Anti-Anti-Nazi Barbarian Hordes are Knocking Down the Gates

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[Warren] Buffett denies social media rumors after Trump shares wild claim that investor backs president crashing market
by Yun Li @YunLi626 and Kevin Breuninger @KevinWilliamB
CNBC
Published Fri, Apr 4 2025 1:32 PM EDT
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/04/buffett ... arket.html

Berkshire Hathaway responds to ‘false reports’ on social media

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsk...
BERKSHIRE STATEMENT: "There are reports currently circulating on social media (including Twitter, Facebook and Tik Tok) regarding comments allegedly made by Warren E. Buffett. All such reports are false."

Warren Buffett went on the record Friday to deny social media posts after President Donald Trump shared on Truth Social a fan video that claimed the president is tanking the stock market on purpose with the endorsement of the legendary investor.

Trump on Friday shared an outlandish social media video that defends his recent policy decisions by arguing he is deliberately taking down the market as a strategic play to force lower interest and mortgage rates.

“Trump is crashing the stock market by 20% this month, but he’s doing it on purpose,” alleged the video, which Trump posted on his Truth Social account.

The video’s narrator then falsely states, “And this is why Warren Buffett just said, ‘Trump is making the best economic moves he’s seen in over 50 years.’”

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
https://x.com/AmericaPapaBear/status/19 ... 4090423367
Trump is purposely CRASHING The Market
x.com
AmericanPapaBear
@AmericaPapaBear) on X
Trump is playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers.
Truth Social

The president shared a link to an X post from the account @AmericaPapaBear, a self-described “Trumper to the end.” The X post itself appears to be a repost of a weeks-old TikTok video from user @wnnsa11. The video has been shared more than 2,000 times on Truth Social and nearly 10,000 times on X.

Buffett, 94, didn’t single out any specific posts, but his conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway
outright rejected all comments claimed to be made by him.

“There are reports currently circulating on social media (including Twitter, Facebook and Tik Tok) regarding comments allegedly made by Warren E. Buffett. All such reports are false,” the company said in a statement Friday.

CNBC’s Becky Quick spoke to Buffett Friday about this statement and he said he wanted to knock down misinformation in an age where false rumors can be blasted around instantaneously. Buffett told Quick that he won’t make any commentary related to the markets, the economy or tariffs between now and Berkshire’s annual meeting on May 3.

‘A tax on goods’

While Buffett hasn’t spoken about this week’s imposition of sweeping tariffs from the Trump administration, his view on such things has pretty much always been negative. Just in March, the Berkshire CEO and chairman called tariffs “an act of war, to some degree.”

“Over time, they are a tax on goods. I mean, the tooth fairy doesn’t pay ’em!” Buffett said in the news interview with a laugh. “And then what? You always have to ask that question in economics. You always say, ‘And then what?’”

During Trump’s first term, Buffett opined at length in 2018 and 2019 about the trade conflicts that erupted, warning that the Republican’s aggressive moves could cause negative consequences globally.

“If we actually have a trade war, it will be bad for the whole world … everything intersects in the world,” Buffett said in a CNBC interview in 2019. “A world that adjusts to something very close to free trade … more people will live better than in a world with significant tariffs and shifting tariffs over time.”

Buffett has been in a defensive mode over the past year as he rapidly dumped stocks and raised a record amount of cash exceeding $300 billion. His conglomerate has a big U.S. focus and has large businesses in insurance, railroads, manufacturing, energy and retail.

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... economists

Trump’s ‘idiotic’ and flawed tariff calculations stun economists: ‘Willing sycophants’ came up with simplistic formula that has thrown global economy into disarray
by Richard Partington
Senior economics correspondent
The US Guardian
Thu 3 Apr 2025 09.38 EDT

Waving a big chart as a prop in the White House Rose Garden, Donald Trump suggested his new tariff plan was simple: “Reciprocal – that means they do it to us, and we do it to them. Very simple. Can’t get simpler than that.”

Perhaps a bit too simple. The method used to calculate the most important numbers in international trade, politics and economics has left some of the world’s leading experts shocked.

For each country, the White House looked up its trade in goods deficit for 2024, then divided that by the total value of imports. Trump, to be “kind”, said he would, however, offer a discount, so halved that figure. The calculation was even distilled into a formula.

For example, take the figures for China:

• Goods trade deficit: $291.9bn
• Total goods imports: $438.9bn
• Those figures divided = 0.67, or 67%
• And halved = 34%

For countries without a large deficit, the White House applied a 10% baseline, ensuring tariffs would be applied regardless. This was the case for the UK, which the US Census Bureau reckons had an almost-$12bn surplus in 2024.

“[It is] quite an extraordinary calculation after months of work behind the scenes,” said Jim Reid, the global head of macro research at Deutsche Bank. “[It] didn’t add much confidence on there being an in-depth strategic implementation plan.”

For weeks, Washington had been talking about an in-depth policy exercise to establish figures based on a combination of tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade, as it perceived them to be; including alleged “currency manipulation”, local laws, regulations, and taxes such as VAT.

In itself that approach raised eyebrows with experts who said VAT was highly unusual to include, because it is a sales tax paid on domestically produced goods and foreign imports alike.

However, the White House appears to have confirmed it took a simplistic approach to making this judgment:

Reciprocal tariffs are calculated as the tariff rate necessary to balance bilateral trade deficits between the US and each of our trading partners. This calculation assumes that persistent trade deficits are due to a combination of tariff and non-tariff factors that prevent trade from balancing.

There are multiple problems with this – not least that it vastly oversimplifies the drivers of trade deficits. Trade deficits occur when a country buys more than it sells abroad. The US has run a deficit persistently since the 1970s. Typically trade deficits balance over time, as they create downward pressure on a country’s currency (as the result of demand for foreign currency, to buy imported goods, outstrips demand for domestic currency).

However, sitting atop the global reserve currency – used throughout the global financial system for payments and international trade – the US has managed to run larger trade deficits than other nations would be able to.

Another part of the reason is US goods are too expensive for consumers in developing economies to buy – helping to explain some of the particularly large trade deficits – and new tariffs – for poorer countries.

Adam Tooze, an economic historian at Columbia University in the US, said there were “grotesque” policies for south-east Asian countries, including a 49% Cambodian tariff, and rates of 48% for Laos and 46% for Vietnam.

“This is not because they discriminate viciously against American exports, but because they are relatively poor. The US does not make a lot of goods that are relevant for them to import,” he said.

Vietnam in particular has become part of the global supply chain for major manufacturers, including US tech and clothing companies such as Nike, Intel, and Apple.

Lesotho, the tiny southern African country, one of the poorest in the world, is another odd example, facing a tariff of 50%. Among its main exports to the US are diamonds and clothes – demonstrating how links around the world for rare minerals are important for the US economy, but also how the US sought to boost development in African nations in recent years – with policies to encourage manufacturing by companies including Levi Strauss and Wrangler.

However, Trump, with his “America First” strategy has upended decades of attempts by successive US administrations to exert global economic influence, in an earthquake for the global economy.

“This is not serious trade policy or grand strategy,” said Tooze. “The boss hates trade deficits and his team of willing sycophants came up with a formula, however idiotic, that ticked the box.”

*************************************

Trump's surprisingly simple tariff math
by Neil Irwin
Axios
Apr 3, 2025
https://www.axios.com/2025/04/03/how-tr ... de-deficit


U.S. weighted average tariff rate. Annually, 1850 to 2025; Estimate for 2025 assumes announced tariffs are fully implemented and remain through year-end. Data: Yale Budget Lab; Chart: Axios Visuals

One of the surprises out of Wednesday's big tariffs announcement was that the Trump administration used a surprisingly simplistic approach to calculating these much-hyped reciprocal tariffs.

Why it matters: This was not a finely tuned set of import taxes calibrated to exert pressure on trading partners to adjust specific policies with which the U.S. has grievances.

• Rather, it was some simple arithmetic, based on overall trade data, that became the justification for the most sweeping U.S. duties in generations — a trade-weighted 22.5% tariff, per the Yale Budget Lab, up from around 2.4% last year.

• It implies fewer off-ramps for countries that seek tariff relief, and thus less potential for de-escalation. If tariffs are applied without regard to the details of each country's economic policies and circumstances, what is there to negotiate?

State of play: Wednesday, some social media sleuths figured out, and the administration confirmed, that there was a simple formula behind the reason, say, Vietnam was slapped with a 46% tariff while Norway faces 15%.

• The formula is to divide the U.S. trade deficit with each country by that country's exports to the U.S. The final reciprocal tariff was then divided by 2, with a minimum of 10% (which applies even to those countries with which the U.S. has a trade surplus).

• "While individually computing the trade deficit effects of tens of thousands of tariff, regulatory, tax and other policies in each country is complex, if not impossible, their combined effects can be proxied by computing the tariff level consistent with driving bilateral trade deficits to zero," per the U.S. Trade Representative's explainer.

Between the lines: This logic implies that any country with which the United States experiences a trade deficit, regardless of the reason, is in some way a bad actor and requires tariffs as payback.

• But even if you believe that it's not good for the U.S. to run large, persistent overall trade deficits (which can contribute to financial imbalances and under-investment in key industries), it doesn't imply that there needs to be balanced trade with every individual country.

• Depending on U.S. consumer demand for a given country's exports, whether it seeks to buy U.S. financial assets, and myriad other factors, even in a world where there is balanced U.S. trade, some countries would be expected to run surpluses and others deficits.

• Moreover, the 10% minimum tariff — even on countries with which the U.S. runs a surplus — implies that tariffs of more than 4x their previous levels are a new minimum that will apply to the rest of the world, no matter how a given country tries to respond to U.S. concerns.

What they're saying: Tobin Marcus and Chutong Zhu of Wolfe Research write in a new note that "since these 'reciprocal' numbers are driven not by actual tariffs but by the simple fact of trade deficits, they will be very challenging to negotiate away, and policy changes may do nothing to alleviate them."

The bottom line: The calculation method used for this round of tariffs implies they won't be negotiated away quickly or easily.

*****************

Trump Tariff Chart: Full List of Countries Hit With 'Reciprocal' Tariffs
by Jesus Mesa
Politics Reporter
Newsweek
Published Apr 02, 2025 at 5:18 PM EDT
Updated Apr 04, 2025 at 9:46 AM EDT
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-reciproc ... rt-2054514

President Donald Trump on Wednesday imposed sweeping new tariffs on all imported goods and unveiled a detailed list of reciprocal duties targeting more than 60 countries, asserting that the move is necessary to combat trade imbalances and restore U.S. manufacturing.

