Month: January 2025

Tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China Could Start This Weekend

Reason

Tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China Could Start This Weekend

Eric Boehm – January 31, 2025

Shipping containers
Photo by Lucas van Oort on Unsplash

Huge new tariffs on goods imported from Canada, China, and Mexico could begin as soon as this weekend.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at a Friday press conference that the Trump administration was prepared to impose a new 25 percent tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico, along with a 10 percent tariff on imports from China. Aside from that statement, Leavitt offered few specifics and the White House has so far not released any further details about the new import taxes.

That leaves many unknowns, such as: Under what authority is President Donald Trump implementing those tariffs? Are there exceptions for certain goods, or are the tariffs being charged on all imports from the three countries? Do those tariffs apply on top of existing import duties—for example, is the new 10 percent tariff on goods from China imposed on top of the tariffs on many Chinese imports that Trump implemented during his first term—or in place of them? Will there be a process for certain companies and industries to seek relief from tariffs for goods that cannot be sourced in the United States, like tequila?

Adding to the confusion: Reuters reported earlier on Friday that those tariffs will be implemented on March 1. Leavitt called that report “false.”

Canada, China, and Mexico are the United States’ three largest trading partners. In 2023, the last full year for which data are available, the U.S. imported $475 billion of goods from Mexico, $426 billion from China, and $418 billion from Canada.

In her remarks to reporters, Leavitt said the new tariffs were being issued in response to the “illegal fentanyl that they have sourced and allowed to distribute into our country.” In an interview with CNBC on Friday, Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro also claimed that “fentanyl…that comes from China and Mexico” was the prime motivator for the new import taxes.

This makes very little sense. How will higher taxes on legal imports affect the flow of illegal drugs?

What the tariffs will do is raise prices for American businesses and consumers.

Though much uncertainly remains about how these tariffs will function, a full-fledged 25 percent tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico, plus a 10 percent tariff on all imports from China, would be a tax increase of $111 billion this year and would shrink the U.S. economy by 0.4 percent, according to estimates by the Tax Foundation.

“Several industries would experience severe disruption, including autos, oil & gas, and agriculture,” wrote Erica York, vice president of policy at the Tax Foundation, in a post on X shortly after Leavitt announced the new tariffs.

Auto manufacturers, which rely on supply chains that stretch across the whole of North America—thanks to free trade agreements—figure to be some of the hardest hit. “Steep tariffs on vehicles would not only raise prices north of the border and shock the Mexican auto sector and its workers. They would also cost jobs in the United States,” warned the Peterson Institute for International Economics, in December. “Because of the highly integrated value chains in the North American auto sector, a high share of US-origin parts are embedded in Mexico’s motor vehicle exports. US suppliers of these parts could soon be caught in the crossfire of Trump’s trade war.”

Fruit and vegetable imports from Mexico will be another victim. “If you put tariffs on Mexican fruits and vegetables, there’s no doubt about it, you’ll have inflation in the supermarket and you will have bare shelves,” Lance Jungmeyer, president of the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas, told The Packer, a trade publication, in November. “Consumers will not be happy with that.”

Tariffs on crude oil imports from Canada will likely drive up prices at the gas pump. More than 50 percent of the crude oil imported to the U.S. comes from Canada, and analysts believe tariffs could cause prices to jump by 40 cents or even 70 cents per gallon. If those tariffs spiral into a broader trade war, energy companies are already warning about “volatility in crude oil prices, impacting refineries and downstream fuel markets, especially for gasoline and diesel.”

There are also unanswered questions about how the other countries might respond. “All three governments have promised to answer Mr. Trump’s levies with tariffs of their own on U.S. exports, including Florida orange juice, Tennessee whiskey and Kentucky peanut butter,” The New York Times notes.

Make no mistake, this is a trade war of choice being launched unilaterally by Trump. It is a foolish and self-destructive move, one that (in the case of tariffs on Canada and Mexico, at least) directly violates a trade deal Trump signed during his first term and hailed as “the fairest, most balanced, and beneficial trade agreement we have ever signed into law. It’s the best agreement we’ve ever made.”

Tariffs are not a path to peace or prosperity, and igniting a trade war with America’s three largest trade partners is sure to have negative consequences no one can foresee at the moment.

“Sound fiscal policy and effective incentives to work, save and invest can increase economic growth, but the implementation of broad-based tariffs impedes that growth and in a full-blown trade war would overwhelm it,” warned economists Phil Gramm and Larry Summers, in a powerful op-ed published Friday in The Wall Street Journal. “We therefore urge Congress not to adopt the administration’s proposed tariffs and urge the president not to implement those tariffs by executive order.”

Congress should act immediately to block these tariffs, reassure America’s top trade partners and other allies, and revoke much of the president’s authority over trade.

How Trump’s tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China could impact U.S. consumers

Independent

How Trump’s tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China could impact U.S. consumers

Ariana Baio – January 31, 2025

Oil, toys, vegetables and electronics are just some of the items imported to the U.S. from Mexico, Canada and China that could soon cost Americans more under Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs.

Trump announced he will implement a 25 percent tariff on Canada and Mexico for all imported goods. China, meanwhile, will face face an additional 10 percent  tariff. Trump says the additional charges are part of an effort to curtail “crime and drugs” coming into the U.S. and slow the number of illegal border crossings.

Though tariffs are designed to promote domestic production and purchasing by taxing imported goods, the increase in cost typically falls on consumers, not foreign governments. Numerous economic experts have warned that Trump’s tariffs on goods from those three countries could lead to price spikes and inflation – a concern shared by many voters who said they backed Trump.

