new memoir, Graydon Carter recounts the story of how his 1984 GQ cover story of Donald Trump — which sold well on newsstands — convinced Condé Nast owner Si Newhouse to publish The Art of the Deal. That book led to The Apprentice, which led to the second half of Trump’s career as media personality and then president.
“As they say, a butterfly’s wings,” Carter writes.
The longtime editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair has a legendarily combustible relationship with Trump. Over the past several decades, the two men have both been fixtures of New York City social life and have at times been something close to friendly. Carter even attended Trump’s 1993 wedding to Marla Maples. But Carter’s SPY Magazine coined the term “short-fingered vulgarian” to describe the then-New York City real estate developer in the 1980s, and in turn, he was one of Trump’s favorite targets on X for years back when it was known as Twitter.
Carter has lived in the United States for almost 50 years, but spent his youth in Ottawa. It’s clear from his new book When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines he still feels real fondness toward his Canadian roots and remains deeply impacted by his childhood and young adulthood there. That puts Carter in an interesting position: able to understand both Trump and his outsize impact on Canada’s upcoming election in a way that most outside observers can’t. Since he was elected last year, Trump has threatened to turn Canada into the “51st state” and levied significant tariffs on steel, aluminum and automobiles from the country.
I asked Carter for his take on Trump’s Canada threats, given what he’s observed of the man over the years, and the growing backlash to them that’s flipped the country’s April 28 election on its head. “Napoleon and Hitler made the mistake of blithely marching into another cold-weather nation,” Carter said in an interview with POLITICO Magazine. “You don’t get through those brutal winters without building up a sturdy resilience. And Canadians can fight and skate at the same time.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Continue reading at Politico Magazine
France’s Bayrou accuses Trump of ‘interference’ with Le Pen rant
French prime minister also says Trump’s trade war will cut France’s economic growth by more than 0.5 percentage point.
U.S. President Donald Trump has interfered in French politics with his tirade against the conviction of French far-right politician Marine Le Pen, France’s Prime Minister François Bayrou charged on Sunday.
In an interview with Le Parisien, Bayrou called Trump’s social-media defense of Marine Le Pen an example of interference. “Interference has become the law of the world,” he said.
“There are no longer any borders for major political debates. What happens [in France] is discussed in Washington,” Bayrou said.
Trump on Friday criticized the court decision that prevents Le Pen from running for French president. “They get her on a minor charge that she probably knew nothing about — sounds like a ‘bookkeeping’ error to me,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account.
Le Pen’s four-year prison sentence for embezzling EU funds — two years of which are suspended — would be served under house arrest. The court ruling is under appeal.
Le Pen’s National Rally party has planned a demonstration in Paris on Sunday in support of her.
Bayrou also shed some light on the impact of the U.S. tariffs on the French economy.
“The risk of job losses is absolutely major, as is that of an economic slowdown and a halt to investment. The consequences will be significant: Trump’s policies could cost us more than 0.5 percent of GDP.”
Continue reading at Politico Europe
Texas county that swung to Trump grapples with immigration crackdown after bakery is targeted
Los Fresnos, which is 90% Latino and counts the school district as its largest employer, is about a half-hour drive from the border.
LOS FRESNOS, Texas — Leonardo Baez and Nora Avila-Guel’s bakery in the Texas community of Los Fresnos is a daily stop for many residents to share gossip over coffee and pick up cakes and pastries for birthdays, office parties or themselves.
When Homeland Security Investigations agents showed up at Abby’s Bakery in February and arrested the owners and eight employees, residents of Los Fresnos were shocked. Abby’s Bakery doesn’t employ violent criminals and Baez and Avila-Guel are not the people who border czar Tom Homan calls the “worst of the worst” and says are the priority for mass deportations.
“I was surprised because I know that they’re not taking advantage of the people,” Esteban Rodriguez, 43, said after pulling into the bakery’s parking lot to discover it was closed. “It was more like helping out people. They didn’t have nowhere to go, instead of them being on the streets.”
The reaction in the town of 8,500 residents may show the limits of support for President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in a majority Hispanic region dotted with fields of cotton, sugarcane and red grapefruit where Republicans made gains in last year’s elections. Cameron County voted for a GOP president for the first time since 2004. For neighboring Starr County, it was the first time since 1896.
Now, Baez and Avila-Guel, a Mexican couple who are legal U.S. permanent residents, could lose everything after being accused of concealing and harboring immigrants who were in the U.S. illegally. It’s a rare case in which business owners face criminal charges rather than just a fine.
Continue reading at Politico
Starmer vows to ‘shelter British business from the storm’ of US tariffs
British prime minister promises to “turbocharge” plans to improve the U.K.’s competitiveness this week.
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said his government is ready to use industrial policy to mitigate the impact of the tariffs that the Trump administration just imposed, adding that all options are being considered in Britain's response.
"We stand ready to use industrial policy to help shelter British business from the storm," Starmer wrote in an op-ed published late Saturday in the Telegraph.
"Some people may feel uncomfortable about ... the idea the state should intervene directly," the prime minister admitted. "But we simply cannot cling on to old sentiments when the world is turning this fast," he said.
Starmer promised to "turbocharge" plans to improve the country's competitiveness this week.
Continue reading at Politico Europe
Angry protesters from New York to Alaska assail Trump and Musk in ‘Hands Off!’ rallies
Crowds of people angry about the way President Donald Trump is running the country marched and rallied in scores of American cities Saturday in the biggest day of demonstrations yet by an opposition movement trying to regain its momentum after the shock of the Republican’s first weeks in office.
So-called Hands Off! demonstrations were organized for more than 1,200 locations in all 50 states by more than 150 groups, including civil rights organizations, labor unions, LBGTQ+ advocates, veterans and elections activists. The rallies appeared peaceful, with no immediate reports of arrests.
Thousands of protesters in cities dotting the nation from Midtown Manhattan to Anchorage, Alaska, including at multiple state capitols, assailed Trump and billionaire Elon Musk ‘s actions on government downsizing, the economy, immigration and human rights. On the West Coast, in the shadow of Seattle’s iconic Space Needle, protesters held signs with slogans like “Fight the oligarchy.” Protesters chanted as they took to the streets in Portland, Oregon, and Los Angeles, where they marched from Pershing Square to City Hall.
Demonstrators voiced anger over the administration’s moves to fire thousands of federal workers, close Social Security Administration field offices, effectively shutter entire agencies, deport immigrants, scale back protections for transgender people and cut funding for health programs.
Continue reading at the AP
Note from Rima: You can find a collection of videos from events around the country in yesterday’s news post as well as the standalone protest and townhall post.
