Tariffs, Tariffs, and More Tariffs 😱✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️😱

Liberation Day?  Tariffs are here and to paraphrase Martha Stewart, they are not a good thing.  As Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal was quick to point out the “overall economic impact of Trump’s tariff barrage is unknowable—not least because we don’t know how countries will react,  but If the response is widespread retaliation, the result could be shrinking world trade, slower growth, recession, or worse.”  To that end bank economists have already begun to revise their growth projections downward to negative numbers, another one of those not good things. As the WSJ says tariffs will result in higher costs for American consumers and businesses because despite what Trump says:  “TARIFFS ARE TAXES.”  Immediately after Trump made his rambling and somewhat incoherent Rose Garden tariff announcement, Dow futures dropped 1000 points, as I write they are down almost 1200 points. Nothing more to say on this subject except maybe Trump should have paid closer attention in his Wharton economics class, assuming he even attended his classes.  Remember his promise to lower grocery prices and inflation, forget about that, now it’s all about suffering and pain.  Even a few Republican Senators think he’s off his rocker.  Four of them: Maine’s Susan Collins, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, and both of Kentucky’s Senators Mitch McConnell, and Rand Paul voted with all the Democrats to try to undo the tariffs he earlier imposed on Canada but it won’t matter because concerned that the Senate passed resolution would also pass in the House something that would cause ketchup bottles to fly in his direction, Speaker Mike Johnson won’t even let the House vote on the Senate resolution.  If the price of avoiding the wrath of the orange one is trashing the economy, so be it.  Yesterday wasn’t just about tariffs, it was also the day that ten thousand or more Department of Health and Human Services professionals were axed. Forget about the CDC, the FDA and their drug safety and efficacy thing, the monitoring of food born illnesses on land and on cruise ships, dealing with asthma, HIV surveillance and transmission prevention, Head Start, Meals on Wheels (food for the elderly), heating subsidies for the poor, and even the IVF program that Trump said he would champion. Even the doctor who fast tracked the monoclonal antibody treatment that saved Trump when he was suffering acute respiratory complications from COVID was fired. The cuts are so drastic and irresponsible that former FDA Commissioner David Kessler fears that unless they are reversed within the week, their impact on our health and medical innovation will be irreversible.  Last night on Rachel Maddow’s show, Kessler said he finds it hard to believe that Trump has a clue about the damage that’s being done. He went on to say “someone” better tell him so he can reverse the cuts now.  Kessler, usually calm and balanced, seemed apoplectic because even as he issued that warning, he had to know that Trump is okay with killing us and setting science back decades if it will facilitate his tax cuts, the irony being that by imposing all those horrendous tariffs, Trump is actually significantly increasing taxes but is so delusional that he doesn’t get it. Former VP Mike Pence gets it though, he called the tariffs the largest peace time tax in US history. Pence is right.             

 

Tuesday’s Election:  The tariff news sucks but at least there’s some good news elsewhere.  In Wisconsin, where elections are usually won or lost by the barest of margins, a majority of the state’s voters rejected Elon Musk’s cheesy antics, million-dollar bribes and $25 million spend and instead voted to seat liberal judicial candidate Susan Crawford rather than Elon’s MAGA favorite Brad Schimel. Crawford won by a stunning ten points.  As a result of her victory, liberals will maintain their narrow majority on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court which means that at least until SCOTUS issues another dreadful abortion ruling, women in Wisconsin will continue to have reproductive rights.  In addition, there’s now a significant chance that Wisconsin’s Republican drawn Congressional district map which disproportionately favors Republican candidates will be redrawn to accurately reflect the state’s actual party make-up.  Despite having a Democratic Governor, one Republican Senator and one Democratic Senator, due to the gerrymandered maps, six of Wisconsin’s eight members of Congress are Republicans and only two are Democrats. The expectation is that with fairly drawn district map the state’s House delegation would be more evenly split. Abortion politics aside, the fear of redistricting and the resulting loss of House seats is why Republicans and Elon contributed so much time and money to backing MAGA man Schimel.  As expected, Republicans easily won both of the special House elections in Florida.  However, their margins of victory, more than 30 points in 2024, shrunk to about 15 points,  Fifteen-point victories are nothing to sneeze at especially since those victories mean that for now, the Republican majority in the House will remain intact. However, those shrinking margins have Republicans, especially those in districts where elections are closer, bigly worried. We know Trump is worried because, though both he and NY Congresswoman Elise Stefanik easily won NY state’s 21^st District in 2024, he was concerned that without him on the ballot and with a lesser-known Republican candidate there was a risk that Republicans would lose Stefanik’s seat if she left the House to become US Ambassador to the United Nations.

Waking Up:  While the voting was taking place on Tuesday, Democratic New Jersey Senator Cory Booker did something remarkable.  He delivered an eloquent and moving marathon 25-hour speech on the Senate floor displacing the record for longest filibuster speech previously held by South Carolina’s one time Senator Strom Thurmond.  Thurmond’s speech was delivered in an attempt to block the passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act, Booker took to the podium to make it clear that we shouldn’t be going back to the discriminatory practices and white’s only days that Thurmond had tried so hard to preserve. It’s not just Booker who is now energized; a number of his Democratic Senate colleagues have finally woken out of their election induced stupor.  California’s Adam Schiff has put an indefinite hold on the confirmation of Ed Martin, the so-called stop the steal toady who Trump has nominated to serve as the US Attorney for Washington DC.  Hawaii’s Brian Schatz has put a hold on State Department confirmations to protest US AID cuts and Arizona’s Ruben Gallego has put a hold on Veterans Department confirmations to protest cuts at the VA.

More:  Michigan’s Mallory McMorrow, who currently serves as the Democratic whip in Michigan’s state Senate formally announced that she’s running for the Senate seat that will be up for grabs in 2026 as a result of Democratic Senator Gary Peters decision not to seek reelection. With charges against him now dropped with prejudice, meaning that despite his likely guilt Trump can no longer hold them over his head, NY’s Mayor Eric Adams announced this morning that he’s running for reelection as an independent because there’s no chance that he could win a Democratic primary. NYC politics are uniquely weird, last time around Republicans didn’t put up a viable candidate so while Adams still has a steep hill to climb to be reelected, it could turn out that the race is between him and a Democrat, possibly former Governor Andrew Cuomo who is a leading contender right now.   Republican Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna has left the Republican Freedom caucus, not because she’s suddenly become more mainstream, she’s still totally MAGA, but because she’s really angry that the caucus and Speaker Mike Johnson are blocking legislation that would allow parents caring for newborn infants to vote by proxy. Johnson who frequently voted by proxy during the COVID epidemic says that allowing new parents to vote by proxy is anti-American, violates the Constitution and worse yet, could lead to the accommodation of cancer-stricken members of Congress.  So much for the pro-family party and making America health again? Johnson actually recessed the House early to avoid having to take a vote on the proxy voting issue.  Though the administration acknowledged that it erred in sending at least one of the deportees to the El Salvador prison/hell hole, they have no plans to get him back because that would be the decent thing to do, and decency isn’t a thing in Trump world.  And lastly, it turns out that SignalGate isn’t a one-off thing.  Mike Waltz has 20 other “chat groups” that he uses to discuss the kind of things that shouldn’t be discussed in chat groups and he and his staff routinely use Gmail rather than official government email.  That’s both a security and a documentation retention problem.  #ButHerEmails?                               

RIP Roger ❤️.  May your memory be for a blessing.

 #BringThemAllHomeNow