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Donald J. Trump White House 2nd Term Page 7
Story by DAVID KLEPPER and ERIC TUCKER

WASHINGTON (AP) — As President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk work to overhaul the federal government, they’re forcing out thousands of workers with insider knowledge and connections who now need a job.

For Russia, China and other adversaries, the upheaval in Washington as Musk's Department of Government Efficiency guts government agencies presents an unprecedented opportunity to recruit informants, national security and intelligence experts say.

Every former federal worker with knowledge of or access to sensitive information or systems could be a target. When thousands of them leave their jobs at the same time, that creates a lot of targets, as well as a counterespionage challenge for the United States.

“This information is highly valuable, and it shouldn’t be surprising that Russia and China and other organizations — criminal syndicates for instance — would be aggressively recruiting government employees,” said Theresa Payton, a former White House chief information officer under President George W. Bush, who now runs her own cybersecurity firm.

Many agencies oversee crucial data
Each year an average of more than 100,000 federal workers leave their jobs. Some retire; others move to the private sector. This year, in three months, the number is already many times higher.

It's not just intelligence officers who present potential security risks. Many departments and agencies oversee vast amounts of data that include personal information on Americans as well as sensitive information about national security and government operations. Exiting employees could also give away helpful security secrets that would allow someone to penetrate government databases or physical offices.
Story by Brian Stelter, CNN

The revelation that President Trump’s aides endangered national security by chatting about a military strike in a Signal chat that included a journalist is embarrassing for everyone involved – which is why it’s a big test of MAGA media’s power to deny, dismiss and deflect.

The president’s favorite media outlets are mostly downplaying the story and deriding the reporter who was invited to the group chat, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg. On X, Elon Musk and his acolytes are cracking jokes about the scandal. And some pro-Trump outlets are trying to ignore it altogether.

It’s all reminiscent of Trump’s first term, when real news stories were rejected by right-wing opinion outlets time and time again. And as we learned back then, the president’s media consumption has a huge impact on the personnel and policy decisions he makes.

So far, the advice he’s getting from his Fox News friends is to weather the current storm.

Many pro-Trump media figures are taking their cues from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who sounded like he reverted to his former role as Fox host when he blasted Goldberg as a “discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes.”

Hegseth likely used the word “hoax” strategically since it viscerally appeals to Trump. The president has a long history of trying to disarm damaging stories by claiming they are “hoaxes,” regardless of reality. The word has become a signal to Trump fans to tune out distressing stories.
An interview with national security lawyer Bradley Moss, who explains why the stunning exposure of highly sensitive war-planning texts might have been unlawful—and reveals Trump as a disastrously failed leader.

By now you may have heard that President Trump’s most senior officials discussed war plans on Signal, and that the group chat actually included Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic. Goldberg published his findings, and it caused an explosion in Washington with many Democrats calling for an investigation, and even the occasional Republican slamming this as an unacceptable security breach. President Trump was asked about this, and shockingly he claimed not to know anything about it. What struck us though is what Trump didn’t say. He failed to say that he’s going to get to the bottom of this mess, and that it should have never happened. Today, we’re trying to dig through all this with the perfect guest, veteran national security lawyer Bradley Moss. Brad, thanks for coming on, man.

Bradley Moss: Absolutely, any time.

Sargent: National security adviser Mike Waltz, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Vice President JD Vance, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and some others were talking on Signal about their upcoming plans to bomb Yemen’s Houthis to open up shipping in the Red Sea. Somehow, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg got included. The top officials argued a bit about the plans, and then soon after Hegseth openly shares operational details about the move itself, about the operation itself. Can you lay out what happened here, Brad?
Story by Khaleda Rahman

Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced on Monday that millions of Social Security records have been updated.

In a post on X, DOGE said the Social Security Administration has been executing a "major cleanup" of records for the past three weeks.

"Approximately 7 million numberholders, all listed age 120+, have now been marked as deceased. Another ~5 million to go," the post said

Last week, an update from DOGE said that 3.2 million Social Security number holders listed as aged over 120 had been marked as deceased.

Judge Blocks DOGE From Accessing Data
On Monday, a federal judge blocked DOGE from accessing sensitive personal data at the Department of Education, the Treasury Department and the Office of Personnel Management.

U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman issued a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit brought by a coalition of labor unions. They allege the Trump administration violated federal privacy laws when it gave DOGE access to systems with personal information about millions of Americans without their consent, The Associated Press reported. She had previously issued a temporary restraining order in the case.

"No matter how important or urgent the President's DOGE agenda may be, federal agencies must execute it in accordance with the law," Boardman wrote on Monday. "That likely did not happen in this case."
By Mike Scarcella and David Thomas

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday that takes action against the law firm Jenner & Block, for what a White House official described as the company's actions to weaponize the government and legal system.

"We've taken action against a number of law firms that have participated either in the weaponization of government, the weaponization of the legal system for political ends, or have otherwise engaged in illegal or inappropriate activities," said White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf.
Story by Jacqueline-housden

A painting of Donald Trump hanging with other presidential portraits at Colarado capitol will be taken down after the US President claimed that his was “purposefully distorted”.

British-born artist Sarah Boardman, who now lives in Colorado Springs, painted the portrait in 2019.

Trump had described a portrait of former US president Barack Obama, also by Boardman, as “wonderful” but said: “The one on me is truly the worst”.

“Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the State Capitol, put up by the Governor, along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.

House Democrats said in a statement that the oil painting would be taken down at the request of Republican leaders in the legislature.
ABC News

An 82-year-old man in Seattle woke up feeling very much alive until he and his wife opened a letter from his bank stating he was deceased.

Ned Johnson was mistakenly declared dead, which led to the cancellation of his Social Security benefits. It took him two months to prove the mistake, including numerous phone calls, letters to government officials and enduring a four-hour wait at his local Social Security office, he said.

And he told ABC News the problem is continuing to follow him.

