Tariffs legal?

Are Trump’s new tariffs legal? It may not matter

Donald Trump is the first president to use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs, teeing up likely legal battles that will test his executive authority.

By Ari Hawkins

President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China may be illegal under the Constitution. But blocking the tariffs in court is likely to be difficult — and time-consuming.

Trump announced Saturday he was levying 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada and a 10 percent tariff on goods from China, under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a little-known law passed nearly 50 years ago. It’s the first time a president has ever used the law to impose tariffs, although the measure has repeatedly been used by past administrations to enact sanctions.

Trump’s novel use of the law, however, is likely to spark legal battles that will test the limits of a president’s executive power.

The International Emergency Economic Powers Act, passed in 1977, grants the president broad authority over economic transactions, and a wide range of abilities to deal with “any unusual and extraordinary threat,” stemming in whole or in part from foreign sources.

Presidents, including Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden, have used the law to impose economic sanctions on other countries, including on Russia after it launched its 2022 war on Ukraine.

But the closest a president has come to citing a national emergency to impose tariffs was when President Richard Nixon used a different law — the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917 — to levy a temporary universal tariff on all imports in 1971.

Trump justified his new tariffs Saturday by pointing to “the major threat of illegal aliens and deadly drugs killing our Citizens, including fentanyl,” which he claims Mexico, Canada and China are not doing enough to keep from coming into the United States.

But Bill Reinsch, a former Commerce Department official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Trump’s use of IEEPA to justify his trade actions “doesn’t really pass the red-face test,” setting the stage for a company or trade association whose members have been harmed by the action to sue.

“The question will be, can you find a judge who will write an injunction to stay the tariffs from going into effect,” Reinsch said. “And my prediction is that will be hard, because you’re asking a federal judge to essentially say, ‘I know more than the President does about what an emergency is.’ And I think judges are going to be reluctant to do that.”

That won’t stop a lawsuit from proceeding, most likely all the way to the Supreme Court, Reinsch said, but it could be years before there is a conclusion to the legal battle.

“The courts have historically upheld the president’s power to take emergency actions, especially when they are related to national security. But one important question is whether they will uphold the use of tariffs. In the past, [IEEPA] has only been used to impose sanctions,” said Tim Brightbill, a trade attorney at the law firm Wiley Rein in Washington, DC.

“While it is possible that companies or industry groups would seek an injunction, they probably face an uphill battle blocking the new tariffs,” Brightbill said.

That doesn’t mean some won’t try. “All options are on the table,” said one industry official who works with companies involved in international trade, when asked about prospects for lawsuits. “This is an action forcing event. It certainly is clarifying to all of us in the business community that wasn’t sure how [Trump] was going to actually play this.”

Major business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and American Farm Bureau Federation are already sounding alarms about Trump’s decision to impose tariffs, and are calling on the three countries to reach a deal. That group could take the lead on any legal challenge, but Chamber has not confirmed it is prepared to take that step just yet.

“The President is right to focus on major problems like our broken border and the scourge of fentanyl, but the imposition of tariffs under IEEPA is unprecedented, won’t solve these problems, and will only raise prices for American families and upend supply chains,” Chamber Senior Vice President and Head of International, John Murphy said in a statement.

“The Chamber will consult with our members, including main street businesses across the country impacted by this move, to determine next steps to prevent economic harm to Americans. We will continue to work with Congress and the administration on solutions to address the fentanyl and border crisis,” they added.

Any lawsuit isn’t likely to be filed until after the tariffs go into effect on Tuesday. And there’s a good chance the Trump administration will be able to negotiate a reduction in the tariffs with Mexico, Canada and China — as they did during Trump’s first term — well before any suits wind their way through the courts.

What about the WTO? China has already threatened to file a complaint with the World Trade Organization and take unspecified “corresponding countermeasures to firmly safeguard its own rights and interests.” The WTO has previously ruled that the U.S. has illegally imposed duties on China and other countries.

But the U.S. effectively killed the WTO Appellate Body during Trump’s first term by blocking the appointment of new judges, leaving it without the ability to adjudicate disputes. And there’s little to suggest the Trump administration would abide by a WTO ruling even if the organization were able to issue one.

The more likely avenue to resolve the dispute could be during next year’s mandatory review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the North American trade deal Trump inked in his first term. The president issued an executive order on his first day in office which included a directive tasking his USTR to begin the consultation process and assess the deal’s overall impact on American workers in consultation with other federal agencies and departments.

What about Congress? Trump could also face pressure from Congress to rein in his tariffs, although Republicans who now control both chambers have been careful not to harshly criticize his trade strategy, even those from major farm exporting states that could bear the brunt of any retaliation.

“Trump seems to have successfully intimidated Republican politicians, and I wouldn’t expect an immediate outcome, even though this really amounts to a shift in control of trade policy from the legislative to the executive branch,” Reinsch said. “If communities start to suffer, however, from higher prices and layoffs caused by retaliatory tariffs, complaints will grow.”

Purge

FBI braces for potential purge of those deemed disloyal to Trump

Leaders and agents at the bureau are being asked to detail their work on Jan. 6 cases.

By Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney

Thousands of FBI agents and employees are being asked by Justice Department leadership to fill out a 12-question survey detailing their roles in investigations stemming from the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

The questionnaire is contributing to a mounting sense of anxiety inside the bureau, as leaders and agents brace for a potential purge of those deemed disloyal to President Donald Trump and his new administration. It has prompted resistance from leaders of some of the bureau’s nationwide field offices, some of whom have urged subordinates not to fill out the questionnaire and let higher-ranking officials handle the fallout.

The questionnaire, which is due by 3 p.m. Monday, asks agents and FBI officials to detail their rank, whether they participated in Jan. 6 investigations and in what capacity. It includes drop-down menus that inquire whether they handled arrests, led operations, testified in trials or were assigned as case agents to the roughly 1,600 defendants who were charged, according to a person who read portions of the message to POLITICO.

The questionnaire also asks whether the officials participated in surveillance, discovery efforts, grand jury proceedings, witness interviews or subpoena review. It also asks if they followed up on leads sent from other field offices and performed other administrative tasks related to the cases.

Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll notified the workforce on Friday that the acting No. 2 at the Justice Department, Emil Bove, gave the FBI a deadline of noon Tuesday to provide a roster of employees who worked on Jan. 6 cases and on a Hamas-related investigation.

The anxiety gripping the FBI’s ranks comes amid a similar shakeup inside the Justice Department, including the firing of roughly 30 prosecutors who handled Jan. 6 cases and more than a dozen connected to former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigations of Trump.

A lawyer representing several FBI employees said several heads of FBI field offices — most of whom hold the title of special agent in charge — are pushing back against the latest inquiries.

“There’s growing resistance from among the SACs,” said the attorney, who was granted anonymity because of concerns about possible retaliation against his clients. “Some are telling people beneath them, don’t submit it, or don’t submit it right away … Some are saying, we will submit it as leadership only.”

Driscoll’s email to employees Friday noted that both he and the acting No. 2 at the bureau worked on Jan. 6 cases.

The FBI Agents Association contacted members over the weekend about the questionnaire, urging them to consult with their supervisors and to include suggested language describing the abrupt demands from DOJ leadership “without being afforded appropriate time.”

“We understand that this feels like agents and employees are being targeted, despite repeated assurances that ‘all FBI employees will be protected against political retribution,’” the association told its members in an unsigned guidance email. “Employees carrying out their duties to investigate allegations of criminal activity with integrity and within the rule of law should never be treated as those who have engaged in actual misconduct.”

“We continue to hear rumors of dismissals/security revocations, or individuals who have been told to expect dismissals on Monday,” the association told its members. “Again, we have no confirmation of any such events. Please be cautious in sharing and spreading what could be misinformation. We do not need any more stress on those potentially impacted.”

Trump shocked both allies and adversaries when he issued a blanket pardon for all convicted Jan. 6 rioters — even those who bludgeoned police — and commuted sentences for Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders convicted of seditious conspiracy. But the emphasis on rooting out Jan. 6 prosecutors and identifying FBI agents who worked on their cases suggests Trump intends to continue efforts to erase the government’s involvement in efforts to punish the attack on the Capitol by a mob of his supporters.

Makes Tragedies Worse

How Trump Makes Tragedies Worse, A History

The president blaming DEI for a deadly plane crash is not the first time he’s peddled conspiracy theories as the nation reels from a crisis.

Julianne McShane

President Trump’s baseless claims that diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives are responsible for the tragic, late-night plane collision in Washington, DC are not the first time he’s peddled conspiracy theories as the nation reels from a crisis.

In the past, Trump has also boosted false and disproven claims in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, a national pandemic, police brutality, natural disasters and more. We took a disturbing and conspiratorial trip down memory lane so you don’t have to.

9/11

Trump has promoted a lot of falsehoods and unfounded claims about the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that killed more than 2,900 people and injured thousands more: He claimed in 2015 that he saw “thousands and thousands” of Arab people in New Jersey celebrating the attacks, a claim for which there is no evidence; he also claimed that from his apartment in Trump Tower—located four miles from the World Trade Center—he watched people jump from the burning towers.

He also said he “helped clear the rubble” at Ground Zero and that he lost “hundreds of friends” in the attacks—but there is no evidence to support either statement.

In 2022, he claimed, “Nobody’s gotten to the bottom of 9/11, unfortunately”—despite the fact that the FBI characterizes its investigation into 9/11 as its most ambitious ever, and says that it involved more than 4,000 special agents and 3,000 professional employees.

And, of course, last September, he brought Laura Loomer—an avowed 9/11 conspiracy theorist—to a somber memorial to commemorate the tragedy, as my colleague Abby Vesoulis reported at the time.

Central Park Five case

After the brutal rape and assault of a 28-year-old female jogger in Central Park in 1989 that made headlines across the country, Trump took out a full-page ad in four major New York newspapers suggesting that the five Black and Latino teenagers who were accused of the crime should face the death penalty. The wrongly accused men spent between 6 and 13 years in prison.

