Cuban Television CENSORED messages of support for Ukraine in international sports broadcast

Once again, the lack of ethics prevails in the decision makers within Cuban Television, transforming an improper product to implant its truth on the Island.

March 12, 2022

The Russian invasion of Ukraine that began more than two weeks ago left a majority of international rejection. Very few governments have not condemned this warmongering interference but Cuba was one of them.

Cuba has had a position that many question. It is understandable given the enormous economic dependence that has existed for a decade, first with the former Soviet Union and later with Vladimir Putin's Russia.

In times of pandemic, corruption, internal incapacity for better production, tightening of the laws by the United States, and many other factors, the Eurasian country is today one of the few options left to the Cuban regime to avoid a total collapse in the economic and political order.

That is why there will be no type of official rejection within Cuba for Russian actions on Ukrainian soil.

Everything that has come out from the state press on the subject is always accompanied by reasons for that "military operation." In all that warlike confrontation the only culprits are the United States, NATO and the president of Ukraine.

This position has not only materialized in statements, comments, news, and reports by officials and journalists but It also includes facts that go beyond absolute professional ethics to the extreme of modifying a totally unrelated sports transmission.

It was in the Spanish League match between Real Madrid and Real Sociedad that they removed the messages that appeared on the sreen showing the score of the match. The same thing happened with a virtual sign at the bottom of the stadium. This detail was publicly denounced by the renowned journalist Ernesto Morales in his YouTube star space.

The leading voice of the prominent platform Cubita showed the original broadcast of that match and what came out through the Rebelde TV channel, or rather what did not come out on the channel. It was a shameful fact and without any logical reason that can support it.

"No to the invasion" and "Everyone with Ukraine" were the two expressions completely suppressed by Cuban television with the aim that the thousands of fans of football in Cuba and especially Real Madrid, continue to have a single vision of that war.

If it is reprehensible to justify invasions, whoever executes it, it is even worse to transform an inappropriate product, above all for wanting to implant a single truth or message.

As if such manipulation achieved its objective in times where the internet and social networks already allow Cubans to have in their hands all the possible information to draw their own conclusions from the realities that hit Cuba and the world in general.

OMG! What have we done?

OMG!

OMG

OMG

OMG

FBI purges top officials, agents who worked on Trump’s criminal cases

by Rebecca Beitsch

The Hill

01/31/25 6:11 PM ET

The Trump administration forced out a number of FBI officials Friday, removing agents who worked on the criminal cases into President Trump as well as the heads of various field offices.

A source familiar said agents who had worked on the Mar-a-Lago and Jan. 6 investigations were escorted out of the Washington Field Office.

The same source said officials in charge of the Washington, D.C., Miami, Seattle, New Orleans and Las Vegas field offices were removed.

The full scope of the removals remains unclear but has sparked concerns from members of Congress.

A statement from Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, indicated the move may have impacted “dozens” of agents.

“It is deeply alarming that the Trump administration appears to be purging dozens of the most experienced agents who are our nation’s first line of defense,” he said.

The Hill reported earlier Friday that the five executive assistant directors of the bureau were notified they would be demoted. That move targeted the band of top officials who oversee the FBI’s five internal branches and are among the highest-ranking career positions in the bureau.

“All Americans who support law enforcement and the rule of law should be deeply concerned by reports that Donald Trump is seeking to fire large numbers of FBI agents, ranging from senior officials to agents assigned to cases against him,” said Rep. Jim Himes (Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

“These actions would undermine our ability to protect Americans from national security and criminal threats, and — just as damaging — they would undermine the independence of our justice system. Pam Bondi and Kash Patel both committed to protecting the Department of Justice and the FBI from politics and weaponization. If these reports are true, it’s clear they misled the Senate.”

The slew of removals comes the day after Patel, Trump’s nominee to lead the agency, was specifically asked about potential removals of agents that worked on Trump’s cases, saying he knew nothing of the plans but would respect processes for removing federal employees.

“I don’t know what’s going on right now over there, but I’m committed to you, Senator, and your colleagues, that I will honor the internal review process of the FBI,” Patel said.

The FBI Agents Association blasted reports that those who worked on Trump’s criminal cases were being removed.

“If true, these outrageous actions by acting officials are fundamentally at odds with the law enforcement objectives outlined by President Trump and his support for FBI Agents,” the group said in a statement.

“These actions also contradict the commitments that Attorney General-nominee Pam Bondi and Director-nominee Kash Patel made during their nomination hearings before the United States Senate. They also run counter to the commitment that Director-nominee Patel made to the FBI Agents Association, where during our meeting he said that Agents would be afforded appropriate process and review and not face retribution based solely on the cases to which they were assigned.”