Moscow court sends US citizen awaiting trial to a psychiatric hospital
MOSCOW (AP) — A U.S. citizen awaiting trial in Moscow has been forcibly admitted to a psychiatric hospital, Russian state media reported Sunday.
Joseph Tater, 46, was arrested in August 2024 after being accused of assaulting a police officer during a confrontation with staff at an upmarket hotel in the Russian capital.
A Moscow court agreed to admit Tater to a psychiatric hospital non-voluntarily after a medical evaluation on March 15, Russian state news agency Tass reported.
It said that doctors had described Tater as displaying signs of “tension, impulsivity, persecutory delusions, and lack of self-awareness regarding his condition.”
Tater had been due to stand trial on April 14 on charges of assaulting a police officer, which is punishable with a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment. It is unclear when the court made its decision to detain him on medical grounds, but Tass previously reported that he had been released from pre-trial detention at the end of March.
At a September court hearing, Tater claimed he came to Russia to seek political asylum and that he was being persecuted by the CIA.
Continue reading at the AP
Trump admin fired USAID workers in Myanmar earthquake zone: Report
The Trump administration fired three workers at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on Friday as they were in Myanmar to assess damage from the earthquake and to report back on ways the U.S. could help, according to The New York Times, which cited three people with knowledge of the firings.
The three aid workers received termination emails sent specifically to them on Friday, just days after arriving to the country, the Times reported. The workers were in the city of Mandalay, which has been buried in rubble, when they received the email.
The Times reported that USAID employees learned of the firings during a meeting Friday of its Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, which, according to the news outlet, sent an email to employees later Friday evening saying the situation “continued to be challenging and uncertain.”
The reported firings come as the Trump administration plans to fully eliminate the USAID agency and absorb its function within the State Department.
Continue reading at The Hill
DOGE Is Planning a Hackathon at the IRS. It Wants Easier Access to Taxpayer Data
DOGE operatives have repeatedly referred to the software company Palantir as a possible partner in creating a “mega API” at the IRS, sources tell WIRED.
Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has plans to stage a “hackathon” next week in Washington, DC. The goal is to create a single “mega API”—a bridge that lets software systems talk to one another—for accessing IRS data, sources tell WIRED. The agency is expected to partner with a third-party vendor to manage certain aspects of the data project. Palantir, a software company cofounded by billionaire and Musk associate Peter Thiel, has been brought up consistently by DOGE representatives as a possible candidate, sources tell WIRED.
Two top DOGE operatives at the IRS, Sam Corcos and Gavin Kliger, are helping to orchestrate the hackathon, sources tell WIRED. Corcos is a health-tech CEO with ties to Musk’s SpaceX. Kliger attended UC Berkeley until 2020 and worked at the AI company Databricks before joining DOGE as a special adviser to the director at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Corcos is also a special adviser to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Since joining Musk’s DOGE, Corcos has told IRS workers that he wants to pause all engineering work and cancel current attempts to modernize the agency’s systems, according to sources with direct knowledge who spoke with WIRED. He has also spoken about some aspects of these cuts publicly: "We've so far stopped work and cut about $1.5 billion from the modernization budget. Mostly projects that were going to continue to put us down the death spiral of complexity in our code base," Corcos told Laura Ingraham on Fox News in March.
Corcos has discussed plans for DOGE to build “one new API to rule them all,” making IRS data more easily accessible for cloud platforms, sources say. APIs, or application programming interfaces, enable different applications to exchange data, and could be used to move IRS data into the cloud. The cloud platform could become the “read center of all IRS systems,” a source with direct knowledge tells WIRED, meaning anyone with access could view and possibly manipulate all IRS data in one place.
Over the last few weeks, DOGE has requested the names of the IRS’s best engineers from agency staffers. Next week, DOGE and IRS leadership are expected to host dozens of engineers in DC so they can begin “ripping up the old systems” and building the API, an IRS engineering source tells WIRED. The goal is to have this task completed within 30 days. Sources say there have been multiple discussions about involving third-party cloud and software providers like Palantir in the implementation.
Continue reading at Wired
MAGA media tiptoes around Loomer-Trump meeting and NSC firings
If you watched or read any legacy media outlets last week, President Trump's firings at the National Security Council and National Security Agency after an Oval Office meeting with conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer were hard to miss.
If you only paid attention to MAGA media, the news was hard to find.
Why it matters: There was plenty of big news last week, chiefly Trump's tariff plan. But taking staffing advice on national security from a 9/11 truther also qualifies as news. Coverage around it was one of the starkest examples of the different media universes that exist for different parts of the country.
Zoom in: The New York Times called the Loomer-fueled firings "a remarkable spectacle." Reuters reported that "Loomer, who has a history of peddling Islamophobic conspiracy theories, did provide Trump with a list of national security staff perceived by her to be disloyal to Trump."
Trump told reporters on Air Force One that Loomer didn't influence the firings. Loomer has declined to say what she and Trump discussed, but said in a statement she "will continue reiterating the importance of strong vetting, for the sake of protecting the President and our national security."
MAGA media barely tiptoed near the story.
Top MAGA podcaster Charlie Kirk posted on X: "Any person who helps expose and expel the warmongering cabal from power does this country a service."
Continue reading at Axios
All the president’s salesmen: Senior Trump officials hawk MAGA-friendly products
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has promoted a fast food chain’s fries. And then there’s Tesla.
Donald Trump has long entangled politics and business. Now, senior Trump administration officials are using their perches in government to reward companies that have embraced the MAGA movement.
Elon Musk’s account on X — the social media site he owns — oscillates from promoting his brands like SpaceX and Tesla to making pronouncements that could reshape government. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick explicitly told Americans to buy shares in Musk’s Tesla. And Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. participated in a conversation-turned-advertisement for a fast food chain that he says is committed to his “Make America Healthy Again” movement.
And then there is the president himself. Trump has meshed the White House with his own personal brand since his first term — and regularly highlights Trump-branded products like crypto ventures or Bibles that he financially benefits from. But he’s also rewarded companies of his allies with promotion, from posing with his preferred brand of beans at the Resolute Desk during his first term to his recent Tesla auto show on the White House lawn.
The Trump administration’s relentless promotion of favored businesses challenges long-held norms — and in some cases, laws — preventing the White House from turning into a sales floor, ethics experts said. Indeed, government officials are legally barred from using their positions “for the endorsement of any product, service, or enterprise” that could benefit themselves or any acquaintances.