A convicted murderer and rapist eventually admitted, in 2002, to being responsible for the attack—and DNA evidence corroborated the confession. But that didn’t stop Trump from doubling down on his beliefs that the Central Park Five, as the wrongly accused men came to be known, were guilty during his 2016 presidential campaign. Around the same time, Yusef Salaam, one of the exonerees who has since been elected to the New York City Council, told Mother Jones that he believed Trump played a role in their conviction, adding that his newspaper ad facilitated “the conviction that was going to happen in the public arena prior to us even getting into the courthouse.”

Hillary Clinton and the Benghazi attack

During the 2016 campaign, Trump repeatedly claimed that after the September 2012 attacks by an Islamic militant group on US government facilities in Benghazi, Libya—which killed four Americans, including the US Ambassador—then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went to sleep rather than help lead the American response.

But Clinton testified before a House Select Committee in 2015 that she “did not sleep all night”—and as the nonpartisan FactCheck.org points out, evidence shows she was fully engaged in the immediate response.

Hurricane Sandy and birtherism

After Hurricane Sandy hit the eastern seaboard in October 2012, devastating New York and New Jersey and killing at least 147 people, Trump claimed that it was “good luck” for then-President Obama, who was running for reelection: “He will buy the election by handing out billions of dollars,” Trump wrote on X, presumably referring to disaster aid.

Not only that, Trump also used it as an opportunity to again promote the racist birther conspiracy theory he originally pioneered, falsely claiming that Obama was not born in the US. Just a week earlier, Trump had claimed he would make a $5 million donation to a charity of Obama’s choice if the president released his “college records and applications…and passport applications and records” by Oct. 31—even though Obama had released his longform birth certificate the year before, which showed he was born in Hawaii. After Hurricane Sandy hit, on Oct. 30, Trump posted on X, “Because of the hurricane, I am extending my 5 million dollar offer for President Obama’s favorite charity.” Obama does not appear to have responded.

In September 2016, while running for president, Trump finally admitted Obama was born in the US—then promptly, and falsely, claimed it was his then-opponent, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who started the conspiracy theory.

Death tolls in Hurricanes Irma and Maria

A year after Hurricanes Irma and Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, leading to more than 3,000 deaths, Trump rejected the death toll and said that it was “done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible.” The nonpartisan fact-checking website Politifact states that researchers warned the preliminary estimates of death tolls from the Puerto Rican government—ranging from 16 to 64 people dead—were undercounts, and that the higher numbers came from indirect deaths, caused by something like the loss of electricity for someone who relies on medical devices, for example.

COVID-19 and…a lot

Who could forget Trump’s litany of unhinged and disproven theories about COVID-19? He initially downplayed the danger of it, claiming in February 2020 that it was “very much under control in the USA.” But just a few months later, he was wondering aloud at a press briefing if people could cure themselves of the coronavirus by injecting themselves with disinfectant or exposing the insides of their bodies to ultraviolet light, as my colleague Madison Pauly covered. (The next day, following an outcry, the White House walked back Trump’s claims, saying Americans should consult with their doctors to treat COVID-19; Trump also claimed the comments were “sarcastic.”)

Trump also promoted the drug hydroxychloroquine as a potential COVID-19 treatment—though leading medical organizations, including the World Health Organization and the Mayo Clinic, recommend against using it as a treatment for, or form of prevention against, COVID-19. (That didn’t stop Trump from taking it—though he still got the virus months after doing so.)

Trump also reposted false claims from other accounts on X stating that the COVID-19 death toll was vastly overblown, which Anthony Fauci promptly shut down. Trump and his son, Eric, also claimed that Democratic officials were prolonging lockdowns to prevent him from being able to hold in-person campaign rallies.

All this makes it no surprise that, as my colleague David Corn reported back in 2020, a Cornell University study analyzing 38 million English-language articles about the coronavirus concluded that Trump was the largest driver of the so-called “infodemic,” or COVID-19-related misinformation. “The biggest surprise,” Sarah Evanega, the study’s lead author, told the New York Times, “was that the president of the United States was the single largest driver of misinformation around Covid.”

Protests in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder by police

After George Floyd‘s murder by Minneapolis police in May 2020 sparked nationwide protests against anti-Black racism and police brutality, Trump promoted a variety of baseless claims about the protesters, calling them “thugs” who were being funded by Democrats and billionaire George Soros, and threatening them. “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” he said at the time.

In just one example, Trump claimed a 75-year-old Buffalo man who was hospitalized after police shoved him to the ground “could be an ANTIFA provocateur” and alleged it “could be a setup”—despite there being no evidence for these claims. The man, Martin Gugino, reportedly spent about a month in the hospital for his injuries; the police officers involved were suspended without pay and then arrested, but the charges were dropped after a grand jury declined to indict them in 2021.