The removals follow a similar playbook at the Justice Department where all prosecutors who worked on Trump’s two criminal investigations were also fired.

The attorneys were told specifically that they were removed due to their work on the case, blaming the Biden administration for a “systemic campaign against its perceived political opponents.”

“Nowhere was that effort more salient than in the unprecedented prosecutions the Department of Justice pursued against President Trump himself,” acting Attorney General James McHenry wrote, adding “I do not believe that the leadership of the Department can trust you to assist in implementing the President’s agenda faithfully.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) described the FBI firing as an unprecedented purge.

“These unprecedented purges of hundreds of prosecutors, staff and experienced law enforcement agents will undermine the government’s power to protect our country against national security, cyber, and criminal threats,” he said in a statement.

“The loyal friend of autocrats, kleptocrats, oligarchs and broligarchs, Trump doesn’t care about the requirements of democracy, national security and public safety,” Raskin continued. “His agenda is vengeance and retribution. If allowed to proceed, Trump’s purge of our federal law enforcement workforce will expose America to authoritarianism and dictatorship.”



<

<






Press Releases

Ranking Member Raskin’s Statement on Trump’s Lawless and Dangerous Purge of FBI Agents and DOJ Prosecutors

Washington, January 31, 2025

Washington, D.C. (January 31, 2025)—Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Committee on the Judiciary, issued the following statement in response to President Donald Trump’s latest assault on the nonpartisan federal workforce, this time taking aim at qualified, expert Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) agents and DOJ prosecutors who worked on the investigations into the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol and Trump’s mishandling of classified documents:

“In another repulsive affront to the rule of law and our nation’s law enforcement officers, the Trump Administration today moved to fire scores of FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors simply for enforcing the law and impartially carrying out the largest criminal investigation in American history which they had been assigned to work on. On Day One, the unpopular President Trump pardoned the members of violent militias and street gangs who beat police officers to a pulp with pipes, flagpoles and broken furniture when they attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021 to overturn the presidential election Trump had lost by more than 7 million votes, 306-232 in the electoral college.

“Today, shockingly but not surprisingly, Trump takes aim at the career FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors who investigated and prosecuted the violent insurrectionary assault on our police officers to block the peaceful transfer of power, as well as those FBI agents who were assigned to investigate Trump’s efforts to illegally retain classified records at his Mar-a-Lago club, defy judicial subpoenas, obstruct justice, conceal evidence, and lie to law enforcement.

“Trump’s outrageous attack on the DOJ and FBI is a clear and present danger to public safety, and a wrecking ball swinging at the rule of law. Trump wants to send the message to the police and federal officers that the law doesn’t apply to Trump and his enablers. It’s also part of his campaign to replace nonpartisan career civil servants with political loyalists and incompetent sycophants. Trump’s moves have already left the Justice Department and the FBI rudderless and adrift by ousting their career senior ranks. Now, these unprecedented purges of hundreds of prosecutors, staff and experienced law enforcement agents will undermine the government’s power to protect our country against national security, cyber, and criminal threats.

“The loyal friend of autocrats, kleptocrats, oligarchs and broligarchs, Trump doesn’t care about the requirements of democracy, national security and public safety. His agenda is vengeance and retribution. If allowed to proceed, Trump’s purge of our federal law enforcement workforce will expose America to authoritarianism and dictatorship.

“Democrats will do everything in our power to stop this lawless and dangerous purge. We’ll stand with the dedicated FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors who have been targeted simply for doing their jobs and upholding their oaths.”




<

<






Trump and Elon Musk Just Pulled Off Another Purge—and It’s a Scary One

Did Musk’s alleged effort to access the government’s payment systems have Trump’s blessing?
Or was he going rogue? Either scenario is bad, but one’s a little worse.

President Donald Trump has granted Elon Musk unprecedented power to carry out his war on the “deep state.” The justification for this is supposed to be that the government is corrupted to its core precisely because it is stocked with unelected bureaucrats who are unaccountable to the people.

Musk, goes this story, will employ his fearsome tech wizardry to root them out, restoring not just efficiency to government but also the democratic accountability that “deep state” denizens have snuffed out—supposedly a major cause of many of our social ills.

