The Conversation -- April 7, 2025
John Melloy & Tanaya Macheel of CNBC: "U.S. stocks were slammed for a third day on Monday as the White House remained defiant even after ... Donald Trump’s rollout of shockingly high tariff rates on most key U.S. trading partners has caused a market meltdown.... The Dow Jones Industrial average tumbled 1,363 points, or 3.5%, following back-to-back 1,500 point losses for the first time ever Thursday and Friday.... The S&P 500 dropped 4%, further into bear territory, as investors sold their tech winners to raise cash. The Nasdaq is off 26% from its high. Trump’s initial unilateral 10% tariff went into effect Saturday. Investors were hoping for news over the weekend that the Trump administration was having successful negotiations with countries to lower the tariff rates, or at the very least, was considering delaying the set of so-called reciprocal tariffs due to take effect April 9. Instead the president and his key advisors played down the sell-off." ~~~
~~~ Here are New York Times updates. ~~~
~~~ Christian Shepherd, et al., of the Washington Post: “Stock markets across the Asia-Pacific and Europe were trading sharply lower on Monday and the S&P 500 was expected to drop again, extending the sell-off triggered by President Donald Trump’s global trade war.... Trump administration officials spent the weekend defending the president’s tariffs on almost all trading partners after major Wall Street indexes continued to fall Friday, when China announced an additional 34 percent in levies on U.S. goods — matching what Trump billed as his 'Liberation Day' increase. CNBC has updates here. ~~~
~~~ Adriana Licon & Fatima Hussein of the AP: “... Donald Trump said Sunday that he won’t back down on his sweeping tariffs on imports from most of the world unless countries even out their trade with the U.S., digging in on his plans to implement the taxes that have sent financial markets reeling, raised fears of a recession and upended the global trading system. Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said he didn’t want global markets to fall, but also that he wasn’t concerned about the massive sell-off either, adding, 'sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.' His comments came as global financial markets appeared on track to continue sharp declines once trading resumes Monday, and after Trump’s aides sought to soothe market concerns by saying more than 50 nations had reached out about launching negotiations to lift the tariffs.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: I heard only a few seconds of Trump's remarks aboard AF1. He wasn't talking about the markets. He was telling a reporter to get her head out of the way of a camera shot of him.
Dean Obeidallah on Substack searches for the reasons Trump is bringing down the U.S. economy. Among the reasons proferrered: (1) Trump reckons he will get richer; (2) 'cause Putin told him to (Obeidallah includes some of the "logic" behind Trump's obedience to Putin); and (3) what Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) lays out in a series of Bluesky tweets here. MB: I think you should take seriously this speculation. Or come up with some theories of your own. As Obeidallah writes, "You don’t need a PhD in Economics to understand that when an economy is slowing, cutting federal spending, causing massive layoffs and wildly increasing taxes by way of tariffs are a recipe for financial disaster[.]" Thank you to laura h. for the link. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Murphy wrote, in part, "He [Trump] is using access to government funds to bully universities, law firms and state and local governments into loyalty pledges." This is obvious, but the use of the word "access" brought home to me that Trump & Musk are causing the federal government to destroy itself. The "enemy within," indeed. Or maybe "autocannibalism." Kinda like if I opened a restaurant called "Health Hazard," and put a sign on the door pledging to spit in your soup & reuse dirty utensils.
Graig Graziosi of the Independent: “Elon Musk has continued to take jabs at Trump officials defending the president's new tariffs.... Musk has lost just over $30bn since Trump announced his tariffs.... That loss and continuing volatility may explain why Musk has been taking pot shots at Trump officials like U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and one of the architects of the president's tariff plan, Peter Navarro.
That may end up being the most enduring image of the Trump presidency, that is, the president out on a golf cart while people's retirement is in flames. -- Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), on "Meet the Press" Sunday
Get your ass off the golf course and face the people! -- Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), at a Hands Off! rally in Washington, D.C., Saturday ~~~
~~~ Our Nero. John Helton of ABC News: "As markets braced for another meltdown triggered by ... Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs, Democrats hammered the president for spending the weekend golfing rather than responding to Americans' fears that their retirement accounts are plummeting with the markets. Trump left Washington, D.C., for Florida on Thursday to attend a LiV Golf Tournament dinner ahead of a tournament at his Doral club in Florida. On Saturday and Sunday, he played in a club championship at his Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter."