“It’s not unusual for an administration to hype business. ‘Buy American’ is a thing that the White House pushes — but when they’re pushing an industry they push multiple companies from the industry,” said Jordan Libowitz, the vice president of communications for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal-leaning ethics watchdog that has repeatedly clashed with Trump. “Even if it doesn’t hit the level of illegal, you do have ethics problems and you do have people asking questions that administrations try to avoid generally.”
Continue reading at Politico
Washington worries Trump could bail out Zuckerberg
With a historic antitrust suit looming against Meta, could the company get a reprieve from its new ally in the White House?
Less than two weeks before the start of a landmark antitrust trial against tech giant Meta, the growing relationship between President Donald Trump and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is stoking fears in Washington that the White House could pull the plug on the whole case.
The trial, scheduled for April 14, is the culmination of a nearly six-year investigation and legal battle. Launched by the Federal Trade Commission during Trump’s first term and advanced by former President Joe Biden’s antitrust enforcers, it could ultimately force Meta to sell off Instagram and WhatsApp — a colossally expensive and complex maneuver that would effectively dismantle the $1.3 trillion company.
The FTC rarely abandons an ongoing antitrust case, regardless of who’s in the White House. But a series of events over the past week has the Washington antitrust world buzzing about the fate of the case — worried that the tech industry’s new closeness with Trump, and specifically Meta’s rapid-fire concessions to Republicans over the past few months, could pay dividends by eliminating Washington’s threat to break up the social media giant.
On Wednesday, Zuckerberg unexpectedly sat down with Trump in the Oval Office, reportedly to appeal for a settlement of the antitrust case.
That same day, FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, now in charge of the case, told reporters at an event that the agency was “raring to go” against Meta. Then, asked directly if he would drop the case at Trump’s direction, he said he would “obey lawful orders” — and otherwise refused to entertain the hypothetical.
Trump gave Ferguson unilateral power over the FTC’s decisions by abruptly firing the agency’s two Democratic commissioners in mid-March — an unprecedented move that clears the way for Ferguson and his sole GOP colleague to make partisan decisions with no Democratic opposition.
Continue reading at Politico
Musk "doesn't understand" trade cheating, Navarro says
Elon Musk "doesn't understand" the mechanics of other countries cheating the U.S. on trade, Trump trade counselor Peter Navarro said Sunday.
Why it matters: Musk blasted Navarro on Saturday and said he'd prefer a world with free trade, setting up a confrontation with one of the architects of Trump's sweeping tariff regime.
What they're saying: Navarro, in an interview on Fox's "Sunday Morning Futures," said the U.S. is plagued by "cheating" by other countries, including high non-tariff barriers and dumping of cheap goods.
Musk "doesn't understand that," Navarro said.
"The thing that's I think important about Elon to understand, he sells cars. That's what he does," he added. "He's simply protecting his own interests, as any businessperson would do."
Zoom out: Navarro also insisted there was no rift between Musk and the administration.
"He's got X, he's got a big microphone, we don't mind him saying whatever he wants."
Continue reading at Axios
Judge blasts government over mistakenly deporting Maryland man
The big picture: The government's shocking admission that Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was legally living in Maryland, was erroneously deported has sparked further concern about the questionable tactics the government has used amid its immigration crackdown.
Abrego Garcia, who had "withholding from removal" status, was removed to El Salvador because of an "administrative error," Justice Department attorneys wrote in a Monday filing.
Driving the news: An immigration judge in 2019 granted Abrego Garcia protection from return to El Salvador, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis noted in her order. But "[s]ix years later, without notice, legal justification, or due process," the Trump administration deported him.
Veteran DOJ attorney Erez Reuveni, who is listed in court documents as the acting deputy director for the Office of Immigration Litigation, expressed his frustration in court Friday over the lack of information he had received from DOJ officials regarding Abrego Garcia's arrest and acknowledged he should not have been deported.
What she's saying: "That silence is telling," Xinis wrote. "As Defendants acknowledge, they had no legal authority to arrest him, no justification to detain him, and no grounds to send him to El Salvador—let alone deliver him into one of the most dangerous prisons in the Western Hemisphere."
The risk of harm to Abrego Garcia "shocks the conscience," Xinis wrote, adding that "[d]efendants have claimed—without any evidence—that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13 and then housed him among the chief rival gang, Barrio 18."
Abrego Garcia has not been convicted of gang-related crimes, despite members of the administration accusing him of having such ties.
The intrigue: Reuveni was placed on administrative leave by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche over the weekend, Attorney General Pam Bondi confirmed on "Fox News Sunday."
Citing her direction to "vigorously advocate on behalf of the United States," Bondi said Reuveni "did not argue" for the Department of Homeland Security in court.
Continue reading at Axios
Bondi on lawsuits against Trump’s actions: ‘That’s the real constitutional crisis’
“It’s basically a game of whack-a-mole with these District Court judges around the country who have a tremendous amount of power, they believe they do,” Bondi said.
Attorney General Pam Bondi on Sunday pushed back on the idea that President Donald Trump might ignore future rulings decided by the Supreme Court, spurring constitutional discord. The real crisis, she argued, is the barrage of lawsuits the White House faces as it tries to move quickly on its agenda.
“Just since January 20th, we’ve had over 170 lawsuits filed against us. That should be the constitutional crisis right there, 50 injunctions,” Bondi told host Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday.” “They’re popping up every single day, trying to control his executive power, trying to control where he believes our tax dollars should be allocated.”
Several judges have played a key role in blocking elements of the President’s agenda, with rulings standing in the way of efforts to cut $11 billion in Covid-19, mental health and substance abuse funding to states and mandating the return of a Maryland man illegally deported to El Salvador both hitting the fore last week. Most of those rulings are temporary in nature, pending fuller court proceedings.
Trump has responded to the judicial disruption by attacking judges seen to be stifling his powers, contending that they are overstepping their authority. Republican backers have also launched efforts to impeach federal judges who have attracted Trump’s ire.
Bondi pointed to the administration’s difficulty in standing up its planned ban on transgender troops serving in the military. A second federal judge in late March blocked the effort, calling it blatantly discriminatory.
“It’s basically a game of whack-a-mole with these District Court judges around the country who have a tremendous amount of power, they believe they do,” she said. “But that’s why we’re appealing all of these cases of course up to the Supreme Court.”
As for Trump?
Continue reading at Politico
Playbook newsletter
Playbook: The Resistance arrives
DRIVING THE DAY
TALKER: “How the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg got added to the White House Signal group chat,” by The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell: “According to three people briefed on the internal investigation, [in 2024, Jeffrey] Goldberg had emailed the campaign about a story that criticized [Donald] Trump for his attitude towards wounded service members. To push back against the story, the campaign enlisted the help of [Mike] Waltz, their national security surrogate.