The U.S. imports a host of goods from Canada, Mexico and China directly as well as supplies for products made in America. Here Here’s what resources, materials or products come from those countries:

Donald Trump has proposed tariffs on China, Mexico and Canada - which provide a host of goods to the U.S. such as toys, lumber and food (AFP via Getty Images)
Donald Trump has proposed tariffs on China, Mexico and Canada – which provide a host of goods to the U.S. such as toys, lumber and food (AFP via Getty Images)
Crude Oil

Canada is the largest supplier of crude oil to the U.S. with more than 3.8 million barrels per day, or 60 percent of U.S. crude oil imports, coming from its northern neighbor.

Although the U.S. produces large quantities of crude oil every day, it makes more economic sense to import it. Crude oil produced in the U.S. is considered “light” compared to the “heavy” oil produced in Canada and the Middle East.

This means the U.S. relies on imports for “heavy” oil. Importing from Canada, which is close by and doesn’t require as much transportation as other countries such as those in the Middle East, makes it more accessible.

Gasoline is made from crude oil and price spikes in oil can lead to more pain at the pump.

Many experts say Trump’s threatened tariffs will lead to price increases (Getty Images)
Many experts say Trump’s threatened tariffs will lead to price increases (Getty Images)

“A 25% tariff on Canadian oil would have huge impacts to #gasprices in the Great Lakes, Midwest & Rockies, which are major markets where refiners process Canadian oil. You can’t simply process different oil overnight. It would take investments/years. More U.S. supply wouldn’t help,” warned gas price expert Patrick De Haan on X.

De Haan, an industry leader with GasBuddy.com, further warned that oil refineries in the U.S. have shrunken over the last four years – making it harder for the U.S. to increase its production in gasoline.

“Total impact to #gasprices in these areas could be 25-75c/gal, dependent on season and refining factors as well if tariffs go through,” De Haan added.

Motor vehicles and parts

Mexico is the largest exporter of vehicles, vehicle parts and vehicle accessories to the U.S. than any other country making up 27 percent of all imports from Mexico.

Importing auto parts abroad and then assembling them in the U.S. is a cheaper alternative than manufacturing and assembling domestically. Tariffs would increase the cost of most cars, though it’s not clear how much.

Patrick Anderson, chief executive of Anderson Economic Group, a consulting firm in Michigan, told the New York Times: “There is probably not a single assembly plant in Michigan, Ohio, Illinois and Texas that would not immediately be affected by a 25 percent tariff.”

Tariffs “would spell disaster for the U.S. auto industry,” analysts at Bernstein said in a note to investors, according to the Times. But, they added, they doubt Trump will follow through.

“Given the wide-ranging negative implications for industrial production in the U.S., we expect this is unlikely to happen in practice,” the Bernstein analysts said.

Electronic Equipment

More than a quarter of U.S. imports from China fall under the electronic equipment, machinery and products category.

These include items such as television sets, smartphones, monitors, projects and more. All of them could see price increases if tariffs are imposed and passed on to consumers.

Mexico too is also a major producer of electronics not only in the U.S. but across the globe.

“Mexico has over 730 plants manufacturing audio and video, telecommunications, computer equipment, and related parts. It is the largest exporter of flat-screen TVs in the world, the third-largest exporter of computers, and the eighth-largest producer of electronics in the world,” consulting firm IVEMSA, according to PC Mag.

Experts are warning that many of electronics sold in America come from Mexico, Canada and China and could see price increases (AP)
Experts are warning that many of electronics sold in America come from Mexico, Canada and China and could see price increases (AP)
Sugar

Among Mexico’s largest exports to the U.S. are sugar and sweeteners. The U.S. spends more than $700 million importing sugar directly from Mexico.

More than 445,000 metric tons of sugar were imported to U.S. ports from Mexico between October 2023 and September 2024.

Fresh vegetables and fruit

The U.S. spends more than $20 billion annually importing horticultural agricultural products from Canada and Mexico. Tomatoes, avocados, peppers, strawberries, lemons, limes, broccoli, cauliflower and so much more produce is imported into the U.S. from Mexico.

Canada supplies the U.S. with mushrooms, potatoes and more.

All of those items could see price increases with tariffs. That would hit American consumers hard as grocery prices have already risen by about 25 percent since 2020. Many voters used groceries as an example of how inflation impacted their day-to-day lives, so another price increase in food could be devastating to households.

Meat

Beef and beef products are often imported from Canada and Mexico and the amount imported has only risen over the last three years.

An analysis by Third Way found that the average cost of 3lbs of frozen beef in America is $26.67. A 10 percent tariff on all goods, with a 60 percent tariff on goods from China, would lead to a price jump for the same meat to $27.76.

Consumers have already seen grocery prices jump by 25 percent since 2020, but Trump’s proposed tariffs could lead to more price increases (AP)
Consumers have already seen grocery prices jump by 25 percent since 2020, but Trump’s proposed tariffs could lead to more price increases (AP)
Toys

China’s third largest export to the U.S. are toys, games and sports requisites because they are cheaper to manufacture overseas.

Though the idea of tariffs is to promote domestic production, the chief executive of Basic Fun, the maker of Fischer-Price and Care Bears, told The New York Post there is “no manufacturing base for toys in the U.S. anymore.”

The same analysis by Third Way estimated the cost of an average board game going from $14.87 to $17.85 under Trump’s tariffs.

Wood, plastics and other materials

All three countries provide the U.S. with an abundance of materials like wood, plastics, iron, textiles and more.

Some companies have already warned that tariffs on materials could lead to a spike increase, even for products assembled in America.

“People generally don’t understand how dependent the global economy is for those kinds of intermediate goods, raw materials, that we sort of take for granted,” Willy Shih, an economist at Harvard Business School, told PackagingDive.com.

“They need to understand where their exposures are,” he said. “A lot of times, it’ll be in surprising areas, because your exposure may be at your supplier level. Your tier two supplier may have exposure to tariffs and you may not know, but the first thing you got to do is understand all that.”

