Atlantic: The Conspiracy Theorist Advising Trump
April 3, 2025 – The chaos inside the White House national-security team persists.
For a few months, the Donald Trump White House managed, at least in public, to keep some of the right’s fringiest figures at bay. Until yesterday.
The far-right celebrity Laura Loomer was at the White House on Wednesday. … Trump clearly likes the 31-year-old provocateur, and in Trumpworld, there’s apparently very little anyone can do once the boss takes a shine to someone.
And so Loomer reportedly walked into the Oval Office yesterday with a list of people who should be removed from the National Security Council because of their disloyalty to Trump and the MAGA cause. …
The next day, at least six staff members, including three senior officials, were fired.
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CNN: Trump administration fires director of National Security Agency
Thom Hartmann: Criminals Always Gonna Crime — But Now They’ve Taken Over the Oval Office
The Trump presidency is the most corrupt in American history — and now it’s openly breaking laws, ignoring judges, and threatening us all with the power of the state…
Bulwark: Will Trump Invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 Next?
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – April 3, 2025
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Trump justified the tariffs by declaring that the U.S. is in the midst of a national emergency, but this afternoon he left the White House for a long weekend in Florida, where his private Doral resort outside of Miami is holding the first domestic golf tournament of the season of LIV Golf, which is financed by the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia.Trump’s tariffs are not an economic policy. Tariffs are generally imposed on products, not on nations. By placing them on countries, the White House was able to arrive at its numbers with a nonsensical formula that appears to have been reached by asking AI how to impose tariffs—a suggestion so outlandish that I dismissed when I saw it last night, but economist Paul Krugman today identified it as being a likely possibility. CNBC’s Steve Liesman said: “Nobody ever heard of this formula. Nobody has ever used this formula. So I’m sorry, but the conclusion seems to be the president kind of made this up as he went along….”
Today, former treasury secretary Lawrence Summers posted: “It’s now clear that the [Trump] Administration computed reciprocal tariffs without using tariff data. This is to economics what creationism is to biology, astrology is to astronomy, or RFK thought is to vaccine science. The Trump tariff policy makes little sense EVEN if you believe in protectionist mercantilist economics.”
Editor of The American Prospect David Dayen notes that there is no apparent policy behind the tariffs, no thought, for example, as to whether it is even possible for the U.S. to ramp up the kind of domestic manufacturing Trump claims to want. While Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CBS, “You’re going to see employment leaping starting today,” in fact, both automaker Stellantis and appliance manufacturer Whirlpool announced layoffs because of the tariffs.
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(more…)Daily Beast: Trump Picks Golf Dinner Over Dignified Transfer of U.S. Troops’ Bodies
VALUES
Trump flew to the Saudi-funded event in Florida on Friday.
Rather than attend the dignified transfer of the bodies of four U.S. Army soldiers who died on a training mission in Lithuania, Donald Trump flew to Florida to watch a Saudi-funded LIV golf tournament at his own course and later join a dinner reception there, NBC News reported.
(more…)Daily Beast: JD Vance Says He’s ‘Feeling Good’ About Market Mayhem: ‘It Could Be Worse’
LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE
Trump’s plan triggered the worst day in U.S. markets since a global pandemic.News Nation: US added 228,000 jobs in March as economy shows resilience
Nate Silver: Wall Street thinks Trump’s tariffs will eat Main Street alive
Sometimes, the stock market is the economy.
It’s hard to think of any occasion when America dealt itself such a self-inflicted economic wound.Silver Bulletin wasn’t around for the Smoot-Hawley tariffs of 1930, which helped to catalyze the Great Depression. But the tariffs that President Trump announced just after markets closed on Wednesday, which triggered the fifth-largest point drop in the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average on Thursday — with further massive losses underway today — are bigger than Smoot-Hawley.
(more…)MSN: ‘Deal or no deal?’ Critics pounce as Trump breaks with own aide immediately after TV spot
Alternet: ‘We’ve made a mistake’: Trump’s policies send Republicans into a tailspin
MSN: Barack Obama Says The ‘Silent’ Part Out Loud With ‘Unimaginable’ Trump Comparison
Root: Kamala Harris Finally Says What We’ve All Been Thinking
In a speech at the Leading Women Defined Summit in California, Kamala Harris reflects on Trump’s first months in office.
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Steven Beschloss: The Demolition of a Welcoming World
America’s mad hatter is blowing up the world economy, alliances carefully built over generations and America’s special status among nations
There was a time, decades ago, when holding up a passport and shouting “Don’t shoot! I’m American” was imaginable. Luckily, I’ve never needed to test it in dicey locations. But that notion is a good reminder that Americans have often had special advantages.Being American was seen as honorable. Being American meant being free, open, democratic, generous. There was a kind of immunity it provided to live in the post-World War II world, emanating in part from the valiant role of America in helping defeat Hitler and the Nazis and helping save our democratic allies from the fascist menace. The Marshall Plan and the bright, youthful energy of John F. Kennedy later extended that dividend.
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(more…)Bulwark: The Lamps Are Going Out Around Us
We may want to believe that this is a glitch or a temporary fall. But we must be open to the likelihood that this is the end of the American-led world order.
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Public Notice: “Elbows up,” explained by a Canadian
“Take off the gloves and get ready for a fight. It’s a defensive posture. You protect your territory.”
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Fast Company: This small Montana town is the gateway to Yellowstone. Trump’s budget cuts could decimate it
“Gardiner is a company town and Yellowstone is the mill. If somebody starts screwing with the mill, we have no choice but to be concerned.”
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CNBC: ‘Keep your head’ if you’re spooked by tariffs: Warren Buffett once suggested reading a 19th century poem when stocks fall
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Buffett wrote: “There is simply no telling how far stocks can fall in a short period.” But should a major decline occur, he continued, “heed these lines” from Rudyard Kipling’s classic poem “If,” circa 1895.“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs … If you can wait and not be tired by waiting … If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim … If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you … Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it.”
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Noah Berlatsky: The Best Songs of 1955
What you should have been listening to seventy years ago.
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Jennifer Rubin: Undaunted, Uninterrupted
One could marvel not only at New Jersey Senator Cory Booker’s endurance during his 25+ hours on the Senate floor, but at his coherence, joyful demeanor, and superb timing (coming as Democrats anxiously awaited the results from Wisconsin). Moreover, students of history, lovers of democracy, and American patriots had the chance to relish the symbolism of a Black man supplanting the record set by an embittered segregationist Strom Thurmond. Booker said about Thurmond:
“I’m here despite his speech. I’m here because as powerful as he was, the people were more powerful.”
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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Trump Wants a Third Term & 1,900 Scientists Warn Against the Administration’s Attacks on Science
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Robert Reich: This week’s small reasons for modest optimism
- Wisconsin Supreme Court vote
- Other races
- Nationwide, an ever-stronger rejection of Trump
- Town halls are terrible for Republicans
- Democrats are fired up (finally)
- Tesla continues to plummet
- Paul Weiss and Skadden are paying a price for selling out to Trump
- Trump’s tariffs cause utter chaos
- Trump has lost his Senate majority (at least on tariffs against Canada, which may be a harbinger of more Senate votes against him)
- Trump’s abductions
- Trump’s attack on Social Security is beginning to harm beneficiaries
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Ken Klippenstein: Tesla “Terrorism” Intel Reports Stoke Contagion
Government reports on Tesla attacks say nothing yet suggest a lot
