Category: 2025

Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – March 28, 2025

“Another wipeout walloped Wall Street Friday,” Stan Choe of the Associated Press wrote today. The S&P 500 had one of its worst days in two years, dropping 2%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 715 points, losing 1.7% of its value. The Nasdaq Composite fell 2.7%. On Tuesday, news dropped that the administration’s blanket firings and wildly shifting tariff policies have dropped consumer confidence to a low it has not hit since January 2021. Today’s stock market tumble started after the Commerce Department released data showing that consumer prices are rising faster than economists expected.

AIG chief international economist James Knightley said: “We are moving in the wrong direction and the concern is that tariffs threaten higher prices, which means the inflation prints are going to remain hot.” Business leaders like lower interest rates, which reduce borrowing costs and make it cheaper to finance business initiatives, but with rising inflation, the Federal Reserve will be less likely to cut interest rates.
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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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Thom Hartmann: She Stepped Onto a Sidewalk in Boston — and Vanished Into Trump’s Shadow State

Masked ICE agents are now snatching dissidents off the streets like a scene from Stalin’s Russia. This isn’t speculative fiction. It’s happening right now, in America…

This is how it begins.

Tuesday night, Tufts University PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk was going out to a restaurant to meet friends when masked federal ICE agents dressed in street clothes seized her off a public sidewalk and disappeared her. Her apparent crime was co-authoring an op-ed critical of Trump and Netanyahu.

Where is she now? At first, nobody knew. As her attorney told The New York Times:

“We are unaware of her whereabouts and have not been able to contact her.”

Then it was revealed last night — as the video of her kidnapping went viral — that she’s been transported to a violent ICE facility in Louisiana. Yeah, that place. Without any legal due process that anybody can identify.
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Senator Sanders transcipt

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to travel in many parts of our country. And I have been able to talk to folks in Nebraska, in Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Colorado, and Arizona. And what I am hearing from in all of these states and in fact all over the country is that our nation right now faces enormous crises, unprecedented crises in the modern history of our country.

And how right now at this moment we respond to these crises will not only impact our lives, it will impact the lives of our kids and future generations. And in terms of climate change, the well-being of the entire planet.

And Mr. President, what I have to tell you is that the American people are angry at what is happening here in Washington, DC and they are prepared to stand up and fight back. In my view and what I have heard from many, many people is that they will not accept an oligarchic form of society where a handful of billionaires control our government, where the wealthiest person on Earth, Mr. Musk, is running all over Washington, DC slashing the Social Security Administration so that our elderly people today are finding it extremely difficult to access the benefits that they paid into.
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But we have had difficult moments before. And I am confident, from the bottom of my heart, that if we stand together, and we do not allow some right-wing extremists to divide us up by the color of our skin, or our religion, or where we were born, or our sexual orientation…

If we stand together, we can save this country. We can defeat oligarchy. We can defeat the movement toward authoritarianism. And in fact, we can create an economy and a government that works for all—not just a few.
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BBC: Five takeaways from leaked US top military chat group

1. Vance questions Trump’s thinking
   “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now,” Vance said. “There’s a further risk that we see moderate to severe spike in oil prices.”
2. Blame for ‘free-loading’ Europe
   He said to the defence secretary, “If you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.”
   Hegseth reciprocated: “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.”
3. After the strike: Emojis and prayers
4. Controlling the message: Blame Biden
5. Waltz in the spotlight

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ProPublica: The October Story That Outlined Exactly What the Trump Administration Would Do to the Federal Bureaucracy

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In late October, ProPublica published one of its most prophetic stories in our history. You can be forgiven if you missed it at the time. There was a lot going on in the days before the election, and the headlines were dominated by seemingly consequential issues like the racist humor of a comedian who addressed Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden.

But if you weren’t among the several hundred thousand people who read our story, “‘Put Them in Trauma’: Inside a Key MAGA Leader’s Plans for a New Trump Agenda,” in real time, you may have seen it referenced since Trump took office in January.

