The Big, Awful Budget Bill is out of committee. Passage in the House is another hurdle. But never fear; the Big Man himself, Donald Trump, came to Capitol Hill and ordered congressional Republicans to pass the bill asap.

However, the bill Trump was pitching isn’t the one that was just released by the committee.

Trump told Republicans he didn’t want Medicaid cuts beyond rooting out “waste, fraud and abuse.”

“Don’t fuck around with Medicaid,” Trump said, according to a source in the room.

But the current bill makes dramatic Medicaid reductions, more than $700 billion over the next decade, with Republicans considering additional changes that would cut hundreds of billions more in order to get conservatives on board.

He told Republicans the bill was a choice between “the biggest tax cut in the history of our country” or “a 68% tax increase.” Neither claim is remotely true. The bill would largely extend current individual tax rates, and if the rates expired, most people would see a 2% or 3% increase in their taxes.

And, he suggested, politically, it wasn’t really wise to increase the state and local tax deduction, reasoning that blue state governors would be the big winners. The current offer from leadership, according to Punchbowl, is to quadruple the state and local tax deduction, from $10,000 to $40,000, allowing wealthy homeowners to write off their huge property tax bills on their federal returns. (SALT caucus members still want more.)

As one House member said,, “He’s not a detail guy.”

When Trump was campaigning last year, he did promise to bring back the SALT deduction that used to let taxpayers deduct what they paid in state and local taxes from federal taxes. This is popular in blue states, which tend to have higher state and local taxes because nobody wants to be Mississippi. And blue state Republicans who are not locks for re-election want to bring it back, too. But now Trump is opposed to it, because he hates Gavin Newsom. See Tobias Burns at The Hill, 5 things to know about SALT, the tax break holding up Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’.

The bill is a disaster. It’s ruinous to the national economy and probably to a majority of its citizens. Most Republicans, including the ones who are smart enough to understand what they’re doing, are refusing to face reality. See David Graham at The Atlantic, Congressional Republicans vs. Reality.

Any straightforward accounting points to one conclusion: The president’s “One, Big, Beautiful Bill” (as Republicans insist on formally calling it) would make the country’s fiscal situation worse. It would slash taxes for years to come, and although it would make some budget cuts, they aren’t anywhere near enough to cover the difference. The bill is projected to add trillions of dollars to the deficit; the only real disagreement among analysts is over how many trillions. Yet Republicans leaders keep trying to pretend otherwise. …

…Later on Friday, the credit-rating agency Moody’s lowered the nation’s rating from the top Aaa to Aa1 with a negative outlook, citing, um, greater federal spending without greater taxes to cover it. “Over the next decade, we expect larger deficits as entitlement spending rises while government revenue remains broadly flat. In turn, persistent, large fiscal deficits will drive the government’s debt and interest burden higher,” Moody’s said in a statement.

Republican leaders’ response to the downgrade has been denial. On Meet the Press, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, “I think that Moody’s is a lagging indicator. I think that’s what everyone thinks of credit agencies.” Even insofar as this is true, why exacerbate the existing problems that Moody’s notes? This morning, Majority Leader Steve Scalise told CNBC, “This bond downgrade is another serious blow that shows that America needs to get its fiscal house in order. We start to do that in this bill.” Never mind that Moody’s is responding to exactly the bill’s approach.

Russell Vought, the White House budget chief, made the tortured argument that because the bill cuts more than the 1997 Balanced Budget Act agreement, it must be fiscally conservative, as though the huge reductions in revenue included in the bill are somehow irrelevant. Vought also noted that the GOP’s accounting is based on “$2.5 trillion in assumed economic growth”—in other words, keeping their fingers crossed for the rosiest results. Among other things, the bill would extend tax cuts passed in Trump’s first term, which didn’t live up to GOP projections that they’d pay for themselves.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt went with a simple up-is-down approach. When asked this morning whether Trump was okay with the bill adding to the deficit, she deadpanned, “This bill does not add to the deficit.”

So there it is. They are counting on the Magic Prosperity Fairy to bail them out.

But even assuming the House GOP manages to vote as one and get the bill passed, what will happen to it in the Senate is anybody’s guess.

