Trump defends tariffs after markets plunge for second straight day: ‘Economic revolution’

 https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5233906-donald-trump-tariffs-economic-revolution/?tbref=hp

President Trump on Saturday took a victory lap over the sweeping new tariffs he levied on nearly all foreign trading partners, claiming the end result will serve as an “economic revolution.”

“We have been the dumb and helpless ‘whipping post,’ but not any longer,” he wrote on Truth Social. “We are bringing back jobs and businesses like never before. Already, more than FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS OF INVESTMENT, and rising fast!”

“THIS IS AN ECONOMIC REVOLUTION, AND WE WILL WIN,” he added. “HANG TOUGH, it won’t be easy, but the end result will be historic. We will, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

Trump Owns the Economy Now

 https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-tariffs-economy-march-jobs-markets-karoline-leavitt-jerome-powell-437a89cd?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

He can try to blame the Fed, but the tariff blunder is his alone.

Markets continued to tumble on Friday, but hey, not to worry, at least the March jobs numbers were good. That’s the view from the White House, where press secretary Karoline Leavitt crowed Friday that “the economy is starting to roar” and “the President’s push to onshore jobs here in the United States is working.”

Ms. Leavitt needs to please her boss, but yikes. Someone should tell her the March jobs estimate was made before Mr. Trump’s tariff barrage. Markets for their part are making a bet on the future. The 228,000 job gain did beat expectations, but the manufacturing jobs boom still hasn’t arrived, with only 1,000 net new jobs in the month.

GOP Lawmakers to Worried Businesses: Let’s Try to Wait Out the Tariff Turmoil

 https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/republicans-grin-and-bear-it-as-businesses-beg-for-tariff-relief-1fa3f225?mod=hp_lead_pos1

Many GOP lawmakers say they trust Trump and hope stock-market turbulence is short-lived

“I think their phones are ringing off the hook hearing from constituents,” said Reynolds, who is worried tariffs will push up costs for his suppliers on imported garments. “As Republican representatives, they want to support the president. But also—it’s their job to support their constituents.”

Trump has 'botched' his whole tariff plan with a single slip of the tongue

 https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/trump-has-botched-his-whole-tariff-plan-with-a-single-slip-of-the-tongue-report/ar-AA1CjLMc?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=NMTS&cvid=53128482b7cf4f4fa2b9c79970ced272&ei=11

The Atlantic's Jonathan Chait claimed in an article Friday that President Donald Trump's plan to encourage American manufacturing by imposing huge import tariffs was doomed from the moment he offered to negotiate with targeted countries.

"The key to making it work was to convince businesses that the new arrangement is durable," Chait wrote. "Nobody is going to invest in building new factories in the United States to create goods that until last week could be imported more cheaply unless they’re certain that the tariffs making the domestic version more competitive will stay in place."

The problem, according to Chait was, "Once you’ve said you might negotiate the tariffs, nobody is going to believe you when you change your mind and say you’ll never negotiate." And, indeed, just over two hours later, Chait wrote that Trump posted that he had just negotiated a possible agreement with Vietnam.

Suspected fertility mix-up leads father to learn he isn't daughter's biological parent

 https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/article-848721

The Health Ministry is investigating a suspected fertility treatment error after an urgent demand was made on Tuesday by the parties involved in the incident.

The error surfaced after a genetic test revealed that a man who raised a girl for years is not her biological father. The discovery was made during a routine medical examination the teenager underwent abroad due to a health issue.

Following the revelation, the father approached the doctor who had treated his wife at a central Israel fertility clinic. In an attempt to trace the origin of the error, he requested information about other patients who underwent embryo transfers around the same time. The doctor, in violation of medical privacy laws, disclosed the identity of another woman who had undergone treatment during that period.

Laura Loomer Is a Warning

 https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/04/laura-loomer-trump-warning/682314/

White House staffers, it seems, had better hope that they stay in Laura Loomer’s good graces. This week, Loomer—a far-right provocateur who has described herself as “pro–white nationalism” and Islam as a “cancer on humanity”—met with Donald Trump in the Oval Office. After she reportedly railed against National Security Council officials she believed were disloyal to the president, the White House fired six NSC staff members the next day. More firings could be on their way: Yesterday, a person close to the administration told my colleague Michael Scherer that “Loomer has been asked to put together a list of people at State who are not MAGA loyalists.”

Loomer’s power marks how little Trump now seems to care about being around people who have expressed racist and extremist ideas and kept racist and extremist company. She is a bit like the Forrest Gump of Trumpworld—an unlikely but persistent character who just keeps popping up during some of the right’s biggest moments. When Trump got off his private plane on his way to the presidential debate in September, Loomer appeared with him. The next day, when Trump traveled to New York for a 9/11-anniversary memorial, Loomer was again there with him. (She has called 9/11 an “inside job.”) As I wrote at the time, prominent Republicans did not like that their presidential candidate was associating himself with Loomer, and publicly challenged Trump over it. He seemingly has not listened.

General Fired After Laura Loomer Launches Loyalty Purge

 https://www.thedailybeast.com/general-timothy-haugh-fired-after-laura-loomer-launches-loyalty-purge/

President Donald Trump has fired the general serving as director of the National Security Agency after far-right activist Laura Loomer accused him of being disloyal to the president.

Air Force General Timothy Haugh, who also heads U.S. Cyber Command, was fired Thursday along with five key National Security Council aides, the Washington Post reported.