"I've since learned that I'm on the Death Master File that apparently is going to chase me for the rest of my life," Johnson told ABC News. "It means that when Social Security declared me as deceased, there's a file that's kept ... that I'm listed on and, apparently, it doesn't go away. So we're struggling with a few issues now that are starting to crop up since we started this whole thing."
Story by Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott, Pro Publica

Elon Musk’s aerospace giant SpaceX allows investors from China to buy stakes in the company as long as the funds are routed through the Cayman Islands or other offshore secrecy hubs, according to previously unreported court records.

The rare picture of SpaceX’s approach recently emerged in an under-the-radar corporate dispute in Delaware. Both SpaceX’s chief financial officer and Iqbaljit Kahlon, a major investor, were forced to testify in the case.

In December, Kahlon testified that SpaceX prefers to avoid investors from China because it is a defense contractor. There is a major exception though, he said: SpaceX finds it “acceptable” for Chinese investors to buy into the company through offshore vehicles.

“The primary mechanism is that those investors would come through intermediate entities that they would create or others would create,” Kahlon said. “Typically they would set up BVI structures or Cayman structures or Hong Kong structures and various other ones,” he added, using the acronym for the British Virgin Islands. Offshore vehicles are often used to keep investors anonymous.

Experts called SpaceX’s approach unusual, saying they were troubled by the possibility that a defense contractor would take active steps to conceal foreign ownership interests.

Kahlon, who has long been close to the company’s leadership, has said he owns billions of dollars of SpaceX stock. His investment firm also acts as a middleman, raising money from investors to buy highly sought SpaceX shares. He has routed money from China through the Caribbean to buy stakes in SpaceX multiple times, according to the court filings.
The Atlantic releases more text from chat after Trump officials claimed none of it was ‘classified information’
Chris Michael

The Atlantic magazine has published fresh messages from a group chat including top US officials where they discuss operational details of plans to bomb Yemen.

The initial revelations by the magazine and its editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, who was accidentally added to the chat on the messaging app Signal, have sparked a huge outcry in the US, with the Trump administration facing withering attacks over the disastrous leak of sensitive information.

However, the magazine did not include specific details of the attack in its initial article, saying it did not want to jeopardise national security. But numerous Trump administration officials, responding to the scandal, have said that none of the information on the Signal chat chain was “classified information” – despite the Atlantic describing it as operational details of the US strike on Yemen’s Houthi militia, which has been attacking shipping in the Red Sea.
If a democrat leaked war plans republicans would be up in arms

Trump said that even though the editor of The Atlantic was inadvertently added to a private chat about military plans, his presence had “no impact” on the military strikes in Yemen.
By Garrett Haake and Megan Lebowitz

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump stood by his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, after The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief was accidentally added to a private, high-level chat on the messaging app Signal in which military plans were being discussed.

"Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man," Trump said Tuesday in a phone interview with NBC News.

Trump's comments were his first substantive remarks since The Atlantic broke the story, which detailed how journalist Jeffrey Goldberg was inadvertently added to a group chat on a private messaging app in which plans for military strikes in Yemen were discussed. Goldberg said he was added to the discussion after he received a request from a user identified as Waltz.

Asked what he was told about how Goldberg came to be added to the Signal chat, Trump said: “It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there.”

Trump said Goldberg’s presence in the chat had “no impact at all” on the military operation.

He expressed confidence in his team, saying he was not frustrated by the events leading up to The Atlantic's story. The situation, Trump said, was "the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one."

Waltz said in a Fox News interview Tuesday night that he takes “full responsibility” for organizing the text group, and that a staffer was not to blame for Goldberg appearing in the group.
Story by kbaker@insider.com (Kelsey Baker)

Trump officials mistakenly shared attack plans with a reporter on an unsecured app, breaching rules.
Pentagon and military leaders emphasize operational security training to protect troops.
OPSEC is the management and control of military information to mitigate an adversary's knowledge.

Trump administration officials accidentally shared planning for combat action with a reporter, and it's exactly the type of failure that military leaders have long feared — one that comes from sloppy OPSEC and smartphones.

Using Signal, a popular secure messaging app that is encrypted though not impenetrable, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, Vice President JD Vance, and other top officials discussed key details related to pending US airstrikes against Houthi militants in Yemen, including weather, assets involved, and timing.

What the group failed to recognize is that one chat member was actually the top editor of The Atlantic magazine.

"We are currently clean on OPSEC," Hegseth wrote in the group chat just below an operational timeline that identified the types of planes involved and strike start times.
Story by Falyn Stempler

Federal employees have reported that the Trump administration's return to office mandates have been extremely disorganized.

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump issued an order that effectively ended remote work for federal employees, despite pre-COVID protocols that saved the government millions of dollars. He then proceeded to dismiss workers indiscriminately, including probationary staff who a judge ruled must be reinstated.

These sweeping changes have resulted in widespread confusion and chaos as federal employees report returning to offices lacking supplies and receiving unclear instructions, completely undermining efforts to save money and increase productivity. Employees from several key agencies have reported shortages of desks, computer monitors, parking spaces and even basic items like toilet paper and paper towels in their offices.
Opinion by Stephen P. Hills

What does it mean to be a centrist today?

I consider myself one. I didn’t vote for President Donald Trump and consider his administration alarming. Yet I know many Republicans and independents who voted for Trump − or wouldn’t vote against him − and they also consider themselves centrist (or “just slightly right of center”) even if they cringe at his behavior and acknowledge his flaws.

How can two sets of people so far apart in their politics both consider themselves centrist? It’s because the meaning of political labels − left, right and center − changes over time. What we need in American politics today is a solid, immutable definition of centrist. Call it our true north.

In navigation, true north is permanent, as distinct from magnetic north, or where the compass points. Magnetic north shifts along with the Earth’s magnetic field, akin to the political center shifting along with the fluctuating allure of politicians. The political true north will have to be defined by something that doesn’t move over time, along with the public’s mood. There can be no better standard than verified fact or objective reality.
How many people will die?