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Good Morning America: These prices could climb within days if Trump slaps tariffs on Canada and Mexico

don the con has egg all over his face: Trump Vowed to ‘Immediately’ Bring Down Egg Prices. His New Press Secretary Says Sudden Spike Is Biden’s Fault

People

Trump Vowed to ‘Immediately’ Bring Down Egg Prices. His New Press Secretary Says Sudden Spike Is Biden’s Fault

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is aiming to prevent her boss from falling into the same trap as Biden, whose early presidency was infamously remembered as an expensive era for eggs

Rachel Raposas – January 31, 2025

Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty; Getty White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has been forced to address the sudden rise in egg prices
Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty; GettyWhite House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has been forced to address the sudden rise in egg prices
  • Donald Trump made a campaign promise to “immediately bring prices down” on his first day in office. Instead, egg prices have spiked.
  • During her first White House briefing, press secretary Karoline Leavitt blamed former President Joe Biden for hurting the egg supply and driving up costs.
  • Egg prices are expected to continue rising due to a bird flu outbreak, which Biden’s Department of Agriculture tried controlling early on by euthanizing infected chickens.

Egg prices have risen in the short time since President Donald Trump took office — despite his campaign promise to “immediately bring prices down, starting on day one” — leading White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt to begin mounting her boss’s defense.

In her first official White House press briefing on Tuesday, Leavitt, 27, blamed former President Joe Biden for rising costs with “everything” across the country right now — including eggs, which have started to increase in price and demand due to bird flu outbreaks among chicken flocks.

“There’s a lot of reporting out there that’s putting the onus on this White House for the increased cost of eggs,” Leavitt said. “I’d like to point out to each and every one of you that in 2024 when Joe Biden was in the Oval Office — or upstairs in the residence sleeping, I’m not so sure — egg prices increased 65 percent in this country.”

CNN previously noted that, while inflation plagued a significant chunk of Biden’s presidency due to factors like the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, wages in the United States had begun to outpace rising grocery prices in 2024. Any progress made on the cost of eggs was recently thwarted by the bird flu outbreak, which created supply issues and was not a direct fault of either president.

Related: RFK Jr. Says He Won’t Take Away Twinkies if Confirmed as Health Secretary — or Diet Coke, ‘Which My Boss Loves’

EyePress News/Shutterstock Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden debate on June 28, 2024
EyePress News/ShutterstockPresidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden debate on June 28, 2024

During the press conference, Leavitt claimed the spike in egg prices were due to the Biden administration’s “mass killing of more than 100 million chickens, which has led to a lack of chicken supply in this country, therefore a lack of egg supply, which is leading to the shortage.”

However, the “killings” are a standard practice for the Department of Agriculture — which the Trump administration is poised to continue — that’s intended to contain the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, or HPAI, colloquially known as the bird flu.

“There is no treatment for HPAI. The only way to stop the disease is to depopulate all affected and exposed poultry,” the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, part of the Department of Agriculture, writes on its website.

Related: Trump Withdraws U.S. from World Health Organization — What Does That Mean?

If chickens are not euthanized, the virus can continue its rapid spread and drive up costs even higher by affecting larger groups.

“Not to be the bearer of bad news, but we’re in this for a while,” Emily Metz, president and CEO of the American Egg Board, previously told CNN of egg shortages. “Until we have time without a detection, unfortunately this very, very tight egg supply is going to continue.”

Related: President Trump Blames DEI for American Airlines Crash, Citing His Own ‘Common Sense’ and Scolding CNN’s Kaitlan Collins

Joe Raedle/Getty Donald Trump on Jan. 27.
Joe Raedle/GettyDonald Trump on Jan. 27.

In the 2024 election, the cost of groceries, gas and other necessary goods was a large force behind how citizens voted — and two thirds of the people who cited basic goods cost as the most important issue for them voted for Trump.

However, many of the policy changes Trump has since began implementing — including a push for increased domestic oil production, decreased Biden-era climate change initiatives and unprecedented tariffs on imported goods — will have either no effect on prices or will affect them adversely, an expert told CNN.

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trump begins his first war: Trump Reveals When His Tariffs on Mexico and Canada Will Kick In

The Daily Beast

Trump Reveals When His Tariffs on Mexico and Canada Will Kick In

Emell Derra Adolphus – January 30, 2025

Claudia Sheinbaum, Donald Trump, and Justin Trudeau.
The Daily Beast/Getty

President Donald Trump affirmed on Thursday that imports from U.S. allies Mexico and Canada will be hit with a 25 percent tariff starting on Saturday.

Speaking to the press from the Oval Office, Trump said that his administration will follow through in announcing tariffs on America’s neighboring countries for “a number of reasons”—chiefly among them being an alleged influx of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, reported The Hill.

On his first day in office, Trump issued a proclamation declaring a state of emergency at America’s southern border.

Thirty-six hours later, the declaration enabled the Department of Defense to send 1,500 troops to the region to work on the placement of barriers and other related actions to deter illegal crossings. According to DOD report, the troops were on standby in Southern California to help combat the Los Angeles County wildfires.

“For the past four years, the federal government has abdicated its responsibility to enforce the border, resulting in a catastrophic immigration crisis for the United States,” declared Trump’s proclamation. However, when Congress was close to passing a bipartisan border security bill in 2024, Trump allegedly pressured Republican allies to kill the bill so he could continue hammering Democrats about border chaos during his campaign, reported CNN.

President Donald Trump talks with Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. / NICHOLAS KAMM / AFP via Getty Images
President Donald Trump talks with Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. / NICHOLAS KAMM / AFP via Getty Images

Trump also cited an influx of drugs, specifically fentanyl, crossing into the United States—as well as a trade deficit—as reason for implementing tariffs on Canada and Mexico.

“I’ll be putting the tariff of 25 percent on Canada and Mexico, and we will really have to do that because we have very big deficits with those countries,” he said. “Those tariffs may or may not rise with time.”

Mexico and Canada are major exporters of gas, food and automobiles to the U.S., with several U.S.-based automobile manufacturers shipping cars back and forth across America’s borders during the manufacturing process.