McConnell calls out Trump for hiring ‘amateur isolationists’ at Pentagon, firing NSA director

 https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5234058-mcconnell-trump-pentagon-nsa-criticism/

President Trump’s decisions to pick “amateur isolationists” for senior policy jobs at the Pentagon and to fire Gen. Timothy Haugh, the head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, without explanation.

“If decades of experience in uniform isn’t enough to lead the N.S.A. but amateur isolationists can hold senior policy jobs at the Pentagon, then what exactly are the criteria for working on this administration’s national security staff,” McConnell said in comments to The New York Times.

“I can’t figure it out,” he said.

McConnell and other Senate Republican defense hawks have signaled their concern about the Trump administration’s decisions to hire Michael DiMino to serve as deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East and Andrew Byers to serve as deputy assistant secretary of defense for South and Southeast Asia.

Trump’s ‘reciprocal’ tariffs aren’t quite what they seem. Here’s the real story

 https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/05/business/trump-reciprocal-tariffs-real-numbers/index.html

The massive tariffs that President Donald Trump announced for dozens of trading partners Wednesday were pitched as “reciprocal,” simply aiming to match the tariffs other countries charge the United States.

But the methodology behind Trump’s attempt to rebalance trade has nothing to do with the tariff rate that foreign countries impose on the US.

The Trump administration instead used a grossly oversimplified calculation that it said factored in a broad set of issues such as Chinese investment, alleged currency manipulation and other countries’ regulations. The administration’s calculation divided a country’s trade deficit with the US by its exports into the country times 1/2. That’s it.

The president is essentially taking a sledgehammer to address a litany of grievances, using the trade deficit that other countries have with the US as a scapegoat. And the vague calculation could have broad implications for countries America depends on for goods — and the foreign companies that supply them.

Gene Sperling: 'The worst self inflicted wound I've seen in the history of our country economically'

<

Republicans Are Losing Faith in Trump Rescuing the Economy

 https://www.newsweek.com/poll-republicans-trump-inflation-expectations-2054186

ntipathy toward President Trump's economic policies is significant and growing among voters across the political spectrum, according to a newly released poll by the Milwaukee-based Marquette Law School.

According to the late March survey of 1,021 adults, 45 percent of Republicans now assess the state of the economy as excellent or good, while 46 percent view it as "not so good" and an additional 9 percent as "poor."

Additionally, a majority of adults (58 percent) believe Trump's policies will result in higher inflation, with the number of Republicans believing the president will reduce inflation declining from 76 percent in December to 62 percent in March.

'I could live 30 years - but plan to die': Has assisted dying in Canada gone too far?

 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3wxq28znpqo

April Hubbard sits on the theatre stage where she plans to die later this year.

She is not terminally ill, but the 39-year-old performance and burlesque artist has been approved for assisted dying under Canada's increasingly liberal laws.

April was born with spina bifida and was later diagnosed with tumours at the base of her spine which she says have left her in constant, debilitating pain.

She's been taking strong opioid painkillers for more than 20 years and applied for Medical Assistance in Dying (Maid) in March 2023. While she could yet live for decades with her condition, she qualified to end her life early seven months after applying. For those who are terminally ill it is possible to get approval within 24 hours.

Congress Is Freaking Out About Trump’s Trade War, But Not Enough to Stop Him

 https://time.com/7274601/tariffs-trump-republicans-against/

While most Hill Republicans tried to avoid criticizing their party’s leader, frustrations were being laid bare as their talking points didn’t match those coming out of the White House. Lawmakers were insisting Trump’s new tariffs are a starting point for a negotiation while the White House said they’re actually the end of the discussion. Frantic calls to Cabinet agencies about home-district impacts were yielding platitudes and not promises. Even give-Trump-a-chance Republicans began losing patience as their office phone lines were on fire. 

“None of this was thought through,” says one Republican lobbyist who is trying to tell her association’s members not to panic. “The math doesn’t work. The end game doesn’t work. The politics doesn’t work. This is just a mess and it is going to cost Republicans seats.”

Republicans at the Capitol understand this is going to hurt not just Americans, but their own political futures. It’s why, in a low-key fever, they’re freaking out. But here’s the rub: while they know this is bad for just about everyone, don’t expect them to exercise their congressional authority to get Trump to back off. Their prospects may be bad right now, but they view crossing a President who leads a vindictive movement as even worse. This is not a moment where anyone in Washington is expecting political bravery. Far from it. The question many Republicans in the Capitol are asking themselves: which path will yield the least pain for selfish spoils? It’s a pretty weak way to run a superpower. 

The Economist Slams ‘The Madness of King Donald’ With Scathing Takedown of Tariffs

 https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-economist-slams-the-madness-of-king-donald-with-scathing-takedown-of-tariffs/

The Economist has posted a scathing takedown of “The Madness of King Donald” in its latest cover feature, lambasting the president’s “Liberation Day” tariffs as “flat-out nonsense” and “utterly deluded.” On the same day that Trump flew to Florida for some R&R after his tariff policy caused the U.S. economy to tank, the publication heralded the moment as “America’s total abandonment of the world trading order and embrace of protectionism.” The administration’s “catalogue of foolishness” will hurt American consumers, reduce competition, and damage global trade, they argued, while taking swipes at Trump’s “pathetic” grasp of technicalities and lack of knowledge on the history of tariffs and their applications. The piece concludes that while Trump’s policies are reckless and based on “deluded” economic theories, the world can limit the fallout by pursuing deeper integration amongst themselves and cutting the U.S out of the picture—although they admit this will take time.“There is no avoiding the havoc Mr Trump has wrought, but that does not mean his foolishness is destined to triumph,” the magazine concluded.