Story by Sriparna Roy

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Thursday he will significantly cut the size of the department he leads, reducing about 10,000 full-time jobs and closing half its regional offices.

The restructuring, along with previous voluntary departures, will result in a total downsizing to 62,000 full-time employees from 82,000.

"We aren't just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic," Kennedy said.
Story by Angela Hart

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — President Donald Trump is vowing a new approach to getting homeless people off the streets by forcibly moving those living outside into large camps while mandating mental health and addiction treatment — an aggressive departure from the nation’s leading homelessness policy, which for decades has prioritized housing as the most effective way to combat the crisis.

“Our once-great cities have become unlivable, unsanitary nightmares,” Trump said in a presidential campaign video. “For those who are severely mentally ill and deeply disturbed, we will bring them to mental institutions, where they belong, with the goal of reintegrating them back into society once they are well enough to manage.”

Now that he’s in office, the assault on “Housing First” has begun.

White House officials haven’t announced a formal policy but are opening the door to a treatment-first agenda, while engineering a major overhaul of the housing and social service programs that form the backbone of the homelessness response system that cities and counties across the nation depend on. Nearly $4 billion was earmarked last year alone. But now, Scott Turner, who heads Trump’s Department of Housing and Urban Development — the agency responsible for administering housing and homelessness funding — has outlined massive funding cuts and called for a review of taxpayer spending.
US officials accidentally leaked Yemen attack plans in Signal chat shared with The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg.
Aljazeera

The Atlantic magazine has published US attack plans against Yemen’s Houthi rebels, mistakenly shared in a group chat that included its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg.

The release on Wednesday came after US President Donald Trump sought to downplay the significance of the texts shared on the Signal messaging app, calling them “not a big deal”.

Some of the most crucial of the published messages appear to have been sent on March 15 by an account seeming to belong to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth as the US military prepared to carry out its attack on Yemen.

Vice President JD Vance, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, purportedly White House Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller (SM) and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard (TG) were among those present in the chat.
Story by Billal Rahman

The inventor of the "DOGE dividend check" has said he believes that $5,000 payments for American taxpayers are within reach, once cuts are made to Social Security and Medicaid.

James Fishback, CEO of the Azoria investment company, told Dr. Phil on Wednesday: "I think we can actually get there, but it's going to depend on DOGE and Elon and the president and also everyday taxpayers. Stepping up and saying if I see waste, fraud or abuse, I report it, DOGE cuts it, and then we get a cut of that action."

Why It Matters
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is tasked with reducing the administration's operational costs and has slashed funding from several federal agencies to downsize the government.

Fishback has suggested using the savings from these reductions to distribute $5,000 checks to American taxpayers. Backed by President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, the proposal aims to share some of the savings with the public, though it has not been finalized yet.
Story by Ahmad Austin Jr.

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) gave a telling response to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Thursday when asked if members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet lied under oath about the Signal chat controversy.

The American political landscape spiraled into chaos as a result of a report from The Atlantic explaining how editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was mistakenly added to a chat on Signal — an encrypted messaging app. In the chat, multiple members of Trump’s Cabinet discussed an attack on the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Then, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth took things a step further when he provided a detailed timeline of the attack. Goldberg initially left the timeline out of the report due to the sensitive nature of the information.

When asked about the chat at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe insisted that the material wasn’t classified information and that they weren’t aware if the timing of attacks and the weaponry were discussed in the chat. The next day, Goldberg published the screenshots to confirm that information was indeed mentioned.
Story by Suzanne Rowan Kelleher, Forbes Staff

Topline
The Trump administration’s multi-front tariff wars and escalating rhetoric are turning off international tourists, according to a growing body of travel data.

Key Facts
President Trump’s tariffs, imperialistic rhetoric and viral headlines of foreigners with legal tourist visas and green cards being detained by U.S. immigration officials are “stacking up as significant hurdles for the U.S. travel industry” and “setting international travel back several years,” Adam Sacks, president of Tourism Economics, a nonpartisan Oxford Economics company tracking tourism statistics, told Forbes.

While Tourism Economics’ end-of-2024 forecast had projected 9% growth for international inbound travel to the U.S. this year, the organization has revised its baseline forecast for a year-over-year drop of 5%—"but we recognize that it could be well worse than that, as things continue to unfold,” Sacks said.
Story by Demian Bio

The Trump administration has announced significant rollbacks in the enforcement of key financial crime laws, a move experts say could make it easier for criminals to engage in money laundering and bribery, InSight Crime reported.

Concretely, the administration has suspended enforcement of the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), which aimed to curb illicit financial flows through shell companies, and paused enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which prohibits bribery in international business.

The administration has also disbanded several Justice Department units focused on fighting corruption, both at home and abroad. The justification given for these changes is reducing regulatory burdens on businesses and improve U.S. economic competitiveness. However, critics quoted by the specialized outlet argue that these rollbacks undermine efforts to combat financial crime and organized corruption.

The U.S. Treasury Department estimates that $300 billion is laundered in the United States annually, with shell companies playing a major role. Most states do not require corporations to disclose their true owners, allowing individuals to conceal unlawful financial activity. The CTA was enacted to address this issue by requiring businesses to report beneficial ownership information to federal authorities. The Trump administration announced on March 21 that it would not enforce the CTA's reporting provisions.
Story by Bruce Gil

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., attends a Cabinet meeting at the White House on February 26, 2025 in Washington, DC.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Thursday that it plans to eliminate approximately 3,500 positions at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), even as the agency’s staff is reportedly struggling to meet product review deadlines.

The layoffs are part of a broader workforce reduction at HHS, which will cut 10,000 full-time employees across multiple agencies. That figure is in addition to the roughly 10,000 employees who have left since President Trump took office, many through voluntary separation programs.

In total, HHS said the downsizing will shrink its workforce from 82,000 to 62,000 employees and save $1.8 billion annually.