“Goldberg’s email was forwarded to then-Trump spokesperson Brian Hughes, who then copied and pasted the content of the email — including the signature block with Goldberg’s phone number — into a text message that he sent to Waltz, so that he could be briefed on the forthcoming story. Waltz did not ultimately call Goldberg, the people said, but in an extraordinary twist, inadvertently ended up saving Goldberg’s number in his iPhone — under the contact card for Hughes, now the spokesperson for the national security council.”
THE RESISTANCE ARRIVES: The first mass protests of the Trump 2.0 era arrived yesterday, the capstone of a week in which opposition to the president seemed to roar to life after months of hibernation.
At more than 1,300 locations throughout the U.S. — rural small towns and big cities, from Anchorage to Palm Beach — demonstrators gathered in a show of both force and breadth, wielding signs voicing their outrage over policies they alleged betrayed something fundamental about America. The president was a frequent object of their ire, of course. But so was Elon Musk. Homemade placards targeted tariffs and tyranny, deportations and DOGE. They defended vaccine science and abortion rights and Gaza and Ukraine. (“So many issues, so little cardboard,” as one sign in Milwaukee put it.)
The crowds: Organizers said more than 600,000 people RSVPed for the events; CNN pegged the number of attendees in the “millions.” … 1,000 in Anchorage, per ADN. … 3,000 in Charlotte, per the Observer. … 5,000 in Raleigh, per CBS17. … 6,000 in Florida’s Palm Beach County, per the Palm Beach Post. … 7,000 in Des Moines, according to the Register. … At least 7,000 in Seattle, per the Seattle Times. … 10,000 in Denver, per the Colorado Sun. … 20,000 in Atlanta, per the AJC. … 25,000 at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul, per the Star Tribune. … 25,000 in Boston, per GBH. … 30,000 in Chicago, per WBEZ. … In New York, the protest stretched along Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue for “nearly 20 blocks,” per the NYT. … In Washington, organizers estimated the crowd exceeded 100,000 — roughly five times larger than they’d predicted, per WaPo.
The big picture: “Until this week, the 11th of Donald Trump’s second presidency, the resistance has not exactly been uppercase R,” as The Atlantic’s Elaine Godfrey put it.
Continue reading Politico’s Playbook newsletter
Under Trump, Texas firm pushes to restart Santa Barbara oil drilling. Is it skirting California laws?
More than 50 years ago, a catastrophic oil spill along Santa Barbara’s coastline served to galvanize the modern environmental movement and also helped to usher in one of the state’s strongest conservation laws: the California Coastal Act.
Now, as the Trump administration seeks to encourage oil and gas production within federal lands and waters, that watershed conservation law is being tested along the same stretch of coastline — and in a way it never has before.
For months, a Texas-based oil company has rebuffed the authority of the California Coastal Commission — the body tasked with enforcing the act — and has instead pushed forward with controversial plans to revive oil production off the Gaviota Coast.
Ten years after another spill brought oil production here to a halt, Sable Offshore Corp. has begun repairing and upgrading the network of oil pipelines responsible for that 2015 spill, without Coastal Commission approval and ignoring the commission’s repeated demands to stop its work, officials say.
“This is the first time in the agency’s history that we’ve had a party blatantly ignore a cease and desist order like this and refuse to submit a permit application,” Cassidy Teufel, deputy director of the California Coastal Commission, told a packed town hall recently.
Sable has accused the commission of “overreach” and insists that it has acquired the necessary approvals for its work.
The company intends to revive operations at three oil platforms known as the Santa Ynez Unit, which connects to pipelines that have been the focus of the ongoing repair work after a corroded section of those pipes ruptured near Refugio State Beach in 2015. That pipeline failure, which occurred under different ownership, spewed an estimated 140,000 gallons of crude oil, harmed hundreds of miles of coastline and cost millions to clean up.
Continue reading at the Los Angeles Times
Johnson strikes deal with Luna on parental proxy voting
Under the agreement being worked out, the House would formalize “vote pairing,” two sources familiar with the matter confirmed to The Hill.
The procedure allows a member — in this case, a new mother — who must be absent for a vote to coordinate with a lawmaker voting opposite their stance who is willing to abstain from the vote, that way the new mother’s vote is canceled out.
As part of the deal, according to the sources, Luna would not force a vote on her discharge petition, which she successfully executed last month to dispatch Rep. Brittany Pettersen’s (D-Colo.) bill to the floor that seeks to allow members who give birth or lawmakers whose spouses give birth to have another member vote for them for 12 weeks.
Additionally, Johnson is still looking at increasing accessibility for young mothers in the Capitol, one of the sources said, a prospect that the Speaker revealed last week. He said he is eyeing a room for nursing mothers and potentially allowing mothers of young children to use their official funds to travel between their home districts and Washington.
Continue reading at The Hill
Nine Big Lots stores to reopen this week, more expected in May
After closing their doors amid a months-long bankruptcy process, several Big Lots stores are set to reopen under new management.
Earlier this year, Big Lots closed a previously announced sale agreement with Gordon Brothers Retail Partners. As part of the deal, Variety Wholesalers was set to acquire 200 to 400 Big Lots stores, which would retain the Big Lots branding, and two distribution centers.
Now, nine of those stores across six states are set to reopen on Thursday, April 10.
Here’s where those stores are located:
Continue reading at The Hill
Judge reaffirms order to return Maryland man erroneously deported to El Salvador
She rejected the idea that the Trump administration has no power to bring the deportee back.
A federal judge is sticking by her demand that the Trump administration seek the immediate return of a Maryland man erroneously sent to El Salvador, where he is being held in “one of the most notoriously inhumane and dangerous prisons in the world.”
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis rejected the Trump administration’s entreaty to back off her Friday order, which requires the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia by Monday night. The Justice Department said the court had no power to order the decision and was intruding on President Donald Trump’s exclusive power to direct foreign policy.
But Xinis described the erroneous deportation of Abrego Garcia — who was under a 2019 court order not to be sent to El Salvador, for fear of reprisal by a violent gang — as a “grievous error” that requires his return.
“Defendants seized Abrego Garcia without any lawful authority; held him in three separate domestic detention centers without legal basis; failed to present him to any immigration judge or officer; and forcibly transported him to El Salvador in direct contravention of [immigration law],” Xinis wrote in a 22-page opinion issued just after 1 a.m. Sunday morning. “Once there, U.S. officials secured his detention in a facility that, by design, deprives its detainees of adequate food, water, and shelter, fosters routine violence; and places him with his persecutors.”