LA wildfires

After devastating wildfires broke out in Los Angeles earlier this month, killing at least 29 people and destroying thousands of structures, Trump boosted a variety of baseless claims—including that Gov. Newsom (D-Calif.) was to blame for a water shortage, though state officials have shut that down. More recently, Trump tried to fashion himself as a savior again, claiming that under his direction the US military “turned on the water” supply from the Pacific Northwest; in an epic clap back, the California Department of Water Resources said that never happened. “The military did not enter California,” the agency posted on X. “The federal government restarted federal water pumps after they were offline for maintenance for three days. State water supplies in Southern California remain plentiful.”

Backwards red-neck dumb-fuck state....

Louisiana Indicts NY Doctor for Telemedicine Abortion

It’s the first known criminal charge against a physician operating under a state’s shield law.

Nina Martin

In what is believed to be the first criminal case of its kind in the post–Roe v. Wade era, a New York-based telemedicine provider has been indicted in Louisiana—which has one of the strictest abortion bans in the country—for supplying the abortion pill to a teenage patient in that state.

The Louisiana indictment against Dr. Margaret “Maggie” Carpenter signals a major escalation in legal challenges by red states against telemedicine providers in blue states who are dispensing abortion drugs under shield laws meant to protect them from prosecution. As my Mother Jones colleagues have reported, those shield laws—which are on the books in 22 states and the District of Columbia—are a major reason why the number of abortions has continued to rise despite the overturn of Roe in June 2022.

The Louisiana case involves a pregnant minor whose mother allegedly purchased abortion medications from Carpenter’s business, Nightingale Medical PC, in April 2024, The Advocate reported. In addition to Carpenter, a grand jury in West Baton Rouge Parish also indicted the mother for allegedly coercing her to take the medicine to terminate the pregnancy. The felony charge against the two women carries a sentence of up to five years in prison and up to $50,000 in fines, WWNO reported.

The indictment comes as the anti-abortion movement has ramped up attacks on the abortion pill on multiple fronts—from pressuring the new Trump administration to reconsider the safety of mifepristone and use the Comstock Act to institute a federal abortion ban, to filing lawsuits challenging the FDA’s regulation of the drug, to introducing a flurry of new bills targeting medication abortion in numerous states. These include Louisiana, which last year became the first state to reclassify mifepristone and misoprostol, the drugs commonly used in medication abortions, as “controlled dangerous substances.” As my colleague Julianne McShane reported:

To say that this designation—the same one applied to opioids and other addictive drugs—is without scientific or medical merit is an understatement. More than 100 studies have found that mifepristone and misoprostol offer a safe and effective way to terminate a pregnancy.

Abortion foes have also begun to challenge the shield laws that blue states have been enacting to protect telemedicine abortion providers operating from within their borders. In December, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton brought a civil suit accusing the same New York doctor—Carpenter—of prescribing abortion pills to a 20-year-old woman near Dallas. But the Texas case doesn’t involve criminal charges; instead, Paxton is seeking an injunction against Carpenter, $100,000 in civil penalties for each violation of Texas law, and legal costs.

Officials in New York, which enacted its abortion shield law in 2023, immediately criticized today’s indictment. “This cowardly attempt out of Louisiana to weaponize the law against out-of-state providers is unjust and un-American,” New York Attorney General Leticia James said in a statement. Meanwhile, Governor Kathy Hochul promised to “never back down from this fight…. We will remain a safe harbor.”

But Louisiana prosecutors defended the charges, which were brought under a 2022 statute that makes it a crime to “knowingly [cause] an abortion to occur by means of delivering, dispensing, distributing, or providing a pregnant woman with an abortion-inducing drug.” Tony Clayton, district attorney of an area that includes West Baton Rouge Parish, told The Advocate, “The daughter wanted the pregnancy and had a reveal party planned.”

“The allegations in this case have nothing to do with reproductive health care,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill echoed in a statement. “This is about coercion. This is about forcing somebody to have an abortion who didn’t want one.” 

Louisiana’s near-total abortion ban, which doesn’t include exceptions for rape or incest, targets physicians in the state with up to 15 years in prison, $200,000 in fines and the loss of their medical licenses. Last year’s law reclassifying abortion medications as controlled substances carries penalties of up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. Both laws specifically exempt pregnant women.

Institutionalize Millions of People

Trump’s War on Medicaid Will Institutionalize Millions of People

The GOP wants to fund billionaire tax cuts—and let disabled Americans pay the price.

Julia Métraux

In August 1981, then-President Ronald Reagan signed a bill into law that allowed the development of state-level programs to help disabled people live outside institutions like nursing homes. Known as Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) waivers, the programs—now in their fourth decade—are funded by Medicaid and run by each individual state. With potential cuts to Medicaid a priority for the Trump administration, the future of HCBS remains in limbo. Donald Trump’s recently confirmed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has refused to directly answer questions about whether he’d fall in line with attacks fielded by Republican politicians and Project 2025 by offering a recommendation to cut Medicaid.

Reagan couldn’t be described as an advocate for disabled people’s rights—just over a year into his first term, 130,500 people had already been dropped from Social Security Disability Insurance, then and now a lifeline for millions. Like Donald Trump, Reagan wanted to slash government spending at the expense of Americans’ wellbeing. But while the politics of the time forced Reagan’s GOP to field a compromise with some benefits for disabled people—which yielded HCBS—the Trump White House hopes to gut even that, leaving hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, without the option of community care.