As part of the restructuring, the department is consolidating 28 divisions into 15, and its 10 regional offices will be reduced to five.
The messages had been set to delete in violation of record-keeping requirements.
By Katherine Faulders, Alexander Mallin, Peter Charalambous, and Olivia Rubin

A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to preserve the contents of the chat in which top national security officials used the Signal app to discuss military strikes in Yemen as they were taking place earlier this month.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered the top cabinet officials named in a lawsuit by the government transparency group American Oversight to retain any messages sent and received over Signal between March 11 and March 15.

Benjamin Sparks, a lawyer representing American Oversight, raised concerns that "these messages are in imminent danger of destruction" due to settings within Signal that can be set to delete messages automatically -- prompting Judge Boasberg to order the Trump administration file a sworn declaration by this Monday to ensure the messages are preserved.
The chat "failed soldiers, diplomats and intelligence officers," an expert said.
By Anne Flaherty and Lucien Bruggeman

The White House doubled down Wednesday on its insistence that its top national security officials did nothing wrong when they discussed a pending military strike in Yemen over a commercial messaging app known as Signal.

Former military and intelligence officials, though, say there's little doubt such exchanges never should have happened that way and warned that U.S. troops could have been put at risk.

Here's what to know about White House claims on the Signal flap:

Experts say the timing of pending military strikes is closely held sensitive information

President Donald Trump and his top aides aren't denying that they started a chat group in Signal to talk about a pending military attack on Yemen.

Instead, they are insisting the information wasn't classified because the data didn't include the location of the strikes or specific sources and methods. They also say they are looking into how the journalist -- The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg -- was inadvertently added to the chain.
Story by Lauren Peacock

President Trump took to his social media site to say that his phone call with the new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was "extremely productive" causing backlash from some of his supports on X.

The two world leaders planned to speak on the phone this morning for the first time ever as Mark Carney recently became the new Canadian Prime Minister. The conversation was the first conversation between the two leaders directly, but some Trump supporter's weren't happy about the call.

Trump wrote on Truth Social that the call was "extremely productive" as the two "agreed on many things" leaving some to call him out on X.
By: James Edwards

U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff has faced backlash for his positive remarks about Russian President Vladimir Putin and his support for Russian-held referenda in Ukraine. British journalist Andrew Neil condemned Witkoff as “a Kremlin stooge” and criticized his understanding of the geopolitical dynamics. Neil cautioned that views from high-ranking officials may derail peace negotiations.

Neil said, “One is just a busted flush mad American broadcaster, but the other is the president’s special envoy and he knows nothing about what he’s talking about.” He added, “I mean this guy’s a property billionaire, he’s never been involved in this level of geopolitics. He doesn’t know anything about it.”

Witkoff claimed that the core conflict in Ukraine has arisen from Russia’s claims to four regions: Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. He noted that the regions are primarily Russian-speaking and referred to referenda showing local wishes to join Russia.
Story by Asawin Suebsaeng and Andrew Perez

Reports that Donald Trump's top national security officials accidentally shared their Yemen attack plans with The Atlantic in real-time drove the news in official Washington in recent days. But it wasn't the only damaging leak of information held by the administration this week.

Two Trump administration spreadsheets - which each include what numerous advocates and government officials say is highly sensitive information on programs funded by the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) - were sent to Congress and also leaked online.

The leak, which sent a variety of international groups and nonprofits scrambling to assess the damage and protect workers operating under repressive regimes, came after the organizations had pressed the Trump administration to keep the sensitive information private and received some assurances it would remain secret.

Reached for comment, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly says: "These documents were transmitted to Congress and not publicly released by the State Department." She urged Rolling Stone to contact "whoever leaked it and in turn, made it public."
By  BILL BARROW

ATLANTA (AP) — President Donald Trump’s order accusing the Smithsonian Institution of not reflecting American history notes correctly that the country’s Founding Fathers declared that “all men are created equal.”

But it doesn’t mention that the founders enshrined slavery into the U.S. Constitution and declared enslaved persons as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of the Census.

Civil rights advocates, historians and Black political leaders sharply rebuked Trump on Friday for his order, entitled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” They argued that his executive order targeting the Smithsonian Institution is his administration’s latest move to downplay how race, racism and Black Americans themselves have shaped the nation’s story.

“It seems like we’re headed in the direction where there’s even an attempt to deny that the institution of slavery even existed, or that Jim Crow laws and segregation and racial violence against Black communities, Black families, Black individuals even occurred,” said historian Clarissa Myrick-Harris, a professor at Morehouse College, the historically Black campus in Atlanta.

The Thursday executive order cites the National Museum of African American History and Culture by name and argues that the Smithsonian as a whole is engaging in a “concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history.”
Story by Cleve R. Wootson Jr.

President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he “couldn’t care less” if car prices spike because of his 25 percent tariffs on auto imports, saying the levies will prompt more people to buy American cars.

“I couldn’t care less. I hope [foreign automakers] raise their prices, because if they do, people are going to buy American-made cars. We have plenty,” he said in the interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker that aired Saturday.

During the interview, he said he did not warn U.S. automakers against hiking prices on their cars as reported by some news organizations. He said his message to industry leaders was: “Congratulations, if you make your car in the United States, you’re going to make a lot of money. If you don’t, you’re going to have to probably come to the United States, because if you make your car in the United States, there is no tariff.”

It was a remarkable, if politically perilous, statement from Trump amid ballooning costs on a wide range of goods. Voters’ economic anxieties propelled Trump to the White House as critics complained his predecessor wasn’t sensitive enough to the impact of persistent inflation on everyday Americans. On the campaign trail, Trump vowed that prices would begin to come down on the first day of his presidency, but they remain stubbornly high, with potentially more economic pain in coming days as more tariffs take effect.
By CHRIS MEGERIAN, Associated Press AP logo

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- President Donald Trump said Sunday that "I'm not joking" about trying to serve a third term, the clearest indication he is considering ways to breach a constitutional barrier against continuing to lead the country after his second term ends in early 2029.