Continue reading at Politico
Federal judge in scathing decision calls Trump’s deportation of Salvadoran man ‘wholly lawless’
“Neither the United States nor El Salvador have told anyone why he was returned to the very country to which he cannot return, or why he is detained at CECOT,” Xinis wrote, referring to the El Salvador prison now holding Abrego Garcia.
“That silence is telling. As Defendants acknowledge, they had no legal authority to arrest him, no justification to detain him, and no grounds to send him to El Salvador — let alone deliver him into one of the most dangerous prisons in the Western Hemisphere.”
“To avoid clear irreparable harm, and because equity and justice compels it, the Court grants the narrowest, daresay only, relief warranted: to order that Defendants return Abrego Garcia to the United States.”
Continue reading at The Hill
GOP rep says Russia and China are ‘laughing at us’ after NSA director firing
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a moderate Republican, slammed President Trump’s decision to fire the director of the National Security Agency (NSA) and his top deputy after demands from far-right influencer Laura Loomer, saying Sunday that China and Russia are “laughing at us” after that decision.
“I will tell you, this puts us back. It hurts us,” Bacon said in an interview on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.”
“Russia and China today are laughing at us because we just fired the absolute best leaders, the most qualified guys that we spent three-and-a-half decades preparing to have this role, and he’s gone,” Bacon continued. “And it’s heartbreaking to see that that decision was made without explanation, and it hurt us.”
Continue reading at The Hill
Schiff criticizes Democrats for ‘not thinking big’ or ‘acting big’
In an interview on NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” moderator Kristen Welker asked Schiff about a moment from Sen. Cory Booker’s (D-N.J.) historic marathon Senate floor speech when he said his own party “has made terrible mistakes and gave a lane to this demagogue,” referring to President Trump, adding, “I confess we all must look in the mirror and say we will do better.”
“I definitely agree with him,” Schiff told Welker. “I think we were guilty of not thinking big and not acting big.”
Schiff said, in a sense, his party could take a note out of their political opponents’ playbook.
“One thing that we see, you know, with the Trump administration is you could move the country far and fast if you had courage of your convictions, if you’re willing to be bold,” Schiff said, noting the Trump administration is “being bold in a horribly dangerous, destructive direction, which is really hurting, you know, working families.”
Continue reading at The Hill
Schiff: ‘If we head into a recession, it will be the Trump recession’
During an appearance on NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” Schiff was asked by host Kristen Welker about Trump’s assurance that his global tariffs will create an “economic revolution.”
“I don’t agree with any part of that,” he said of Trump’s statement. “And unfortunately, he’s wrecking our economy.”
“I hope and pray we stay out of recession,” he added. “But if we head into a recession, it will be the Trump recession.”
Schiff also said images of Trump golfing while “people have seen their retirement savings on fire” will be “the most enduring image of the Trump presidency.”
“This is a completely self-destructive economic act that he’s engaged in,” Schiff continued. “And it’s not just the tariffs. It’s also the freezing of funds, the firing of people, the alienation of our allies in California. I’m hearing from farmers who still haven’t recovered market share from the tariffs during the first Trump administration.”
He noted that the tourist industry and small businesses are also taking a hit.
Continue reading at The Hill
Russia’s foothold in Syria presents conundrum for Trump
U.S. sanctions on Syria provide Washington with enormous leverage to influence the new government headed by Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former U.S.-designated terrorist who led the overthrow of longtime dictator Bashar Assad.
Last month, Trump officials provided al-Sharaa’s representatives with a list of conditions for eventual sanctions relief. But ousting Russia’s military presence in the country was not included, according to two people familiar with the situation.
“There’s a huge internal debate within the administration about what position to take on the Russian base,” said one person familiar with the matter. “This was debated within the State Department and White House, there was a push by some in the administration to remove the Russian base.”
The person added that ousting Russian forces is currently “not being demanded of the Syrians to remove sanctions.”
Russia’s involvement in Syria is another potential flashpoint as Trump tries to bring Moscow to the table on a ceasefire with Ukraine.
Continue reading at The Hill
Walz says Trump ‘not wrong’ US manufacturing has been ‘gutted’ but tariffs ‘not the solution’
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) said on Sunday that President Trump is “not wrong” in identifying the gutting of the manufacturing industry as an issue, but he said the president is wrong about tariffs as the solution.
“Here’s the thing that the Democrats have to figure out. Donald Trump’s language around this, he’s not wrong that we have had manufacturing gutted. He’s not wrong that we saw an outshoring. People of my generation were told there aren’t going to be any manufacturing jobs, so you need to go to college and rack up student loan debt,” Walz said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“The problem is, Donald Trump’s solution to this is not the solution,” Walz added.
Continue reading at The Hill
Lee Zeldin’s push to gut EPA is giving him political heft in MAGA land
The EPA administrator’s attacks on his agency’s spending and regulations have made him a rising star in the Trump Cabinet, but left some former colleagues mystified.
President Donald Trump’s wild-card pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency has emerged as one of the most devoted public champions for his efforts to demolish the Biden agenda — and MAGA world is taking notice.
Lee Zeldin’s crusade to revoke more than $20 billion in already-doled-out climate grants has taken the EPA into uncharted legal territory, provoked a spat inside the Justice Department and left some environmental nonprofits fearing possible bankruptcy. He’s made dozens of appearances on conservative television outlets such as Fox News, Fox Business and Newsmax — proclaiming the “death of the green new scam” on Laura Ingraham’s primetime show — while using his own videos on X and EPA’s YouTube channel to call for rolling back “suffocating” regulations and defanging the “climate change religion.”
Zeldin has also praised Elon Musk and embraced Trump’s call for slashing 65 percent from his own agency’s budget, a target that he insists will cut waste, bring back auto jobs and boost U.S. energy dominance. The Sierra Club has denounced the proposed cuts as “sabotage.”
The Army reservist and former House member’s performance as Trump’s environmental enforcer is winning cheers from the president’s supporters, according to interviews with a dozen of Zeldin’s former colleagues, political opponents and local officials in and around his home community of Long Island. This comes a little more than two years after Zeldin’s aggressive, crime-focused campaign for governor in deep-blue New York came surprisingly close to unseating Democrat Kathy Hochul — an outcome that caused fellow Republicans to predict a bright future for him in GOP politics, possibly as national or state party chair.
Now the question is what doors a role in Trump’s Cabinet might be opening — or closing — for Zeldin.
Continue reading at Politico
Booker calls on Democrats to take responsibility for party’s mistakes
The New Jersey Democrat’s remarks follow a record-breaking Senate floor speech.