"This is Liberation Day," Trump said during a Rose Garden ceremony, holding up a printed chart of countries and their new tariff rates. "For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike."

Why It Matters

The tariffs, which he described as "reciprocal," fulfill a key campaign pledge and are aimed at pressuring trade partners to lower their own barriers. The administration expects the new rates to remain in place until the U.S. narrows a $1.2 trillion trade imbalance recorded last year.

But the extensive list of tariffs also threatens to upend the U.S. economy, as many — but not all — economists say they amount to taxes on American companies that will be passed down to consumers.

What To Know

The president said there will be a "baseline" tariff of 10 percent on all imports.

Some nations will face "discounted reciprocal tariffs" which are at half the rate those countries currently charge the U.S.

According to a chart Trump held up, the U.S. will impose a 34 percent tariff on Chinese imports; 20 percent on goods from the European Union; 25 percent on South Korean products; 24 percent on Japanese imports; and 32 percent on goods from Taiwan.

The 34 percent reciprocal tariff that China will face is in addition to a 20 percent tariff on the country which is already in effect, the White House said.

The move also includes specific tariffs on countries with low formal tariff rates but significant trade surpluses with the U.S., including the UK, Australia and Brazil.

The U.S. had an overall trade deficit of $918.4 billion in 2024, with the largest gaps coming from China ($295.4 billion), the European Union ($235.6 billion), Mexico ($171.8 billion) and Vietnam ($123.5 billion), according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis​.

While announcing the measures, Trump invoked national security powers under a continuing state of emergency to justify the action, circumventing Congressional approval.

While specifics about enforcement and duration of the new tariffs remain unclear, a document distributed to reporters included a list of 65 countries with calculated reciprocal rates.

Cambodia topped the chart at a 49% tariff, followed by Madagascar (47%), Sri Lanka (44%), and Vietnam (46%).

Major U.S. partners like Japan, South Korea and India were also included, despite active trade negotiations in recent years.

How Trump's Tariff Rates Were Set

President Trump said the new tariffs on U.S. trading partners were "reciprocal," meant to reflect the trade barriers those countries place on American goods. He didn't explain how the rates were calculated, but a clearer method appeared later on Wednesday.

According to analysts and later White House clarification, each country's tariff rate was based on the U.S. trade deficit with that country, divided by the value of that country's exports to the U.S. Trump then cut that number in half, saying he was being "kind."

While Trump originally claimed the tariffs would reflect not just trade deficits but also non-monetary barriers and "cheating," experts believe the administration used a quick, simple formula to push the policy through.

Full List of Countries Hit With Reciprocal Tariffs

Country / Tariffs Charged to the U.S.A. (%) / U.S.A. Discounted Reciprocal Tariffs (%)

China / 67 / 34
European Union / 39 / 20
Vietnam / 90 / 46
Taiwan / 64 / 32
Japan / 46 / 24
India / 52 / 26
South Korea / 50 / 25
Thailand / 72 / 36
Switzerland / 61 / 31
Indonesia / 64 / 32
Malaysia / 47 / 24
Cambodia / 97 / 49
United Kingdom / 10 / 10
South Africa / 60 / 30
Brazil / 10 / 10
Bangladesh / 74 / 37
Singapore / 10 / 10
Israel / 33 / 17
Philippines / 34 / 17
Chile / 10 / 10
Australia / 10 / 10
Pakistan / 58 / 29
Turkey / 10 / 10
Sri Lanka / 88 / 44
Colombia / 10 / 10
Peru / 10 / 10
Nicaragua / 36 / 18
Norway / 30 / 15
Costa Rica / 17 / 10
Jordan / 40 / 20
Dominican Republic / 10 / 10
United Arab Emirates / 10 / 10
New Zealand / 20 / 10
Argentina / 10 / 10
Ecuador / 12 / 10
Guatemala / 10 / 10
Honduras / 10 / 10
Madagascar / 93 / 47
Myanmar (Burma) / 88 / 44
Tunisia / 55 / 28
Kazakhstan / 54 / 27
Serbia / 74 / 37
Egypt / 10 / 10
Saudi Arabia / 10 / 10
El Salvador / 10 / 10
Côte d'Ivoire / 41 / 21
Laos / 95 / 48
Botswana / 74 / 37
Trinidad and Tobago / 12 / 10
Morocco / 10 / 10
Papua New Guinea / 15 / 10
Malawi / 34 / 17
Liberia / 10 / 10
British Virgin Islands / 10 / 10
Afghanistan / 49 / 10
Zimbabwe / 35 / 18
Benin / 10 / 10
Barbados / 10 / 10
Monaco / 10 / 10
Syria / 81 / 41
Uzbekistan / 10 / 10
Republic of the Congo / 10 / 10
Djibouti / 10 / 10
French Polynesia / 10 / 10
Cayman Islands / 10 / 10
Kosovo / 10 / 10
Curaçao / 10 / 10
Vanuatu / 44 / 22
Rwanda / 10 / 10
Sierra Leone / 10 / 10
Mongolia / 10 / 10
San Marino / 10 / 10
Antigua and Barbuda / 10 / 10
Bermuda / 10 / 10
Eswatini / 10 / 10
Marshall Islands / 10 / 10
Saint Pierre and Miquelon / 99 / 50
Saint Kitts and Nevis / 10 / 10
Turkmenistan / 10 / 10
Grenada / 10 / 10
Sudan / 10 / 10
Turks and Caicos Islands / 10 / 10
Aruba / 10 / 10
Montenegro / 10 / 10
Saint Helena / 15 / 10
Kyrgyzstan / 10 / 10
Yemen / 10 / 10
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines / 10 / 10
Niger / 10 / 10
Saint Lucia / 10 / 10
Nauru 59 30
Equatorial Guinea / 25 / 13
Iran / 10 / 10
Libya / 61 / 31
Samoa / 10 / 10
Guinea / 10 / 10
Timor-Leste / 10 / 10
Montserrat / 10 / 10
Chad / 26 / 13
Mali / 10 / 10
Algeria / 59 / 30
Oman / 10 / 10
Uruguay / 10 / 10
Bahamas / 10 / 10
Lesotho / 99 / 50
Ukraine / 10 / 10
Bahrain / 10 / 10
Qatar / 10 / 10
Mauritius / 80 / 40
Fiji / 63 / 32
Iceland / 10 / 10
Kenya / 10 / 10
Liechtenstein / 73 / 37
Guyana / 76 / 38
Haiti / 10 / 10
Bosnia and Herzegovina / 70 / 35
Nigeria / 27 / 14
Namibia / 42 / 21
Brunei / 47 / 24
Bolivia / 20 / 0
Panama / 10 / 10
Venezuela / 29 / 15
North Macedonia / 65 / 33
Ethiopia / 10 / 10
Ghana / 17 / 10
Moldova / 61 / 31
Angola / 63 / 32
Democratic Republic of the Congo / 22 / 11
Jamaica / 10 / 10
Mozambique / 31 / 16
Paraguay / 10 / 10
Zambia / 33 / 17
Lebanon / 10 / 10
Tanzania / 10 / 10
Iraq / 78 / 39
Georgia / 10 / 10
Senegal / 10 / 10
Azerbaijan / 10 / 10
Cameroon / 22 / 11
Uganda / 20 / 10
Albania / 10 / 10
Armenia / 10 / 10
Nepal / 10 / 10
Sint Maarten / 10 / 10
Falkland Islands / 82 / 41
Gabon / 10 / 10
Kuwait / 10 / 10
Togo / 10 / 10
Suriname / 10 / 10
Belize / 10 / 10
Maldives / 10 / 10
Tajikistan / 10 / 10
Cabo Verde / 10 / 10
Burundi / 10 / 10
Guadeloupe / 10 / 10
Bhutan / 10 / 10
Martinique / 10 / 10
Tonga / 10 / 10
Mauritania / 10 / 10
Dominica / 10 / 10
Micronesia / 10 / 10
Gambia / 10 / 10
French Guiana / 10 / 10
Christmas Island / 10 / 10
Andorra / 10 / 10
Central African Republic / 10 / 10
Solomon Islands / 10 / 10
Mayotte / 10 / 10
Anguilla / 10 / 10
Cocos (Keeling) Islands / 10 / 10
Eritrea / 10 / 10
Cook Islands / 10 / 10
South Sudan / 10 / 10
Comoros / 10 / 10
Kiribati / 10 / 10
Sao Tome and Principe / 10 / 10
Norfolk Island 58 29
Gibraltar / 10 / 10
Tuvalu / 10 / 10
British Indian Ocean Territory / 10 / 10
Tokelau / 10 / 10
Guinea-Bissau / 10 / 10
Svalbard and Jan Mayen / 10 / 10
Heard and McDonald Islands / 10 / 10
Reunion / 73 / 37

*White House officials said the calculations came from the Council of Economic Advisers.

What People Are Saying

President Donald Trump while announcing the new tariffs on Wednesday: "Chronic trade deficits are a national emergency."

Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics at the Budget Lab at Yale, told Newsweek: "Obviously it's still unclear whether this is the policy that will be announced. But with that caveat: this idea would bring tariffs back to where they were in America in the early 1900s. It would raise about $3 trillion over a decade—enough to pay for about half of the tax cut extension—but it would also raise prices by the equivalent of more than a year's worth of normal inflation and cut U.S. economic growth in 2025 in half."

What Happens Next

A 25% tariff on "all foreign-made automobiles" will take effect on April 3. The 10% "baseline" tariffs will take effect on April 5 and the reciprocal tariffs will kick in on April 9.

Markets reacted sharply to the announcement.

Stock futures plunged and after-hours trading descended into turmoil as Trump pledged steep tariffs on some of the U.S.'s top trading partners. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY), which tracks the S&P 500, fell 2.47 percent. The SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF Trust (DIA) dropped 1.37 percent, while the Invesco QQQ ETF, which tracks the Nasdaq Composite Index, sank 3.45 percent.

Update 4/2/25, 10:27p.m. ET: This article has been updated to include additional information

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Climate crisis on track to destroy capitalism, warns top insurer: Action urgently needed to save the conditions under which markets – and civilisation itself – can operate, says senior Allianz figure
by Damian Carrington
Environment editor
The Guardian
Thu 3 Apr 2025 05.41 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... nz-insurer

The climate crisis is on track to destroy capitalism, a top insurer has warned, with the vast cost of extreme weather impacts leaving the financial sector unable to operate.