⭐Cecilia Vega of CBS News: "Three weeks ago, 238 Venezuelan migrants were flown from Texas to a maximum security prison in El Salvador. That country's president offered to take them and the Trump administration used a law not invoked since World War II to send them -- claiming they are all terrorists and violent gang members. The government has released very little information about the men. But through internal government documents, we have obtained a list of their identities and found that an overwhelming majority have no apparent criminal convictions or even criminal charges.... Among them: a makeup artist, a soccer player and a food delivery driver, being held in a place so harsh that El Salvador's justice minister once said the only way out is in a coffin.... At least 22% of the men on the list have criminal records here in the United States or abroad. The vast majority are for non-violent offenses like theft, shoplifting and trespassing. About a dozen are accused of murder, rape, assault and kidnapping. For 3% of those deported, it is unclear whether a criminal record exists. But we could not find criminal records for 75% of the Venezuelans - 179 men- now sitting in prison." ~~~
Alan Feuer of the New York Times: “The Trump administration committed a 'grievous error' that 'shocks the conscience' by inadvertently deporting a Salvadoran migrant to a notorious prison last month and then declaring there was little it could do to bring him back, a federal judge in Maryland said on Sunday. The strongly worded order by the judge, Paula Xinis,..., offered a more detailed explanation of a brief ruling she issued on Friday, demanding that the White House bring the migrant, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, back to the United States by the end of Monday. And it rejected a request by the Justice Department to pause the order as a federal appeals court considered its validity. Over 22 pages, Judge Xinis took Trump officials to task for deporting Mr. Abrego Garcia to El Salvador on March 15 in violation of a previous court order that allowed him to stay in the United States. Administration officials then argued that neither they nor she as the judge overseeing the case had any power to retrieve him from the prison.” The linked order is to a federal court webpage, so is not firewalled. The AP report is here.
Erik Uebelacker of Courthouse News: “A federal judge on Friday ruled that the Trump administration had violated his order to halt sweeping freezes to federal funding by withholding Federal Emergency Management Agency funds to at least 19 states. It seemed to be a 'covert' effort to punish states with so-called sanctuary laws for immigrants, the judge said. In March, U.S. District Judge John McConnell issued a preliminary injunction in favor of 23 states that sued the government over its plan to implement a broad pause to state aid. The Barack Obama appointee ruled that the plan 'fundamentally undermines the distinct constitutional roles of each branch of our government,' and ordered the Trump administration to 'immediately end any funding pause' until further notice. But on Friday, McConnell found the Trump administration in breach of the court’s order. At least 19 states — all with Democratic attorney generals, and all of which had sued to stop the funding cuts — 'presented undisputed evidence' that they were not receiving congressionally approved FEMA funding from the federal government, the judge ruled.” Thanks to RAS for the link. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: Do bear in mind that the failure to follow the court's order is not just as oopsie! Rather, it's part of "a full-scale attack on democracy" and move toward autocracy, as Paul Blumenthal lays out in his HuffPost column linked below.
Kate Conger of the New York Times: “The decision by the White House to grant X a position of power and visibility [in the White House briefing room] alongside news organizations was one of an increasing number of perks landed by the social media company, as [Elon] Musk became omnipresent at ... [Donald] Trump’s side.... The positioning of X as a powerful government mouthpiece has helped bolster the platform, even as the company continues to struggle.... Mr. Musk, who has long bristled at media coverage of himself and his companies, has in recent months positioned X as a new media outlet, using his own news-making power to draw the spotlight to his platform.” ~~~
~~~ Yes, but Musk deserves the boost because he's doing such excellent work for the American people. ~~~
~~~ SNAFU. Lisa Rein, et al., of the Washington Post: “Retirees and disabled people are facing chronic website outages and other access problems as they attempt to log in to their online Social Security accounts, even as they are being directed to do more of their business with the agency online. The website has crashed repeatedly in recent weeks, with outages lasting anywhere from 20 minutes to almost a day, according to six current and former officials with knowledge of the issues. Even when the site is back online, many customers have not been able to sign in to their accounts — or have logged in only to find information missing. For others, access to the system has been slow, requiring repeated tries to get in.... The new demands from Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service include a 50 percent cut to the technology division responsible for the website and other electronic access. Many of the network outages appear to be caused by an expanded fraud check system imposed by the DOGE team, current and former officials said. The technology staff did not test the new software against a high volume of users to see if the servers could handle the rush, these officials said.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: Got that? (1) Musk fires half the staff needed to maintain the Website. Then (2) his incompetent boyz club writes some faulty code and installs it without beta-testing it. ~~~
~~~ AND This. Carolyn Johnson of the Washington Post: “Scientists at the National Institutes of Health demonstrated a promising step toward using a person’s own immune cells to fight gastrointestinal cancers in a paper in Nature Medicine on Tuesday, the same day the agency was hit with devastating layoffs that left many NIH personnel in tears.... A researcher who was not involved in the study called the results 'remarkable' because they highlight a path to a frustratingly elusive goal in medicine — harnessing a person’s own immune defenses to target common solid tumor cancers.... But the progress arrives at a sad time for science — and for patients, said the leader of the work, NIH immunotherapy pioneer Steven Rosenberg.... The Trump administration’s aggressive downsizing of staff and hampering of routine activities is beginning to delay that care.... Rosenberg said[,] 'Right now, assuming things don’t get any worse, it would be a month [delay]. These are not patients that have very many months left [to live].'”