Sen. Cory Booker reiterated Sunday his call for Democrats to take more responsibility for the turbulent early months of President Donald Trump’s return to office — an argument he delivered in a record-breaking speech less than a week earlier.
“We are in a state where, again, the Democratic Party should own up,” Booker said during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week.”
“We partfully laid this pathway for this demagogue to come into office and so, the way we deal with that, the way we correct from those mistakes is to do more of the centering of American voices, American people in our conversation and in our focus,” he continued. “Not focus on politics, focus on people.”
The New Jersey Democrat’s comments echoed his marathon, 25-hour Senate floor speech last week, shattering a record set by the late Sen. Strom Thurmond for a filibuster against civil rights legislation in 1957. Booker had pledged to speak “as long as physically able” in an effort to disrupt Senate business to protest the Trump administration’s agenda.
Continue reading at Politico
House GOP leaders vow to push forward with budget vote
Growing conservative backlash to Senate-approved plan hasn’t yet derailed Speaker Mike Johnson.
House Republican leaders told their members Sunday they still plan on muscling a reworked Senate budget blueprint through the House this week, according to multiple people briefed on the plans, even as fiscal hawks say there is enough opposition to tank the measure should it come to a vote.
Several House Republicans have vowed in recent days to oppose the Senate framework, including Rep. Chip Roy of Texas — a leader of the hard-right bloc — and some other members of the House Freedom Caucus. With a 220-213 majority, Speaker Mike Johnson can lose only three Republicans on a party-line vote if all members are present and voting.
“The Senate plan that passed will easily fail on the House floor,” one House Republican said Sunday afternoon as GOP leaders tried to rally the rank and file on a conference call with their members. The fiscal hawk was granted anonymity, as were the other people, to speak candidly about private conversations and the state of play.
On the call, GOP leaders argued that House Republicans desperately need to advance the Senate-approved plan without changes or else trigger another month of delays in the process, according to two other people with direct knowledge of the conversation.
Continue reading at Politico
Trump’s pro-Palestinian activism crackdown closely mirrors a plan from the creators of Project 2025
As President Donald Trump was seeking to distance himself from Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation quietly released a blueprint to destroy the pro-Palestinian movement. Many of its recommendations have since become policy.
The Trump administration’s intensifying crackdown on universities and pro-Palestinian protesters closely mirrors a lesser-known blueprint from the same creators of Project 2025.
Quietly unveiled last fall before the election, the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther offered a roadmap for deploying anti-terror, hate speech and immigration laws to “exploit” the vulnerabilities of what it deems to be an antisemitic and “anti-American” pro-Palestinian movement. It’s a playbook the White House appears to be following as it pulls university funding and strips students and professors of legal status — an effort that has launched the administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown into a more controversial, politically dicier territory.
People involved with Project Esther are close allies of President Donald Trump, and some now have roles in the administration. And according to a POLITICO analysis of the 33-page document, of the 47 points it lays out, the Trump administration and its allies in Congress have already moved in their rhetoric or policy to make at least 27 reality.
Those include calls to deport pro-Palestinian activists who are in the country legally, revoke the visas of international students and faculty who have supported pro-Palestinian causes, defund organizations that aid them and discredit the broader movement by branding its backers as supporters of Hamas.
“As we were watching our campuses burn, as we were watching Jewish students that were locking themselves inside of their rooms because they were afraid to leave, [Trump] made promises to our community,” said Bryan Leib, a member of the task force behind Project Esther. “Here we are in April — and promises made and promises kept.”
Continue reading at Politico
US officials: Trump has been flooded with requests for trade talks
Brooke Rollins said countries are “burning” up the phone lines to talk trade.
Trump administration officials on Sunday defended President Donald Trump’s massive tariff action last week, saying it has triggered a flood of requests for negotiations from countries hit by the sweeping new duties.
“We’ve got 50 countries that are burning the phone lines into the White House up,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “And probably the president’s cell phone as well, and probably [Commerce Secretary] Howard Lutnick as well. And I’ve heard from some as well.”
White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week” also said he had heard Saturday night from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative that “that more than 50 countries have reached out to the president to begin a negotiation.” Neither Rollins nor Hassett specified which countries had reached out.
Trump’s decision last week to impose a baseline tariff of at least 10 percent on nearly every country, and duties ranging up to 50 percent on about 60 trading partners that the Trump administration believes treats the United States most unfairly in trade, triggered a massive stock market sell-off and increased fears of a recession caused by higher costs for consumer, increased uncertainty for businesses and foreign trade retaliation.
Continue reading at Politico
Barbara Lee was supposed to be a lock for Oakland mayor. Why is the race so close?
A progressive icon and public fury collide in Oakland.
OAKLAND, California — Barbara Lee’s homecoming run for Oakland mayor had all the markings of a blowout: Political power players swiftly united behind Lee, a progressive icon in her staunchly blue town, as she pledged to move the city past rancorous recalls.
But her dominant position is now being turned against her.
Lee’s unexpectedly tight contest against a more moderate former city official will test whether the former lawmaker’s towering stature can overcome the anti-status-quo fervor that has driven Democrats out of office since the pandemic, often putting progressives like Lee on the defensive. Now, amid a confluence of crises culminating in the November recalls of the city’s mayor and district attorney, her opponent Loren Taylor is trying to pull off a major upset in an April 15 special election by capitalizing on seething voter discontent.
“Things have gotten worse, not better, in Oakland over the last many years, and whenever that dynamic occurs it’s a change election,” said John Whitehurst, a political consultant and veteran of Oakland politics who is not working for either candidate. “The heart of the progressive movement beats in (Lee). Everyone thought she’d be a bench-clearer. Not the case — she’s been successfully tagged with the failures of the past.”
Lee entered the race in January with formidable advantages, including pervasive name recognition and respect from decades representing the city in the House and championing progressive policies such as universal health care. Former mayors, unions, and business leaders swiftly coalesced to back her — some of whom had endorsed Taylor when he ran in 2022 — and labor allies have supplied a pro-Lee PAC with nearly $400,000.
Continue reading at Politico
Bondi on lawsuits against Trump’s actions: ‘That’s the real constitutional crisis’
“It’s basically a game of whack-a-mole with these District Court judges around the country who have a tremendous amount of power, they believe they do,” Bondi said.
Attorney General Pam Bondi on Sunday pushed back on the idea that President Donald Trump might ignore future rulings decided by the Supreme Court, spurring constitutional discord. The real crisis, she argued, is the barrage of lawsuits the White House faces as it tries to move quickly on its agenda.
“Just since January 20th, we’ve had over 170 lawsuits filed against us. That should be the constitutional crisis right there, 50 injunctions,” Bondi told host Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday.” “They’re popping up every single day, trying to control his executive power, trying to control where he believes our tax dollars should be allocated.”