The president said that his administration has not yet decided on whether it would levy tariffs on oil imports, reported Reuters.

“We may or may not. We’re going to make that determination probably tonight,” said Trump. He added that this would partly depend on prices and on whether the two countries “treat us properly.”

Trump Decides Presser on D.C. Plane Crash Is Best Time for a Joke

The New Republic – Opinion

Trump Decides Presser on D.C. Plane Crash Is Best Time for a Joke

Edith Olmsted – January 30, 2025

Donald Trump just will not take Wednesday night’s deadly aviation collision seriously.

While signing yet another batch of executive orders on Thursday, the president was asked whether he planned to visit the site of the deadly midair crash between a military helicopter and an American Airlines flight, which killed all 67 people on board the two aircraft.

“I have a plan to visit, not the site, because why don’t you tell me, what’s the site? The water?” Trump said. “You want me to go swimming?”

Trump followed up his flippant response by saying he planned to meet with some of the family members of those who had died in the crash.

The bodies of at least 28 people had been recovered from the Potomac River by Thursday evening, as recovery operations continued, according to the Associated Press.

Earlier on Thursday, Trump had suggested that the Biden administration’s diversity, equity, and inclusion hiring practices were to blame for the crash, specifically pointing to the Federal Aviation Administration’s practice of hiring people with “targeted disabilities.” The FAA published a report contradicting this outlandish and unserious claim, saying that staffing in the air traffic control tower was “not normal” on Wednesday night when the crash occurred.

It’s also worth noting that Trump went on television to speak about the crash hours before he had actually briefed on the incident. Meanwhile, National Transportation Safety Board member Todd Inman said Thursday it is too early to tell what exactly caused the crash.

Granderson: Aiding Ukraine has been cheap. Caving to Russia would be far more costly

The Hill Opinion

Running the numbers: What if the US were to stop supporting Ukraine?

Elaine McCusker, opinion contributor January 30, 2025

Many Americans are understandably concerned about the cost of aid to Ukraine. But they are thinking about the issue the wrong way — we should be considering the cost of Ukraine losing.

Analysis conducted at the American Enterprise Institute has determined that Russia defeating Ukraine would cost American taxpayers an additional $808 billion over what the U.S. has planned to spend on defense in the next five years. This is about seven times more than all the aid appropriated to the Pentagon to help Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion.

This estimate is based on a scenario in which the U.S. stops providing aid and the resulting Russian victory requires us to adapt our military capabilities, capacity and posture in order to maintain our security. The study then uses the Defense Futures Simulator to estimate the spending required to deter and, if necessary, defeat Russia in Europe, while also preventing further conflict by emboldened adversaries in the Pacific and the Middle East.

Without U.S. support, Russia would advance in 2025 as Kyiv runs out of weapons. By 2026, Ukraine would lose effective air defense, allowing Russia to conduct continuous large-scale bombings. Ukraine’s conventional forces would continue to courageously fight but would likely collapse by the end of that year, allowing Russia to seize Kyiv and then drive to the NATO border.

An emboldened Russia would reconstitute its combat units, use Ukraine’s resources to bolster its capabilities, station its forces along the NATO frontier, and be ready to attack beyond Ukraine by 2030.

The notion that America should disengage from Europe and save its forces and money misses the global nature of conflict. While Europe should certainly invest more in its own defense, history has violently shown us the dangers of thinking we can ignore our interests in any given region. Such regional conflict is a thing of the past. Nothing has made that more clear than China, North Korea and Iran’s support of Russia’s war effort.

In order to protect itself — nationally, militarily, economically — the U.S. must remain a global power and invest in the capabilities it needs to protect its partners and itself. A failure of American resolve in Europe will only motivate aggression and threaten our prosperity across the globe.

If Ukraine is allowed to fall, Washington will need a military that is larger, more capable, more responsive, and positioned in more locations. To deter or, if necessary, defeat Russia, the U.S. armed forces would need 14 new brigade combat teams, 18 more battle force ships, eight additional Marine Corps infantry battalions, 555 more Air Force aircraft, and 266,000 more uniform personnel for the increased force structure.

The U.S. would need to fortify its presence in Europe, including prepositioning air defenses, supplies and munitions. Efforts to diversify and expand the industrial base that supports our military would also need to move much more quickly than it does now to fulfill the high demands of modern warfare.

Although a conflict on the European continent would be primarily led by land forces under the cover of air forces, Washington would need to invest in naval capabilities as well. The U.S. Navy would have to discard its plans to shrink its overall number of ships, stabilize its carrier fleet at 12 and buy additional craft — submarines, destroyers, frigates, and logistics and support ships to keep the fleet at sea longer.

The U.S. will also have to maintain a higher state of readiness for home-stationed and deployed forces, which means additional training, improvements to facilities and stockpiles of spare parts. It will need more and better special operations forces, which are essential to intelligence gathering, shaping the battlefield and disrupting the enemy.

Given that Russia is an experienced space and cyber power, the U.S. will also need better architecture and command systems for both domains.

Instead, if America and its allies accelerate assistance, a victorious Ukraine would see Russia retreat behind its own borders with a defeated and diminished military, a struggling economy, weakened partnerships, and a healthy dose of domestic challenges.

Ukraine, in contrast, would be vibrant and free, with a thriving industrial base and a modern military. Washington would be able to scale down its deployments and capabilities in Europe. It would still maintain a presence there, but it would be able to dedicate more resources and attention to the Pacific.

Not only is the U.S. safer when it is engaged, but it also saves money. The U.S. is faced with numerous national challenges. Illegal immigration, financing the national debt and an increasingly unpredictable global security environment all compete for attention and resources. But the stakes are especially high in Ukraine.

Even putting aside the security and moral reasons for supporting a free Kyiv, which are immense, backing Ukraine is a financially sound decision for the United States.