Today, roughly 4.5 million people use Medicaid-funded HCBS as an alternative to institutionalization; the waivers help pay for home healthcare workers, durable medical equipment, career coaching, case management and other services. No one claims that the program is perfect—but most criticism has come on the basis of shortfalls, not overspending. More than half a million disabled people remain on waitlists for HCBS, often waiting years for a waiver, and inconsistent requirements across states can make the process confusing and challenging.

“It’s a bit of a mix between racism and ableism that believes that certain types of people are undeserving of assistance,” said Mia Ives-Rublee, senior director of the Center for American Progress’ disability justice initiatives, of ongoing attacks on Medicaid.

Ives-Rublee said that Project 2025 includes a push to end Medicaid exception waivers—programs that allow states to modify and add to standard Medicaid services, which “specifically implies HCBS funding”—on the grounds that the government is spending too much money on them.

About half of disabled children in the United States currently rely on Medicaid, says Jenny McLelland, director of HCBS policy for Little Lobbyists, an organization that advocates for kids with complex health needs. That includes McLelland’s son James, who spent the first year of his life in an institution; the private insurance McLelland’s family then had, like many plans, did not cover long-term home-based care. Only a Medicaid waiver allowed him to go home.

McLelland’s HCBS waiver “pays for a nurse who manages his ventilator and breathing while he’s asleep or while we are away from the house to work,” she said. “Medicaid home and community-based services make it possible for my son to have an integrated, joyful life,” taking part in school theater and bringing home straight-A grades.

Advocates are worried about the fate of HCBS, which would be relatively easy for states to abandon under the new administration—and which helps millions of people stay out of hospitals, nursing homes, and group homes, which McLelland says frequently deliver “lower-quality care, often at a higher cost.”

The GOP has put forth several proposals promoting Medicaid per-capita spending, which would change current spending practices by limiting funds through a formula that doesn’t take into consideration the needs of disabled people. Nicole Jorwic, Caring Across Generations‘ chief of advocacy and campaigns, said that what such changes “would ultimately do is cut the amount of money that the federal government is sending to states per person…just on the consumer price index.”

Changes to Medicaid per-capita spending, Jorwic says, “means waiting lists would grow” and that “the types of services being offered are going to narrow” as funding is reduced or withdrawn. Given that federal Medicaid funds already make up, on average, one-third of state budgets, Jorwic believes that state governments coughing up the extra cost “is never going to happen.” She notes that health funding is a popular target even in blue states like Maryland, where a $3 billion state funding shortfall has put hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for its human services department funds—where Medicaid is housed—on the chopping block.

Another attack on Medicaid incorporated into Project 2025 has involved lifetime caps on the support of people on Medicaid—caps that many disabled people may hit at a young age. “A state will have to take up the rest of that spending,” said Ives-Rublee, “or they will reduce the coverage of an individual, either by saying we won’t cover these services or by saying we won’t cover you at all.”

McLelland is also concerned that attacks on the Affordable Care Act could lead to further damage: disabled people who qualify for Medicaid only due to ACA expansions could be kicked off HCBS as a result. There’s “no ethical way” to deprive people of Medicaid, McLelland says.

An ulterior motivation for Republicans’ push to cut Medicaid, Jorwic says, is the Trump administration’s need to cut costs in order to finance an extension—or expansion—of Trump’s first-term tax cuts for the richest Americans and corporations, which Jorwic finds “even more upsetting and ableist.”

Ives-Rublee also foresees bleak outcomes if HCBS waivers are defunded or dropped: “That’s going to result in more people either ending up in institutions or ending up dead.”

War on Gender

Trump’s War on Gender is Accelerating

Agencies ordered government workers to remove pronouns from email signatures, and the CDC scrubbed youth and LGBTQ+ resources from its site.

Abby Vesoulis

If you searched “transgender” on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website on January 19—the day before President Donald Trump took office—you’d find helpful information about HIV, gender-affirming resources, and the high rate of diabetes among the LGBTQ+ community.

If you make the same web query on the CDC.gov now, those webpages bring you an error message: “The page you’re looking for was not found.”

Information about trans people, gender identity, and disease prevention was edited or removed from the CDC’s website by Friday, according to the Washington Post. The removals coincided with the CDC and other government agencies—the Departments of Transportation and Energy—instructing employees last week to remove their pronouns from email signatures. An employee of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission also told Mother Jones they were told verbally to remove their pronouns.

Both efforts were spurred by an executive order Trump signed on his first day in office, in which he declared, “it is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female.” The memo included several directives for government agencies, including instructions for them to cease issuing passports with the “X” gender-marker, “to remove all statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications, or other internal and external messages that promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology,” and to “take all necessary steps, as permitted by law, to end the Federal funding of gender ideology.”