Several judges have played a key role in blocking elements of the President’s agenda, with rulings standing in the way of efforts to cut $11 billion in Covid-19, mental health and substance abuse funding to states and mandating the return of a Maryland man illegally deported to El Salvador both hitting the fore last week. Most of those rulings are temporary in nature, pending fuller court proceedings.
Trump has responded to the judicial disruption by attacking judges seen to be stifling his powers, contending that they are overstepping their authority. Republican backers have also launched efforts to impeach federal judges who have attracted Trump’s ire.
Bondi pointed to the administration’s difficulty in standing up its planned ban on transgender troops serving in the military. A second federal judge in late March blocked the effort, calling it blatantly discriminatory.
Continue reading at Politico
Mahmoud Khalil speaks out on ‘abduction,’ calls on students to take action
Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian activist who was arrested in March by immigration authorities, spoke out about his “abduction” in a Friday opinion piece.
Khalil, a former lead negotiator for Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian encampment, said in his Columbia Daily Spectator opinion piece that the school “laid the groundwork for my abduction” and pushed for the school’s students to “not abdicate their responsibility to resist repression.”
“Since my abduction on March 8, the intimidation and kidnapping of international students who stand for Palestine has only accelerated,” Khalil wrote in the piece.
The Trump administration has accused Khalil, who was recently detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), of being “pro-Hamas” and taking part in “pro-terrorist,” antisemitic activity, with the administration attempting to revoke the activist’s green card over the allegations.
Continue reading at The Hill
Microsoft Hooked the Government on Its Products With Freebies. Could Elon Musk’s Starlink Be Doing the Same?
The tech billionaire and Trump adviser “donated” Starlink service to the White House. The move resembles a previous maneuver by Microsoft.
A few weeks ago, my colleague Doris Burke sent me a story from The New York Times that gave us both deja vu.
The piece reported that Starlink, the satellite internet provider operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, had, in the words of Trump administration officials, “donated” internet service to improve wireless connectivity and cell reception at the White House.
The donation puzzled some former officials quoted in the story. But it immediately struck us as the potential Trump-era iteration of a tried-and-true business maneuver we’d spent months reporting on last year. In that investigation, we focused on deals between Microsoft and the Biden administration. At the heart of the arrangements was something that most consumers intuitively understand: “Free” offers usually have a catch.
Microsoft began offering the federal government “free” cybersecurity upgrades and consulting services in 2021, after President Joe Biden pressed tech companies to help bolster the nation’s cyber defenses. Our investigation revealed that the ostensibly altruistic White House Offer, as it was known inside Microsoft, belied a more complex, profit-driven agenda. The company knew the proverbial catch was that, once the free trial period ended, federal customers who had accepted the offer and installed the upgrades would effectively be locked into keeping them because switching to a competitor at that point would be costly and cumbersome.
Former Microsoft employees told me the company’s offer was akin to a drug dealer hooking users with free samples. “If we give you the crack, and you take the crack, you’ll enjoy the crack,” one said. “And then when it comes time for us to take the crack away, your end users will say, ‘Don’t take it away from me.’ And you’ll be forced to pay me.”
What Microsoft predicted internally did indeed come to pass. When the free trials ended, vast swaths of the federal government kept the upgrades and began paying the higher subscription fees, unlocking billions in future sales for the company.
Continue reading at Gizmodo
FAFSA had been struggling for years. Then Trump cut the Education Department in half
Families and students are growing nervous about the fate of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) amid President Trump’s massive cuts to the Department of Education and his plans to do away with it entirely.
FAFSA has had a rough few years, starting with a clumsy rollout of revamped forms during the Biden administration that led to a drop in the college aid applications.
But even amid a need to rebuild trust with parents and applicants, the Trump administration has halved the Department of Education, and the agency has seen multiple high-level retirements, including the retirement this week of the chief operating officer for the Office of Federal Student Aid.
As of March 17, the Education Department marked more than 8 million completed FAFSA forms, an increase of 50 percent from those submitted by the same time last year.
“We have concerns that when students and families hear that the Department of Education is being dismantled or shutting down … they might hear, and we have concerns that they take that to mean that there won’t be a FAFSA, that there won’t be a Pell Grant, that as the department goes away, Federal Student Aid goes away,” said Kim Cook, chief executive officer of the National College Attainment Network (NCAN).
“We’ve been working very hard with our members and the message to our students that even if there is disruption or change, Federal Student Aid, FAFSA, Pell Grants continue,” Cook added.
Continue reading at The Hill
Trump administration deports gay makeup artist to prison in El Salvador
Andry Hernandez Romero, a gay makeup artist who came to the United States last year in search of asylum, is one of 238 Venezuelan migrants who were flown from the U.S. to a maximum security prison in El Salvador three weeks ago.
President Trump, who campaigned on eradicating the Venezuelan gang known as Tren de Aragua, brokered a deal with El Salvador's president that allows the U.S. to send deportees to the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT.
The Trump administration used the Alien Enemies Act, a law not invoked since World War II, to send many of the Venezuelans there, claiming they were all terrorists and violent gang members.
Lawyers and family members of the Venezuelan migrants told 60 Minutes they've had no contact with the men since they arrived in El Salvador.
"Our client, who was in the middle of seeking asylum, just disappeared. One day he was there, and the next day we're supposed to have court, and he wasn't brought to court," Lindsay Toczylowski, Hernandez Romero's lawyer, said.
Continue reading at CBS News
Trump says he hopes Sununu runs for Senate in New Hampshire
President Trump said Sunday that he met with former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) about a potential Senate bid and that he hopes Sununu launches a campaign.
“He came to my office, came to the Oval Office, and met with Chris Sununu, and I support him fully. I hope he runs,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “He’s been very nice to me over the last year or so, but no, I hope he runs. I think he’ll win that seat.”
Sununu has been a regular Trump critic, and the former governor endorsed Nikki Haley in the 2024 GOP primary before eventually backing Trump once he became the presumptive nominee.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the senior Democratic senator from New Hampshire, announced last month that she will not run for reelection in 2026, setting up what is expected to be a highly competitive race.
Continue reading at The Hill
Le Pen’s ‘Save Democracy’ rally after guilty verdict falls short of expectations
The French far right has framed the verdict against Le Pen as an attack on democracy — but was unable to attract a large crowd to a rally of support on Sunday.
PARIS — Marine Le Pen’s political future is cloudy for now, but Sunday’s rally in support of her took place under an impeccably sunny spring sky in an upscale neighborhood of central Paris, with temperatures nearing 20 degrees Celsius.