"There are methods which you could do it," Trump said in a telephone interview with NBC News.

He also said "it is far too early to think about it."

The 22nd Amendment, added to the Constitution in 1951 after President Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected four times in a row, says "no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice."

NBC's Kristen Welker asked Trump if one potential avenue to a third term was having Vice President JD Vance run for the top job and "then pass the baton to you."
Jesse Pound

White House aides have drafted a proposal that would levy tariffs of roughly 20% on most imports, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.

The report cited three people familiar with the matter. It also said White House advisers cautioned that several options are still on the table, meaning the 20% tariffs may not come to pass. Another plan being considered is the country-by-country “reciprocal” approach, according to the Washington Post.

The report comes a day before April 2, when President Donald Trump is set to announce his larger plans for global trade. The date has loomed over Wall Street, where stocks have been struggling in part due to uncertainty around rapidly changing global trade policy.
By Maggie Fick and Michael Erman

LONDON/NEW YORK, April 1 (Reuters) - Drugmakers are lobbying U.S. President Donald Trump to phase in tariffs on imported pharmaceutical products in hopes of reducing the sting from the charges and to allow time to shift manufacturing, according to four sources familiar with the discussions.

Trump is expected to unveil a massive tariff plan on Wednesday. He said on Sunday that the reciprocal tariffs he is due to announce will include all nations, not just a smaller group of 10 to 15 countries with the biggest trade imbalances.

He has also said he will soon declare tariffs on the pharma industry, which have been exempt from past trade wars, following his measures against other sectors.
The four sources, who asked not to be named because discussions between the administration and industry have been confidential, said it is their understanding that Trump will not announce specifics on any pharma tariffs on Wednesday.

Still, the largest multinational drug companies now expect U.S. tariffs targeting medical products are inevitable and hope to secure an incremental ramp-up to the 25% tariff the president has threatened, rather than 25% from day one, the four sources said.
Avery Lotz

President Trump and his allies for months have teased a third term for the already twice-elected commander-in-chief.

Over the weekend, the president confirmed he's "not joking" about yet another term.

Why it matters: The 22nd Amendment bars presidents from being elected to a third term. Amending the Constitution is an arduous path that's unlikely to succeed — but Trump told NBC News there are "methods" by which he could serve again.

There is virtually no possibility that the required two-thirds of both chambers of Congress and three-quarters of the U.S. states would vote to abolish the 22nd Amendment.
Two-thirds of U.S. states can also call for a constitutional convention to propose an amendment, but 38 of 50 states still need to ratify any amendment.
White House communications director Steven Cheung reiterated in a statement to Axios that Trump thinks "it's far too early to think about" a third term.

Driving the news: But scholars tell Axios they're taking Trump's comments seriously.

"Why would there be a 22nd Amendment if it's inoperative?" asked Kimberly Wehle, a University of Baltimore law professor and constitutional law expert.
She continued, "If the whole time it was meant to just set up some kind of game that could be outmaneuvered through tricky lawyering, that to me is not a legitimate or ethical position."

Here's what to know about the 22nd Amendment.
Story by Alex Henderson

The United States Institute of Peace (USIP), an independent think tank funded by Congress, is among the many agencies that is clashing with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — the Elon Musk-led group that is coordinating with the Trump Administration in its push for mass layoffs of federal workers. Most USIP employees received termination notices, and at one point, employees refused to let DOGE staffers through their front door.

Moreover, USIP is fighting DOGE and the Trump Administration in court. According to Wired's Brian Barrett, court documents filed on Monday, March 31 "reveal the next phase of DOGE's plans for USIP."

Barrett explains, "The dramatic confrontations culminated in a full takeover, with former State Department official Kenneth Jackson assuming the role of president…. As of March 25, DOGE staffer Nate Cavanaugh — formerly installed at GSA (General Services Administration) — has replaced Jackson as the institute's acting president, the documents show. They further state that Cavanaugh has been instructed to transfer USIP's assets — including its real estate — to the GSA."
Alex Henderson

After Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election and chose Elon Musk to run a new advisory group called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Tesla/SpaceX/X.com CEO claimed that working at DOGE would require altruistic motives. DOGE, Musk warned, would require a selfless commitment to cutting waste from the United States' federal government — not a desire for cushy, easy employment.

On November 14, 2024, Musk cryptically tweeted, "Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lots of enemies & compensation is zero. What a great deal!"

But according to Forbes' Beatrice Nolan, some DOGE employees are drawing "six-figure taxpayer-funded salaries" — while putting thousands of federal government employees out of work.

In an article published on March 5, Nolan — drawing in part on recent reporting from Wired — reports, "Musk had initially claimed positions within DOGE would be 'tedious work' where 'compensation is zero'…. While DOGE has aggressively downsized government offices, some of its own members are earning top-tier federal salaries, Wired reported."
Gregory Robinson

A leaked Pentagon document reportedly suggests Donald Trump is unlikely to help Europe if Russia’s president Vladimir Putin attacks.

Confidential guidance from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth acknowledged that the Trump administration is unlikely to offer substantial support, if any, to Europe in the event of a Russian attack, as reported by The Washington Post.

The secret document, called the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance”, states that while the US could rely on its vast nuclear deterrence capabilities to assist Russia, European allies could only expect troop deployments that are not already committed to homeland defence or countering China.

According to The Washington Post, the document, “outlines, in broad and sometimes partisan detail, the execution of President Donald Trump’s vision to prepare for and win a potential war against Beijing and defend the United States from threats in the near abroad, including Greenland and the Panama Canal.”
Story by Matthew Chapman

The Trump administration has suddenly disqualified $42 million in federal grants to schools in Michigan that had already been approved, reported FOX 2 Detroit on Monday.

The Michigan Department of Education "announced that just after 5 p.m. on March 28, education departments around the country received a notice from the U.S. Department of Education about a change in reimbursement policy. School districts that had received permission to submit delayed requests for late reimbursement for pre-approved projects will no longer receive the money," reported Jack Nissen.