The world is fast approaching temperature levels where insurers will no longer be able to offer cover for many climate risks, said Günther Thallinger, on the board of Allianz SE, one of the world’s biggest insurance companies. He said that without insurance, which is already being pulled in some places, many other financial services become unviable, from mortgages to investments.

Global carbon emissions are still rising and current policies will result in a rise in global temperature between 2.2C and 3.4C above pre-industrial levels. The damage at 3C will be so great that governments will be unable to provide financial bailouts and it will be impossible to adapt to many climate impacts, said Thallinger, who is also the chair of the German company’s investment board and was previously CEO of Allianz Investment Management.

The core business of the insurance industry is risk management and it has long taken the dangers of global heating very seriously. In recent reports, Aviva said extreme weather damages for the decade to 2023 hit $2tn, while GallagherRE said the figure was $400bn in 2024. Zurich said it was “essential” to hit net zero by 2050.

Thallinger said: “The good news is we already have the technologies to switch from fossil combustion to zero-emission energy. The only thing missing is speed and scale. This is about saving the conditions under which markets, finance, and civilisation itself can continue to operate.”

Nick Robins, the chair of the Just Transition Finance Lab at the London School of Economics, said: “This devastating analysis from a global insurance leader sets out not just the financial but also the civilisational threat posed by climate change. It needs to be the basis for renewed action, particularly in the countries of the global south.”

“The insurance sector is a canary in the coalmine when it comes to climate impacts,” said Janos Pasztor, former UN assistant secretary-general for climate change.

The argument set out by Thallinger in a LinkedIn post begins with the increasingly severe damage being caused by the climate crisis: “Heat and water destroy capital. Flooded homes lose value. Overheated cities become uninhabitable. Entire asset classes are degrading in real time.”

“We are fast approaching temperature levels – 1.5C, 2C, 3C – where insurers will no longer be able to offer coverage for many of these risks,” he said. “The math breaks down: the premiums required exceed what people or companies can pay. This is already happening. Entire regions are becoming uninsurable.” He cited companies ending home insurance in California due to wildfires.

Thallinger said it was a systemic risk “threatening the very foundation of the financial sector”, because a lack of insurance means other financial services become unavailable: “This is a climate-induced credit crunch.”

“This applies not only to housing, but to infrastructure, transportation, agriculture, and industry,” he said. “The economic value of entire regions – coastal, arid, wildfire-prone – will begin to vanish from financial ledgers. Markets will reprice, rapidly and brutally. This is what a climate-driven market failure looks like.”

No governments will realistically be able to cover the damage when multiple high-cost events happen in rapid succession, as climate models predict, Thallinger said. Australia’s disaster recovery spending has already increased sevenfold between 2017 and 2023, he noted.

The idea that billions of people can just adapt to worsening climate impacts is a “false comfort”, he said: “There is no way to ‘adapt’ to temperatures beyond human tolerance … Whole cities built on flood plains cannot simply pick up and move uphill.”

At 3C of global heating, climate damage cannot be insured against, covered by governments, or adapted to, Thallinger said: “That means no more mortgages, no new real estate development, no long-term investment, no financial stability. The financial sector as we know it ceases to function. And with it, capitalism as we know it ceases to be viable.”

The only solution was to cut fossil fuel burning, or capture the emissions, he said, with everything else being a delay or distraction. He said capitalism must solve the crisis, starting with putting its sustainability goals on the same level as financial goals.

Many financial institutions have moved away from climate action after the election of the US president, Donald Trump, who has called such action a “green scam”. Thallinger said in February: “The cost of inaction is higher than the cost of transformation and adaptation. If we succeed in our transition, we will enjoy a more efficient, competitive economy [and] a higher quality of life.”

[admin]

https://www.axios.com/2025/04/03/trump- ... ty-council

Scoop: Multiple firings on Trump's National Security Council after Loomer visit
by Axios
Apr 3, 2025 -Politics & Policy

Several members of President Trump's embattled National Security Council have been fired, a U.S. official and a second source familiar told Axios on Thursday.

Why it matters: The firings come a day after conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer visited the Oval Office and pressed Trump to fire specific NSC staffers. Axios has not confirmed whether the firings were directly linked to that incident, but the source familiar said they were "being labeled as an anti-neocon move."

Driving the news: In a conversation with reporters on Air Force One on Thursday, Trump confirmed the firings at the National Security Council.

• "We're always going to let go of people — people we don't like or people that take advantage of [us] or people that may have loyalties to someone else," he said.

• Trump praised Loomer and said "she makes recommendations ... and sometimes I listen to those recommendations ... I listen to everybody and then I make a decision."

• Trump said Loomer recommended some people for jobs at the White House but denied she had anything to do with the firings.

Behind the scenes: The U.S. official said Loomer was furious that "neocons" had "slipped through" the vetting process for administration jobs, referring to hawkish foreign policy views commonly associated with the Bush administration.

• "She went to the White House yesterday and presented them with her research and evidence," the official said. Loomer's visit was reported earlier by Status and The New York Times. The official suspected that the firings were linked to Loomer's visit but was not certain.

• The U.S. official named three senior NSC members who had been fired, and said it was shaping up to be a "bloodbath." Axios is seeking additional confirmation before naming those people.

• The source familiar said several people had been fired, possibly as many as 10, including senior directors. An NSC spokesperson declined to comment.

State of play: Axios has not confirmed whether any of the individuals let go were in any way connected to the separate controversy about the use of Signal and private email accounts by national security adviser Michael Waltz and NSC staff to discuss sensitive information.

• Waltz had accidentally added The Atlantic's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, whom Trump allies have labeled a "neocon," to a Signal chat about military strikes in Yemen.

• Trump considered firing Waltz at the height of the "Signalgate" scandal but ultimately decided to keep him and deny his critics a scalp, Axios' Marc Caputo and Mike Allen reported.

Editor's note: This story has been updated with President Trump's comments on Thursday.

*****

What to know about Laura Loomer, Trump's conspiracy theorist ally
by Axios
Updated Apr 3, 2025 -Politics & Policy

Far-right activist Laura Loomer was at President Trump's side as he campaigned and is now visiting the Oval Office. Trump previously claimed he's unaware of the conspiracy theories Loomer promoted.

Why it matters: National Security Council staffers were fired on Thursday, a day after Loomer visited the Oval Office and pressed Trump to remove specific members.

• Some Republicans have sounded alarms over Loomer's presence in Trump's inner circle, concerned it's a sign he's moving deeper into a world of conspiracies and racism, Axios' Sophia Cai and Alex Thompson reported last year.

Relationship with Trump

The latest: Loomer was furious that "neocons" had "slipped through" the vetting process for Trump administration jobs, Axios' Barak Ravid and Dave Lawler reported on Thursday.

• At the White House on Wednesday, she presented "research and evidence," per a U.S. official. The firings occurred on Thursday.

• Axios has not confirmed if the firings were directly linked to that incident.

• Loomer did not immediately respond to Axios' request for comment.
Zoom out: Loomer, who previously said she doesn't work for Trump, is a frequent guest of Mar-a-Lago and was backstage at September's presidential debate.

• She traveled with him the following day to New York and Pennsylvania.

What she's saying: "It was an honor to meet with President Trump and present him with my research findings," Loomer wrote on X on Thursday.

• "I will continue working hard to support his agenda, and I will continue reiterating the importance of, and the necessity of STRONG VETTING, for the sake of protecting the President of the United States of America, and our national security."

• She also said she would not divulge details on the Oval Office meeting.
Trump was asked about Loomer and his relationship with her several times during a press conference in California last year, and said she's a "supporter" of him and his campaign.

• "I don't control Laura," he said. "Laura has to say what she wants. She's a free spirit."

• Pressed on whether he's aware of the conspiracy theories she espouses, he said "No, I don't know that much about it. ... I know she's a big fan of the campaign."

• He said in a Sept. 2024 post on his Truth Social platform: "I disagree with the statements she made but, like the many millions of people who support me, she is tired of watching the Radical Left Marxists and Fascists violently attack and smear me."

Conspiracy theories and racist commentary

Loomer, who has described herself as a "proud Islamophobe," has called the 9/11 attacks an "inside job." She also falsely claimed President Biden was behind the assassination attempt against Trump in July.

• Last year, she peddled another baseless conspiracy theory about Haitian immigrants eating pets — a claim that Trump also raised.

• Loomer, who has 1.2 million followers on X, had also posted that if Vice President Harris — whose mother immigrated from India — had been elected president, "the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center."
Rise to prominence as provocateur

Loomer has worked for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' Infowars media platform, among other right-wing outlets.

• In one 2015 stunt, she posed as a Hillary Clinton supporter to try to entrap campaign workers into accepting illegal cash donations.

• Her social media presence is full of inflammatory posts about immigrants and other groups, including one celebrating the deaths of migrants crossing the Mediterranean. She denies being a racist, though she has described herself as pro-white nationalism.

• Her history of false claims include that multiple school shootings were staged.

• Getting banned from social media outlets like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram — for reasons including violating policies on hateful conduct and speech and for posting misinformation — helped build her notoriety, even as it cost her large followings on those platforms.

Failed races for Congress

Loomer is a twice-failed congressional candidate in Florida.

• She ran in 2020 as the GOP nominee for the state's 21st congressional district and again in the Republican primary for the 11th congressional district in 2022.

Editor's note: This story has been updated with details about the Trump administration firing National Security Council members. Axios' April Rubin contributed reporting.

****

MAGA media tiptoes around Loomer-Trump meeting and NSC firings
by Tal Axelrod
Axios
Apr 6, 2025 -Politics & Policy

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."

MAGA online outlets and social media accounts focused heavily on tariffs, but also highlighted transgender teachers, local politicians and the live-action "Snow White" film's poor box office performance.

• The NSC story is a "silly distraction," said Mike Davis, the president of The Article III Project and a frequent MAGA media guest.

The bottom line: Where people get their news is an increasingly powerful indicator of how they formulate their politics and helps explain how divided the country has become. And few stories like the NSC and NSA firings so succinctly capture just how wide the country's media gap is.

***

Top Democrats denounce reported firing of NSA chief
by Rebecca Falconer
Axios
Updated Apr 4, 2025 -Politics & Policy


National Security Agency director Timothy Haugh on Capitol Hill in 2024. Photo: Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images

Top congressional Democrats on Thursday night spoke out over reports that Gen. Timothy Haugh has been fired as National Security Agency director.