Trump’s people were on a real roll today. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem explained to a Senate hearing that “Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country, and suspend their right to—.” That’s as far as she got before she was interrupted by an exasperated Senator Maggie Hassan.  There were a lot of interesting hearings today, in fact, with RFK the Lesser and Marco Rubio, who holds several jobs now. I imagine him singing the “Largo al Factorum” from Barber of Seville, about how everybody needs him for something. Lesser and Little Marco notably didn’t know anything about what they were asked. Trump’s people are brilliant at not knowing anything. I guess none of them are detail guys.

Well, the Court giveth, and the Court taketh away. Today SCOTUS decided it was okay to let Trump remove nearly 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants from Temporary Protected Status so that he can go ahead and deport them.

At issue before the Supreme Court was a subsequent designation made in October 2023 and extended in January just before Donald Trump took office. It is set to expire in October 2026.

In February, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sought to unwind those determinations, meaning the protections would expire this year instead.

California-based U.S. District Judge Edward Chen blocked the move, citing concerns that the decision was based in part on racial animus.

Noem’s actions meant the affected immigrants face “possible imminent deportation,” he wrote.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the administration’s emergency application that the courts could not review Noem’s decision.

And why can’t the courts review Noem’s decision? Oh, never mind. This is from the New York Times:

The justices announced they would allow the Trump administration to end the protections pending appeal of the case, potentially allowing the administration to move ahead with deportations. The justices also clarified, however, that they would preserve the ability of individual immigrants to bring some legal challenges if the government tried to cancel their work permits or to remove them from the country.

And do the justices seriously think Trump’s people are going to allow these Venezuelans to bring legal challenges before they’re loaded on a plane to go who knows where? If so, are those justices stupid? Oh, never mind.

This is even more outrageous:

Trump calls for probe into Springsteen’s involvement in Harris presidential campaign
President Donald Trump early on Monday said he would call for an investigation into musician Bruce Springsteen’s endorsement of former Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential run.

“I am going to call for a major investigation into this matter,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social network. “Candidates aren’t allowed to pay for ENDORSEMENTS, which is what Kamala did, under the guise of paying for entertainment.”

What can one say but, what the bleep? Trump is pissed at The Boss for dissing him during performances in London.  Trump is also calling for investigations into several other celebrities:

President Donald Trump has called for a “major investigation” into celebrities who aided Kamala Harris‘ 2024 election campaign, including Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey, and Bono, saying their appearances were potentially illegal contributions.

Trump had some celebrity endorsers, also, and some of them appeared at his rallies. Some people don’t know when to leave well enough alone. I believe celebrity endorsements go back to when Al Jolson endorsed Warren Harding.

In other news, the Terrible Horrible Budget Bill did make it out of committee. It has to be voted on in the House, and then who knows what the Senate will do with it. The best commentary I’ve seen on this is by Paul Krugman: Attack of the Sadistic Zombies.

There’s a guy named Steve Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown U, who writes a Substack column called One First. He’s worth checking out. A couple of days ago he wrote that The Supreme Court’s (Alien Enemies Act) Patience is Wearing Thin.  Here’s a bit that points out what is significant in the ruling.

First, that the Fifth Circuit did have jurisdiction to hear the plaintiffs’ appeal of the district court’s refusal to block their removal (the Fifth Circuit had concluded otherwise). Second, that the plaintiffs were entitled to more notice than they had received as of April 18. And third—and this is the quiet bombshell in the ruling—that “this Court may properly issue temporary injunctive relief to the putative class in order to preserve our jurisdiction pending appeal,” even without resolving whether full class certification is likely. In other words, a majority of the Supreme Court held that, when issuing preliminary relief, it (and lower federal courts) can recognize a “putative” (or “provisional”) class of plaintiffs for purposes of temporary relief even before a class has been properly certified in the district court—and perhaps even without regard to whether it will be. More below on why this is immensely significant not just for challenges to the AEA, but elsewhere.

The SCOTUS has been consistent in saying that all of the targeted migrants are entitled to due process, even if they are dragging their feet about ruling on Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act. But now — get this — Trump has decided the SCOTUS ruling is illegal.

Donald Trump is still seething at the Supreme Court after it issued a ruling Friday continuing to block his efforts to deport immigrants without due process by citing an archaic wartime law.

On Saturday, Trump shared a post on Truth Social from lawyer Mike Davis, one of his most extreme MAGA allies, claiming that the Supreme Court put “an illegal injunction on the president of the United States, preventing him from commanding military operations to expel these foreign terrorists.” 

Of course, nobody is stopping Trump from deporting people who deserve deporting. He just doesn’t want to go through the bother of due process first. And that’s because if he had to prove all these people were criminals and threats to the country, it would shrink the number of people he deports to a ridiculously tiny size.