The approval was yanked, per the report, "because the deadline for those requests was moved from March 28, 2026, to March 28, 2025, with the notice arriving just after the deadline was retroactively moved up."
Opinion by Staff

(ThyBlackMan.com) You are either against President Trump or you are for him. In the same vein, you are either for authoritarians running the federal government, or you are against it. You cannot be both.

Unfortunately, most institutions are proving to be weak in the face of authoritarianism. The Republican Party with their long history of promoting patriotism, family values and national security was the first institution to accept authoritarianism by anointing Donald Trump as their leader. We can no longer trust that any resemblance of the old Republican Party still exists to form any amount of political or moral resistance. As the livelihoods of everyday Americans are under constant threat, many of those who will be hurt by this authoritarian take over still support the president’s efforts.

At a ceremony in the White House’s East Room, the president recently signed an executive order to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education while surrounded by over a dozen children seated at school desks. Before sitting down, the president asked the group of assembled children if he should sign the order. The request was greeted by enthusiastic nods.
Story by Khaleda Rahman

Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced on Monday that almost 10 million Social Security records have now been updated.

In a post on X, DOGE said the Social Security Administration has been executing a "major cleanup" of records over the past four weeks.

"Approximately 9.9 million numberholders, all listed age 120+, have now been marked deceased. Another ~2 million to go," the post said.

Last week, an update from DOGE said that about seven million Social Security number holders listed as aged over 120 had been marked as deceased.
Story by Andrew Feinberg

The White House is angrily deflecting questions over how a Salvadoran man who had sought asylum in the United States was sent back to his home country despite having been granted protected legal status.

On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the deportation by claiming Kilmar Abrego Garcia was a leader of the notorious MS-13 gang who had engaged in human trafficking.

“Foreign terrorists do not have legal protections in the United States of America anymore, and it is within the President's executive authority and power to deport these heinous individuals from American communities,” she said.

Just a day earlier, Justice Department lawyers admitted in a court filing that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had mistakenly arrested and deported Abrego Garcia, despite being aware that he had been granted a form of protected legal status called “withholding of removal” in 2019 after an immigration judge found he would likely be targeted by gangs for persecution and torture if sent back to El Salvador, the place he’d fled when he came to the U.S. in 2011.
Story by Elizabeth Elkind

A normally sleepy procedural vote ended in drama for the House of Representatives after a rebellion by Republicans against their own party forced chamber proceedings to grind to a halt.

It puts the future in question for two key bills backed by the Trump administration that were slated to get a vote this week.

A mechanism known as a "rule vote," which traditionally falls along party lines and is not an expression of support or opposition to specific legislation, failed on Tuesday when nine Republicans joined Democrats in an extraordinary rebuke of GOP leaders.
ABC News

President Donald Trump said Monday he would "love" to run against former President Barack Obama when asked about a hypothetical matchup. Though the Constitution prevents a third term in office, Trump did not rule out seeking one when asked by NBC on Sunday.

"A lot of people want me to do it," Trump told NBC. He later told reporters on Air Force One, “I don’t want to talk about a third term right now ... No matter how you look at it, we got a long time to go."

Meanwhile, tariffs on imported autos are to go into effect on Wednesday. While economists predict Trump's tariffs will raise prices in the U.S., Trump told reporters Sunday that automakers "are going to make a lot of money," suggesting the measures would encourage companies "to build in the United States."
Story by Madeline Heim, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Over the past two years, Kristy Allen sent around 3,000 pounds of honey to the St. Croix Valley Food Bank in northwest Wisconsin.

Allen runs The Beez Kneez in Burnett County, where she sells honey and bees and teaches bee-keeping classes. She participated in the Wisconsin Local Food Purchase Assistance Program, which paid Wisconsin farmers to produce food for local pantries and other organizations working to combat hunger. Without the program, she said, she couldn't have afforded to give that much honey to a food bank. She was paid $25,000 the first year and $15,000 the second year to do so.

It wasn't just a financial win — it was a gratifying one, too. She got a handwritten note from a woman across the state who had received her honey and wanted to express gratitude for Allen's hard work.
Story by insider@insider.com (John L. Dorman,Brent D. Griffiths)

For Wisconsin Republicans, regaining a conservative majority on the state's Supreme Court was a top priority.

Elon Musk, the world's richest man, whose America PAC poured in more than $12 million to sway the pivotal judicial race in one of the country's premier swing states.

It wasn't enough.

On Tuesday, Musk's big bet on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race fell apart, as liberal Dane County Judge Susan Crawford defeated conservative Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel in the most expensive judicial race in US history. The race was called for Crawford by CNN and NBC News.

Musk, the face of President Donald Trump's White House DOGE office, has been met with increasingly vocal opposition by voters over the task force's cost-cutting efforts. And the fallout from DOGE is also impacting Tesla, the company that catapulted Musk to international prominence.

Crawford's victory is a significant blow for Musk as DOGE's work continues to face increased scrutiny from the public and could lead to electoral gains for Democrats in the 2026 midterm elections.
A new supercut shows how Trump's predictions in both 2020 and 2024 didn't age very well.
By Ed Mazza

A new CNN supercut shows just how far off the mark President Donald Trump has been with his economic predictions.

Trump last year promised he would “immediately begin a brand-new Trump economic boom” if he won the election.

“It’ll be a boom!” he vowed. “We’re gonna turn this country around so fast.”

Instead, it’s been a bust as the market plunged from record highs in former President Joe Biden’s final weeks, to weeks of losses since Trump announced tariffs and other trade war measures.

Stocks tanked yet again on Thursday, and the market reached “correction” territory, which is when major indexes drop by 10%.
Story by S.V. Date

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump is set to announce Wednesday his decision to unilaterally raise taxes on American importers by trillions of dollars over the next 10 years, potentially the biggest tax hike since World War II, with that cost getting passed along to consumers.