The big picture: The Washington Post first reported that Haugh had been removed from the NSA role and as U.S. Cyber Command chief, along with his civilian deputy Wendy Noble, citing a former U.S. official and two current ones.

• Several National Security Council members were fired earlier Thursday after conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer visited the Oval Office and pressed President Trump to oust specific NSC staffers, Axios first reported.

A spokesperson for the Pentagon told Axios they were aware of the reports but did not confirm their veracity.

• Representatives for the NSA declined to comment and referred Axios to the Pentagon.

The White House referred Axios to the Department of Defense.

The latest: Loomer took to X early Friday to denounce Haugh and Noble and seemingly confirm their terminations.

• Loomer wrote that Haugh and Noble have been "disloyal to President Trump. That is why they have been fired."

What they're saying: Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, posted on Bluesky that Haugh had "served our country in uniform, with honor and distinction, for more than 30 years."

• At a time when the U.S. faces "unprecedented cyber threats, as the Salt Typhoon cyberattack from China has so clearly underscored, how does firing him make Americans any safer?" he wrote.

• "It is astonishing that President Trump would fire the nonpartisan leader of the NSA while still failing to hold any member of his team accountable for leaking classified information on Signal — even as he apparently takes staffing direction from a discredited conspiracy theorist in the Oval Office."

Meanwhile, House Intelligence Committee ranking member Jim Himes (D-Conn.), in a statement posted to X, said he's "deeply disturbed by the decision to remove" Haugh from the NSA.

• "I have known General Haugh to be an honest and forthright leader who followed the law and put national security first — I fear those are precisely the qualities that could lead to his firing in this Administration," he said.

• "The Intelligence Committee and the American people need an immediate explanation for this decision, which makes all of us less safe."

Background: Haugh's career includes more than 30 years with the U.S. Air Force, much of it spent in cyber and intelligence roles, according to his biography.

• Then-President Biden nominated Haugh in 2023 to serve as leader of Cyber Command and the NSA.

• Biden announced soon after that Noble would serve as deputy NSA director.

• Noble began her NSA career in 1987 as a cryptologic linguist and "has served in numerous analytic, technical, and leadership roles spanning target and language analysis, strategy development, joint collection programs, and liaison operations, serving at both NSA Headquarters and various overseas locations," per her bio.

[admin]

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/ ... omic-havoc

President Trump’s mindless tariffs will cause economic havoc. But the rest of the world can limit the damage.
Published Fri, Apr 4, 2025 · 03:00 PM

IF YOU failed to spot America being “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far” or it being cruelly denied a “turn to prosper”, then congratulations: you have a firmer grip on reality than the president of the United States. It’s hard to know which is more unsettling: that the leader of the free world could spout complete drivel about its most successful and admired economy. Or the fact that on April 2, spurred on by his delusions, Donald Trump announced the biggest break in America’s trade policy in over a century – and committed the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era.

Speaking in the Rose Garden of the White House, the president announced new “reciprocal” tariffs on almost all America’s trading partners. There will be levies of 34 per cent on China, 27 per cent on India, 24 per cent on Japan and 20 per cent on the European Union. Many small economies face swingeing rates; all targets face a tariff of at least 10 per cent. Including existing duties, the total levy on China will now be 65 per cent. Canada and Mexico were spared additional tariffs, and the new levies will not be added to industry-specific measures, such as a 25 per cent tariff on cars, or a promised tariff on semiconductors. But America’s overall tariff rate will soar above its Depression-era level back to the 19th century.

Trump called it one of the most important days in American history. He is almost right. His “Liberation Day” heralds America’s total abandonment of the world trading order and embrace of protectionism. The question for countries reeling from the president’s mindless vandalism is how to limit the damage.

And Trump’s grasp of the technicalities was pathetic. He suggested that the new tariffs were based on an assessment of a country’s tariffs against America, plus currency manipulation and other supposed distortions, such as value-added tax. But it looks as if officials set the tariffs using a formula that takes America’s bilateral trade deficit as a share of goods imported from each country and halves it – which is almost as random as taxing you on the number of vowels in your name.

This catalogue of foolishness will bring needless harm to America. Consumers will pay more and have less choice. Raising the price of parts for America’s manufacturers while relieving them of the discipline of foreign competition will make them flabby. As stock market futures tumbled, shares in Nike, which has factories in Vietnam (tariff: 46 per cent) fell by 7 per cent. Does Trump really think Americans would be better off if only they sewed their own running shoes?

The rest of the world will share in the disaster – and must decide what to do. One question is whether to retaliate. Politicians should be cautious. Pace Trump, trade barriers harm those who put them up. Because they are more likely to cause Trump to double down than retreat, they risk making things worse – possibly catastrophically so, as in the 1930s.

Instead, governments should focus on increasing trade flows among themselves, especially in the services that power the 21st-century economy. With a share of final demand for imports of only 15 per cent, America does not dominate global trade the way it does global finance or military spending. Even if it halted imports entirely, on current trends, 100 of its trading partners would have recovered all their lost exports within just five years, calculates Global Trade Alert, a think-tank. The EU, the 12 members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), South Korea and small open economies such as Norway account for 34 per cent of global demand for imports.

Should this effort include China? Many in the West think that China’s state-owned enterprises violate the spirit of global trading rules, and they have in the past used exports to soak up surplus capacity. Those worries will worsen if more Chinese goods are redirected away from America. Building a trading system with China is desirable, but will be viable only if it rebalances its economy towards domestic demand to ease worries about dumping. Also, China could be required to transfer technology and invest in production in Europe in exchange for lower tariffs. The EU should centralise its investment rules so that it can strike deals covering foreign direct investments and it should overcome its aversion to big trade pacts and sign up to the CPTPP, which has ways of resolving some disputes.

The madness of King Donald

If this seems gruelling and slow, that is because integration always is. Throwing up barriers is easier and faster. There is no avoiding the havoc Trump has wrought, but that does not mean his foolishness is destined to triumph.

©2025 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved

[admin]

Europe prepares countermeasures to Trump’s tariffs, calling them a ‘major blow to the world economy’
by Lex Harvey, CNN
Updated 2:41 AM EDT, Thu April 3, 2025
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/03/business ... index.html

The European Union is preparing countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s announcement of 20% tariffs on imports from the bloc, which it called a “major blow to the world economy.”

The EU is a major US trading partner. Last year, it was the largest single market for US goods exports, ahead of America’s neighbors Canada and Mexico, based on figures from the United States Census Bureau.

“President Trump’s announcement of universal tariffs on the whole world including the European Union is a major blow to the world economy. I deeply regret this choice,” Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Union’s executive arm, said on Thursday, adding the tariffs will be felt “immediately.”

Trump on Wednesday launched a historic global trade war, announcing sweeping global tariffs on dozens of nations, from Nicaragua to Cambodia. The tariffs come on top of previously imposed taxes on imports of steel, aluminum and cars.

“Let’s be clear-eyed about the immense consequences. The global economy will massively suffer. Uncertainty will spiral and trigger the rise of further protectionism,” von der Leyen said in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where she is attending the EU-Central Asia Summit.

“All businesses, big and small, will suffer from day 1, from big uncertainty to the disruption of supply chains, to burdensome bureaucracy. The costs of doing business with the United States will drastically increase,” she said.

While the European Union would prefer to work with the US to reduce trade barriers, von der Leyen said “Europe is ready to respond.”

“We are already finalizing the first package of countermeasures in response to tariffs on steel, and we are now preparing for further countermeasures to protect our interests and our businesses if negotiations fail,” she added.

Last month, the EU responded to Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs by unveiling countermeasures on up to 26 billion euros ($28 billion) worth of exports of American goods, including tariffs on boats, bourbon and motorbikes.

Both Europe and the US have a lot at stake in the escalating trade dispute. In 2024, America was the biggest buyer of European goods, with imports ranging from pharmaceutical products and cars to alcoholic drinks and telecommunications equipment, according to official EU data. The EU, meanwhile, was America’s biggest source of goods imports last year, the US figures showed.

“In the past 80 years trade between the European Union and the United States has created millions of jobs,” von der Leyen said on Thursday. “Consumers across the Atlantic have benefitted from reduced prices. Businesses have benefitted from huge opportunities, leading to unprecedented growth and prosperity.”

Still, she said the global trading system has “serious deficiencies.”

“I agree with President Trump that others are taking unfair advantage of the current rules and I am ready to support any efforts to make the global trading system fit for the realities of the global economy,” von der Leyen said. “Reaching for tariffs as your first and last tool will not fix it.”

She stressed that the European Union is ready to negotiate with the US, but Europe must stand up for itself.

“I know that many of you feel let down by our oldest ally. Yes, we must brace for the impact that this will inevitably have. Europe has everything it needs to make it through the storm. We are in this together. If you take on one of us, you take on all of us.”

CNN’s Olesya Dmitracova contributed reporting.

[admin]

Judge Tells Trump Administration: "This Was An Illegal Act"
by Glenn Kirschner
Apr 4 2025

A federal judge just ordered the Trump administration to return Kilmar Arbrego Garcia to the United States after they unlawfully and unconstitutionally deported him to El Salvador.

Judge Paula Xinis issued an order that Garcia must be returned to the US by 11:59 pm on April 7.