Trump also has ordered his departments to stop enforcing rules he doesn’t like.

Since the paragraph above was published, in March, the resistance has grown moe robust. But we need even more.

There are a lot of people to blame for this, including the voters who still aren’t paying attention. But nobody helped set this crisis up better than the Supreme Court, which could have stopped him but instead sat on its hands and eventually gave him a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Update: I just saw this one — Trump shared a “truth” post that called for military tribunals for Barack Obama. For what, exactly, it doesn’t say.

This is your monster, John Roberts. What are you willing to do to stop him?

Another Update: President Biden has been diagnosed with an aggressive prostate cancer that has spread to the bones. So now let’s everybody just shut up about his infirmities and give him some peace.

Yesterday the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the nationwide injunctions issued by some federal judges blocking Trump’s “birthright citizenship” attempted overrule of the Constitution. By all accounts the Trump attorneys’ arguments were utterly shredded. Yet most of the commentary today is saying that the justices are “split” and that the Court may give Trump some of what he wants, even though chaos would ensue, and the birthright citizenship ban is blatantly unconstitutional.

The question before the Court, as I understand it, wasn’t about birthright citizenship itself but whether a federal district judge can issue a decision that affects the whole nation and not just that district. Universal injunctions sometimes can be problematic, such as when a Texas judge decided to ban the abortion pill mifepristone. On the other hand, no universal injunction would require countless individuals to have to file the same suit to protect their rights against government overreach.

Also, it came out in the arguments that there are a ton of unanswered questions about how Trump’s birthright citizenship block would work if it became law. Who would decide which babies got to be citizens and which would be stateless? The hospitals? Or would states have to set up some kind of bureaucracy, or make all parents apply for citizenship for their babies? And then if birthright citizenship were still in effect in some states but not others, would a stateless baby gain citizenship by moving into a “birthright” state?

Ultimately, one assumes, the question of whether Trump’s block is constitutional would go to the Supreme Court. But what if it didn’t?

I’m not going to waste a gift link to it, but today the New York Times is running an op ed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mehmet Oz, Brooke Rollins, and Scott Turner headlined “Trump Leadership: If You Want Welfare and Can Work, You Must.” A sample:

America’s welfare programs were created with a noble purpose: to help those who needed them most — our seniors, individuals with disabilities, pregnant women and low-income families with children.

In recent years, though, these welfare programs have deviated from their original mission both by drift and by design. Millions of able-bodied adults have been added to the rolls in the past decade, primarily as a result of Medicaid expansion. Many of these recipients are working-age individuals without children who might remain on welfare for years. Some of them do not work at all or they work inconsistently throughout the year.

The increased share of welfare spending dedicated to able-bodied working-age adults distracts from what should be the focus of these programs: the truly needy.

The great right-wing fantasy that has lived at least since LBJ initiated the Great Society program is there are vast numbers of deadbeats who are living off “welfare” instead of working. And if we got rid of welfare, they’d go out and get jobs and be perfectly fine. There is all kinds of authoritative data easily found via web search saying otherwise, of course.

This is from Axios:

By the numbers: There’s little evidence that people are somehow free-riding on Medicaid.

64% of adults with Medicaid work full time or part time, according to an analysis of census data by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. [That would be 44 percent full time, 20 percent part time]

Another 32% are taking care of home or family, are ill or disabled, attend school, or are retired.

2% could not find work. And there’s another 2% in an “other” category.

You can’t live on Medicaid. The beneficiary doesn’t see a dime of it. It just pays for medical care already received. Nobody is sitting around watching teevee all day and living off the Medicaid checks. According to the American Hospital Association, “Approximately 42% of Medicaid beneficiaries are adults, 36% are children, 10% are disabled, and 10% are age 65 or older.” So more than half of Medicaid recipients are children, seniors, or disabled.

The House “big, beautiful budget bill” now includes work requirements for receiving Medicaid. Axios reports that “The bill would require Medicaid recipients who are under 65 years old, without dependents, to confirm they are working at least 80 hours a month. Another provision requires some to certify twice a year that they qualify for insurance.” A few states have tried this, and I understand the administrative costs of checking up on the work requirements are prohibitive. In Georgia, Axios says, the state spent $13,000 per enrollee just to sign them up.  It’s probably more cost-effective to let a few deadbeats slip through. And a lot of people who should be able to qualify aren’t able to navigate the system.

