The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and numerous infosec leaders are lobbying US President Donald Trump to drop his enduring investigation into Chris Krebs, claiming that targeting the former CISA boss amounts to bullying. read more
It was clear from the staging of Sunday night's first open "Town Hall" appearance before voters that 17th District Congressman Mike Lawler and his staff were concerned about the growing number of similar public appearances by Republican office holders around the country in which angry constituents have demanded explanations for their support of Trump administration policies. read more
The president's executive order would push AI education in K"12 schools; the idea gets support from education experts, but raises concerns about how early students should learn about the technology.
The U.S. economy shrank at a 0.3% annual pace from January through March, first drop in three years. It was slowed by a surge in imports as companies in the United States tried to bring in foreign goods before President Donald Trump imposed massive tariffs. read more
A lawyer representing MyPillow and its CEO Mike Lindell in a defamation case admitted using artificial intelligence in a brief that has nearly 30 defective citations, including misquotes and citations to fictional cases, a federal judge said. read more
It looks like Rep Lawler may have a hill to climb in 2026 ...
17th District
en.wikipedia.org
... The district was one of three congressional districts that voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election while simultaneously electing a Republican in the 2024 House of Representatives elections.[8] ...
@#17
Trump Wants a Mulligan for Bad Economic Report
politicalwire.com
... "President Donald Trump blamed former President Joe Biden for weak economic data that sent stocks tumbling, arguing government data showed increased domestic investment signaled his tariff regime is working," Bloomberg reports.
Said Trump, at a Cabinet meeting: "I have to start off by saying, that's Biden. That's not Trump."
He added: "Let's give us a pass on the first month, we were sort of getting a little bit used to things." ...
OpEd: Trump's Tariffs Have Done What No US Adversary Could
jacobin.com
... Great powers often decline through self-inflicted blows. By starting a trade war he was unable to follow through on, Donald Trump may have just dealt a severe one to the United States.
ften in history, there's no blow struck by the enemies of a great power more fatal than the one it inflicts on itself. The British invasion of Egypt in 1956, for example, and the ensuing pushback, walkback, humiliation, and loss of prestige for the country, came to be viewed as the own goal that firmly ended the United Kingdom's claim to being a global empire.
Donald Trump's sudden declaration of, and subsequent quick retreat from, trade war on China may end up being remembered the same way: an unforced error cementing the decline of a unipolar world order dominated by one single power and signaling the transition to something new.
The Trump administration's stated goals of reshoring the jobs that years of pro-corporate free trade deals had sent out of the country and reconstituting the US manufacturing base are good and arguably necessary. After all, it was only a few years ago that the United States had to rely on airlifts of vital medical supplies from its leading rival to grapple with a pandemic.
But the specific way Trump has rolled out the tariffs, and the decision to turn that project into one big pissing contest for global supremacy, has potentially done the exact kind of damage to global perceptions of US power that the president was trying to avoid.
To the extent that the Trump administration had a coherent set of goals in its ever-shifting public justifications for its tariffs, they were meant to not just kick-start the process of bringing manufacturing back to the United States but to force countries into renegotiating their terms of trade in a way that was more favorable to the United States and, more broadly, to isolate and put pressure on a rising China vying for global leadership. That last one was reportedly what Trump officials had been discussing two weeks into the tariff announcement, reasoning that most of the world's countries, China included, would face such an economic shock from losing the ability to sell their exports to the United States' sizable population of big-spending consumers, they would simply fold and agree to whatever Trump wanted.
So far, none of that has worked out.
The blanket, erratic, and often nonsensical nature of the tariffs has, far from showing signs of jump-starting the long process of reshoring manufacturing jobs, actually proven a major obstacle to that project, while also leading manufacturers to shed jobs or scale back their plans and plunging the entire US economy into uncertainty more broadly.
This reached a crescendo with the mass sell-off of US Treasury bonds earlier this month that briefly threatened to send the entire US financial system buckling. ...
Trump: I run the country and the world'
thehill.com
... "The first time, I had two things to do " run the country and survive; I had all these crooked guys," Trump said in the interview published Monday. "And the second time, I run the country and the world."
Trump has taken broad executive action on a range of issues since returning to office in January, with his moves on immigration and trade drawing the most attention and producing intense pushback in courts and among global leaders, respectively.
On trade, Trump sparked backlash globally by announcing tariffs on most countries, including top U.S. trading partners, though he has paused some of the country-specific levies until July. The rollercoaster action on trade has rattled global markets and raised economic anxiety.
Relationships with longtime American allies have also seen strain with rhetoric around acquiring Greenland and of Canada becoming part of the U.S. Meanwhile, Trump has focused much of his first few months in office on trying to broker a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine.
While speaking with The Atlantic, the president also commented on the possibility of a third bid for the White House, something he has previously flirted with but which GOP lawmakers have largely dismissed as joking. ...
Related ...
United States Job Openings
tradingeconomics.com
... Job openings in the United States fell by 288,000 to 7.192 million in March 2025, the lowest in six months and well below market expectations of 7.48 million. The drop was broad-based, with the largest decreases reported for transportation, warehousing, and utilities (-59K), accommodation and food services (-42K), construction (-38K), federal governemnt (-36K), real estate and rental and leasing (-39K), and health care and social assistance (-37K).
On the other-------- openings increased in finance and insurance (25K), other services (20K), state and local education (17K), wholesale trade (10K) and manufacturing (4K). Regarding regional distribution, job openings fell in the Northeast (-180K), the South (-69K), and in the West (-76K), but increased in the Midwest (36K).
Meanwhile, hires held at 5.4 million, and total separations changed little at 5.1 million. Within separations, quits were unchanged (3.3 million) and layoffs and discharges edged down (1.6 million).
source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics ...
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