Transcript

This was an illegal act..."

a federal court judge just told
the Trump
administration. "Let's talk about that
because justice matters
[Music]
Hey all Glenn Kirschner here So friends the
Trump administration's crime spree
continues but it's being called out by
judge after judge after judge Today's
Trump travesty Well you may recall that
ICE agents seized a young man named Arbo
Garcia without a warrant without any
lawful or constitutional basis to grab
him to seize him to arrest him to detain
him they took him and they stuffed him
on a plane and they sent him to a prison
in El Salvador the very country from
which he fled gang violence
On top of it all Arbrego Garcia had a
court order prohibiting the US
government from deporting him to El
Salvador Well friends today a federal
court judge just ordered the Trump
administration to return Garcia to the
United States
pronto Let's start with the new
reporting This from
NPR headline judge orders the Trump
administration to return man who was
mistakenly
deported And that article begins "A
federal judge in Maryland Friday ordered
the Trump administration to take
immediate steps to return a Maryland man
who was deported to a Salvadoran mega
prison by mistake setting up another
highstakes clash between the White House
and the courts." This from the judge
quote "This was an illegal act." US
Federal District Judge Paula Sheen told
Justice Department lawyers at a federal
court hearing in Green Belt Maryland
about the deportation of Kilmar Arbrego
Garcia who lived in the US legally and
had a work permit Arrego Garcia was
arrested and deported last month despite
having been granted protection by an
immigration judge in 2019 that should
have prevented him from being deported
to El
Salvador Judge Shenez ordered the
government to return Arbrego Garcia to
the US by 11:59 p.m on Monday April 7th
She said keeping him in El Salvador
constitutes irreparable harm quote "From
the moment he was seized it was
unconstitutional." Judge Sheenez said
during the hearing Quote "If there isn't
a document a warrant a statement of
probable cause then there is no basis to
have seized him in the first place
That's how I'm looking at it." The judge
said the Justice Department admits that
Arbrego Garcia was deported because of
an administrative error but DOJ lawyers
argued in court papers that he's a
member of the criminal gang
MS-13 and that the judge lacks authority
to order his return since Arbrego Garcia
is no longer in the US
Garcia's lawyers told the court that's
nonsense and said the Department of
Homeland Security should bring Arbgo
Garcia back from El Salvador immediately
Quote "They're coming before this court
and saying "We've tried nothing and
we're all out of options," said Simon
Sandival Mashenberg one of Arbrego
Garcia's lawyers
Arbrego Garcia had been living in
Maryland with his wife and children all
US citizens when he was arrested by ICE
officers last month Quote "In a blink of
an eye our three children lost their
father and I lost the love of my life
His mother lost his son His siblings
lost their brother said "Jennifer
Vasquez Arbrego Garcia's wife at a press
conference earlier Friday in Maryland."
Quote "Our entire family is broken by
ISIS's error," she said and described
Arbrego Garcia as a dedicated father and
great husband who pushes everyone around
to find their happiness even in tough
times
But friends despite a total lack of
evidence these third rate DOJ lawyers
kept suggesting to Judge Sheinus that
well Arbrego Garcia was a a dangerous
gang
member Here's how the judge responded to
that evidence-free argument Quote
"That's just chatter in my view I
haven't been given any evidence." Judge
Sheen said "In a court of law when
someone is accused of membership in such
a violent and predatory
organization it comes in the form of an
indictment a complaint a criminal
proceeding that then has robust process
so we can assess facts
I mean the nerve of that judge wanting
actual facts actual evidence supporting
the claims of the DOJ lawyers that you
know this Garcia guy is dangerous He's a
gang member Just take our word for
it You know you may have heard the
saying before that when lawyers have the
facts on their side they pound on the
facts When they have the law on their
side they pound on the law When they
have neither on their side they just
pound on the table make a lot of noise a
lot of bluff bluster use it all as a
distraction And the DOJ lawyers have
neither the facts supporting their
claims on their side And they sure don't
have the law on their side because it is
beyond argument beyond dispute that they
snatched up Mr Garcia with no lawful
basis to do it and they deported him in
what is an absolutely
unconstitutional manner They have
neither the facts nor the law on their
side So all they can do is sort of
meekly pound on the table You know
friends once we move through the Trump
induced darkness and back into the light
when government officials and DOJ
attorneys are once again loyal to the
rule of law and the Constitution and the
oath they took I mean their
responsibility is to represent the
interests of the American
people not to represent the interests of
the man in the Oval office who is
obviously on a damn crime spree acting
lawlessly and
unconstitutionally And judges are
telling him so They are ruling that so
much of what he's doing is lawless and
unconstitutional And yet these DOJ
lawyers go in and argue in favor of that
unconstitutionality They prop up his
lawlessness I was a federal prosecutor
for 30 years My job my responsibility my
oath was the exact opposite of that I
didn't pledge loyalty to the man in the
Oval Office I pledged loyalty to the
Constitution I upheld the rule of law
and the rights of all the American
people I argued in favor of the
interests of the American people not
against the interests of the American
people But that's what these DOJ lawyers
are doing
And when we move back into the light of
lawfulness and
constitutionality these lawyers will
have to be held accountable for what
they
did because
justice
matters Friends as always please stay
safe please stay tuned and I look
forward to talking with you all again
tomorrow
[Music]

***********

Trump ORDERED to IMMEDIATELY COMPLY by Federal Judge
by Michael Popok
MeidasTouch
Apr 4 2025

In breaking news, a Judge has charged that the Trump Administration has committed an “illegal” act and ordered that they immediately obtain the return BY MONDAY from an El Salvadoran prison of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident married to a US citizen who was under an order of protection by a US Immigration judge since 2019 to prevent him being sent to El Salvador. Michael Popok explains that this is the second judge today who charged the Trump Administration with violating an order and why the public is so outraged by his being deported without due process, as the Trump Administration callously calls his likely torture and death in prison an “administrative error.”



Transcript

In fact the Trump administration
admitted in court that they knew they
had illegally deported somebody who was
under an asylum order a Maryland
resident married to a US citizen with a
baby and it was just a big oops that
pissed off Judge Paula Zenis and she
ordered from the bench followed by a
written order that we will get our hands
on just now she ordered that the US take
all steps necessary to get back into
their custody get out of El Salvador and
bring back before her into the United
States by Monday Kilmer Armando Abrego
Garcia mr abrego Garcia this is where
the public outrage comes from was a
Maryland resident who had been under an
asylum order since 2019 and the and the
Trump administration just callously and
cavalerely admitted in their own court
filing that they knew and that ICE knew
that he was under an order to remain in
the country and it was administrative
oops and they also tried to lie to the
judge that they had no power to get him
back and that lack of power to get him
back denied her jurisdiction judge
Zinnus wasn't having any of it i'm going
to cover it right here on the Midas
Touch Network and Legal AF i hope my my
heat here matches the public um
rejection of the Trump administration's
depravity the fact that they thought
they would just sit in a room with a
computer and tap out a paper and just
admit that they sent a person to certain
death in El Salvador and there's nothing
a federal judge can do about it well
Judge Zenna had something else to say
about that in her in her order from the
bench stop paying for his housing in El
Salvador it's already been on public
record that the US government is paying
El Salvador and it's President Blly $6
million she said "Stop paying for his
housing and make all political and other
diplomatic phone calls that you need to
do to get him back from El Salvador."
They claimed in their filing the Trump
administration you don't have the
jurisdiction judge you don't have the
power to do that you can only do it by
what's called a writ of habius corpus
and you can't use a rid of habius corpus
because the body of the habius part is
in El Salvador this stands in stark
contrast to talk about speaking out of
both sides of their mouth which is why
they're going to have problems at the
United States Supreme Court they all
they said and they bragged about in
other filings against for instance Judge
Boseberg who's who uh uh well I'm going
to talk about in a separate hottake
about his use his blocking of the Alien
Enemies Act being used by Donald Trump
as a war power they said 'Well you're
interfering with foreign relations you
know uh these very delicately negotiated
agreements between the El Salvadorian
government and the US government look
but Kelly is a fanboy of Trump and vice
versa you just said in another court
filing in another court appearance I
guess thinking nobody would know about
it that you have very close
relationships and you've negotiated a
contract an agreement with El Salvador
will call on the agreement does anybody
think if Trump didn't pick up the phone
right now as he's been effectively
ordered to do and call Boke Kelly the
dictator of El Salvador that that
person's not going to be returned i
think it's a two-step phone call what's
the uh uh what's the check-in number
inmate number for Bgo Garcia 16489 okay
hey Belly Trump here get 16489 out we
need a Monday morning in front of a
federal judge in Maryland that's how
simple this is going to be but instead
the Trump administration and its lawyers
are just on their computers oh it's just
it's habious corpus juristprudence no
it's a human life and it's a violation
as the judge said from the bench today
you committed an illegal act trump
administration you deported somebody who
you knew not should have known you knew
was subject to an order of a federal
judge an immigration judge to remain in
this country on an asylum application
and you made a quote administrative
error you get him back you get them back
here's what the Trump administration
said in their filing to try to oppose
this and now you'll see why Judge Zenis
was so hot and bothered they admit on
page three of their brief three pages in
they got to confess the obvious that we
all know on March 15th although ICE was
aware of his protection from removal to
El Salvador Abrego Garcia was removed to
El Salvador because of an administrative
error on March 16th there was a news
article the wife a US citizen of
Maryland saw a photo of him they say
"Well she only recognizes because of his
tattoos and his headscarves." Who cares
tattoos at
headscarves what I care about is um I'm
sure she recognized her husband so they
had to admit that and then they go on to
say that you judge don't have the power
to tell us to stop funding and to order
us to take him out of a country where
you don't have jurisdiction except
that's the catch 22 right they don't
have jurisdiction the judge so the story
goes because they took him out and sent
him to Al Salvador she's not buying it
she's buying that she has as a judge she
has admin she has inherent authority to
order for the return in order to do
justice so after they get done with it
sounds in in habius my other uh least
favorite part of their brief is when
they say um that there's no irreparable
harm this is on page 13 this is what the
federal government says instead of
writing all of this and getting into the
esoteric world of habius corpus
petitions and proper venue how about you
use a human dimension and go get the guy
out how about that you have the power to
do it i think that's where the judge
came in this is what they said instead
instead of moving fast to get a Brago
Garcia back they said um there they only
point to two irreparable harms you only
need one that he he's separated from his
family and get this one the alleged risk
that Abrago Garcia will be tortured or
killed in El Salvador the alleged risk
have you seen the statistics trump
administration the judge has more than
300 people have died in El Salvador in
jails in the last year and a half alone
from quote unquote natural causes you
ever see these people in a jail they
look like they're strong as bull they're
short they're shirtless they work out
all day people believe that they died of
natural causes unless you believe a
beating and torturing is natural cause
and all of the other other evidence that
has been recited including in Judge
Booseberg's filings as a judge down in
DC about that listen to this they kill
the prisoner and then they take his
rotting corpse and put it in a prison
cell with live prisoners okay as another
means of torture they say "Well it's
it's all speculation." No it's the
threat that he could be killed in the
jail especially now that he's been
branded a member of MS-13 the gang and
of course they ignore all of
that they say uh on page 14 plaintiffs
have not clearly shown a likelihood that
Abrego Garcia will be tortured or killed
i mean even a slim chance is enough for
me plaintiffs point to little evidence
about conditions in the in this
particular prison pointing to other
Salvadorian prisons so it's an admission
there are other killer prisons but
they're not all killer prisons well we
don't really know about this one yet
it's brand new while there may be
allegations of abuses in other
Salvadorian prisons of very few in
relation to the large number of
detainees how many die in our jails 300
in a month there is no clear showing
that Alrego Garcia himself is likely to
be tortured or killed in Secott i'd like
to send the lawyer that wrote that to
Secot if you know what I mean so the
judge wasn't happy we got a bunch of
judges not happy today um Judge Boseberg
wasn't happy um he's he is going to rule
based on his findings today that the
Trump administration also violated and
committed another illegal act by se
right by continuing to ship people to El
Salvador when he ordered them to ground
the plates that came up at a hearing
today so you got a pissed-off uh judge
Boseberg who's about to issue a contempt
sanction against the Trump
administration and now you've got
joining that is Judge Sinnus in Maryland
i'll continue to follow it all right
here at the intersection of law and
politics one place well two Meidas Touch
Network and the Legal AF YouTube channel

[admin]

Federal judge finally LOSES ALL PATIENCE with Trump
by Brian Tyler Cohen
Apr. 4, 2025

Legal Breakdown episode 500:
‪@GlennKirschner2‬ discusses Judge Boasberg losing his patience with the DOJ.