Regarding Georgia, do read He Became the Face of Georgia’s Medicaid Work Requirement. Now He’s Fed Up With It. by Margaret Coker at ProPublica. A real Georgia Medicaid recipient who runs a small business was featured on state-sponsored video ads about what a great medical benefits program Georgia had. Since the ads aired the guy has lost his benefits twice because of bureaucratic red tape, and he’s fed up with it. You really need to read this. It appears the state is perpetually changing the work hour reporting procedures so that people make reporting mistakes and their benefits can be canceled.

And on that note, see Paul Krugman, Republicans Hate You.

Allow me to elaborate. If you struggle to pay your bills, if you have anxiety about your economic future, if the cost of housing and college and just ordinary living weigh on you all the time? There is nothing more important for you to understand than this: Republicans hate you. They think you’re lazy, they think you’re stupid, they think you don’t deserve anything better than to be a wage slave working your ass off so they and their billionaire buddies can have more servants and vacation houses and private jets, while they sit around laughing about what a sucker they think you are. They hate you.

I’ll go into detail on what this message accomplishes and why it’s so important, but first let’s consider this in context of what is probably the most abhorrent part of the budget bill: enormous cuts to Medicaid that would lead to millions of Americans losing their health coverage — as many as 14.7 million, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The primary way they will do this is through “work requirements,” i.e. forcing recipients to navigate a bureaucratic obstacle course to prove, over and over again, that they are working and therefore deserving of health coverage.

Work requirements are terrible policy, but what matters is why Republicans want to use them to kick all those people off their insurance. It’s because they hate people who need Medicaid. The same goes for those who might need food stamps or student loans, workers who want to bargain collectively, and pretty much anyone who isn’t lucky enough to be rich. They hate you.

I bolded that last paragraph because I think it’s true. They hate people who need benefits. Those people are a drag on the ability of rich people to not pay taxes.

Remember back during the depths of the covid pandemic, when the Senate had to debate relief checks? This is from Bess Levin, Vanity Fair, March 2020:

At some point on Wednesday, the Senate is expected to vote on a desperately needed $2 trillion coronavirus relief package. When that will happen is unclear, though, because a number of leading Republicans are demanding changes to the legislation, worried that it provides perverse incentives that could ultimately hurt the country. Do their concerns have to do with huge multinational corporations using the funds on buybacks? Insufficient aid to hospitals or low-wage workers unsure of how they’ll be able to afford food in a week? Not exactly! Rather, Senators Lindsey Graham, Ben Sasse, Rick Scott, and Tim Scott are sick with fear that the legislation will make unemployment so enticing that low-wage workers will decide to lay themselves off.

In the minds of these, um, people, those low-wage workers had better get their asses into the workplace, covid or no covid, and if some of them die that’s okay, but they can’t be allowed to not work!

Claiming the relief package will encourage people to stay out of the workforce, Graham told reporters that the bill “pays you more not to work than if you were working,” noting that it would provide the equivalent of $24.07 an hour in South Carolina versus the state minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. “If the federal government accidentally incentivizes layoffs, we risk life-threatening shortages in sectors where doctors, nurses, and pharmacists are trying to care for the sick, and where growers and grocers, truckers and cooks are trying to get food to families’ tables,” Graham, Sasse, and Scott said in a statement. Yes, it takes a real parody of a Republican to worry—at a time when a deadly pandemic is sweeping the nation and doctors are discussing the prospect of having to pick which patients get to live—about the possibility of being too generous to people making 1/1000000th of their annual salary.

See also Greg Sargent at The New Republic, Mike Johnson Just Wrecked Trump’s Ugly “Working-Class GOP” Scam. The current GOP bill creates a whole new benefit for wealthy investors. Greg Sargent explains it better than I can. The Tax Foundation analysis of the bill says that one effect of the bill will be to limit wage growth.

American incomes measured by Gross National Product (GNP) would increase by less than 0.05 percent because the deficit impact of the bill drives a wedge between the increase in economic output and the increase in American incomes. The tax provisions would increase the budget deficit by $3.3 trillion from 2025 through 2034 on a dynamic basis, and that higher budget deficit would require the US government to borrow more. As interest payments on the debt made to foreigners increase, American incomes decrease.