Kyle Melnick, et al., of the Washington Post: “A second child has died of measles amid an outbreak in West Texas, prompting Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to meet with the family of the deceased 8-year-old girl in Gaines County, where most of the cases have clustered.... He said he was also there to learn how the Department of Health and Human Services can help control the outbreak. 'The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine,' Kennedy said, referring to the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine....
⭐“Hours after his pro-vaccine post, Kennedy followed up with photos of his visit to Texas, including with two doctors he described as 'extraordinary healers' who used the steroids and an antibiotic that infectious diseases specialists say are not recommended measles treatments. Ben Edwards, one of the doctors Kennedy praised, has criticized measles vaccination and released a podcast earlier in the outbreak describing mass infection as 'God’s version of measles immunization.” Richard Bartlett, the other, has inaccurately touted the steroid treatment as a cure for covid-19 and was disciplined by Texas medical regulators in 2003 for inappropriate use of antibacterial and steroid treatments.” ~~~
~~~ Other reports, like this one in Politico and this one from NBC News, note Kennedy's endorsement of the MMR vaccine, but don't mention his enthusiasm for a couple of voodoo medicine men. Kudos to the WashPo for reporting how Kennedy countered and effectively repudiated his supposed endorsement of the measles vax.
Sheryl Stolberg of the New York Times: “Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a show on Facebook of his meeting with American Indian and Alaska Native leaders last month.... Now Native leaders have some questions for him. Why ... did he lay off employees in programs aimed at supporting Native people, like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Healthy Tribes initiative? Why has he shuttered five regional offices of the Department of Health and Human Services that ... cover 80 percent of the nation’s Indian population? Why were five senior advisers for tribal issues within the department’s Administration for Children and Families, all of them Indian or Native people, let go? Why are all of these changes being made without consulting tribal leaders, despite centuries-old treaty obligations, as well as presidential executive orders, requiring it? But the final indignity ... came last week, when Mr. Kennedy reassigned high-ranking health officials ... to Indian Health Service locations in the American West, when what the chronically understaffed service really needs are doctors and nurses who are familiar with the unique needs of Native people.”
digby has much more on Saturday's protests. Thanks to RAS for the link. Gotta love the West Virginia White lady with the sign that reads, "What Cory Said." It's hard to give up when you see that kind of spunk and solidarity. (Also linked yesterday.)
Maegan Vazquez & Marianna Sotomayor of the Washington Post: “House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) told House Republicans on Sunday that he has reached a deal with Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Florida) on a bipartisan bill that would have allowed new parents in Congress to vote remotely.... Johnson said ... Luna had pulled her resolution.... Instead, Johnson will work to formalize vote 'pairing' — a House rule that would match up an absent member’s vote with the vote of another member who votes the opposite way.... Luna [said the pairing] ... would be available for all House Republicans to use 'when unable to physically be present to vote: new parents, bereaved, emergencies.'... Initially, Democrats reacted skeptically and said they are trying to understand the agreement Johnson proposed before commenting.” MB: Uh, so the deal, whatever it is, is available only to Republicans? Or has Johnson pulled some kind of fast one on Luna, who is not the sharpest tack on the board? For a Man of God, Bible Mike is mighty shifty.