Transcript

You're watching the legal breakdown
Glenn All Eyes in this country are on
one judge in particular that's Judge
bosberg who's presiding over this case
regarding uh Trump illegally deporting
these accused gang members who we now
know weren't all gang members but we
have folks who were actually legal
residents uh who had done nothing wrong
that were part of that batch he was in
court with the Trump Administration
today and it seems that we have finally
reached the point uh where judge bosberg
has lost his patience with the Trump
Administration can you explain what just
happened yeah Brian Judge James bosberg
has had about enough of the BS from the
doj lawyers and contempt is now on the
table expressly he has asked them okay
who is it that is responsible for
violating my court orders to turn the
planes around and bring these Venezuelan
immigrants back to the US immigrants who
had their due process rights violated
clearly plainly in arguably they had no
notice and no opportunity to be heard
before the Trump Administration stuffed
them on a plane and sent them to a
prison in El Salvador judge bosberg
wants to know who was responsible and he
is going to then move on to contempt
proceedings but let me just read a
couple of choice comments by judge
bosberg as reported out by political
Kyle Cheney who was watching the
proceedings in court he said that he
believes the Trump Administration quote
acted in bad faith on the day they
deported the Venezuelan immigrants and
he said to the doj lawyer if you really
believed that everything you the Trump
Administration did that day was legal
and would have survived a court
challenge you would not have operated
the way you did and that's just for
openers one of the things that he did
because judge bosberg is an expert
tactician I know because he was my trial
partner I tried with him and I also
supervised him when he was a federal
homicide prosecutor is he cross-examined
the doj lawyer an attorney named Drew
ensen and the judge specifically
cross-examined him to expose the lies
that Donald Trump has told about what
judge bosberg did in this case
previously so here's what he did bosberg
started the hearing by ticking through a
series of Undisputed facts that
contradict what Donald Trump has has
been saying for instance he said my trro
my temporary restraining order did not
order any gang member to be released
from custody correct and the attorney
had to acknowledge correct my trro did
not prevent the government the Trump
Administration from apprehending any
gang member correct and the doj lawyer
had to agree that was correct and he
said the T my trro did not bar the Trump
Administration from deporting any gang
member through other wellestablished
processes correct correct and it's a
beautiful thing Brian when the doj
lawyers are the ones who put the lie to
what Donald Trump has been telling the
American people judge bosberg knows his
way around this judicial thing Glen you
had mentioned that judge bosberg is
going to get to the point where he's
going to consider contempt charges is
that a certainty right now or is there
some indication that you have by virtue
of how he's spoken that suggests that he
may move in that direction so judge
bosberg is always very careful when he
chooses his words he's thoughtful he's
circumspect he does things incrementally
to make sure he has evidentiary support
for each move he is contemplating taking
so what he said today was um I am not
buying your I'm paraphrasing here based
on the reporting I'm not buying your
explanations in fact he called some of
them quote sketchy close quote
um he said so if I find there's probable
cause that my orders were violated by
the Trump Administration I need to know
from you who is it that failed to comply
with my orders for instance he said I
need to know which Trump Administration
officials failed to notify the pilots of
the planes in the event the planes were
in the air that's still an open question
some of the planes it sounds like hadn't
even taken off yet which is a more
egregious violation of his orders not to
deport anyone but he said I need to know
from you exactly which officials are
responsible assuming I find that my
orders were violated again he's doing
things incrementally thoughtfully he
wants evidentiary support for each step
he takes but you know I can't say it's a
certainty because he didn't declare it
was a certainty but based on everything
else he said and how he drilled down on
all of the facts and the BS explanations
that the doj lawyers were providing I
mean he shot them down one after another
after another including the state
Secrets nonsense that we can't even tell
you what time the plane took off because
it was a state secret let me tell you
how he addressed that Brian he said um
any of the information about when the
planes took off and when they landed and
who was on the planes is any of it
classified information the doj lawyers
had to conceive
none of it is classified judge so what
did he say next he said well then there
is no case law there is no legal
Authority there is no precedent that you
can invoke the state Secrets Doctrine
for information that is not classified
I'm telling you it's such a beautiful
thing because the judge was playing
chess and the doj attorneys were like
rummaging around in their game closet
looking for a checker board to pull out
they weren't even on the playing field
so I can't say it's a certainty that's a
very long runup to this definitive
answer but I'll tell you everything
judge bosberg has said and done makes me
think that you know next stop is
contempt Glenn I I have to ask what does
it look like when a judge brings a
contempt charge against government
officials I mean are we going to expect
them to have to abide by anything that's
handed down by this judge yeah so here's
the thing Brian the only time a judge
has the ability the lawful ability to
get an independent prosecutor and direct
that person to prosecute a criminal
charge is when it's contempt of court
that's the one and only time an
independent prosecutor is available to a
judge to be appointed to move forward in
a criminal case so assuming he goes to
criminal contempt and not just civil
contempt civil contempt is generally
money fines that are put in place to try
to urge the administration the
government officials to do the right
thing that horse has left the barn and
those immigrants have left the country
so so I suspect we're going to hear more
about criminal contempt so let's talk
about what that looks like so I think
this probably qualifies as irony Brian
because those Venezuelan immigrants who
had a constitutional right to do process
meaning they had a right of notice that
the government was going to act against
them and an opportunity to be heard in
court and present evidence as to why the
government shouldn't be lawfully allowed
to act against them they were deprived
of those constitutionally guaranteed do
process rights but guess what the Trump
Administration officials who are
responsible for violating the Court's
orders they're going to enjoy their
constitutional rights of notice and
opportunity to be heard and let's refer
back to when Donald Trump was held in
contempt 10 times over in the New York
state court trial by judge Maran what
did he do he gave Donald Trump and his
lawyers an opportunity uh of notice that
this is going to happen an opportunity
to be heard make whatever arguments you
want to make and then he held him in
contempt of court 10 flipping times and
fined him that was civil contempt not
criminal contempt but it's the same
process that these Trump doj officials
will go through they'll have notice
they'll have opportunity to be heard and
it's kind of a summary proceeding But
ultimately the court can conclude that
they are in contempt they intentionally
violated court orders and then the
question is what is the sanction and
Brian it can absolutely include
confinement a term in jail now here is
the thing that I would love to see
happen but I certainly can't tell our
viewers it will happen you know if you
order that the Trump Administration
officials who are responsible for
violating the court order and by
extension violating the constitutional
rights of these Venezuelan immigrants if
you sentence them to a period in jail
however you figuratively give them the
keys to the cell and say you can Purge
the contempt you can unlock your own
cell door all you have to do is arrange
to have the Trump Administration return
the people who were
unconstitutionally deported contempt
sentence complete I don't know that that
will happen there are lots of potential
procedural impediments to that I just
want to throw it out as kind of the most
potentially aggressive stance stance
that a judge could take to try to urge a
lawless Administration to come in
compliance with the law not to throw
cold water onto that but didn't the
Supreme Court give Trump the keys to be
able to paron anybody who was federally
charged with uh with with a crime and so
he Trump can you know Trump has cart
blanch to basically say anybody who does
something uh who who incurs any charges
I can just go ahead and pardon them and
and my power to do so is unlimited yeah
so we're going back to the absolute
immunity ruling by the Supreme Court
which was horrific and frankly
unconstitutional because it contradicts
the very language of the Constitution
but you're exactly right so let's play
that out let's assume that the courts
are prepared to extend the pardon power
even to a president who wants to Pardon
somebody for intentionally violating
court orders because ultimately they
didn't want to comply with the court
orders because they wanted to violate
the constitutional rights of others
there's kind of constitutional insult at
to constitutional injury there right
let's assume that courts will say you
know what it's all kind of it all falls
under the umbrella of absolute immunity
we're not going to say that there's
anything wrong or unconstitutional about
it though the Supreme Court ultimately
might they might carve out a niche they
have the power and the authority to do
it for the pardon power not being able
to be used to excuse or wipe the Slate
clean when people are violating court
orders and Frank the Supreme Court
actually has an Institutional interest
in making sure that judicial court
orders are complied with and if there's
not there's a sanction but here's the
other thing Brian this issue could
actually bubble up to the Supreme Court
if Donald Trump DS to Pardon a whole
bunch of guilty Administration officials
who defied court orders that could could
Inspire the Supreme Court to revisit the
presidential immunity ruling
acknowledging that they kind of see the
Franken Ste monster of a president they
have created it would give them a
perfect legal vehicle to revisit the
wisdom of that ill-advised ruling I'm
not saying they will but boy they
certainly could and if they're ever
going to do it that would be the perfect
moment to do it well look this is as I
mentioned in the beginning the case that
all eyes are on across the country right
now so we will continue to keep an eye
on Judge bosberg and what happens as it
relates to his interaction hostile
interaction with the do o j so for those
who are watching right now if you want
to follow along please make sure to
subscribe that's also the best way to
support our work and Independent Media
more broadly I'm Brian teller Cohen and
I'm Glenn kirschner you're watching the
legal breakdown
[Music]

[admin]

Trump’s DISASTER DAY gets WORSE as GOP Backs AWAY
by Michael Popok
Legal AF
Apr. 4, 2025

Trump just caused overnight the "Dumbest Recession Ever' wiping out 2 Trillion in corporate value and our stock and investments along with it, as he has made a recession and hyper inflation a near certainty as a result of his 1930's style tariff hikes on 70+ nations. Trump's reaction "things are going great" as he left for Golf Trip #10 on the tax payer dime, and even GOP supporters said the President was "selling deep stupid" and "we are all going to die" as a result. Popok reports.



