Tim Kaine: Why I’m forcing a vote on Trump’s Canada tariffs
Trump has created a fake “emergency” to impose tariffs whose cost will be borne by American families.
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President Donald Trump is abusing emergency powers to impose tariffs on Canada that will raise prices for American families and alienate one of our closest allies — so I’m forcing a vote to challenge him.
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The emergency powers Trump is invoking — based on provisions of the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act — are intended for use in legitimate emergencies related to foreign threats and adversaries. This law is typically used to place sanctions on bad actors like cartels and dictators, but Trump’s rationale for an “emergency” that justifies billions in taxes on American consumers doesn’t make sense in Canada’s case. He has made spurious claims of a fentanyl crisis at the northern border on par with the drug situation at the southern border, but his numbers don’t add up.
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Fortunately, the National Emergencies Act of 1976 included a provision allowing any senator to force a vote to block emergency powers being abused by the president. I will be pulling that procedural lever to challenge Trump’s Canada tariffs early next week.
I am leading this effort alongside Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) and Mark R. Warner (D-Virginia), and I am glad to be joined by our co-sponsors, Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), Angus King (I-Maine), Chris Coons (D-Delaware) and Rand Paul (R-Kentucky). All 100 members of the chamber — including the 52 other Republicans — will have to make a public choice about whether to side with American families, businesses and farmers or with Trump.
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Politico: Capitol agenda: Stefanik’s return reveals GOP fears
President Donald Trump’s unexpected decision to withdraw Rep. Elise Stefanik’s U.N. nomination and keep her in the House is exposing fresh electoral fears for the GOP — and creating some chaos on Capitol Hill.Trump’s not alone in believing that the New York special election to replace Stefanik could have been a real challenge, even though she carried the district by 24 points last year.
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NBC: A DHS staffer faces serious punishment for accidentally adding a reporter to a group email
A federal worker accidentally includes a journalist on a detailed message in advance of a government operation.While that sounds like the case of The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief being added to a group Signal chat by Trump’s national security adviser Michael Waltz, in which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed military attack plans in Yemen, it’s not.
It’s what happened to a longtime Department of Homeland Security employee who told colleagues she inadvertently sent unclassified details of an upcoming Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation to a journalist in late January, according to former ICE chief of staff Jason Houser, one former DHS official and one current DHS official.
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But unlike Waltz and Hegseth, who both remain in their jobs, the career DHS employee was put on administrative leave and told late last week that the agency intends to revoke her security clearance, the officials said.
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Houser, the former ICE chief of staff, said the employee had a reputation for being “mission-focused” and “apolitical.”“Targeting a career official who dedicated her service to protecting public safety and enforcing the law — while excusing political appointees who leaked sensitive war plans — shows this administration punishes integrity and protects recklessness. That doesn’t just betray her, it weakens every public servant who risks their career to do the right thing,” Houser said.
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Reuters: Rubio says US may have revoked more than 300 visas
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday the State Department may have revoked more than 300 visas and warned that the Trump administration was looking every day for “these lunatics” after Washington this week detained and revoked the visa of a Turkish student at Tufts University.Bulwark: Questions for America’s Secret Police
… DHS spokesman explained that “DHS and ICE investigations found Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans.”
These statements raise more questions than they answer.
- What is the evidence that Ozturk supported Hamas?
We have one op-ed in a student paper coauthored by Ozturk and it does not mention Hamas. If the government has proof that Ozturk “engaged in activities in support of Hamas,” it has not publicly produced it. - Who is funneling the list of people to Rubio for revocation of their visas?
I assume that the secretary of state is not sitting around googling campus activists and trying to find evidence of actionable thought crimes. Someone else must be compiling this list of “lunatics” creating a “ruckus.”What individual or organization is doing this research and list-making? Are they inside, or outside, the government?
- How is this list of targets having the evidence against them verified?
Ken Klippenstein: Trump Admin Spies on Social Media of Foreign Students
Ideological purge of foreign students revealed in new leaked directive
The Trump administration is requiring that foreign students studying in, or seeking to study in the United States, pass an ideological test in order to obtain a visa, according to a “sensitive” State Department directive issued by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and which I obtained.
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Specific reference is made to students seeking to participate “in pro-Hamas events,” which is how the Trump administration has characterized student protests against the war in Gaza.Christina Pagel: Trump’s attacks on universities get ever darker, with the shadows reaching our shores
The US has become a hostile and authoritarian state to foreign scientists and is choosing ideology over science.
A colleague and I would like to write an academic paper on the potential impact of US funding cuts to global health programmes. Our ideal co-author is an international expert newly based in the US, and they would like to do it. But we are all worried that doing so will expose them to the risk of having their academic visa cancelled, being detained and eventually deported – no matter how solid the science and how academic and dry our language. We are especially fearful because they are brown.
- What is the evidence that Ozturk supported Hamas?
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – March 27, 2025
Today, Wired reported that it had found four more Venmo accounts associated with the Trump administration officials who participated in the now-infamous Signal chat about a planned military attack on the Houthis in Yemen. A payment on one of them was identified only with an eggplant emoji, which is commonly used to suggest sexual activity.
