The uncoordinated, mish-mash, change-when-the-wind-blows “policies” of the Trump administration are — to put it simply — the products of an ignorant, demented mind. Here’s a roundup of today’s foolishness from the Trump Reich.
President Donald Trump said he will consider pardoning the men convicted in connection with a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D).
Speaking with reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday, the president said he plans to look at the cases of the four men who were either convicted or pleaded guilty on various federal charges stemming from the 2020 plot to kidnap the governor. Trump, when asked about potential pardons by a pool reporter, stated he believes the men were “railroaded.”
“I will take a look at it,” Trump said. “It’s been brought to my attention. I did watch the trial. It looked to me like somewhat of a railroad job, I’ll be honest with you. It looked to me like some people said some stupid things, you know? They were drinking, and I think they said stupid things. But I’ll take a look at that, and a lot of people are asking me that question — from both sides, actually. A lot of people think they got railroaded. A lot of people think they got railroaded. And probably some people don’t.”
On a podcast last week, Ed Martin — who is now the DOJ’s pardon attorney after having his nomination withdrawn to be the lead U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia — said he plans to take a “hard look” at pardons for the men. “We can’t leave these guys behind,” Martin told far-right podcaster Breanna Morello. He added, “In my opinion, these are victims just like January 6.”
US court blocks Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs
Source: Reuters
NEW YORK (Reuters) -A U.S. federal court on Wednesday blocked President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs from going into effect, ruling that the president overstepped his authority by imposing across-the-board duties on imports from nations that sell more to the United States than they buy.
The Manhattan-based Court of International Trade said the U.S. Constitution gives the U.S. Congress exclusive powers to regulate commerce with other countries that are not trumped by the president’s emergency powers to safeguard the U.S. economy.
The lawsuit, filed by the nonpartisan Liberty Justice Center on behalf of five small U.S. businesses that import goods from countries targeted by the duties, was the first major legal challenge to Trump’s tariffs.
The companies – which range from a New York wine and spirits importer to a Virginia-based maker of educational kits and musical instruments – have said the tariffs will hurt their ability to do business.
The lawsuit is one of seven court challenges to Trump’s tariff policies, along with challenges from 13 U.S. states and other groups of small businesses.
Trump claims he is attacking Harvard to help American kids get into Harvard. He’s lying as usual.
President Donald Trump has mostly justified his lawless attempt to restrict international students from attending Harvard University by pretending it’s designed to root out the antisemites, woke radicals, and dangerous terrorists supposedly nesting in their ranks. Now, however, Trump has a new rationale: It’s all about helping young, aspiring Americans, particularly those in the working class. “We have Americans who want to go there and to other places,” Trump told reporters over the weekend, adding angrily that many of Harvard’s international students are “bad” and are taking Americans’ slots: “They can’t go there because you have 31 percent foreign.”
Trump then tweeted:
Yeah, OK. If Trump really wants to facilitate the upward mobility of America’s working-class youth, here’s a better way to do it: Persuade his fellow Republicans in the House to drop their new budget’s changes to financial aid for higher education, which will restrict access to it for large numbers of working-class students, including many who want to attend—yup—trade schools.
At this point, there’s no need to pretend there’s a genuine public-interest rationale at work here. Everyone knows it’s all about getting universities to surrender to flatter Trump, or about executing a broader hostile MAGA takeover of liberal institutions. For instance, in an article reporting that Trump is now nixing Harvard’s federal contracts on top of canceling billions in grants, The New York Times notes almost in passing that Trump wants to bring Harvard “to its knees,” as if this is unremarkable, when it should be depicted as the power-crazed ravings of a Mad King.
Fed minutes show rising unemployment, stagflationary risks
Source: The Hill
05/28/25 5:04 PM ET
Minutes from the May meeting of the Federal Reserve’s interest rate-setting committee show stagflationary risk to the economy as a result of new White House trade policies and higher projections for unemployment through the next couple of years.
Fed bankers weighed in with their outlook for the economy in the middle of Trump’s tariff blitz, prior to the trade truce with China earlier this month that paused mutually imposed triple-digit tariffs.
Officials felt that “the labor market was expected to weaken substantially, with the unemployment rate forecast moving above the staff’s estimate of its natural rate by the end of this year and remaining above the natural rate through 2027.”
The Fed projected in March an unemployment rate of 4.4 percent for 2025 and of 4.3 percent for 2026 and 2027. The May minutes suggest those numbers will be higher. Inflation projections were higher and growth projections lower than the ones put out in the March SEP. Inflation was expected to hit a 2.7 percent annual increase this year, and growth was forecast to be 1.7 percent.
Read more: https://thehill.com/business/5322348-fed-minutes-show-rising-unemployment-stagflationary-risks/