Leavitt: "Ultimately, when we have fair and balanced trade which the American people have not seen in decades ... revenues will stay here. Wages will go up. And our country will be made wealthy again. And I think it's insulting that you are trying to test my knowledge of economics and the decisions this president has made."
Republican lawmakers are enjoying more access " and having more success " in their attempts to convince the White House to reverse cuts to certain programs and workers, while Democrats are largely striking out.Even in cases where they are advocating for the same thing, Republicans are able to leverage entry points into Trump administration in ways that Democrats simply can't, leaving them in the dark on many of the recent reversals the administration has agreed to.
Agents told him his student visa was revoked. But he had a green card. Agents then said that was revoked too. read more
The Network State cult is actively lobbying Congress to legalize new kinds of corporate-controlled cities where normal laws don't apply. Trump's 2024 campaign proposed something called "freedom cities," a lightly rebranded version of the Network State. Yet, most news outlets mentioned the idea without providing any real explanation of the concept. read more
Sanders started his speech warning that "we have an administration that is leading us to oligarchy, an administration that is leading us to an authoritarian form of society, an administration that is leading us towards kleptocracy." read more
This is where we are folks:
News Eye
@newseye.bsky.social
A President reduced to car salesman is historically degrading.
But there's something else very revealing in all this: amidst growing protests & collapsing sales, Musk is panicked.
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com
holy ---- -- Trump was reading from a literal Tesla sales pitch, complete with pricing, during his White House event with Elon Musk. (Andrew Harnik/Getty)
bsky.app
"Ultimately, when we have fair and balanced trade which the American people have not seen in decades ... "
Have not seen in decades? Hmm, someone needs to ask Leavitt, Trump and Republicans in general if this includes "the largest, most significant, modern, and balanced trade agreement in history" which Trump himself negotiated and bragged about just 5 years ago:
President Donald J. Trump's United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement Delivers a Historic Win for American Workerstrumpwhitehouse.archives.gov
January 29, 2020
"The USMCA is the largest, most significant, modern, and balanced trade agreement in history. All of our countries will benefit greatly."
President Donald J. Trump
DELIVERING ON HIS PROMISE: President Donald J. Trump is replacing the outdated North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
Heck of a job, DonOLD. PS this will really convice people we should privatize Social Security so that money can be put in the stock market:
S&P 500 Drops to Record Low As Trump Escalates His Trade War
New YORK--The S&P 500 has dropped more than 10% below its record following President Donald Trump's latest escalation in his trade war.
The S&P 500 earlier sank as much as 1.5% Tuesday before paring its loss to 1.4%, which put it 9.9% below its record. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 711 points, or 1.7%, as of 1:32 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.2% lower.
The drops came after Trump said he would raise tariffs on steel and aluminum coming from Canada, doubling their planned increase to 50%. The president said it was a response to moves a Canadian province made after Trump began threatening tariffs on one of the United States' most important trading partners.
time.com
No, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren aren't top recipients of pharmaceutical industry donationswww.statnews.com
Behind misleading claim by RFK Jr. is a quirk in the OpenSecrets site
Sanders, in fact, received no contributions at all from political action committees affiliated with drug companies, or from top pharmaceutical executives. But because of a quirk in the site's methodology, donations from individual, low-ranking employees are counted the same as official contributions from corporate PACs.
Typically, in Washington, corporations' support for political candidates is measured by donations from its PAC, and to an extent, from its top executives.
OpenSecrets, by contrast, measures corporate giving by combining PAC spending with any contribution of $200 or more from any company employee. In other words: if an entry-level human resources officer at a pharmaceutical company wrote Sanders or Warren even a modest check, the website would count that sum toward the company's total giving, no differently than a check written by the company's PAC.
This methodology appears to have misled users. Both Sanders and Warren ran for president in 2020, and raised millions of dollars from supporters across the country. Many of them were rank-and-file employees at drug companies, whose voting preferences may not always align with their companies' interests.
"Some of the people making these claims know full well that they're being misleading," said Daniel Weiner, the director of elections and government at the Brennan Center for Justice. "There is a distinction between a random donation from someone who happens to work in a particular industry, versus a donation from a corporate PAC."
Historically, Democrats have favored aggressive measures to reduce drug prices, while many Republicans have argued that limiting drug companies' profits could stifle future innovation of lifesaving medicines.
When measuring PAC spending specifically, Sanders and Warren are nowhere near the top. According to OpenSecrets, neither is among Capitol Hill's top 25 recipients of donations from pharmaceutical manufacturing PACs. In 2020, the top pharmaceutical PAC recipient in Congress was Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), who accepted $240,600 in official committee gifts; in 2024, it was Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), who accepted $441,800.
This FUBAR cutting of medical research is unfortunately not limited to Columbia University but is an essential feature of Musk and his DOGE bros assault on the federal government:
www.nytimes.comInefficiency, stupidity and cruellty. But what else would you expect from 2 narcissistic billionaires and their small-minded Republican backers?