These changes won’t just make it harder for individuals to seek information they can use in their personal lives, but they may also stifle research that helps identify links between age, race, gender, socioeconomic status and public health risks. For example, data from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, a national survey conducted every two years (I personally remember taking it in school) among high school students, is currently not available on the CDC site. Data from that survey previously has been used to understand children’s’ use of weapons and drugs, as well as suicidality.

In the first two weeks of his second presidential term, Trump has also directed his attorney general to investigate teachers who “unlawfully facilitat[e] the social transition of a minor student.” According to the executive order, reported by my colleague Madison Pauly, possible offenses include an educator calling a student by their trans name and pronouns or allowing a student to use the restroom aligned with their gender identity. Yet another executive order instructs federal agencies to start taking steps to eliminate gender-affirming treatments for individuals up to the age of 19.

The Trump Administration’s obsession with this issue is disproportionate to the number of Americans and children who identify as non-binary or seek gender-affirming healthcare. Fewer than 2 percent of adults in the US say their gender is different from their assigned sex at birth, according to Pew Research Center. Moreover, a recent survey of 5.1 million kids in JAMA-pediatrics found that only 0.017 percent of youth were coded as trans and received puberty blockers, while 0.037 percent were trans and accessed hormone therapy.

Another Disaster

Trump’s Tariffs: Another Disaster for the Families Who’ve Lost Everything

His one-two punch of deportations and duties will make recovery slower—and way pricier.

Mike Mechanic and Michael Mechanic

President Donald Trump announced punitive tariffs Saturday on American allies and rivals—25 percent on imported goods from Canada and Mexico and 10 percent on Chinese imports in addition to any preexisting tariffs—a move the Wall Street Journal‘s conservative editorial board deemed “the dumbest trade war in history.” Energy products from Canada were assigned a lower duty of 10 percent. We don’t yet know exactly how the targeted countries will respond, but the expert consensus is that the tariffs will drive up prices for American companies and, in turn, consumers.

That’s particularly unwelcome news for the Floridians and North Carolinians whose homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed by Hurricanes Milton and Helena, the thousands of Los Angelenos who lost everything in the recent fires, and any American community, now or in the near future, that is compelled to rebuild in the face of ever more frequent and destructive climate-change-driven disasters.

Trump’s tariffs will “fan the flames of the already challenging environment that Californians face in recovering from the LA fires,” says Ann Harrison, an economist at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business who specializes in international trade. “A tariff of 25 percent levied on foreign imports would likely be paid by domestic California businesses and residents consuming lumber, food, cement, plastics, and other necessities. If the tariffs are passed through to importers of these goods, then rebuilding homes could be much more expensive.”

Consider the vulnerabilities: In 2022, according to visual data compiled by the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), Canada was the source of almost half of the roughly $35 billion worth of wood products imported into the United States, with China second.

OEC

The US imported nearly $3 billion worth of plastic building materials in 2022. Here’s where they came from:

OEC

What about the $2.3 billion worth of cement America imports? Turkey is the biggest source, but the runners up are Canada and Mexico.

OEC

It goes on like this. The majority of imported gravel and crushed stone is from Canada and Mexico. Nearly a quarter of imported bricks are supplied by China and Canada. The United States took in $43.2 billion worth of steel in 2022, and about 37 percent came from the three countries Trump is targeting.

OEC

As the Guardian‘s Nina Lakhani reported a few days ago, Trump’s deportation orders are already posing problems for communities stricken by fires and floods. Clearing toxic debris in a disaster’s wake is difficult and dangerous work, and with unemployment hovering around 4 percent, it’s hard to find people willing to do it. For better or worse, America depends on immigrants, often undocumented, for work that is low-paid and unpleasant, albeit essential.

At the best of times, the construction industry depends heavily on immigrants, from grunt laborers to contractors and skilled tradespeople, including carpenters electricians, landscapers, masons, plumbers, roofers, tilers, and welders. In some states, including California and Florida, an estimated 40 percent of construction industry workers are immigrants. Some have green cards, legal work permits, or, until last week, temporary deportation protections—which President Biden granted but Trump has since rejected. Others are in the United States illegally and are therefore at the mercy of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

As the administration pursues its deportation agenda, which experts predict will be economically destructive, even legal immigrants will be reticent to make themselves vulnerable to getting swept up in ICE raids. Any worker fearful of la migra may well choose to avoid disaster recovery zones, lest those areas prove too tempting a target for immigration enforcement.

Any labor shortages that result from deportations, or the fear of deportation, will inevitably slow the pace of recovery and drive up the costs. The double-whammy of deportations and tariffs could prove devastating for recovery efforts. “Trump’s tariffs are insane, not to put it into too-technical language. And the timing couldn’t be worse,” says Joseph Stiglitz, a prominent economist at Columbia University who was awarded the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize for economics.

“Combined with labor shortages that may arise from his immigration policies, they are even worse. And with the climate-related disasters, such as the wildfires in LA, there will be an even greater need both for construction workers and materials. Like it or not, we are heavily dependent on both from outside our borders, and changing that can’t occur overnight.” 