So it’s a terrible bill. At least I am also reading that a lot of Senate Republicans have some real issues with it, so there’s some hope it will be modified, I suppose. Josh Hawley, of all people, published another NY Times op-ed a couple of days ago headlined Don’t Cut Medicaid. Hawley dishonestly pretends that Trump wants Medicaid left alone —

Mr. Trump has promised working-class tax cuts and protection for working-class social insurance, such as Medicaid. But now a noisy contingent of corporatist Republicans — call it the party’s Wall Street wing — is urging Congress to ignore all that and get back to the old-time religion: corporate giveaways, preferences for capital and deep cuts to social insurance.

Trump has promised a lot of things, but it’s obvious the one promise he wants to keep is cutting taxes for the rich. If the little people have to suffer, too bad.

This wing of the party wants Republicans to build our big, beautiful bill around slashing health insurance for the working poor. But that argument is both morally wrong and politically suicidal.

Hawley isn’t stupid.

Now some 21 percent of Missourians benefit from Medicaid or CHIP, the companion insurance program for lower-income children. And many of our rural hospitals and health providers depend on the funding from these programs to keep their doors open.

That percentage would probably be a lot harder if the state didn’t make signing up so difficult. I swear the application form is endless.

All of which means this: If Congress cuts funding for Medicaid benefits, Missouri workers and their children will lose their health care. And hospitals will close. It’s that simple. And that pattern will be replicated in states across the country.

One of my constituents, a married mother of five, contacted me to explain why Medicaid is vital to her 8-year-old daughter, who depends on a feeding tube to survive. Formula, pump rentals, feeding extensions and other treatments cost $1,500 a month; prescriptions nearly double that cost. These expenses aren’t covered by private insurance. The mother wrote to me, “Without Medicaid, we would lose everything — our home, our vehicles and, eventually, our daughter.”

If Hawley puts up a meaningful fight to stop the Medicaid cuts, I might take back some of the bad things I’ve said about him. Not all of them, though.

Recommended read: Jamelle Bouie, They Were Waiting for Trump All Along.

A letter someone sent to Josh Marshall:

My feeling about Qatar gifting Trump a 747 is simply that it is just embarrassing for the United States. The US can afford and can build its own state-of-the-art Air Force One. The US doesn’t need a gift from a little country of a used plane that is out of production and largely used for freight. It’s not becoming of the United States nor the President of the United States. It’s just embarrassing. 

I’m reading that retrofitting of the plane to have Air Force One capabilities and being sure there are no bugs or other security risks built into it will cost hundreds of millions of dollars. And it will probably take at least a couple of years. The plane may not be ready for Trump to fly before his term ends. And even a lot of Republicans are opposed to accepting the “gift.” Never mind the emoluments clause thing. This transaction may be doomed. We’ll see.

But the bribe may have already done its job. There are all manner of news stories out today reporting on a rift between Trump and Netanyahu. And it so happens Qatar is a major supporter of Hamas. Hmmm.

This is Newsweek:

A senior Hamas official tells Newsweek that the Palestinian militant group saw “positive” potential in signs of a growing rift between President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after offering the U.S. leader a political win in the form of an American hostage release ahead of his Middle East trip.

“Given the unlimited support of the American administration for the entity, any disagreement between them would certainly be a positive development that would weaken Netanyahu’s stubborn position and open the door to the possibility of reaching an agreement to end the war,” Hamas Political Bureau member and spokesperson Basem Naim told Newsweek.

“This is especially true since the continuation of the war does not serve Trump’s strategic projects in the region,” he added, “and Hamas will not accept any agreement that does not lead to an end to the war, ensure the withdrawal of hostile forces and rebuild the Gaza Strip with the participation of its residents.”

Here is WaPo:

During his first major overseas trip this week, President Donald Trump is set to visit three countries in the Middle East — Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — without stopping in Jerusalem.

It’s not the first time he has bypassed Israel — or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

From embarking on nuclear talks with Iran to attempting hostage talks with Hamas without Israel’s knowledge, Trump has increasingly sidelined Netanyahu, stoking anxieties in a country long accustomed to being consulted by successive U.S. administrations.

Looking at all the Stupid coming from the Naked Emperor in the past couple of days, one hardly knows where to start. But let’s start with his latest prescription drug declaration.

What does this tell us? One, that he has paid absolutely no attention to what’s been going on in Congress with prescription drug prices for about a quarter century now. And all those other countries have NATIONAL HEALTH CARE PLANS  that include strict price controls on all prescription drugs. Republicans (and “centrist” Democrats) for all these years have refused to allow such things in the U.S.