The craziness going on around us in the first two months of the second Trump administration makes a lot more sense if you remember that the goal of those currently in power was never simply to change the policies or the personnel of the U.S. government. Their goal is to dismantle the central pillars of the United States of America—government, law, business, education, culture, and so on—because they believe the very shape of those institutions serves what they call “the Left.”
Their definition of “the Left” includes all Americans, Republicans and Independents as well as Democrats, who believe the government has a role to play in regulating business, providing a basic social safety net, promoting infrastructure, and protecting civil rights and who support the institutional structures Americans have built since World War II.
In place of those structures, today’s MAGA leaders intend to create their own new institutions, shaped by their own people, whose ideological purity trumps their abilities. As Vice President J.D. Vance explained in a 2021 interview, he and his ilk believe that American “conservatives…have lost every major powerful institution in the country, except for maybe churches and religious institutions, which of course are weaker now than they’ve ever been. We’ve lost big business. We’ve lost finance. We’ve lost the culture. We’ve lost the academy. And if we’re going to actually really effect real change in the country, it will require us completely replacing the existing ruling class with another ruling class…. I don’t think there’s sort of a compromise that we’re going to come with the people who currently actually control the country. Unless we overthrow them in some way, we’re going to keep losing.” “We really need to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power,” he said.
This plan is central to Project 2025, the plan President Donald Trump insisted before the election he knew nothing about but which, now that he’s in office, has provided the blueprint for a large majority of the administration’s actions.
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Robert Reich: Six small morsels of hope
- Voters are furious.
- Bernie and AOC are drawing record crowds.
- April 5 protests are planned everywhere.
- Trump is fumbling on all fronts.
- Trump’s polls are plummeting.
- The courts continue to hold Trump and Musk in check, but for how long?
Jay Kuo: Three Signals that I Very Much Like
A special election, a bad internal GOP poll and the yanking of a nomination tell us things are not going very well for Trump and the GOP.
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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Trump Removes Ban on Segregation in Federal Contracts & American Women are Giving Up on Marriage
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Steven Beschloss: Reveling in Terror Tactics
The sociopathic Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem flaunts her rejection of justice by proudly promoting the illegal removal of refugees.
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Lisa Needham: All the laws flouted during SignalGate
Very illegal and very not cool.
Daily Beast: Trump’s Attorney General Wants More Government Use of Signal: ‘Very Safe Way to Communicate’
NOTHING TO SEE HERE
Pam Bondi said she’s confident journalist Jeffrey Goldberg was simply added to the Yemen attack group chat by mistake.Daily Beast: Fox News Is Really Struggling to Spin the Signal Chat Leak
Fox News hosts are running out of ways to spin the fiasco, Media Matters’ Matt Gertz tells The New Abnormal.
Jeff Tiedrich: Plastered Pete not plastered when he bombed Yemen, CIA pinky-swears!
why are we not reassured?
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Alexa, show me the least-reassuring headline, ever.US defence secretary was not drunk when he ordered airstrikes, says CIA chief
Pete Hegseth was not drunk when he discussed plans to bomb Yemen in a group chat which included a journalist, the director of the CIA has said.
you can trust the CIA, because they would never lie to us, right?
Borowitz Report: WhiskeyLeaks: The Musical!
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Daily Beast: U.S. Officials Learned What Greenlanders Think of Usha Vance Visit in Most Humiliating Way Possible
‘NO, NO, NO, NO, NO’
U.S. representatives going door-to-door in the capital looking for supporters were told nobody welcomed her visit.
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Jennifer Rubin: Undaunted: Tammy Duckworth fights for America
We honor her for denouncing MAGA bullying, incompetence, and Democratic spinelessness–while exhibiting unceasing resilience and integrity
When focusing on domestic policy, she has no difficulty explaining what the oligarchs are up to. She routinely hammers home the message that out-of-touch billionaires are slashing benefits for everyone—from veterans to children covered by Medicaid to research scientists—so that Musk-Trump can dole out trillions more in tax cuts for them and their super-rich cronies. Just days ago, Duckworth posted on social media: “Donald Trump is illegally firing FTC commissioners whose jobs are to protect American consumers from corporate greed… Trump is making it easier for his billionaire pals to skirt the law, screw you over and get away with it.” She concluded:“A wannabe king acts this way.”
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Daily Beast: Musk Hides Edward Coristine as DOGE Goons Spew Wild Claims on Fox
EASY, DOGE
The billionaire sat down with his top lieutenants for a question-and-answer session on Special Report with Bret Baier.
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Evan Hurst: Why Are White MAGA Weenuses So Scared Of Jasmine Crockett? Here’s Why.
Bless their mediocre little hearts.
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Your Local Epidemiologist: Threats to public health at every angle
Covid anniversary, pandemic revisionism, chronic diseases, and a boulder going down the hill
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We must be able to hold two truths: 1. Mistakes were made. 2. Public health demonstrated remarkable resilience. Revisionist narratives often erase the second truth.