Misconduct

RFK Jr. Refuses to Disclose to Senate Details of Two “Misconduct” Cases He Settled

Will senators press him on these allegations?

David Corn

On Friday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., responding to written questions from Senate Democrats, revealed information about his personal history that was not yet part of the public record: He had settled at least one case in which he had been accused of “misconduct or inappropriate behavior.” Kennedy also acknowledged that he had been party to at least one non-disclosure agreement.

But in that reply Kennedy provided no details about these allegations. He only offered a one-word reply when asked if he had ever been accused in such a fashion: “Yes.”

Consequently, Senate Democrats followed up with another written query to Kennedy, the anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist who has been nominated by President Donald Trump to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. This was the request:

Please describe the nature of the financial settlements (including total amounts) and non-disclosure agreements reached and what these agreements involved. Please also indicate how many of these settlements and non-disclosure agreements you have signed.

On Sunday, Kennedy submitted his response:

Twice, I have been targeted by frivolous, unfounded allegations, which I strenuously denied at the time and continue to deny. I entered into confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements to prohibit these individuals from continuing to make these allegations.

This was not a full answer. The Senate Democrats had asked for the total amounts of the settlements, and Kennedy did not provide that information. Nor did this response indicate what “misconduct or inappropriate behavior” had been alleged.

In this reply, Kennedy stressed that he denied the allegations, whatever they had been. But how can senators assess his refutation?

During his confirmation hearing on Thursday before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), noting that “character matters,” asked Kennedy about the allegation from Eliza Cooney, who had been a babysitter for Kennedy’s family, that Kennedy had once groped her.

Murray noted that after the allegation became public in July Kennedy said he was “not a church boy… I have so many skeletons in my closet.” (He did not deny Cooney’s accusation.) Murray also pointed out that Kennedy had texted an apology to Cooney claiming he had no memory of the incident.

Kennedy shot back at Murray with a new position: “That story has been debunked.” Murray asked why then had he apologized to Cooney. Kennedy said, “I apologized to her for something else.”

But that was not how the text he sent to Cooney came across. It read, “I have no memory of this incident but I apologize sincerely for anything I ever did that made you feel uncomfortable or anything I did or said that offended you or hurt your feelings. I never intended you any harm. If I hurt you, it was inadvertent. I feel badly for doing so.”

At the hearing, Kennedy did not specify what the “something else” was for which he had apologized to Cooney.

Kennedy’s exchange with Murray might lead senators to question the validity of his denial of the accusations of inappropriate behavior that he fended off with confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements. What happened in these two cases remains a mystery.

After Kennedy initially disclosed the existence of these agreements, Senate Democrats did not raise a fuss about these accusations. With his nomination heading toward a committee vote and possibly a floor vote this upcoming week, it’s unclear whether the allegations of misconduct that Kennedy smothered will play any role in the fight over his confirmation. Kennedy’s stonewalling may well succeed.

Promises to Get Ugly

Trump’s Trade War Is Here and Promises to Get Ugly

Canada, Mexico, and China are all moving to retaliate against Trump’s new tariffs.

Pema Levy

As he ran for a second term, President Donald Trump promised to impose sweeping tariffs. On Saturday, he pressed the launch button. In three executive orders, Trump placed 25 percent tariffs on almost all imports from Canada and Mexico and a 10 percent tariff on goods from China. In response, Canada announced its own 25 percent tariff on more than $100 billion in American goods. Mexico and China similarly promised retaliation.

The trade war that most dismissed as too economically disastrous to actually undertake is now here. In a lesson many analysts and commentators fail to learn over and over, it is wise to take Trump both seriously and literally.

With the economies of the US and its two neighbors tightly intertwined, imposing tariffs will not just raise prices but also disrupt manufacturing. According to economist Paul Krugman, the tariffs represent the end of an integrated North American manufacturing hub that mutually benefited all three nations. “Now we have a US president saying that a duly negotiated and signed trade pact isn’t worth the paper it was printed on—that he can impose high tariffs on the other signatories whenever he feels like it,” Krugman wrote on his Substack. “And even if the tariffs go away, the private sector will know that they can always come back; the credibility of this trade agreement, or any future trade agreement, will be lost. So North American manufacturing will disintegrate—that is, dis-integrate—reverting to inefficient, fragmented national industries.”

Immediate effects loom. The National Homebuilder Association warned Trump that the tariffs will raise building costs, worsening the nation’s housing crisis by slowing construction and pushing home prices upward. Automobile costs, already high, will likely rise, as auto parts cross both the northern and southern border multiple times in the process of manufacturing American cars.

Economically, a trade war seemed like such a bad idea that financial institutions and individuals didn’t really believe it would happen. Less than two weeks ago, Goldman Sachs put the likelihood of Trump’s promised tariffs at 20 percent. The staunchly right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial board on Friday called the tariffs “The Dumbest Trade War in History.”