Transcript

[Michael Popok] Well, when Donald Trump's staunchest
supporters, like Senator John Kennedy out
of Louisiana had this to say on Newsmax
in response to the bloodbath and
bloodletting that was Black Thursday, and
is Black Thursday, to kick off a
worldwide and US-based recession,
possible depression, when he commented on
Newsmax, a friendly media outlet, that in
the long run we're all dead. And also
commenting on supporters of Donald Trump
who believe they understand where this
tariff war is going, and that it's going
into the positive, he said "Then they are
selling deep stupid." I could not have
put it any better than that Republican
senator.

I'm Michael Popok. You're on
Legal AF. We're not deep stupid. Let's get
to it.

I can't undersell, I can't
underscore how terrible and
cataclysmic today was from a wipeout of
value, wealth, spinning us and hurtling
us towards a self-created recession,
depression, and hyperinflation period. I
can't undersell it. In fact, there are
reports on Wall Street that Wall Street
didn't overreact today -- wait till you
hear the numbers -- they underreacted, and
that they will continue to
compound into stock prices a
belief that these tariffs, these taxes on
the American consumer that Donald Trump
just imposed worldwide, a 23% drag on the
worldwide economy, that they will
continue to use that to force America
effectively into a
recession. $2 trillion of value was wiped
out today by Donald Trump, plain and
simple. And his economic advisors,
including Howard Lutnick, the commerce
secretary, and Scott Bessant, the Treasury
Secretary. All the numbers I'm
about to give you are worse than we
thought coming off of last night, and
Europe, which of course is ahead
of us by five, six, seven hours, and the
futures, meaning what we thought today's
opening bell [would be] and throughout the day, it's
worse. And again, there's a belief that
Wall Street is underreacting to this.

Standard and Poor, as we thought, was
dropped by about 2 to 3%, down 5%. Dow
Jones' industrial average down 4%.
NASDAQ down 6%. Wait till I give you
particularly the stock drop and value
drop for people in Trump's own
administration, just to show you how deep
stupid, to quote Senator Kennedy,
this really is, and this is while Donald
Trump, by the way, talk about Nero playing
golf while Rome burned, Donald Trump went
to his 10th golf outing, costing the
American people about $35 million to
Doral Country Club in Miami today. Is
today the day you leave, and you
get on a plane and go play golf? Can you
imagine if a Democrat was in a sand
trap, playing golf, while America burned.
Donald Trump loves the stock market,
except when it's against him. He
commented, "Oh Biden's stock drop, and
Kamala Harris stock drop." Yeah,
this paled in comparison. No Democrat
wiped out $2 trillion worth of value
overnight based on a policy. This is
COVID-like impact on the economy.

Let me look at the individual stock prices for
those in Donald Trump's cabinet, his
brain trusts such as it is. Howard Lutnick
controls, through his family, two major
companies: BGC and Newmark -- BGC down 6%,
Newmark down 9%.

Linda McMahon, who's about to put the
Department of Education out of business,
she has something called TKO, which owns
World Wrestling Enterprises, that's down
5%.

Big Oil, which supported Donald
Trump to the tune of $200 million when
he was campaigning. Big Oil, and all of
its stock down 5%. Crude oil prices down
5%.

Wait till I get to the tech side.
Remember all those people, all those tech
bros, that supported Donald Trump, that
sat behind him in the family circle
during the inauguration, that paid off
Donald Trump in order to try to curry
favor with him, okay Apple down
9.25%. Meta Facebook down 9%. Amazon Jeff
Bezos down 9%. Tesla down 6%. It's down
about 30% since February,
and the rest.

Now let me show you the
quote from Newsmax of Senator John
Kennedy. Let's roll the quote.

[Sen. Kennedy] But in the
long run, we're all dead. The short
term matters as well. And the truth is
that we don't know what the impact will
be short-term on the American economy.
I've heard a bunch of economists over
the last month, some say that it will
cause the economy to grow exponentially.
Others say the tariffs will tank the
economy.

[Michael Popok] And then in contrast to that,
Donald Trump, rather than standing and
deliver, says that, on the way out of town to
go play golf again, that he thinks things
are going exceedingly well. Let's roll
that clip.

[Reporter] You ready for some questions?

[Donald Trump] Anybody want to buy one?
Okay, let's go.

[Reporter] First, we'd love to get your reaction, sir,
to what's going on in the financial
markets today.

[Donald Trump] Well, I mean, it's to be
expected. This is a patient that
was very sick. We inherited, we really
inherited a terrible economy, as you know,
with a lot of problems, including loss of
manufacturing, and plants closed up all
over the country. You know, we've lost
90,000 plants since NAFTA, if you think about it.
90,000. It's not even believable.
And about 6 million jobs. And so it's a
sick, it was a sick patient. It went
through an operation on Liberation Day.
And it's going to be, it's going to be
a booming country, a very booming country.
It's going to be amazing actually. And we
see it because we have trillions of
dollars committed to come in. Trillions.

[Michael Popok] All right. Enough of the clips. Let's get
down to what just happened, all right?

Donald Trump said the economy is going
to boom. The only thing that went boom is
our savings, our 401ks, our check-to-check
ability to live. When you put a
23% drag on the world economy at the
exact same time, which is what the
average is, with China over 54%, and other
tech friendly nations to this country at
between 20 and 40%, including Israel,
when you do that, what did you think was
going to happen?

Let me just give you an
idea just from some individual stocks.
Again, I'm not a stock picker. I'm not,
you know, I'm not a drunken kitty, or
whatever it is.
But listen to these numbers. Best Buy,
you know Best Buy?, they rely on products
all over the world to sell, their stock
is down 18%. Nike down
14%. Target down 11%. United Airlines down
16%. You see where this is going? And it's
not in a good direction.

And now, in addition to it, as I
did a prior hot-take, Wall Street figured
out that the formula that was used to
set the tariff was fugazi. That's a legal
term. It means fakakta. Another legal term.
It means all screwed up. All they did,
as we suspected, look looking at the
numbers, was take the trade
surplus, or
the delta, and divide it by the amount of
of trade between the two countries.
That's not how you come up with a
proper tariff! And Donald Trump's hopes
and dreams of having American jobs
returned to America through a tariff
policy, that's years in the making. He
won't live to see that result even if it
were true. You know the Democrats got a
lot of grief under Obama for focusing so
heavily on Obamacare, the Affordable Care
Act, to the exclusion of really all other
accomplishments or policies during the
first four years. It was such a
heavy lift in the first two years that
they really didn't accomplish much after
that, you know, in terms of policies, and
they took a lot of grief for that? Well,
what do you think is happening with the
Republicans? They just put all of our
eggs in their tariff basket, and now
you're watching it explode and
implode. They'll never get anything else
done. How can they be trusted with the
stewards of our money, you know? And what
were those Union members doing whooping
it up in the Rose Garden during this
announcement? I get it. They don't
understand how free and fair trade works,
and the value of it. Let me
explain it here.

Our major economic advantage that we
should be pressing in the world is our
ability, at our size and scale, to create
more goods and services, high value goods
and services, than any other country in
the world. And Donald Trump just
destroyed our competitive advantage.
Because in order to make the money, and
bring in the earnings for the companies,
on the Dow Jones and
the stock markets, they have to have
markets to sell it to. And America and
its 330 million people, many of whom have now been thrown
on the unemployment line by Donald Trump,
cutting international spending, cutting
spending and funding to the states, to
not for profits, cutting the
federal workforce, throwing them all on
the unemployment line all at the same
time? This 330 million people can't buy
all the products and services made by US
companies. They have to have
markets. Now they're already starting
retaliation already. I know Scott Bessant,
Treasury Secretary, and Howard Lutnick,
wagging their fingers, their little bony
fingers, "Don't you dare! We'll go up
higher!" Yeah? "Don't you dare We won't
trade with you at all."

And just to show you what that means, an
iPhone famously, as has been reported,
cannot be made in America. We don't have
the supply chain, and the products, and
the technology, to build an iPhone in
America. It comes from about 30 different
countries, you know? And so that
reality is up against a 1930s,
I mean I know he's older, but a 1930s
mentality, by Donald Trump and Peter
Navarro, these two 80-year-olds who are
making economic policy like they're
advising Herbert Hoover in the 1930s. Do you
know what happened with the
Smoot Holly Act back in the 1930s, which
was the last time we went this high with
tariffs, and we went America first? Yeah.
It shoved us down the seventh ring of
hell, and made the depression that was
already started, even worse, and stopped
worldwide trade by
70%. This is the role model? This is the
blueprint for Donald Trump, so he can
collect what? You know, $500 billion, and
tell everybody, "Look, I can cut taxes. I
just killed the international
economy, and the US economy along with it,
but everybody's getting $500
in their next tax return, their
next tax refund.

You know, it's
remarkable that um this guy got elected
It's remarkable that he put together
this cabinet of half-wit halfbaked too
smart by half people who think they're
doing some sort of tabletop exercise at
some executive summit some executive
retreat in the woods instead of what it
is Just admit you don't know what you're
doing Just admit Senator Kennedy is
right that you're selling deep
stupid Um we see it You don't you don't
have to tell us now How do we get out of
it how do we get out of it fortunately
there's at least a group of Senate
Republicans that are trying to oppose
Donald Trump on tariffs at least as it
relates to Canada and Mexico You know
there's a certain power that Donald
Trump is using to impose these tariffs
We're going to have to challenge that
power in the courts cuz it sounds
completely arbitrary and capricious and
it sounds like he has gone beyond and
needs to be checked and balanced by the
federal court system I am sure sometime
later this week early next week there's
going to be a lawsuit on an emergency
basis to get Donald Trump from stopping
him from imposing these tariffs.

And we'll continue to follow it right here
on Legal A. So until my next reporting,
you know where to go. Legal AF, the
podcast Wednesdays and Saturdays at 800
PM Eastern time on the Meidas Touch
Network. I co-founded it with Ben Meiselas.
I do the show with him on Saturdays on
Wednesdays with Karen Freidman Agnifilo. I
do about 14 hot takes, 15 hot takes a
week, at the Intersection of Law and
Politics, on the Meidas Touch Network.