“It’s an extraordinary tax increase,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a conservative economist with the American Action Forum and formerly the director of the Congressional Budget Office.

Trump has been touting his announcement of his new import taxes — which he is doing on his own, without congressional approval — as “liberation day” for weeks. White House officials declined on Tuesday to reveal exactly how large a tariff Trump would impose and on which countries, although his statements in recent days have suggested that it would be across the board.

“Essentially all of the countries,” he told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday.

Earlier that day, Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro told Fox News: “Tariffs are going to raise about $600 billion a year, about $6 trillion over a 10-year period.”

If that figure is correct, that would make it the third biggest tax increase in U.S. history, at 2% of gross domestic product. Only the tax increases approved in Congress in 1941, 2.2% of GDP, and 1942, 5%, were larger, according to statistics compiled by the Tax Foundation.
Story by Jennifer Tucker, Wesleyan University

I teach history in Connecticut, but I grew up in Oklahoma and Kansas, where my interest in the subject was sparked by visits to local museums.

I fondly remember trips to the Fellow-Reeves Museum in Wichita, Kansas, and the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. A 1908 photograph of my great-grandparents picking cotton has been used as a poster by the Oklahoma Historical Society.

This love of learning history continued into my years as a graduate student of history, when I would spend hours at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum learning about the history of human flight and ballooning. As a professor, I’ve integrated the institution’s exhibits into my history courses.

The Trump administration, however, is not happy with the way the Smithsonian Institution and other U.S. museums are portraying history.

On March 27, 2025, the president issued an executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which asserted, “Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth. Under this historical revision, our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”
Story by Aurora DeStefano

While the world’s richest man Elon Musk has been promoting drastic cuts to the federal budget and workplaces, two Democratic lawmakers in New York are introducing a bill today to audit the so-called Buffalo Billion project.

The State of New York spent nearly $1 Billion ($959 million) to build an industrial plant near Buffalo which Musk’s company Tesla reportedly leases for $1 a year. (The plant currently produces chargers and related components for Tesla cars and trucks.)

Note: The bill is called “New York Determining Obligations and Guaranteeing Enforcement (DOGE) in Government Contracting Act.”

New York State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and State Assemblyman Micah Lasher said in a statement: “It is the height of hypocrisy that Elon Musk, the man who is dismantling federal agencies and doing enormous damage on the basis of wildly unsubstantiated claims of waste, fraud and abuse, is the beneficiary of one of the biggest, shadiest subsidy deals of all time.”
Story by asheffey@businessinsider.com (Ayelet Sheffey)

President Donald Trump's highly-anticipated new round of tariffs is here, and it could mean increased prices on a range of goods Americans rely on.

On Wednesday, Trump signed an executive order announcing reciprocal tariffs on all countries that have placed tariffs on US goods. These tariffs fall on Trump's so-called "Liberation Day," which the president has been touting for weeks as the day when his expansive trade plan would drop.

"April 2, 2025, will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America's destiny was reclaimed, and the day that we began to make America wealthy again," Trump said during Wednesday remarks.

The motivation for the reciprocal tariffs: "They do it to us, and we do it to them," Trump said. "Very simple. Can't get any simpler than that." He added that all of the tariffs would have a baseline 10% tariff rate.

Trump said during his remarks that he would charge countries "approximately half" of what those countries have been charging the US. Trump said that would amount to a 32% tariff on goods from China, 20% tariff for the European Union, 32% tariff for Taiwan, and 26% tariff for India.
Story by Nicole Lafond

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, obtained private emails that show the acting commissioner of Social Security purposely canceled contracts the Social Security Administration holds with the state of Maine as some sort of political payback against Democratic Gov. Janet Mills.

Connolly outlined the correspondence in a letter, which appears to have been originally obtained by HuffPost. The emails reportedly show that acting commissioner Leland Dudek asked Social Security staff to provide him with information on what contracts the state of Maine holds with the SSA. He made the request about one week after President Trump got into a public fight with Mills over his at the time new executive order banning trans women and girls from participating in women’s and girls’ sports.

Social Security staff reportedly told Dudek that Maine, like all states, has a contract with the Social Security Administration that allows infants to be assigned Social Security numbers at birth. The contract also aides in state death verifications.

Per HuffPost:

According to emails obtained by Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Social Security staff informed Dudek that canceling the contracts “would result in improper payments and potential for identity theft.”

Dudek told his staff to go for it.

“Please cancel the contracts. While our improper payments will go up, and fraudsters may compromise identities, no money will go from the public trust to a petulant child,” Dudek wrote, referring to Mills.

Canceling the vital records contracts would make it more difficult for the federal government to track births and deaths in Maine, hampering efforts to prevent fraud across government agencies, all of which use Social Security records to prevent improper payments.
Story by Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck, CNN

When Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden faced intense scrutiny for their handling of classified material, top officials now serving in Trump’s Justice Department and FBI demanded criminal probes and severe penalties.

Yet today, those same figures – including Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, and DC interim US Attorney Ed Martin – have all declined to publicly criticize senior Trump officials who used Signal to share military attack plans in a chat that inadvertently included a journalist.

The Trump administration has denied any classified information was discussed in the text messages released by The Atlantic about plans to bomb rebels in Yemen, but CNN reported that information shared in the chat was highly classified at the time it was sent.

Bondi, now the country’s highest ranking law enforcement official, vigorously defended the officials who participated in the Signal chat, including Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and suggested it was unlikely their actions would be investigated criminally. But previously, Bondi argued that both Clinton and her aide Huma Abedin needed to face charges after emails that contained classified information were found on the computer of her ex-husband, former Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner.

“This has everything to do with the security of our country,” Bondi said in January 2018 on Fox News. “When you have the top-secret security clearance that Huma Abedin had – you know when you send those emails that you are violating the law, and there is no objective law enforcement officer in this country that would not charge her based on that. Alright? No one.”
US taxpayers are already footing a big bill for Trump’s second term golf trips
Story by thedailydigest.com

How much is one outlet estimating?
Donald Trump promised to drastically pare back government spending when he was on the campaign trail, and for the most part, the President has been keeping his promise to the American people. But there’s one minor hitch.