Canada quickly announced a retaliatory 25 percent tariffs on US goods, with an emphasis on products from Republican-controlled states, possibly a savvy way to apply pressure on Trump. Among those goods now taxed at 25 percent are Florida orange juice, Tennessee whiskey, and Kentucky peanut butter, according to the New York Times, as well as clothing, shoes, furniture, appliances. Canada is coordinating its strategy with Mexico, according to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Trump has said he would impose further tariffs if Canada and Mexico retaliate, raising the possibility that these are merely the opening shots in a new trade war.

While Trump long promised tariffs on China, it’s noteworthy that on Saturday, he saved his highest tariffs for America’s closest trading partners, neighbors, and allies. China faces only a 10 percent tariff so far. China promised retaliation as well.

Voter discontent over inflation was one of Trump’s biggest political advantages in the 2024 election, but the pain from his tariffs is likely to be passed on to consumers. (Trump admitted in a social media post on Sunday that Americans will feel pain from his tariffs and that it “will be worth the price that must be paid.”) Perhaps most immediately, economists warn, food costs are likely to rise. The price of cars, electronics, including cell phones, and clothing will also go up if the tariffs remain in place.

What could possibly go wrong????

Elon Musk May Now Have Unique Sway Over the US Treasury

What could possibly go wrong with giving the tech mogul access to federal payments?

Pema Levy

Late Friday, newly sworn-in Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave access to the agency’s payments system to representatives of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, created by President Donald Trump and headed by Elon Musk. A strike force of Musk lackeys appears to be pursuing a takeover of key background systems of the US government—from human resources to physical buildings to software systems to, now, what is essentially the country’s central bank account. At this point, Musk’s people reportedly cannot control payments, only view them, but how long that arrangement will last is unclear.

Treasury’s payment system processes more than $5 trillion annually, paying the country’s bills. This includes Social Security checks and tax refunds, which means the system includes sensitive personal information on tens of millions of Americans. A Sunday headline from New York Magazine, “Elon Musk May Have Your Social Security Number,” is not an exaggeration.

When Musk, the world’s richest man, took over Twitter, he cut costs by simply refusing to make payments. From rent for the company’s headquarter offices in San Francisco to janitorial services, Musk’s approach was to simply stop paying the bills and see what happens. (Employees were forced to use bathrooms in other buildings.)

A similar approach to the United States government, however, promises to be catastrophic. One scenario is that shutting off payments to federal grantees and nonprofits could cause rapid harm. And this could come at the whims of extremist ideological allies of Trump. For example, his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, a Christian nationalist and purveyor of misinformation (who lied to the FBI and was later pardoned by Trump), posted on X information about federal payments to Lutheran Family Services, which along with its affiliates provides a wide range of services, including counseling. Musk retweeted Flynn’s post promising “The @DOGE team is rapidly shutting down these illegal payments.” The illegal actions would in fact appear to be Musk’s own—Congress appropriates federal funds, but Musk is acting as if the law will never catch up to him.

Musk’s tweet may be getting ahead of the reality of what he and his team are doing at the moment. But imagine if the US government were to stop paying bills because a billionaire saw a social media post from a conspiracy theorist urging him to do so.

“Fitch and everyone else should downgrade US credit,” Dean Baker, and economist at the progressive Center for Economy and Policy Research, posted on Bluesky. “If a bill gets paid only if Elon Musk or Donald Trump feels like it, then the US is not very creditworthy.”

Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, issued a similar warning. “To put it bluntly, these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy,” he said in a statement late Friday. “The federal government is in a financially precarious position, currently utilizing accounting maneuvers to continue paying its bills since it reached the debt limit at the beginning of the year. I am concerned that mismanagement of these payment systems could threaten the full faith and credit of the United States.”

Economists have long warned that should the United States miss a debt payment, it would send shockwaves through the world economy. On the domestic front, the Trump administration this past week attempted to withhold billions in federal aid through an Office of Management and Budget memo instructing agencies to temporarily halt payments. The attempt was “wildly illegal,” according to experts, and two federal judges have halted much of that effort. Now, it may be possible for Musk and his underlings themselves to simply withhold payments they disagree with. Theoretically, rather than asking agencies to cut spending, Musk could move to cut off the funds from Treasury.

“I am deeply concerned that following the federal grant and loan freeze earlier this week, these officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs,” Wyden said in statement.

According to reporting in Politico, the Doge team doesn’t have the capability to withhold or change payments—at least not yet. Instead, access by Doge’s Treasury representative, software executive Tom Krause, is “read-only.” But warning signs of a hostile takeover have been flashing. For example, Musk’s team literally took over Office of Personnel Management computer systems this past week, locking OPM officials out of them. They have been taking down entire government websites and datasets, causing public-facing information and research to disappear before Americans’ eyes in Orwellian fashion. And over the weekend, Doge representatives demanded classified information from USAID that they lacked clearances for, according to CNN, despite that the executive order creating Doge explicitly exempts classified information from its efforts. When USAID security officials refused to comply, they were put on leave.

The power that comes with controlling US government payments is vast. How Musk and Trump might try to leverage that against political or legal opponents—say, against states that file lawsuits they don’t like—is sobering to consider. So far, the GOP-controlled Congress seems willing to let them do whatever they want.