Two, he tried to pull this same stunt in his first term, but a judge stopped it. Like most of what Trump tries to change through executive orders, this sort of thing really needs to go through Congress. I expect the drug companies will tell Trump to go pound sand.

Third, central planning of the economy, anybody? Isn’t that something like Original Sin for Republicans? I guess the worship of the Free Market is out of favor, suddenly.

Fourth, Joe Biden pushed through some legislation that really did set prescription drug prices to go down. although much of that law hasn’t fully gone into effect. I expect Trump to take credit as various provisions do go into effect. President Biden also issued some of his own executive orders requesting changes in drug policies to lower cost, but Trump rescinded those as soon as he took office.

Now, let’s move on to the Qatar $400 million 747 jumbo jet boondoggle. David Kurtz at TPM covers that pretty well. The story is that the government of Qatar offered to give the U.S. Department of Defense a Boeing 747-8 jet, with the understanding that it would be for Trump’s use as president, to replace Air Force One. Technically, this gift will only be temporary, so that once Trump is out of office Qatar can transfer the jet to Trump’s presidential library so that he can still use it.

There are several problems with this plan, even beyond the emoluments clause. The first is that yesterday Qatar said the plans to “transfer” the jet to the U.S. DoD were not finalized. Maybe Qatar would send over a jet, and maybe not. It sounds like Trump may have announced the transaction prematurely.

Second, even if the jet does materialize, it would present a security nightmare. “The (US Air Force) would have to tear it apart looking for surveillance equipment and inspect the integrity of the plane,” it says here.

Third, as David Kurtz explains, retrofitting even a very nice luxury jet to have the same essential capabilities as the current Air Force One may not be possible, and even if possible could take years. Trump expects to be able to use his shiny new jet by this fall. There’s no way that’s going to happen.

So what’s wrong with the current Air Force One, besides being 40 years old? Trump had put Boeing to work on a new Air Force One in his first term, and Boeing is still working on it. I take it the plane wasn’t a big priority to Joe Biden. Trump apparently can’t deal with having a shabby forty-year-old jet at his disposal; he wants a newer one. As Kurtz writes,

While the apparent lawlessness of such an arrangement is alarming, there’s an emperor has no clothes aspect to the whole thing. Trump wants what he wants, and no one wants to tell him no. And so everyone pretends it’s possible, even to the point of entertaining wildly corrupt scenarios to make it happen. But in the end, the whole thing collapses under the weight of its own ridiculousness.

On to tariffs. This morning there were headlines about a “major breakthrough,” as China and the U.S. have agreed to lower tariffs for 90 days while negotiations are ongoing. The Trump Administration is calling this a win; most commenters say it’s a cave. Per Paul Krugman, “This wasn’t a case of both sides backing down. China only imposed its tariffs as a response to Trump’s gambit, and has reduced them only because he retreated. And retreat he did. This was basically Trump running away from the killer rabbit.”

Krugman also points out there is still a 30 percent tariff on Chinese imports, which is still way too high and probably coming to late to avoid big price hikes and empty shelves. And nobody knows what will happen when the 90 days are up.

And the House Republicans are still planning to throw millions of people off Medicaid, even if they deny that’s what they are doing.

Getting back to my hypothesis that Trump is dumb as a bag of hammers, let’s look at something he said yesterday —

During a press briefing in the Oval Office, Trump downplayed concerns over job security sparked by a significant drop in cargo volumes as a result of his sweeping tariff policy and ongoing trade negotiations with China.

One reporter said that traffic at U.S. ports “has really slowed, and now thousands of dockworkers and truck drivers are worried about their jobs,” before being interrupted by the president.

“That means we lose less money, you know? When I see that, that means we lose less money,” Trump replied. He claimed that China had been making “over a trillion, 1.1 trillion, in my opinion.”

“And frankly if we didn’t do business, we would have been better off,” Trump continued. “So, when you say it slowed down, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing.

Probably most of this is Trump refusing to acknowledge that his policies are hurting people. But what he’s actually saying here is that trade is bad. He’s saying the U.S. would be better off economically if we closed our borders to imports, according to Trump. We should just sell stuff to other countries, not buy stuff.  Maybe he doesn’t really believe it, but he’s sure as bleep dumb enough to say it. I guess he thinks that if all the dockworkers lose their jobs they can get those factory jobs “screwing in little screws” all day long, like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick talked about recently.