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Bulwark: Back to Work at the Roach-Infested Mold Dungeon
Former telework employees report lousy office conditions at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
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TNR: Welcome to the Pro-Death Administration
From climate change to nuclear weapons to lethal disease, the Trump administration seems to have decided that preventing mass death isn’t really government’s business anymore.
Perhaps, in retrospect, the most important turning point in the evolution of the contemporary far-right elite occurred in April 2020, just a month into a pandemic that would ultimately become a mass extinction event, killing more than seven million people worldwide. Condemning public health restrictions, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said, “There are more important things than living.”
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La Prensa:
Retiro de USAID: EE. UU. permite a China llenar el vacío dejado en América Latina y Asia
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Bulwark: What Happens When the Government Starts Reporting ‘Alternative Facts’?
The truth is the last weapon of the opposition.
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Politico: Musk butts up against Wisconsin state law with (now deleted) $1 million check giveaway
Election law experts were skeptical about the billionaire’s move.
AP: Musk changes reason for visiting Wisconsin to hand out $2 million ahead of Supreme Court election
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Wired: DOGE Plans to Rebuild SSA Codebase in Months, Risking Benefits and System Collapse
Social Security systems contain tens of millions of lines of code written in COBOL, an archaic programming language. Safely rewriting that code would take years—DOGE wants it done in months.
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WKSU: Northeast Ohio foodbanks feel the pinch of Trump administration cuts
Food banks across Northeast Ohio are scrambling to figure out how to make up for cuts in federal support from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
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Allison Gill: I’m Suing DOGE
The First Amendment Coalition (FAC) and MSW Media have filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. DOGE Service for its failure to respond to FOIA requests
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Bulwark: Trump-Approved Immigration Reform? Biz Leaders Are Still Dreaming.
They plan to ‘split the baby.’ Immigrants, scarred and mistrustful, aren’t convinced.
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Jacob Knutson: How Trump’s ‘Conspiracy-Driven Policy Making’ Could Throw Elections Into Chaos
But a different part of the order could throw election administration and the vote counting process into chaos, experts say, and attempts to allow the president to commandeer an independent, bipartisan federal voting agency to serve his political goals. If Trump’s order stands, they said, future elections — including the 2026 midterms — would likely be not only more expensive and more prone to human error, but also more skewed in his party’s favor.
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Lucian K. Truscott IV: Donald Trump’s Articles of Confederation
We are losing the Second Civil War for the Union. Ten thousand were lost at the battle of Heath and Human Services. There were another 10,000 casualties at the battle of USAID. Thirteen hundred souls fell at the battle for the Department of Education. One thousand one hundred and fifty-five scientists have fallen at the battle of the EPA. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered a temporary halt to fighting raging at the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, the Interior and Treasury, allowing unions and nonprofits to pick up their wounded from the battlefield during the ceasefire. The Trump administration struck back immediately and appealed the Ninth Circuit decision to the Supreme Court.
Surrenders are happening in Trump’s battles to defeat Union law firms. Two thousand lawyers from the New York firm of Paul Weiss threw down their arms after the firm’s commander, Brad S. Karp, walked into the Oval Office on March 19 and agreed to pay $40 million to groups of Trump’s choosing if he would stop shooting at his lawyers. Today, another New York firm, Skadden Arps, raised a white flag and threw $100 million at Trump’s feet in what was seen by legal experts as an abject surrender to Trump’s autocratic rule.
Yesterday, Trump added to his articles of Confederation when he issued an executive order calling on the surrender of the Smithsonian Institution, founded in 1846 for “for the increase & diffusion of knowledge among men.” From now on, according to Trump, the Smithsonian will be under the control of Vice President JD Vance and will be forbidden from putting on any “exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy.” In addition, Trump ordered steps to be taken to restore “public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties” that have been “removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology.”
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JD Vance is probably already working on a Smithsonian statue on the Mall for General Elon Musk, the Robert E. Lee of the Second Civil War.
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Chron: Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton join forces to shut down Plano mosque’s project
The conservative duo is eyeing the East Plano Islamic Center’s plans for a Muslim community.
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Decoding Fox News: The Week When Everyone Went Rogue
Last week on Fox several guests and a few hosts openly debunked lies the network was trying to promote. It was a festival of guests and Fox News employees accidentally going rogue as they didn’t follow the Fox News narrative.
Something wonky happened in the propaganda matrix. Even Fox News hosts inadvertently undermined their own talking points.
Were the astronauts really stranded in space? Was domestic terrorism a serious crime or just a protest that got out of hand? Does a Tesla automobile have more value than a United States Capitol Police officer?
Were all the men shoved in a hellish prison in El Salvador really dangerous gang members? Does a pardon count if president Biden used an autopen when he signed it?
The only cohesive theme was idea that the country was being overrun by violent transgender activists in a loosely formed gang known as ‘transtifa’ who were hellbent on destroying Tesla dealerships.