Elaine McCusker is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. She previously served as the Pentagon’s acting undersecretary of defense (comptroller).

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Granderson: Aiding Ukraine has been cheap. Caving to Russia would be far more costly

The Los Angeles Times – Opinion

LZ Granderson – November 22, 2024

FILE - In this June 28, 2019, file photo, President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin walk to participate in a group photo at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan. Russia says it will withdraw from an international treaty allowing observation flights over military facilities following the U.S. exit from the pact. Russia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday, Jan. 15, 2021 that the U.S. withdrawal from the Open Skies Treaty last year "significantly upended the balance of interests of signatory states," adding that Moscow's proposals to keep the treaty alive after the U.S. exit have been cold-shouldered by Washington's allies. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
Then-President Trump and Vladimir Putin of Russia walk together at a 2019 G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan. (Susan Walsh / Associated Press)

After 20 years and $2.3 trillion spent, after more than 100,000 American and Afghan lives lost, one would think our war in Afghanistan would be more of a reference point today. Yet, outside of a few jabs from conservatives regarding President Biden’s handling of the exit, the war was hardly brought up at all this election cycle — despite having ended just three years earlier.

A reminder of how fast society moves and perhaps a glimpse into the future.

When was the last time you heard someone mention Ukraine in casual conversation? Back in February 2022, when Russia invaded, there were vigils in our streets. Now, more than 1,000 days later, after Congress has approved $175 billion in aid, it’s likely to fade into distant memory. President-elect Donald Trump, who has repeatedly questioned funding Ukraine, has vowed to end the war quickly. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said he would like to do so through “diplomatic means” next year.

Read more: Opinion: Western aid isn’t prolonging the war in Ukraine. This is

While the average American probably hadn’t thought much about Ukraine before the 2022 invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been thinking about the country for more than 30 years.

“The breakup of the Soviet Union was the collapse of a historic Russia,” he said in a documentary that aired on Russia’s airwaves. Putin has also referred to his country’s 1991 fall as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.” For those keeping score at home, he’s ranking the end of the U.S.S.R. as worse than both world wars and the 20 years in Vietnam. “We lost 40% of the territory, production capacities and population. We became a different country. What had been built over a millennium was lost to a large extent.”

Read more: Biden for the first time OKs Ukraine’s use of U.S.-supplied long-range missiles in Russia

Make Russia Great Again may not lend itself to a pronounceable acronym, but it does clearly define Putin’s foreign policy agenda. It’s one predicated on a worldview that sees Ukraine as a rebellious commonwealth and not an independent democracy.

“Throwing off oppression” is a story we know well in this country. It’s a story we teach our children and base our exceptionalism on. It’s a story of freedom. But as we all know, freedom isn’t free.

Under the Biden administration, America was willing to help Ukraine pay to keep its freedom. The incoming Trump administration has signaled this will likely not continue. Other nations will go on to help Ukraine in its fight, but without America’s military and economic power, this coalition will struggle to hold together against Russia’s might.

The gamble in not providing aid to Ukraine is that should that country fall, it won’t satisfy Putin. His desire to restore his country’s glory has been burning for three decades. Why would he stop just as resistance crumbles?

The phrase “elections have consequences” isn’t just about domestic politics. There are consequences abroad as well. When most voters supported Trump’s candidacy, did they fully understand what walking away from Ukraine would mean?

As former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) told me: “Ukraine gave up its nukes, in exchange for peace. The fact that Russia is attacking now means that only nukes work as a deterrent, so you can expect nuclear proliferation throughout the world.”

Read more: Column: Trump talks tough on Russia now, but as president he bowed to Putin

As president, Trump was slow to respond after Russia fired on and captured Ukrainian vessels and sailors back in 2018. Based on that lukewarm response, and his comments about helping Ukraine, it does make one wonder if Trump has any “red line” for Putin, and if so, what it is and what he is prepared to do to defend it. Unfortunately, there weren’t many opportunities to have these conversations during this election cycle. If there had been, perhaps voters would have a better understanding about the money for Ukraine. According to Kinzinger, a member of the Air National Guard and an Air Force veteran who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, “the money spent on weapons is actually produced here in the United States and we send our old [weapons] to Ukraine. So, we’re actually building jobs and refreshing our own weapons.”

Normally the U.S. pays to have old weapons destroyed, Kinzinger said.

None of this rose above the noise that surrounded a campaign season saturated with misinformation. Trump’s pitch for isolationism, or his willingness to ignore Ukraine, apparently resonated with many voters. And given our habit of quickly moving on from talking about war, it’s doubtful many of us would even remember just how much supporting Ukraine cost us.

On the other hand, we might find abandoning Ukraine and caving to Russia has a far steeper cost — one that will be impossible for us to forget.

More in Politics
People: Trump Vowed to ‘Immediately’ Bring Down Egg Prices. His New Press Secretary Says Sudden Spike Is Biden’s Fault

Trump makes moves to expand his power, sparking chaos and a possible constitutional crisis

Associated Press

Trump makes moves to expand his power, sparking chaos and a possible constitutional crisis

Nicholas Riccardi – January 29, 2025

President Donald Trump arrives to speak at the 2025 House Republican Members Conference Dinner at Trump National Doral Miami in Doral, Fla., Monday, Jan. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Just a little over a week into his second term, President Donald Trump took steps to maximize his power, sparking chaos and what critics contend is a constitutional crisis as he challenges the separation of powers that have defined American government for more than 200 years.

The new administration’s most provocative move came this week, as it announced it would temporarily halt federal payments to ensure they complied with Trump’s orders barring diversity programs. The technical-sounding directive had enormous immediate impact before it was blocked by a federal judge, potentially pulling trillions of dollars from police departments, domestic violence shelters, nutrition services and disaster relief programs that rely on federal grants. The administration on Wednesday rescinded the order.