The startling news that a top Treasury Department official is departing after a dispute with Musk shows how deeply wrong that story truly is—and why it’s actively dangerous. The Washington Post reports that David Lebryk, who has carried out senior nonpolitical roles at the department for decades, is leaving after officials on Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, sought access to Treasury’s payment system:

Lebryk had a dispute with Musk’s surrogates over access to the payment system the U.S. government uses to disburse trillions of dollars every year, the people said. The exact nature of the disagreement was not immediately clear, they said.

The news raises a complicated question: WTF??? Why is Musk’s DOGE trying to access payment systems inside the Treasury Department? It’s not clear what relevance this would have to his ostensible role, which is to search for savings and inefficiencies in government, not to directly influence whether previously authorized government obligations are honored.

Another question: Did Trump directly authorize Musk to do this, or did he not? Either answer is bad. If Trump did, he may be authorizing an unelected billionaire to exert unprecedented control over the internal workings of government payment systems. If he did not, then Musk may be going rogue to an even greater extent than we thought.

I contacted a few former officials at the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB, to try to gauge what this means. What was striking is the level of alarm they evinced about it. Here’s how the Post describes these systems:

Typically only a small number of career officials control Treasury’s payment systems. Run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the sensitive systems control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to households, businesses and more nationwide. Tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people across the country rely on the systems, which are responsible for distributing Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions.

Former officials I spoke with were at a loss to explain why Musk would want such access. They noted that while we don’t yet know Musk’s motive, the move could potentially give DOGE the power to turn off all kinds of government payments in a targeted way. They said we now must establish if Musk is seeking to carry out what Trump tried via his federal funding freeze: Turn off government payments previously authorized by Congress. The White House rescinded the freeze after a national outcry, but Trump’s spokesperson vowed the hunt for spending to halt will continue. The former officials are asking: Is this Treasury power grab a way to execute that?

“Anybody who would have access to these systems is in a position to turn off funding selectively,” said Michael Linden, a former OMB official who is now director of Families Over Billionaires, a group fighting Trump’s tax cuts for the rich. “The only reason Musk wants to get himself in there must be because he wants to turn some things off.”

These officials describe these systems as almost akin to a series of faucets. Congress, by authorizing payments, fills the tanks and decides where the water will ultimately flow. The team overseen by the now-departing Lebryk in effect is in control of the spigots, these officials said.

What also alarms these officials is that this is unfolding even as a debt ceiling crisis looms. When the government is on the verge of defaulting on its obligations, these officials tell me, it’s Lebryk and his team who carefully monitor the situation to determine, to the greatest extent possible, on what date it will no longer be able to meet its obligations. This team monitors the water levels, these officials say, noting that this is how Treasury knows what to say in those letters that periodically warn Congress that a breach is approaching.

As it happens, this is precisely why we want career, nonpolitical civil servants to be in charge of the spigots. To put it delicately, this is some really complicated shit, and we want the process to be administered in a totally nonpoliticized way. Letting someone like Musk anywhere near it risks corrupting it quite deeply.

“The payment systems are controlled by a small number of career officials precisely to protect them and the full faith and credit of the United States from political interference,” said Jesse Lee, who was a senior adviser to the National Economic Council under President Joe Biden. Or as Linden put it: “This is exactly the kind of thing you do not want political appointees getting involved in.”

All of which is why it’s critical to know whether Trump directly authorized this move by Musk. Trump’s executive order creating DOGE orders agencies to give it access to “all” unclassified records and systems. As the Post notes, that would appear to include these Treasury ones.

But we need to know whether Trump was aware of or directly authorized this particular effort by DOGE to access Treasury’s payment systems. Even if a relatively innocent explanation for this is possible—maybe DOGE merely hopes to study how efficient they are—the move clearly alarmed this longtime government veteran enough to prompt his resignation. Did Trump want Musk to have this access, and if so, for what purpose?

“Is this something that has authorization and approval from the White House and specifically the president?” asked Bradley Moss, a national security lawyer, in an interview. “Or is this Musk going rogue within the federal bureaucracy?”

If Trump did greenlight it, Moss said, it would mean he’s “authorizing Elon to shove his weight into the most crucial parts of our financial mechanisms,” and “exposes the basic functions of government to the whims of a nongovernmental employee.” If Trump did not, it would represent a “complete abuse of authority and discretion” on Musk’s part: “He has no possible need for access to those systems.”

Whatever more we learn, this saga already demonstrates exactly why we want an apolitical, professionalized civil service, one in which career officials enjoy a variety of protections to safeguard their independence. As Jonathan Chait points out at The Atlantic, the whole point of the civil service system is precisely that it ensures that challenging, consequential government jobs go to people who are actually qualified to execute them.