GOP Senator Favors Violence Against Journalists. Molly Young of the Oklahoman: “Journalists would write fewer 'fake news' stories if disputes over coverage could be handled through violence, U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin suggested on social media. In a video posted over the weekend to his official X account, the Oklahoma Republican describes the 1890 killing of a former congressman, who was shot by a reporter in the U.S. Capitol. Mullin briefly pauses after finishing the story, then begins talking about journalists today. 'Now, there’s a lot we could say about reporters and the stories they write, but I bet they would write a lot less false stories — as President Trump says, “fake news” — if we could still handle our differences that way,' Mullin says.... Mullin recorded the video from the flight of stairs where he says the shooting occurred. He says stains from the former lawmaker’s blood can still be seen on the stone steps.... After Mullin makes his statement about reporters, the person recording him zooms in to show the blood-stained stairs.... Mullin's latest remarks come as verbal attacks against journalists grow more common.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: Although a reporter murdered a congressman, Mullin uses the episode to suggest "lawmakers" should be the ones shooting reporters if they write stories members of Congress don't like. Seems a rather harsh codicil to the First Amendment, Markwayne(, you ignorant goon).
~~~~~~~~~
Samantha Chery & Avi Selk of the Washington Post: “A Mississippi judge this week dismissed former governor Phil Bryant’s defamation lawsuit against a news nonprofit that investigated his connections to a $77 million public welfare scandal, sparing the newsroom from being forced to reveal internal documents and confidential sources it used for the Pulitzer-winning series. The dismissal was widely applauded by press freedom groups that viewed the suit as an effort to punish Mississippi Today and its journalists for scrutinizing government officials. Bryant filed the suit in July 2023 — about a year after Mississippi Today published the first installments of its investigative series 'The Backchannel,' which named Bryant and NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre in connection to a scheme to abuse the state’s welfare program. Neither Favre nor Bryant have been charged with a crime, and both broadly deny any wrongdoing.”
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Cambodia. Hannah Beech & Sun Narin of the New York Times: “... the slashing of American foreign aid and ... [Donald] Trump’s executive order last month to gut American-funded news media like Radio Free Asia and Voice of America are erasing what little space for free speech remains in Cambodia. Thirty projects funded by the United States Agency for International Development have been canceled, including those supporting civil society and an independent media. It is a tectonic shift in this Southeast Asian nation, which was once a laboratory for internationally mandated democracy-building in the post-Khmer Rouge era, then later devolved into a strongman state.”
Israel/Palestine. Sam Mednick of the AP: “Israel has dramatically expanded its footprint in the Gaza Strip since relaunching its war against Hamas last month. It now controls more than 50% of the territory and is squeezing Palestinians into shrinking wedges of land. The largest contiguous area the army controls is around the Gaza border, where the military has razed Palestinian homes, farmland and infrastructure to the point of uninhabitability, according to Israeli soldiers and rights groups. This military buffer zone has doubled in size in recent weeks.”
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Reader Comments (7)
Recently we had a bit of a discussion about the Fat Hitler regime’s lack of any real vision of the future beyond total destruction of democracy, of healthcare, of defense, of civil service, of Social Security, of…everything. Turns out that IS the vision of the future. We’ve also taken the craven cowards in the PoT to task for sitting back and allowing this to happen when just a handful could join Democrats and stop it.
The reason the Party of Traitors is backing Doge is all too simple,
“DOGE isn’t about government spending, right-sizing budgets, or the promotion of efficiency. It’s simply about laying waste—burning the government down to its foundations—and it’s every bit as capacious and consuming a vision of the future as anything the abundance bros have come up with.
The GOP has long given up on winning over voters by demonstrating that it knows best how to make the government work for people; as I’ve noted previously, the notion that there are even ‘Republican lawmakers’ anymore is a quaint myth. Republicans are backing DOGE because it’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to incapacitate the federal government once and for all and forever alter the public’s ability to demand more from their leaders. DOGE’s proponents are making a bet that even if Democrats return to power, they’ll be left with a smoking husk instead of a functional administrative state—and that they’ll lack the willpower to rebuild it.”
And it’s happening right before our eyes.
Akhilleus,
Yes, a government of spoiled children for spoiled children is precisely the point. Or said another way, a government of and for patricides who want to destroy anything or anyone who can tell them what to do.
Law? Rules? Regulation? Consequence? Punishment? None of that allowed in their egomanic Edens.