But despite ideal weather, the crowd didn’t show up.
The far-right politician’s supporters were called to gather in the French capital after Le Pen was found guilty last Monday of embezzling funds from the European Parliament and sentenced to an immediate five-year ban from running for office — a decision that dealt a massive blow to her chances of standing in the next presidential election, scheduled for 2027. Her party, the National Rally, and 22 other defendants also were convicted in the case.
During an aggressive speech to the crowd on Sunday, Le Pen again claimed that the verdict was politically motivated and that her fight was for “truth and justice.” Le Pen called the European Union’s anti-fraud unit, OLAF, a “totalitarian organism” and pinned the investigations into her party on the Parliament’s former social democratic president, Martin Schulz.
“The system’s only purpose is to stay in place, no matter the cost,” Le Pen said.
Continue reading at Politico Europe
Europe needs roadmap from US on any troop pullout, says Finnish defense minister
Any American withdrawal poses dangers for the continent, Antti Häkkänen warned.
European NATO allies should have a "clear roadmap" spelling out how any U.S. pullout from the continent would work, Finnish Defense Minister Antti Häkkänen told POLITICO.
“We need to have some sort of joint plan with Americans about a roadmap if the Americans are shifting the balance in the Pacific area in conventional defense capabilities," he said in a phone interview following an informal meeting of EU defense ministers in Warsaw.
He called for a "clear roadmap" from Washington "so that there will be no kind of window of opportunity for Russia to try something," and said that U.S plans should coordinate with EU initiatives to boost the bloc's defense capacity.
Häkkänen's comments echo those of German Defense Boris Pistorius, who last month asked his U.S. counterpart Pete Hegseth to “develop a roadmap to avoid gaps in capabilities, organize burden sharing progressively, to know who does what” in case the U.S shifts forces from Europe to the Indo-Pacific.
Pistorius said he got no answer from either the White House or the Pentagon.
European countries are scrambling to recalibrate the continent's defenses as the administration of Donald Trump wages economic war against the EU, warms ties with Russia, warns it may not defend NATO allies it feels underspend on defense, and threatens to invade Greenland.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio — in Brussels for a meeting of NATO foreign ministers — dismissed worries about America's commitment to the alliance as "hysteria."
At the same meeting, NATO chief Mark Rutte argued there are "no surprises" within the alliance and that any U.S. pivot toward Asia would be done "in a very coordinated manner."
The Finnish minister was sympathetic to U.S. arguments about the need to shift to Asia. "The message I get from the Americans, and from the Pentagon side, is that we need to understand their pressure [from] China’s military buildup in the Indo-Pacific area."
Continue reading at Politico Europe
Europe’s new war with Russia: Deep sea sabotage
Suspicious Russian tankers keep slashing Europe’s internet and power cables. It’s not an act of war … but someday it might be.
GULF OF FINLAND — Before Russia bulldozed its way into Ukraine, Ilja Iljin mainly hunted for people stranded at sea. Now, he also hunts saboteurs.
Iljin, a deputy commander of Finland’s coast guard, is increasingly on the lookout for tankers about to commit sabotage. Behind him is a small army: dozens of radars and cameras, numerous patrol boats, a fleet of planes and helicopters — all deployed to scour a stretch of water as large as Belgium.
They’re looking for suspicious behavior that could imperil the undersea cables that bring internet and power to Europeans.
And yet, sabotage keeps happening — twice in the Gulf of Finland alone in the last 18 months, according to Iljin. In total, the Baltic Sea has registered at least six suspected sabotage incidents since 2022, with 11 known undersea cables taken out since 2023.
“This is becoming more common,” Iljin said, standing in the cabin of the 23-meter patrol vessel, waves chopping against its sides. “We have become more aware of the risk, and we're currently trying to figure out ways for how to properly respond.”
The damage hasn't disrupted society. The lights stayed on; the Wi-Fi still worked. But they still sent a chill through Europe: What if the next vigilantes were more coordinated, more aggressive? What if Russia was launching an assault on Europe? What if it meant war?
Continue reading at Politico Europe
In Memoriam
Jay North, TV’s mischievous Dennis the Menace, dies at 73
LAKE BUTLER, Fla. (AP) — Jay North, who starred as the towheaded mischief maker on TV’s “Dennis the Menace” for four seasons starting in 1959, has died. He was 73.
North died Sunday at his home in Lake Butler, Florida, after battling colon cancer, said Laurie Jacobson, a longtime friend, and Bonnie Vent, who was his booking agent.
“He had a heart as big as a mountain, loved his friends deeply. He called us frequently and ended every conversation with ‘I love you with all my heart,’” Jacobson wrote in a tribute on Facebook.
North was 6 when he was cast as the smiling troublemaker in the CBS sitcom adaptation of Hank Ketcham’s popular comic strip that took place in an idyllic American suburb.
Continue reading at the AP
Ukraine is stuck with Musk’s Starlink for now
Key competitor Eutelsat won’t break Starlink’s grip on Kyiv’s wartime communications overnight.
Ukrainians will have to live with the specter of Elon Musk cutting off satellite communications keeping their hospitals, military bases and troops online, as there are no short-term alternatives that can match the tech mogul's Starlink system.
Starlink has become vital to Ukrainian forces fighting Russia but leaves Kyiv at the mercy of the entrepreneur, now a top advisor to United States President Donald Trump. Musk in March warned that the "entire front line would collapse if I turned it off."
To cope with that risk, the European Union is on the lookout for backup options for Ukraine. One of those is Franco-British operator Eutelsat, which is pitching itself as a way for Kyiv to get out from under Musk’s thumb.
Working with Starlink "is a dependence that can be decided in the White House or [Trump's private residence] Mar-a-Lago," Eutelsat Chief Executive Officer Eva Berneke told POLITICO. "It's good to have multiple options."
But today's Starlink alternatives aren't ready to take on Musk — including Eutelsat, by Berneke's own admission.
"If we were to take over the entire connectivity capacity for Ukraine and all the citizens, we wouldn't be able to do that. Let's just be very honest," Berneke said. "But I do think we can provide capacity for some of the critical use cases of government."
Continue reading at Politico Europe
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My Opinion Pieces:
That work wardrobe you need? Fuhget it for the next four years | Blog#42
If you’re a white collar worker, one of the costs of working is having to maintain a work-appropriate wardrobe, and pencilling in time at your favorite department store at your local upscale mall. No matter what kind of work you do, if you have children, you pencil in a trip to the local mall to buy children’s clothing, with time at their favorite restaurant for a burger and dessert.