Trump’s breaking his promise
However, while Trump has given his political ally, Elon Musk, the power to slash his way through the federal government and cut any waste and fraud he finds, the President has been busy spending tax payer money in another area.

Golfing though his second term
According to a March 29th report from HuffPost, President Trump has visited one of his golf courses a whopping nine out of the ten weekends that he’s been in office. Let’s put the amount of time that Trump has spent golfing in his second term into perspective.
Rachel Maddow looks at the sloppiness with which new international tariffs were announced by Donald Trump, including small, island countries with no population to speak of and certainly no significant exports that require tariff protection for the U.S. economy.
Story by Housnia Shams

Donald Trump has reportedly fired at least three National Security Council staffers, after far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer pushed the US president to let them go.

Loomer met with Trump at the Oval Office on Wednesday and urged him to fire several members of his National Security Council staff that she deemed disloyal to him, CNN reported.

Officials fired include director for intelligence Brian Walsh, senior director for legislative affairs Thomas Boodry and David Feith, a senior director overseeing technology and national security, CNN reported.

Vice President JD Vance, chief of staff Susie Wiles and national security adviser Mike Waltz were reportedly among those who participated in Wednesday's meeting.
Story by Alana Loftus

The Trump administration terminated the entire staff who were running a $4.1 billion program to help low-income households across the United States pay their heating bills.

The mass firings, which are one of many similar instances in recent months, threaten the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. The program helps offset high utility bills for around 6.2 million households in the United States during. It provides relief for both high heating bills and cooling bills in the summer.

Executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, Mark Wolfe, told the New York Times, “They fired everybody, there’s nobody left to do anything. Either this was incredibly sloppy, or they intend to kill the program altogether.”
Story by Joe Kucinski

The sweeping tariffs signed into existence by President Donald Trump over the last week have sent shockwaves through the auto industry. Several automakers have suggested they may need to or will raise prices to counter the effects of the levies. The Ford Motor Company, however, is responding in a very different way: by offering their employee pricing program to everyone.

According to reports by The Detroit Free Press and Reuters, Ford will offer its so-called A-Plan pricing on most Ford and Lincoln vehicles to all buyers, not just those who work for the company, through June 2. A separate program that offers a free home charger and complimentary installation to those people who purchase or lease an all-electric vehicle has also been extended through June 30.

A new ad campaign called “From America, For America” has been launched to announce this new program. But the campaign does more than just communicate the discount program; it lets people know Ford employs more hourly workers and assembles more vehicles in America than any other automaker, according to the Free Press.
Story by Steve Benen

A month into Donald Trump’s second term, the president hosted a White House event for the National Governors Association, which didn’t quite go as planned. The Republican picked a fight with Maine’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, over transgender student-athletes, apparently hoping to bully her into submission.

It didn’t work. “See you in court,” the governor told him.

Ideally, at this point, the dispute would be handled responsibly through a legal process. But as The Washington Post reported, the Trump administration appears to have settled on a different kind of course.

In an email first obtained by The Washington Post, Leland Dudek, the acting Social Security Administration chief, wrote that Mills was “disrespectful” and “unprofessional” toward Trump. Dudek added that canceling the contracts would lead to an increase in the number of improper payments, but he directed officials to do it anyway.

“Please cancel the contracts. While our improper payments will go up, and fraudsters may compromise identities, no money will go from the public trust to a petulant child,” Dudek wrote, referring to Mills.
Story by Alex Henderson

On Wednesday afternoon, April 2, President Donald Trump had a visitor in the White House Oval Office: far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, a self-described "proud Islamophobe" who is controversial even among fellow Trump supporters.

During the meeting, according to reporters Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan and Ken Bensinger, Loomer "pressed for him to fire National Security Council staff members whom she deemed disloyal to him."

The Times interviewed seven different sources with knowledge of the meeting. And according to Times reporters Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan and Ken Bensinger, Trump "may act on some of Ms. Loomer's recommendations."

The Times journalists, in an article published the day after the meeting, reported, "Ms. Loomer's rhetoric and actions have been so extreme that she has alienated others even on the far right. She has shared a conspiracy theory on social media calling the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks an 'inside job.' During the 2024 campaign, Ms. Loomer said that 'the White House will smell like curry' if Kamala Harris were elected — a jab at her Indian heritage…. But on Wednesday afternoon, she sat with the president in the Oval Office, plying him with claims about staff members whom she insisted he should dismiss."
Story by Michael Hiltzik

The old political adage that "where you stand depends upon where you sit" has been getting aired out in Washington.

Republicans and conservatives used to celebrate judges' issuance of nationwide court injunctions to block Biden policies or progressive government programs.

Now that nationwide court injunctions are being used to block Trump policies, however, onetime fans of the practice have decided that it's unconstitutional and illegal and needs to be outlawed.

Law professors Nicholas Bagley and Samuel Bray
"When a single district court judge halts a law or policy across the entire country," Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote his colleagues on Monday, "it can undermine the federal policymaking process and erode the ability of popularly elected officials to serve their constituents."

That's not untrue. But I couldn't find evidence that Jordan ever made this point before Trump came into office. I asked his committee staff to identify any such reference, but haven't heard back.

The issue of nationwide injunctions — in which federal judges apply their rulings beyond the specific plaintiffs who have brought suits in their courthouses — dovetails with another widely decried abuse of the judicial process. That's "judge-shopping," through which litigants connive to bring their cases before judges they assume will rule in their favor, typically by filing lawsuits in judicial divisions staffed by only a single judge whose predilections are known.

The combination of these schemes allowed conservative judges in remote federal courthouses to block major policy initiatives by President Biden, such as his efforts to enact student debt relief.
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