Sanhedrin (94b) What did Hezekiah do to ensure Torah study? He inserted a sword at the entrance of the study hall and said: Anyone who does not engage in Torah study shall be stabbed with this sword. As a result, they searched from Dan in the north to Beersheba in the south, and did not find an ignoramus. They searched from Gevat to Antipatris and did not find a male child, or a female child, or a man, or a woman who was not expert even in the complex halakhot of ritual purity and impurity.
Friday, April 4, 2025
The Real Story of the Maryland Father Deported to El Salvador By Mistake
The U.S. government has long-argued that Abrego Garcia resident has ties to MS-13, a criminal gang that began in immigrant communities in Los Angeles with ties to Central and South American countries. His attorneys argue he doesn't have a criminal history and has never been charged with a crime in the U.S., El Salvador, or anywhere else.
Abrego Garcia was denied bond because officials argued there was sufficient evidence to show he was "a verified member" of MS-13, meaning he was a danger to the community.
His attorneys claimed, and ICE later confirmed, that the only verification came from a form filled out by the Prince George County Police Department, which based his membership on the fact that "he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie; and that a confidential informant advised that he was an active member of MS-13 with the Westerns clique" – a group based out of Long Island, New York.
"It was so clear that they had absolutely no evidence that Kilmar was ever a gang member, yet they made us prove he was not one," Vasquez Sura wrote on March 24, 2019, during his immigration hearing.
Trump’s self-inflicted tariff crisis sparks confusion, chaos and questions of competence
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/03/politics/trump-tariffs-chaos-competence/index.html
“I think it’s going very well,” Trump told reporters Thursday, in the aftermath of his “Liberation Day” announcement the day before.
“It was an operation like when a patient gets operated on and it’s a big thing,” Trump said. “We’ve never seen anything like it. The markets are going to boom. The stock is going to boom. The country is going to boom.”
The conflicting messages and sense of drift posed fundamental questions of whether a presidential inner circle that critics have long said is delusional about the impact of a tariff war also has the competence to navigate out of the crisis.
“They know nothing,” veteran Wall Street trader Peter Tuchman told CNN’s Erin Burnett.
“The formula they used … it’s like apples, oranges, a couple of cashews divided by 10 times four.” He added: “None of it makes any sense and billions and trillions of dollars are being wiped out of the market on a day-to-day basis.
“It was nothing but blood on the streets.”
Wall Street traders may no longer trust Trump, but it will take more than a stock market slump to shatter the rare bond that the president enjoys with his base.
Past presidents have irrevocably severed trust with the public when they insisted on a reality that voters could perceive was false. This includes Lyndon Johnson’s insistence on expanding a war he was losing in Vietnam, George W. Bush’s denial when victory in Iraq degenerated into an insurgency and Joe Biden’s insistence that the chaotic exit from Afghanistan was a success.
Judging by their remarks on Thursday, Trump and Vance risk going down a similar road even as their situation promises to get worse.
Lutnick to plunging markets: Let Trump run the global economy
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said President Trump should run the global economy as markets plummet due to the onset of Wednesday’s tariff announcement for a range of nations.
“Let Donald Trump run the global economy. He knows what he’s doing. He’s been talking about it for 35 years,” Lutnick said during a Thursday morning CNN appearance.
“You got to trust Donald Trump in the White House.”
His words came hours after the Nasdaq composite, Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 index all opened with significant losses.
Trump Responds To Market Turmoil Over Tariffs: 'Going Very Well' - Alternative Reality or Idiocy?
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-responds-market-turmoil-tariffs-2055053
By Thursday afternoon, Wall Street was on track for its worst day since 2022. As of 2:30 p.m. ET, the S&P 500 index had fallen 4.3 percent, while the Nasdaq had tumbled more than 5 percent.
Asian and European markets also fell sharply as economists, analysts and investors sounded the alarm about the potentially devastating impact Trump's tariffs could have on the global economy.
A reporter asked Trump how he thinks things are going as U.S. markets continue plunging in response to his tariffs, which were announced on Wednesday.
"I think it's going very well," Trump replied. "It was an operation, like when a patient gets operated on and it's a big thing. I said this would exactly be the way it is. We have six or seven trillion dollars coming into our country and we've never seen anything like it."
He added: "The markets are going to boom, the stock is going to boom, the country's going to boom. And the rest of the world wants to see, is there any way they can make a deal. They've taken advantage of us for many, many years. And many years we've been at the wrong side of the ball and I'll tell you what, I think it's going to be unbelievable."