Lutnick is another specimen that belongs in the Overprivileged Twit Museum.

Update: I missed this earlier. Steve Benen wrote on the Maddow Blog,

As the week got underway, NBC News aired Donald Trump’s latest appearance on “Meet the Press,” during which the president shared some odd claims about trade policy. “We were losing hundreds of billions of dollars with China,” he said. “Now we’re essentially not doing business with China. Therefore, we’re saving hundreds of billions of dollars.”

Of course, by that reasoning, if I stopped doing business with my local grocery stores, I could boast about all of the money I’m saving, which would be great except for the related fact that I wouldn’t have any food.

A couple of days later, Trump again said that he didn’t care about the collapse of economic activity between the U.S. and China. “You know, we lost a trillion dollars to China on trade … and by not trading, we’re losing nothing,” the Republican claimed. “So, we’re saving a trillion dollars. That’s a lot.”

So if we all stopped buying stuff we’d save a lot of money. However, I’m not sure how that’s going to increase federal revenue. The General Services Administration does buy some electronics and other technical stuff from China, but I doubt that such purchases add up to a trillion dollars.

In other news — retired Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter has died.

Trump has fired the Librarian of Congress for being an obstacle to President Trump’s agenda. I’m struggling to understand what the Librarian of Congress could possibly do that interferes with anyone’s agenda.

Update: Another perspective —

There is now an American pope. For what it’s worth. There’s some evidence the new Pope is not a fan of Donald Trump. At least the guy should probably avoid J.D. Vance. Just to be safe.

A bit of good news — the Ed Martin nomination for U.S. attorney for D.C has been pulled. Martin was something of a festering boil in Missouri politics for a lot of years, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has been running editorials with headlines like “Missouri Owes America an Apology” and “Ed Martin’s Toxic Road Show Continues.” Unfortunately they’re all behind a paywall. My aunt has been sending me newspaper clippings. Juicy stuff. Let’s just say the guy is not overly burdened with intelligence, competence, or ethics. See also Greg Sargent, Trump Erupts as Top DOJ Pick Implodes in Huge Blow to MAGA at The New Republic.

However, before we celebrate — there is speculation Trump will choose the wackadoo Fox News host Jeanine Pirro for the job.

In other personnel news — Cameron Hamilton, acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was fired from his job yesterday.

The firing occurred one day after Hamilton told a House Appropriations subcommittee that the nation needs FEMA, which Trump has suggested abolishing or shrinking.

“I do not believe it is in the best interests of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency,” Hamilton said at the hearing.

The Atlantic Council, among others, has pointed out that abolishing FEMA would hurt Red states more than Blue ones. Although it wouldn’t be good for Blue states, either.

On to tariff news. After bragging that he has negotiated 200 trade deals, Trump finally announced one. Except it’s not a deal, says Paul Krugman.

The Trump administration is planning to announce its first trade deal today, with Britain. Except it won’t be a deal; more of a “deal.” Reportedly it will mainly be a “framework” for an actual deal that may or may not happen sometime in the future. This is the tariff equivalent of “concepts of a plan” for health care.

In other words, this will be smoke and mirrors, an attempt to persuade the gullible that Trump’s tariffs are actually working. Markets — driven by small investors who seem desperate to believe that the people in charge have some idea what they’re doing — may briefly bounce on the announcement.

Most news outlets will dutifully report there is a “trade deal,” as if one deal with one nation is going to mend the disruption Trump has caused.

Even good writers can be wrong. David Dayan wrote yesterday that Senate Dems “caved” and were preparing to rubber-stamp a Republican crypto bill. But they didn’t. Instead, all Dems, plus Rand Paul and Josh Hawley, voted to keep the bill from being voted on in the Senate.  For now at least. I take it the bill was intended to create a legal framework for cryptocurrency and provided for a little regulation, although surely not so much regulation that it would interfere with the Trump family’s ongoing crypto currency money grab.

But let’s go back to David Dayan, anyway.

As we reported on Monday, a bill called the GENIUS Act would set up a relatively weak regulatory framework for stablecoins, digital assets pegged to the U.S. dollar and used mostly to facilitate crypto trading. It was almost destined for success, as a significant number of crypto-friendly Democrats, boosted by campaign contributions from the industry, were all set to sign on. But then reports about Trump’s family organization launching a stablecoin, and the United Arab Emirates using it in a $2 billion deal to purchase the digital currency exchange Binance started bubbling up. Suddenly, it seemed like terrible politics for Democrats to effectively rubber-stamp Trump’s crypto corruption.