Though the Republican administration denied Medicaid was affected, it acknowledged the online portal allowing states to file for reimbursement from the program was shut down for part of Tuesday in what it insisted was an error.

Legal experts noted the president is explicitly forbidden from cutting off spending for programs that Congress has approved. The U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to appropriate money and requires the executive to pay it out. A 50-year-old law known as the Impoundment Control Act makes that explicit by prohibiting the president from halting payments on grants or other programs approved by Congress.

“The thing that prevents the president from being an absolute monarch is Congress controls the power of the purse strings,” said Josh Chafetz, a law professor at Georgetown University, adding that even a temporary freeze violates the law. “It’s what guarantees there’s a check on the presidency.”

Democrats and other critics said the move was blatantly unconstitutional.

“What happened last night is the most direct assault on the authority of Congress, I believe, in the history of the United States,” Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine, said Tuesday.

While some Republicans were critical, most were supportive.

“I think he is testing the limits of his power, and I don’t think any of us are surprised by it,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican who is close with Trump.

At first blush, the Trump administration appeared to be following the correct procedures in identifying potential spending cuts, and the Impoundment Control Act outlines a procedure for how they could become permanent, said Rachel Snyderman, a former official at the Office of Management and Budget who is now at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Congress must eventually sign off on any cuts the administration wants to make, Snyderman said, though she noted that no president since Bill Clinton, a Democrat, has been successful in getting that done. Congress did not act on $14 billion in impoundment cuts Trump proposed during his prior term, she said.

“We have to see what the next steps are,” Snyderman said.

The attempt to halt grants came after Trump, who during the campaign pledged to be “a dictator on day one,” has taken a number of provocative moves to challenge legal constraints on his power. He fired the inspectors general of his Cabinet agencies without giving Congress the warning required by law, declared that there is an immigrant “invasion” despite low numbers of border crossings, is requiring loyalty pledges from new hires, challenged the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship and is moving career staff out of key positions at the Department of Justice to ensure his loyalists control investigations and prosecutions.

On Tuesday evening, the new administration made its latest move, trying to prune the federal workforce by offering pay until the end of September for those who agree to resign by the end of next week.

The Trump actions have all led to a cascade of court challenges contending he has overstepped his constitutional bounds. A federal judge in Seattle has already put on hold Trump’s attempt to revoke birthright citizenship, calling it a blatant violation of the nation’s foundational legal document. On Tuesday, nonprofit groups persuaded a federal judge in Washington to put the administration’s spending freeze order on hold until a fuller hearing on Feb. 3.

Democratic attorneys general also rushed to court to block the order. New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez, a Democrat, said the swiftness of the court action against Trump’s spending freeze demonstrates the “carelessness” of the order.

“My hope is that the president, working with Congress, can identify whatever his priorities are and can work through the normal constitutional order that is well established that limits the power of Democratic and Republican presidents,” he said.

The grant freeze — administration officials described it as a “pause” — fit with a long-sought goal of some Trump allies, including his nominee to run the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, to challenge the constitutionality of the Impoundment Control Act. They contend the president, as the person in charge of distributing funds, should be able to have some control over how the money goes out.

Though there’s little doubt the new administration wanted a court fight over its power to control spending, experts agree that this was likely not the way they hoped to present it.

“This is a really sloppy way of doing this,” said Bill Galston, of the Brookings Institution, adding that he thought it was an administration error. “This is just classic Trump. He believes it’s better to be fast and sloppy than slow and precise.”

In her first press conference, Trump’s new press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, on Tuesday urged organizations that need the grants to call the administration and show how their operations are “in line with the president’s agenda.”

“It’s incumbent on this administration to make sure, again, that every penny is accounted for,” Leavitt said.

Republican lawmakers largely took the freeze in stride.

“This isn’t a huge surprise to me,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota during the House Republican retreat at one of the president’s Florida golf resorts. “Clearly, Donald Trump campaigned in no small part on the idea that the Biden administration was putting out a lot of money that was not consistent with Donald Trump’s values.”

But Democrats and others were furious at the move, which seemed designed to undercut congressional authority.

“If President Trump wants to change our nation’s laws, he has the right to ask Congress to change them,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, said in a statement. “He does not have the right to violate the United States Constitution. He is not a king.”

Chafetz, of Georgetown University, said the lack of pushback from Republican members of Congress was especially alarming because the legislative branch is the one whose powers are most at risk in the latest power play.

Even if Trump loses the legal battle, Chafetz said, he and his followers might feel like they’ve won by pushing things to this extreme.

“Damaging the institutions they don’t like,” he said, “seems to be their whole theory of governance.”

Riccardi reported from Denver. Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Lisa Mascaro in Washington and Morgan Lee in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed to this report.

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RFK Jr. Stuns ‘Daily Show’ With The ‘Worst’ Possible Answer To 1 Simple Question

HuffPost

RFK Jr. Stuns ‘Daily Show’ With The ‘Worst’ Possible Answer To 1 Simple Question

Ed Mazza – January 30, 2025

“The Daily Show” correspondent Michael Kosta said Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spent his Senate confirmation hearings trying to backtrack from his views on vaccines.

Kennedy, whom President Donald Trump nominated for secretary of Health and Human Services, has frequently spoken out against vaccines. But he spent part of Wednesday’s hearings denying that he was an anti-vaxxer and at one point insisted that his own children were vaccinated.

“What are you going to believe, his well-documented decades-long record, or the thing he said today when he was trying to get a job?” Kosta asked. “Besides, all of his kids are vaccinated. He definitely doesn’t regret that, right? Right? Right?”

Kosta rolled footage of Kennedy in 2020 saying that, if he could go back in time, he would stop his children from getting vaccinated.

“I would do anything for that,” Kennedy said. “I would pay anything to be able to do that.”

Kosta was flabbergasted.