Trump and His ‘Little Disturbance’ From Tariffs
President Trump said there would be “a little disturbance” from his tariffs, but how does he define little? The stock market Thursday suffered its worst day since the government shut down the economy in March 2020. Not to worry, the White House says tariffs will eventually be worth the pain. Feeling better?
Stocks Suffer Biggest One-Day Wipeout in Value Since March 2020
U.S. markets suffered their steepest declines since 2020 on fears President Trump’s new tariff plans will trigger a global trade war and drag the U.S. economy into recession.
Major stock indexes dropped as much as 6% on Thursday. Stocks lost roughly $3.1 trillion in market value, their largest one-day decline since March 2020. On Friday, stock-index futures drifted lower, and stocks in Japan were hit for a second day.
In Thursday's market plunge, the Dow industrials dropped 1679 points, or 4%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq, which powered the market higher for years, was down 6%, pulled lower by big declines in Nvidia, Apple and Amazon.com. The S&P 500, which fell 4.8%, and the other benchmarks suffered their sharpest declines since the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Thursday, April 3, 2025
A third global recession in 20 years looms
https://www.axios.com/2025/04/02/trump-reciprocal-tariffs-cause-recession
A truly enormous shock is needed to tip the entire global economy into recession. Since World War II, there have been two of these events: the financial crisis of 2008-09, and the coronavirus pandemic of 2020.
President Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs, if they stay in place and especially if they face retaliation from targeted nations, could be the third such economic earthquake in 17 years.
It's almost impossible to overstate the sheer magnitude of the announced tariffs, along with the degree to which they could devastate the global economy.
GOP senator says he ‘won’t apologize’ after telling fired HHS employee he ‘probably deserved it’
Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) on Wednesday said he “won’t apologize” for telling a fired Health and Human Services (HHS) employee that he “probably deserved it,” after video footage of the exchange was widely circulated on social media.
The viral video showed former HHS employee Mack Schroeder approaching Banks in a Senate office building on Tuesday and asking him about the mass layoffs at HHS. Schroeder, who noted that he personally was among the fired HHS employees, asked the senator how he would ensure residents in his state got the services they needed.
“You probably deserved it,” Banks told Schroeder, referring to Schroeder’s termination. When Schroeder asked why, Banks told him, “Because you seem like a clown.”
Stocks in major decline as Trump's tariffs roil global markets
https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-tariffs-news-04-03-25/index.html
Global markets rattled: US stock markets fell sharply Thursday, as did Asian and European markets, after the tariff announcement. Meanwhile, gold hit a new record high as investors seek safer investments. Leading economists told CNN they feared the tariffs could lead to a global recession.
Dow plunges more than 1,500 points as Trump’s reciprocal tariffs threaten trade war
President Trump’s “Liberation Day” has been followed by a “Day of Reckoning” on Wall Street.
Wall Street Opens Sharply Lower After Trump's Tariffs Rattle Global Markets
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-tariffs-stock-market-plunge-eu-asia-live-updates-2054749
Wall Street opened sharply lower on Thursday, following a sharp drop in global markets after President Trump's announcement of new, higher tariffs on U.S. imports. The move has escalated trade tensions with major economies, and some countries are already warning of potential retaliation.
Trump’s New Protectionist Age
Blowing up the world trading system has consequences that the President isn’t advertising.
President Trump unveiled his new “liberation day” tariffs on Wednesday, and they are another large step toward a new old era of trade protectionism. Assuming the policy sticks—and we hope it doesn’t—the effort amounts to an attempt to remake the U.S. economy and the world trading system.
All details aren’t clear as we write this, but Mr. Trump’s tariffs look “reciprocal” in name only. First he’s hitting every nation in the world with a 10% “baseline” tariff to sell in the U.S. market. For those he calls “bad actors,” he’s adding up the country’s tariff rate on U.S. goods, plus an arbitrary estimate of the cost of its “currency manipulation” and non-tariff barriers. He then takes that total number and applies half of that in tariffs on the country’s exports to the U.S.
• New economic risks and uncertainty. The overall economic impact of Mr. Trump’s tariff barrage is unknowable—not least because we don’t know how countries will react. If countries try to negotiate with the U.S. to reduce tariffs, the damage could be milder. But if the response is widespread retaliation, the result could be shrinking world trade and slower growth, recession, or worse.
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