*******************************

'We're All Dead': GOP Senator Reacts To Trump Tariffs. While he voted in favor Wednesday of Trump retaining the emergency powers he used to impose his Canada tariffs, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) has some concerns.
by Marco Margaritoff
HuffPost
Apr 3, 2025, 02:55 PM EDT
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/john-ken ... af721e0beb

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) wasn’t concerned enough about President Donald Trump’s steep international tariffs to vote against them Wednesday — like some of his GOP colleagues — but did scold staunch supporters of the policy with a dire warning to multiple outlets.

“In the long run, we’re all dead,” he told CNN’s Manu Raju on Capitol Hill for “The Lead with Jake Tapper” on Wednesday. “Short run matters, too. Nobody knows what the impact of these tariffs is going to be on the economy.”

Trump dubbed April 2 “Liberation Day” and announced a sweeping 10% baseline tariff on all imports to the U.S., with levies on dozens of countries set even higher. He repeated his false claim Wednesday that foreign nations, rather than Americans, will shoulder the costs.

Only four Republican senators Wednesday — Rand Paul (Ky.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Susan Collins (Maine) — joined Democrats in voting against the emergency powers Trump is using to impose a 25% tariff against Canada.

Kennedy did not, but reiterated his concerns in a Newsmax interview later that day.

“What the president is saying is, if you want to sell stuff to Americans, move your business to America and hire Americans and contribute to our economy, don’t just sell stuff,” he told anchor Rob Schmitt. “In the long run, he’s right. But in the long run, we’re all dead.”

The Louisiana senator added that he’s heard both favorable and disastrous assessments on the tariffs from economists in Washington, D.C., but said even “late-night psychic hotlines” are more accurate in their predictions — and slammed blind supporters of the policy.

We Don't Work For Billionaires. We Work For You.
Big money interests are running the government — and influencing the news you read. While other outlets are retreating behind paywalls and bending the knee to political pressure, HuffPost is proud to be unbought and unfiltered. Will you help us keep it that way? You can even access our stories ad-free.

“It may not [lead to inflation] this time,” Kennedy added. “Am I predicting that it will or won’t? No. I’m going to say it again. We’re in uncharted waters and we don’t know. And anybody who tries to tell you that they know what the short-term impact is going to be is just lying.”

“Either that or they’re selling deep stupid,” he concluded.

[admin]

An American ugliness: The US criminal system is a gulag of cruelty and poverty that crushes human beings
American ugliness
by Antonio Muñoz Molina
El Pais
APR 05, 2025 - 00:00 EDT
https://english.elpais.com/opinion/2025 ... iness.html

The sad truth about this new, crass and repressive face of the United States is that it’s not new at all.

Red Shirt March of Neo-Nazi Unity in Orlando, Florida on September 2, 2023. Stephanie Keith (Getty Images)

-- The American far right is emboldened by the return of Donald Trump: The Republican’s victory has been followed by a boost in the activity of neo-Nazis and white supremacists, although many do not consider themselves part of the Trumpist movement, by Nicholas Dale Leal, 11/26/24

It’s always been there, like the dark side of the Moon, even if no one sees it. It’s difficult to see because our gaze is blinded by the glitter of wealth and power, fueled by the overwhelming propaganda that rains down on us incessantly, at any hour of the day or night, in movies, on television, on street billboards, in the millions of mirages of social media.

Virtually all the most successful films and series are American, and they impose their insolent supremacy over distribution channels and consciences, which barely receive any other visual messages, any other fictions not governed by the same aesthetics and values. On the sides of bus stops, there’s almost always a poster for an American movie featuring a superhero with muscles decorated with stars and stripes, or a policeman brandishing a pistol, or a thug in a torn T-shirt armed with a futuristic machine gun. On television channels, including Spanish Television’s La 1, all the films shown at night are melodramas about well-off people living in grassy residential estates, or police or science fiction stories that have in common extreme visual effects and a permanent celebration of violence, cars, helicopters, firearms, all seasoned with robotic dubbing in which the poor Spanish language is twisted and disfigured until it becomes a pathetic carbon copy of English.

-- Today, it’s all about Spanglish, the ‘language’ posing a threat to Anglocentrism in the United States: The mix of Spanish and English is the world’s fastest growing linguistic hybrid. Experts calculate that it is spoken by 50 million people. By Paola Nagovitch, 6/2/24

At the beginning of his term, the evanescent Minister of Culture expressed his intention to decolonize Spanish museums. I would recommend that, while he is at it, he undertake a much more difficult decolonization, that of Spanish culture, life, and language. We admire and copy that other world, mimicking it as subjects of an imperial power, and in reality, we don’t even know what it’s like. We know what high schools are like with the flag in the classrooms and the lockers in the hallways, we know what family Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners are like, we know about the soldiers returning from war in custom-made uniforms, and cheerleaders on the sidelines of U.S. football stadiums.

Visitors in the room where the Parthenon marbles are displayed, in the British Museum, last December.
Mike Kemp (In Pictures via Getty Images)

-- Museums in Europe and the United States confront their colonial past: Many countries have begun to return pieces that were looted during periods of colonization. Experts are also researching the origins of stolen collections. Some parties, however, have resisted coming to agreements, by El Pais, 1/28/24

And since all of this seems to us a more attractive and an almost truer reality than our own, we cannot imagine to what extent it is all a grand stage set, a performance put on by people trained since childhood to interpret themselves and to avoid seeing what, for them, it is better not to see: on the one hand, the fragility or the pure lie of the fictions of enthusiasm and success that the vast majority reveres like a religion; and, on the other, the brutality and darkness that are only a step away from the luminous surfaces that prevail in American visual culture: worlds of hardship, misery, abandonment, of a social cruelty that is unimaginable for a European.

Simone Weil said that Hitler acted toward the invaded countries of Europe the same way that European powers acted in their colonial dominions. Travelers with Canadian and European Union passports now receive treatment at the U.S. border that resembles in some ways, though not entirely, the treatment suffered by immigrants from much poorer regions. Jasmine Mooney, a white professional with a Canadian passport, aroused the suspicions of one of those fearsome immigration officials who, upon arrival, examine you from head to toe as if your formal and frightened demeanor concealed a terrorist. After a brief interrogation, she was thrown into a tiny cell with five other women, and where the lights never went out. They took her belt and shoelaces, along with all her belongings. She was allowed to make a single phone call, but no one remembers numbers these days anymore. Blocked, terrified, she suddenly remembered the name of a friend and called her for help.

-- It wasn’t just terror: The Nazis won the cultural battle in a year: For the National Socialists, everything was political. All forms of culture — from theater and cinema to painting and literature — were turned into instruments of propaganda and antisemitism, by Book burning in Nazi Germany in 1933. Universal History Archive (Universal Images Group via Getty Images), Mar Padilla, 3/14/25

After three days in that cell, where she was given a mattress and a sheet of aluminum foil to cover herself, her fingerprints were taken, she was handcuffed and chained, she was dressed in an orange prison uniform, and taken to another cell where she was alone and had no mattress or anything to cover herself with, just the icy cement floor and a toilet without a lid. At no point did she learn what she was accused of, nor did she have access to a lawyer. Soon after, handcuffed and shackled at the waist and feet, she was taken on a multi-hour bus ride to a prison in Arizona where hundreds of women were locked up without trial, conviction, legal representation, or hope of escape. She was luckier and was released after a few weeks. After all, she was Canadian, white, and had a passport.

Jasmine Mooney recounted her captivity in a harrowing article in The Guardian. The prison where she was held belongs to one of those private companies that are contractors of the federal government: just as social services and nursing homes are “outsourced” in Spain, the same is done in the U.S. with prisons, which is a huge incentive to detain more people and keep them locked up longer — poor, foreign, and undocumented people, too, who are not going to be able to afford lawyers or report the abuses they suffer.

Jasmine Mooney back in Vancouver, Canada, after her detention in Ice facilities for two weeks. In front of her are letters other women gave her to pass along to their families. Photograph: Jasmine Mooney

-- I’m the Canadian who was detained by Ice for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped: I was stuck in a freezing cell without explanation despite eventually having lawyers and media attention. Yet, compared with others, I was lucky, by Jasmine Mooney, 3/19/25

-- Private prisons in US stand to cash in from Trump’s mass deportation plan: Shares in GEO Group and CoreCivic, the two largest publicly traded US prison groups, are rising sharply on the prospect of an increase in the penitentiary population and the number of migrants detained under the Republican administration, by Alvaro Sanchez, 12/1/24

The judicial and prison systems are the darkest part of the great darkness of the United States, where a vengeful idea of punishment inherited from the Old Testament prevails, an “eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” that has long since disappeared from the civilized world, and which, of course, preys on Black people, the poor, and the mentally ill. It is a ferocity that is now being crudely displayed in these times of Trump, but which long predates them, and has been maintained through both Democratic and Republican administrations, due to a coldness that seems almost universal, but which in the case of the Democrats is accentuated by the fear of being accused of weakness in the face of crime, of being what Americans call “soft on crime.”

A view of the crime scene a day after a shooting at a teenager's birthday party in a dance studio, in Dadeville, Alabama, U.S., April 16, 2023.
CHENEY ORR (Reuters)

-- The politicization of violent crime in the US ignores the numbers: According to a new study, the rate of crimes such as homicide, armed robbery and rape have declined across the country — contrary to public perception. But this fact is unlikely to impact debate on the issue, which is one of the top concerns for voters, by Nicholas Dale Leal, 8/17/24

Very close to the glitter and vitality of Manhattan, on Rikers Island, thousands of pretrial detainees live in inhumane conditions, defenseless against the violence of guards, police and the more aggressive inmates. They live in suffocating cells invaded by lice, roaches and rats, feeding on filth. A murderer can end up on Rikers Island just as much as any one of those poor, deranged people who haunt the subway stations, without family, without shelter, without treatment for their psychotic delusions. The American criminal system is a gulag of cruelty and poverty that crushes human beings, one from which many never emerge, or emerge in a cheap coffin after being executed. There is no rehabilitation: for an ex-convict, it is very difficult to find a job or a place to live.

The ruthlessness of this biblical condemnation is complemented by an implacable idea of personal responsibility. “He made the wrong choices,” is said of a criminal, whether suspected or confirmed. It’s his problem. Except for a few reporters and activists, including those few people who demonstrate in the freezing cold in the early morning hours in front of the prison where an execution is about to take place, no one raises their voice against this monstrous system of injustice and revenge. Trump and his followers did not emerge from nowhere.

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