“That is the worst answer to what you would do with a time machine that I have ever heard,” Kosta said, adding in disbelief: “You can’t think of anyone else in your family that you would go back in time and try to prevent a shot from happening, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? No one else?”

Kennedy’s father, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968. His uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963.

See more in the Wednesday night “Daily Show” monologue:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=a7MJP7zYhLQ%3F

I Just Got Trump’s “Buyout” Offer at My Job. Let Me Tell You How That’s Going.

Slate

I Just Got Trump’s “Buyout” Offer at My Job. Let Me Tell You How That’s Going.

Denise Cana – January 29, 2025

The author is a federal civil servant who has been granted the use of a pen name to protect them and their family from reprisals.

The new Trump administration’s effort to both get a grip on and dismantle the federal workforce has also been a dystopian farce, climaxing Tuesday evening, after the Office of Personnel Management sent an email offering what the media has described as a “buyout” to all federal employees. This saga began shortly after Donald Trump took office, when someone asserting the authority of OPM began spamming federal workers with emails demanding a reply. In one breath, the message asked all employees to respond “Yes” to confirm that the system was working, but it also warned employees to be cautious about the contents of emails coming to them. Meanwhile, the note itself was flagged, for recipients with a government email account, as having come from an “[EXTERNAL]” source—and thus not necessarily one to be trusted.

Then, Tuesday night, federal workers were sent an email announcing a “fork in the road.” Again, the message was flagged by government servers as “[EXTERNAL].” This email, much of which was copied and pasted from a similar message sent to Twitter employees after Elon Musk—Trump’s pick to lead his effort to overhaul the civil service, otherwise known as the Department of Government Efficiency—took over that company, proclaims that the federal workforce will be undergoing significant changes. Anyone who didn’t want to participate in this new vision was invited to reply “Resign” to the flagged-as-external email address and collect six months’ salary, without having to perform any additional work, while they looked for a new job. The details of this offer are confusing, conflict with later OPM “FAQs” about the program, and seem to run afoul of long-standing legal caps on severance packages.

Welcome to government by chatbot.

This latest buyout directive is evocative of A.I. gobbledygook, beyond evidently being a copy-and-paste job from Musk’s Twitter exploits. When technologists assess a new A.I. language tool, the go-to metric is generally not the accuracy of its product, or even the consistency of its answers. It is engagement. Substance is pushed aside in pursuit of simply keeping human eyeballs trained on its messages for as long as possible. Once considered a proxy for content’s ability to be “valuable” or “worthwhile,” attention itself has become the commodity we’re after: looks, likes, clicks, play next episode. Unfortunately, one of the easiest ways to engage people is to enrage them.

Like a chatbot in training, the Musk-Miller-Trump administration is not a principled political entity concerned with substance, consistency, or competence. In the administration’s executive order regarding TikTok, for instance, the president endeavored to grant rights to private companies in one paragraph (the DOJ “shall take no action to enforce the Act or impose any penalties against any entity for any noncompliance with the Act”), while specifically disclaiming the gift to TikTok in another (“this order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States”). This was a presidential pinky-swear with his fingers crossed.

Even before Tuesday’s email, the original, outside-the-government Department of Government Efficiency project spearheaded by Musk immediately ran afoul of regulations protecting against corruption that keep our democracy from slipping into an oligarchy. When the administration pivoted to bring the project inside the government, meanwhile, it immediately ran afoul of safeguards against citizen surveillance and privacy protections that keep our democracy from slipping into an autocracy.

Which brings us back to the buyout. Putting aside Musk’s failed promises to Twitter employees who had hoped for a similar buyout, the vision of the federal workforce announced in the email is no more sensible than the TikTok executive order, no more effective at considering governmental protections than the early DOGE efforts. One “pillar” of this supposed new federal workforce presumes the flexible assignment and reassignment of anyone who works for the federal government to whatever task, agency, or group the president wants, whenever he wants. In other words, it assumes that the president can usurp the priority-setting prerogatives exclusive to Congress when it sets its budgets and directs funds toward or away from various mandates.

In another pillar, the vision asserts the president’s right to reclassify federal works to at-will employees. But to do that, he should have to pass new regulations, legislation that would require planning, process, public comment, and (likely) judicial review. And to skip that process, he’d have to revoke the Administrative Procedure Act, a move that should require an act of Congress and (likely) judicial review.

If that sounds like a lot of red tape worth cutting through, think of it this way: If the president can do what this memo suggests he can do to federal workers, then he can do pretty much anything to pretty much anyone at pretty much any time. He can change substantive law on a whim—banking codes, safety regs, union protections, taxes.

These are not the actions of a thoughtful, careful, or competent government. It is not the one envisioned by our founders or present throughout the first nearly two and a half centuries of the American experiment. This is the empty chatter of a bot trained on revenge fantasy scripts that lacks a fourth grader’s understanding of the branches of government and separation of powers.

But, hey, it’s good for grabbing headlines.

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Trump’s First Big Fiasco Triggers Stephen Miller’s Rage—Take Note Dems

The New Republic

Trump’s First Big Fiasco Triggers Stephen Miller’s Rage—Take Note Dems

Greg Sargent – January 29, 2025

Admitting failure is anathema to the authoritarian leader, who is perpetually in danger of being diminished only by those who are resentful of his glory—which is why White House adviser Stephen Miller is frantically searching for scapegoats to blame for the unfolding disaster around President Donald Trump’s massive freeze on federal spending. “Welcome to the first dumb media hoax of 2025,” Miller angrily tweeted on Tuesday night. “Leftwing media outright lied, and some people fell for the hoax.”

What Miller is actually angry about is that the media covered this fiasco aggressively and fairly. Miller insists that the press glossed over the funding pause’s supposed exemption for “aid and benefit programs.” But this is rank misdirection: The funding freeze, which is likely illegal, was indeed confusingly drafted and recklessly rolled out. This is in part what prompted the national outcry over the huge swath of programs that it threatened, Medicaid benefits included—and the media coverage that angered Miller.