And so nine pro-crypto Democrats vowed to vote against cloture and maintain a filibuster, thus blocking the bill, without changes. Some assumed that asking to address “concerns” was just a pretext to kill the measure. Others thought that the crypto Dems were just searching for a fig leaf they could use to say that their concerns were addressed and the bill could go forward.

It was the latter. 

Sens. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and Mark Warner (D-VA) engaged in round-the-clock negotiations with Republicans on the GENIUS Act to get to yes. Earlier on Wednesday, Gallego told MeidasTouch that he wouldn’t let Republicans “jam us and pass bad legislation” without Democratic input. “Don’t try to fuck us on it, that’s not going to happen,” Gallego said. But the language was generally based on trying to get a “good bill” that supposedly protects consumers and investors. Gallego and Warner voted for the initial version of the GENIUS Act in the Senate Banking Committee.

Sens. Gallego and Warner did not respond to requests for comment about the negotiations.

Meanwhile, Democrats engaged in a classic tactic when they want to pass something but the optics are bad: come up with a different bill that will never pass so they can pretend they care. Sens. Chuck Schumer and Jeff Merkley introduced the End Crypto Corruption Act, which would ban the president, vice president, senior officials in the executive branch, members of Congress, and their immediate families from financially benefiting from crypto assets that they issue or endorse, including stablecoins. 

And so on. I take it that the vote today was premature; negotiations were ongoing. I also get a sense that the crypto-friendly Democrats may have been spooked by recent news stories of Trump’s blatant corruption, promising top traders of his stupid memecoin access to him and tours of the White House.

Note: Trump really did issue a proclamation calling May 8 World War II Victory Day. Like the Pacific War was just a messy little skirmish that didn’t really matter. I am not celebrating.

Pete Hegseth is in the news again. It’s been discovered that some weeks ago he randomly stopped shipments of weapons to Ukraine that had already been approved, catching even the White House off guard. He’s also decided the Army has too many four-star generals and admirals, and he’s cutting their ranks by 20 percent. But CNN says there are only 37 four-star generals and admirals across the entire military. That really doesn’t seem an excessive number, considering the size of the U.S. military. One wonders if the boy’s hitting the bottle again.

Incompetence abounds. I take it the House has really hit a wall over cutting Medicaid. Yesterday Trump released a budget calling for massive cuts to medical services, but he’s saying benefits won’t be cut. But nobody with any sense thinks he can have his cuts without impairing benefits. He wants women to be having more babies, but Medicaid is paying for more than 40 percent of American births (nearly 50 percent in rural areas). Plus, the economic anxiety his policies are creating aren’t exactly conducive to long-term commitments, like a baby.

Trump wants to bring back coal mining. But he’s also cutting safety regulations in coal mines. Coal mining can be deadly. Before there were regulations, thousands of miners died every year. And then there’s black lung. Trump has cut programs that screened miners for black lung and provided treatment. Miners were stunned.

These guys think Trump will reinstate the program if someone just explains it to him. They still haven’t figured out what he is.

He doesn’t care, and he also doesn’t connect one thing with another. He’s not bright enough to think comprehensively. He wants coal miners to love him, so he promises to bring back coal mining. He wants mine owners to like him, so he cuts regulations. He wants to fund his tax cuts, so let’s cut all these health programs he doesn’t understand. This is not 12-dimensional chess. It’s just stupid.

He keeps saying he has made hundreds of tariff deals, but won’t announce them. But if you listen to these remarks he made today, it’s pretty clear he hasn’t made any deals at all. He thinks he can just set terms, and countries can work with us, or not. But it’s really American consumers are the ones who have to pay the price.

He has no idea what he’s talking about. In his meeting today with Canada’s  Prime Minister Mark Carney, he actually said, “We don’t do much business with Canada from our standpoint. They do a lot of business with us. We’re at like 4%.” Canada is the top buyer of U.S. exports.

I keep reading articles that try to explain “why” Trump is taking this or that destructive position. There is no “why.” He’s an idiot.

There must be at least some Republicans in Congress who realize he is an idiot. Some of them are nearly as dumb as he is, but I don’t think they all are. Some of them must realize how much he’s screwing up. Maybe they think their voters won’t notice.

See also Philip Bump on American’s Least American President.