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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Hubris [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-04-08
We begin with Chris Geidner of LawDork and the news that the U.S. Supreme Court has granted the Trump Administration’s request to vacate a U.S. District Court’s order about the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act.
On a 5-4 vote and with an unsigned, per curiam opinion, the Supreme Court granted the Trump administration’s emergency request to vacate the district court orders that had been temporarily blocking Trump’s unprecedented use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans who the administration has decided are part of a gang, Tren de Aragua. The orders had been in place since the Trump administration began implementing Trump’s proclamation on March 15. At the same time, however, it is important to note — as both sides did — that there was significant unanimity hiding beneath Trump’s “victory” on Monday. All nine justices agreed that AEA removals are subject to judicial review — and that the propriety of Trump’s invocation of the law here was not addressed by Monday’s decision — and that due process requires that anyone the administration is seeking to deport under the AEA receive notice that they have been so designated and have an actual opportunity to challenge their AEA-related removal. That unanimity is important — and does mean that this ruling could be more temporary than it is devastating. At the same time, though, there is much to question and challenge in the five-justice majority’s disturbing opinion — which said nothing about how those people sent to the El Salvador prison on those first two planes on March 15 are to address their claims.
Jonathan Lemire of The Atlantic reports that the tacky shoe salesman is not blinking— yet— on his imposition of tariffs on many countries in spite of those countries retaliating with counter tariffs and criticisms domestically even by those of his own political party.
Trump is showing no signs—at least not yet—of being encumbered by political considerations as he makes the biggest bet of his presidency, according to three White House officials and two outside allies granted anonymity to discuss the president’s decision making. Emboldened by his historic comeback, he believes that launching a trade battle is his best chance of fundamentally remaking the American economy, elites and experts be damned. [...] Markets plunged around the globe today for the third-straight trading day after Trump announced the sweeping “Liberation Day” set of tariffs—imposed on nearly all of the world’s economies—that almost instantly remade the United States’ trading relationship with the rest of the world. He has said that Americans should expect short-term pain (“HANG TOUGH,” he declared on social media) as he attempts to make the U.S. economy less dependent on foreign-made goods. The blowback has been extensive and relentless. Other nations have responded with retaliatory levies. Fears of a recession have spiked. CEOs, after panicking privately for days, are beginning to speak out. Most cable channels have been bathed in the red of graphs depicting plunging markets, the stock ticker in the corner falling ever downward. Even Fox News, which has downplayed the crisis, has begun carrying stories about the impact on Trump voters who are worried about shrinking retirement accounts and rising prices. GOP lawmakers, usually loath to cross the White House, are mulling trying to limit the president’s economic authority. Senator Ted Cruz worried that the tariffs will cause a 2026 midterms “bloodbath,” while seven other GOP senators, including Trump allies such as Chuck Grassley, signed on to a bipartisan bill that would require Congress to approve Trump’s steep tariffs on trading partners.
Edward Helmore of the Guardian gathers some reactions to the tariffs from Wall Street traders.
Traders leaving the New York stock exchange after the bell closed on Monday were sanguine about what had been, by an measure, a day of mood swings on Wall Street, as waves of volatility shook the stock markets, each one created by another deluge of headlines around Donald Trump’s trade war and global economic uncertainty. [...] Monday’s wild gyrations came after a misreading of an interview with Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, on Fox News on Sunday. In the interview, Hassett was asked whether Trump could call a “90-day timeout” on his tariffs, to which Hassett responded: “I think the president will decide what the president is going to decide.” But Jay said “everything” they saw was about Trump’s relationship with China. The administration, he said, “was trying to get everyone on board so they can box China out. I think they’re saying, look, we will drop the tariffs on you, but you have to tariff China.
“Jay” remains clueless, I guess.
Paul Krugman writes on his self-named Substack about the hubris of rich people that backed Trump, what they expected of Trump and their confidence that they know more about the economy than anyone else, including economic experts.
On one side there are “less-engaged” voters who don’t follow politics closely. And to be fair, ordinary Americans have good excuses for not paying close attention to the news: They have jobs to do, children to raise, lives to live. Unfortunately, many of these voters believed Trump’s fabulist promises. They are only now beginning to understand what they voted for. There’s now a huge debate among Democrats about how to reach less-engaged voters. But that’s a topic for future posts. But less-engaged voters weren’t the only people who missed the warning signs and supported Donald Trump. Trump also had a number of ultra-wealthy backers, both on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, who are now shocked, shocked to discover that he is who he always was. [...] To be honest, I’m actually glad that Trump II is proving to be such a disaster for the economy. If he had exercised some restraint, if he had simply claimed credit for the very good economy Joe Biden left him, many wealthy people would have cheered him on while he destroyed democracy. Now they may turn on him.
Maybe. Maybe not.
Christina Greer writes for The New York Times and has no problem at all saying “I told you so.”
Black people have seen this America before. We have endured throughout history’s progress and regress, watching the arc of justice bend with the changing winds. Until we reckon with our fellow citizens’ capacity — even hunger — for injustice, we will fail to meet, understand and survive this political moment. What I mean by that is the ability of some Americans (historically, almost all of them white, though increasingly there are multiethnic fellow travelers in MAGA these days) to burn this country to the ground before they share it with those deemed other and unworthy. I also mean how long it takes for almost everyone else to wake up to the danger these people pose not only to Black people but, yes, to everyone else, too. Again, Black people are not surprised. Far too many well-meaning white Americans have been what I like to call ally ostriches, believing in progress while burying their heads in the sand when discussions around the past become uncomfortable. Or newer Americans, perhaps the children of immigrants of recent decades, who don’t see what business it is of theirs what violence slave owners or Jim Crow enforcers visited on their fellow citizens or the legacy of it. And now some of them are seeing people who look like them summarily deported. How did this happen? Every day I hear, spoken by these ostriches but also, increasingly, by those who blithely voted for Mr. Trump, thinking he didn’t intend to actually do those things he said he would do, or who just couldn’t bring themselves to vote for a Black woman or who feel some version of disbelief. As if the America of chattel slavery, of Native American expulsion and attempted extermination, of reckless imperial expansion, of Jim Crow, of internment camps was echoed by authoritarian regimes across the globe in the past. I find myself reminding those who are surprised by this moment that my still very spry mother attended legally mandated segregated schools her entire life. The past has somehow turned into prologue, and the head-scratching of many tells me there is a fundamental lack of understanding of this country and what Americans are capable of. No, dear ostriches, not all Americans. But enough and often enough.
Even your friendly neighborhood APR aggregator was born at a time when hospitals were racially segregated even in the North. I was born in one of those hospitals.
Finally today, Chauncey Alcorn of Capital B News looks at evidence that DOGE layoffs may be more targeted than they seem.
An internal memo provided to Capital B Atlanta by a CDC employee appears to show a list of agency departments and divisions that were downsized on Tuesday. In addition to divisions related to areas of research in which Black people are overrepresented, the memo also lists research divisions primarily affecting women and other minority groups. “They went in there and dismantled anything that would help any marginalized community,” CDC information technology specialist Irismar “Reese” Williams said on Tuesday, after receiving a layoff notice. “Make no mistake: This is a direct attack.” In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services denied to Capital B that the CDC’s restructuring is racially motivated, calling the allegations “not only absurd but entirely inaccurate.” [...] Civil rights leaders have been sounding the alarm about potential bias in DOGE downsizing since the agency that President Donald Trump tasked with reducing federal government waste began laying off workers last month.
Try to have the best possible day everyone!
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