All of which carries a lesson for Democrats: This is what it looks like when the opposition stirs and uses its power in a unified way to make a lot of what you might call sheer political noise. That can help set the media agenda, throw Trump and his allies on the defensive, and deliver defeats to Trump that deflate his cultish aura of invincibility.

“This has been a red-alert moment for weeks—but now no one can deny it,” Senator Chris Murphy, the Connecticut Democrat who has argued for an emergency footing against Trump, told me. “For my colleagues that didn’t want to cry wolf, the wolf is literally chomping at our leg right now.”

Until this crisis, the Democratic opposition has mostly been relatively tentative and divided. Democrats were not sufficiently quick, forceful, or unified in denouncing Trump’s illegal purge of inspectors general and his deranged threat to prosecute state officials who don’t comply with mass deportations. Internal party debates suggest that many Democrats believe that Trump’s 2024 victory shows voters don’t care about the dire threat he poses to democracy and constitutional governance, or that defending them against Trump must be reducible to “kitchen table” appeals.

But the funding-freeze fiasco should illustrate that this reading is highly insufficient. An understanding of the moment shaped around the idea that voters are mostly reachable only via economic concerns—however important—fails to provide guidance on how to convey to voters why things like this extraordinary Trumpian power grab actually matter.

Democrats need to think through ways to act collectively, to utilize something akin to a party-wide strategy, precisely because this sort of collective, concerted action has the capacity to alert voters in a different kind of way. It can put them on edge, signaling to them that something is deeply amiss in the threat Trump is posing to the rule of law and constitutional order.

Generally speaking, some Democrats have several objections to this kind of approach. One is that voters don’t care about anything that doesn’t directly impact them and that warnings about the Trump threat make them look unfocused on people’s material concerns. Another is that if Democrats do this too often, voters will stop believing there’s real cause for alarm.

The funding-freeze fiasco got around the first objection for Democrats because it did have vast material implications, potentially harming millions of people. But Democrats shouldn’t take the wrong lesson from this. A big reason this became a huge story was also that it represented a wildly audacious grab for quasi-dictatorial power. Democratic alarms about this dimension of the story surely helped prompt wall-to-wall coverage. Democrats can learn from that.

Faiz Shakir, a progressive dark-horse candidate for Democratic National Committee chair, suggests another way around the first objection—that Democrats can seize on Trump’s abuses of power in a way that does appeal to the working class. The party, he argues, can enlist elected officials and influencers with working-class credibility to explain that those abuses should matter, not just to working-class voters’ bottom lines but, critically, because his degenerate public conduct should disgust them as well. He says Democrats can argue: “The way he is acting is a betrayal of working-class values and your working-class interests.”

Shakir also suggests an intriguing way for the party to act in concert. As chair, he’d aggressively encourage as many elected officials as possible to use the video-recording studio at the DNC in moments like these, getting them to record short takes on why voters should care about them, then push the content out on social media.*

Shakir said he sees a model in Murphy, who regularly serves up short, hyper-timely videos that use phrases like “Let me tell you why this matters.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1884297054136021224

The goal, Shakir said, would be to provide Democrats with research and recording infrastructure enabling elected officials to find their own voices and flood information spaces with civic knowledge. This also would give Democrats who want to stick to a “kitchen table” approach a way to shape their own warnings around that.

Minnesota Democratic Party Chair Ken Martin, a leading DNC chair candidate, agrees that speed and unity are paramount. “We can’t be waiting several days to organize a response to each of these things from Trump—we have to move quick,” Martin said, adding that the “larger party apparatus” should all be “singing from the same sheet of music.”

The second objection to a concerted approach—that it risks a “cry wolf” effect—is also seriously flawed. It’s already clear some Democrats are using this to avoid hard fights, for instance in hints about “working with” Elon Musk or Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who each pose serious threats to bedrock ideals of public service. Also, if Democrats bestow bipartisan legitimacy on Trumpian moves like appointing those two walking civic basket cases, it complicates sounding the alarm in even more grave situations.

“It is hard for us to argue that our democracy is falling if we’re helping to confirm all of his nominees,” Murphy told me.

Taking too much of an à la carte approach to Trump’s abuses of power also risks squandering leverage. Democratic strategist Jesse Lee notes that the party’s lawmakers could consider a unified, future-oriented approach to abuses like the funding freeze. “The fight is real and here,” Lee said, arguing that Democrats can “make it clear” to GOP leaders that “they will get no Dem votes bailing them out while this power grab is in place.” (On Wednesday, the Trump administration rescinded the funding pause, strengthening the case for an aggressive opposition.)

Nobody denies that the Democratic Party is a big, sprawling, highly varied organism with elected officials facing a huge spectrum of different political imperatives. Of course there will be variation in how they approach each Trumpian abuse. But as Brian Beutler puts it, the answer to this cannot be to “lodge passing complaints about Trump’s abuses of power, but turn every conversation back to the cost of groceries.” This incoherently implies that the abuses themselves are not serious on their own terms.

How to corral Democrats who don’t want to sound warnings in particular situations is not easy to solve. But some of the ideas above are a start. And regardless, at a minimum, we need clearer signs that party leaders, at the highest levels, are seriously thinking through how to act concertedly in ways that clearly signal to voters that we’re in a civic emergency, and will argue to wayward Democrats that this is in their interests as well.

“People will not take us seriously if we don’t do our jobs every day like we’re in the middle of a constitutional crisis,” Murphy told me. “Today, everybody understands that he’s trying to seize power for corrupt purposes. But tomorrow, we have to start acting with purpose to stop what he’s doing.” If you doubt the efficacy of this, Stephen Miller’s anger confirms it as clearly as anyone could want.

* This article is about a breaking news story and has been updated. It has also been edited to include mention of the DNC’s existing recording studio.