The story drew on private recordings of a series of speeches given in 2023 and 2024 by Russell Vought obtained by our colleagues at Documented, a news site with a remarkable knack for uncovering information powerful interests would prefer remained secret.
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Dan Rather: Revelations

Sarah Inama teaches sixth grade. Like many teachers, she has adorned her classroom with posters and signs meant to inspire her students. One of those posters depicts hands of various hues with the text “Everyone is welcome here.”

In January, Inama was told that the poster violates school district policy and that she must take it down. The policy “ensures that classrooms remain neutral.” The school district informed Inama that the poster is considered a “personal opinion” and that “everyone is welcome here” is not something everyone believes.

Though she took down the poster immediately, after reflecting on what happened, she put it back up a few days later. In an email to her principal, Inama explained, “I don’t agree that this is a personal opinion. I feel that this is the basis of public education.”

For now, the poster remains on her classroom wall, but it must be gone by the end of the school year, or she could face repercussions for insubordination.
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Public Notice: How #TeslaTakedown is bringing the fight to Musk

While the Trump administration and DOGE recklessly dismantle the federal government, millions of Americans are outraged and looking for ways to hold the Trump administration accountable. Considering Elon Musk is the CEO and largest shareholder of a major car company — Tesla — resistance is increasingly focused on how to disrupt his marquee business.

Going by the moniker of #TeslaTakedown, activists and regular citizens around the nation (and world) have been showing up to Tesla showrooms to protest Musk’s actions and DOGE generally. What started as small protests have grown to well-attended demonstrations in many different states. These protests, as well as random acts of vandalism that Tesla car owners and dealerships have experienced, have clearly ruffled the feathers of Trump and Musk.

WSJ: Meet the Former Tesla Die-Hards Now Selling Their Shares

Elon Musk’s role in the Trump administration turns off some loyal investors; stock is down more than 40% this year

Wired: The FBI Is Investigating Attacks on Tesla as ‘Domestic Terrorism.’ Here’s Why That Matters

The domestic terrorism designation could give law enforcement sweeping authority to surveil people protesting against Elon Musk’s role in the US federal government, civil liberties experts warn.
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Beschloss: What Trump Can’t Do

Nine facts that show we are still Americans. We will not give in to Trump’s dictatorial regime. We are still human. We will decide our own fate.

1. Trump can’t take away our anger.
2. He can’t stop us from using our minds.
3. He can’t stop us from reading or writing or consuming knowledge and beauty.
4. He can’t hide his fraudulence.
5. He can’t make us hate a free and democratic America.
6. He can’t convince us that our allies are really our enemies.
7. He can’t make us stop loving.
8. He can’t stop us from realizing our collective power.
9. Trump cannot last.

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Bulwark: ‘We Won’t Know It’s a Different Country’

Trump is causing incredible harm. Whether we learn to live with it matters.

Another normal day in Trumplandia, where the president is scheduled to start feeding the Department of Education into the wood chipper today.

In yesterday’s newsletter, Bill quoted Philip Larkin’s “Homage to a Government,” on Britain’s quiet post-WWII retrenchment: “Next year we are to bring all the soldiers home for lack of money, and it is all right.”

I want to dwell briefly on another line from the same poem: “Our children will not know it’s a different country.”

The damage being done today, the scope of the global cruelty and tragedy, is hard to take in. It is the sort of stain that should be remembered. Will it be?
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These days, those who don’t back Trump like to talk about “touching the stove.” If the American public couldn’t be talked out of its complacent, decadent willingness to give the guy another spin at the wheel, maybe they can at least be shocked out of it. Maybe veterans will turn on him once they see the cuts to the VA, or retirees will revolt when they can’t get a person on the line to help with their Social Security payments.

But even if this does happen, that doesn’t mean putting things back together will be simple. Whether it will even be possible remains to be seen.
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