The GOP, as you say is not interested in a government that works for people. They are interested in a government that works for them, and with the leadership they now have, that means no government at all.
How best to describe Fat Hitler’s “National security” Houthi PC group’s reaction to their sworn duty?
Shirking and Smirking
First, shirking their duty in so many ways, but especially in using dangerously ineffective software for communicating attack plans that endangered the lives of American military personnel. But why so cavalier?
“…Fourth, as a first-term Trump administration official and ex-CIA officer, I believe the reason these officials risk interacting in this way is to prevent their communications from being preserved as required by the Presidential Records Act, and avoid them being discoverable in litigation, or subject to a subpoena or Freedom of Information Act request. And fifth, no one seems to have feared being investigated by the justice department for what appears to be a violation of the Espionage Act’s Section 793(f), which makes gross negligence in mishandling classified information a felony…”
Which brings us to the smirking part. Why no fear of consequences?
“You don’t need 30-plus years in uniform to know that holding a detailed yet insecure discussion about a pending military mission is wrong; the participants in the chat knew, too. They just didn’t care, not as much as they cared about keeping their communications from being legally discoverable. They’re safe in the knowledge that in a new era without benefit of the rule of law, Patel’s FBI and Bondi’s justice department will never bring charges against them, for a crime which uniformed service members are routinely prosecuted for vastly smaller infractions. As the attorney general made plain in her remarks about this matter, federal law enforcement is now entirely subservient to Trump’s personal and political interests.”
The Pentagon, under the direction of one these smirking bastards, Drunk Pete, is supposedly conducting an investigational-like thingie which I’m sure will get to the bottom of something, most likely a bottle of scotch.
We are completely through the looking glass. And the glass has been shattered by these smirking, shirking sons of bitches.
They’re laughing at us. Just as our enemies are doing for putting such incompetent and wanton wastrels in charge.
Oopsie!
Fatty sez we gotta take his medicine. He didn’t say it was cyanide…
From the WSJ, minutes ago:
“Turmoil in global markets snowballed into one of the worst routs in recent memory after President Trump said he will stay the course with aggressive, economically disruptive tariffs.
‘What’s going to happen to the markets, I can’t tell you,’ Trump said [no shit] late Sunday. ‘I don’t want anything to go down. But sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.’
Stocks fell early Monday, with contracts tied to the major U.S. indexes falling more than 3%. The pullback tipped the broad S&P 500 index into bear-market territory, following the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite. That is often defined as following a 20%-plus decline from a recent peak.
Wall Street's ‘fear gauge,’ the VIX, leapt as investors braced for further volatility ahead.
Global markets recoiled. In Asia, where many economies are highly trade-reliant, stocks plunged. Hong Kong's main equity benchmark lost 13%, in its worst day since the Asian financial crisis. Indexes in Shanghai, Taipei and Tokyo fell between 7% and 10%.
The selloff didn't spare Europe, where the Stoxx Europe 600 sank more than 4%. Bitcoin and oil prices fell.”
The kind of medicine needed to “fix” Fatty, democracy, is being taken off the shelves. It’s unfaaaair to Trump.
Dean Obeidallah's, substack, suggested by Bluesky, speculates on t****'s reasons for crashing the markets, noting
"...the most chilling reason, best summed up by Democratic Senator Chris Murphy in a long post online Wednesday night. Murphy wrote, 'Those trying to understand the tariffs as economic policy are dangerously naive.' Rather, 'the tariffs are a tool to collapse our democracy.'
Murphy then laid out how Trump would use the tariffs to gain more power, writing, 'one by one, every industry or company will need to pledge loyalty to Trump in order to get sanctions relief.' In exchange, companies will be required by Trump to 'police' employees to silence criticism of Trump and he would demand 'contributions to his political efforts.'
As Murphy warned, 'Trump didn’t invent this strategy. It’s the playbook for democratically elected leaders who want to stay in power forever.'"
Since one of those reasons suggested is to "'Make Russia Great Again' at the expense of the United States.", Obeidallah includes an interview with Christpher Steele taped last October.
WHY?
@Marie
Yes! The Pretender (and the current GOP) is government's raging auto-immune disease.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/04/07/trump-deportee-mistake-supreme-court-abrego-garcia/?
Heartbreaking to be told again how powerless our government is.
How about 100% tariffs on El Salvador, Donald? Tariff threats can be very scary, I've heard.