Whatever Musk intends with this new effort, this isn’t part of any war on the “deep state.” We’re witnessing a broad assault on that genuinely meritocratic achievement, the civil service—one that could enable right-wing elites to corruptly loot the place, or install a highly “personalist” government marked above all by loyalty to Trump himself, or some combination of the two. And by all indications, that larger war is fully backed by the president himself.

Greg Sargent is a staff writer at The New Republic and the host of the podcast The Daily Blast. A seasoned political commentator with over two decades of experience, he was a prominent columnist and blogger at The Washington Post from 2010 to 2023 and has worked at Talking Points Memo, New York magazine, and the New York Observer. Greg is also the author of the critically acclaimed book An Uncivil War: Taking Back Our Democracy in an Age of Disinformation and Thunderdome Politics.




<

<






'You want me to go swimming?': Trump's cold remark about plane crash

By Nick Pearson

1:07pm Jan 31, 2025

Donald Trump has made a bizarre remark about the Washington plane crash in the Oval Office.

Sitting at his desk, Trump was asked whether he planned to visit the crash site.

"What's the site? The water? You want me to go swimming?" he said.

The reporter suggested that he would go to the site to meet with first responders.

"I will be meeting with some people that were very badly hurt, with their family members," Trump replied.

There are no reports of anybody hurt in the crash.

Everybody on board both the plane and the helicopter were killed.

Emergency services are now in the process of retrieving bodies from the Potomac River next to Reagan Airport.

Already several dozen bodies have been recovered.

The crash site is an estimated nine-minute drive from the White House.

Earlier today, Trump placed the blame for the crash on diversity.

Trump said the Biden Administration had encouraged the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to hire people "who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative".

He added the program also allowed the hiring of people with paralysis, epilepsy and dwarfism.

He also claimed that the FAA in the Obama years had determined the agency was "too white".

The air traffic control operator has not been identified, and there has been no indication of when they were hired and whether they were in any way disabled.

US news outlet ABC reports that diversity initiatives do not apply to air traffic controllers, and no-one is given preferential treatment.

Trump also took aim at former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

"He's run it right into the ground with his diversity," he said.

Buttigieg called Trump's comments "despicable".

"As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying. We put safety first, drove down close calls, grew Air Traffic Control, and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch," Buttigieg said.

"President Trump now oversees the military and the FAA.

"One of his first acts was to fire and suspend some of the key personnel who helped keep our skies safe.

"Time for the president to show actual leadership and explain what he will do to prevent this from happening again."




<

<






Inside 45 hours of chaos: The brief life and quick death of Trump’s federal spending freeze

Letter: Federal freeze chaos proved Trump’s incompetence

Author

By Letter To The Editor

PUBLISHED: January 31, 2025 at 10:54 AM EST

Editor: The nascent Trump administration has just displayed the epitome of incompetence with the way it froze a wide range of federal grants and loans via Trump’s executive order and then lifted the freeze two days later. What makes Trump’s incompetence even worse is the meanness with which the payment freeze was implemented. Millions of Americans depend on federal payments to merely survive. Old people, poor people, children. Just news of the freeze caused unnecessary widespread fear and angst among these vulnerable populations of Americans. The needs of all were never considered with his heartless directive. This is symptomatic of what we can expect. Consider the unqualified and incompetent nominees for Trump’s cabinet: Gabbard, Kennedy, Hegseth, Patel.

There are those who believe that Washington needs to be shaken up. That may be true to some degree. Washington may need a tune-up. But like when a car needs a tune-up, it is accomplished by a skilled mechanic using the right tools, not a sledgehammer wielded by an idiot. I accept that America voted for change. I don’t believe that a turn to cruelty and incompetence was the change Americans sought.




<

<







Trump taps loyalists with few qualifications for top jobs

By Gram Slattery, Andrew Goudsward, Patricia Zengerle and Sarah N. Lynch

Reuters

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump chose loyalists with little experience for several key cabinet positions on Wednesday, stunning some allies and making clear that he is serious about reshaping - and in some cases testing - America's institutions.

Trump's choice of congressman Matt Gaetz, 42, for U.S. attorney general, America's top law enforcement officer, was a surprising pick. The former attorney has never worked in the Justice Department, or as a prosecutor, and was investigated by the Justice Department over sex trafficking allegations. His office said in 2023 that he had been told by prosecutors he would not face criminal charges

Trump tapped Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence. The former Democratic congresswoman-turned-Trump-ally has in the past spoken out against military intervention in the civil war in Syria under former President Barack Obama and implied that Russian President Vladimir Putin had valid grounds for invading Ukraine, America's ally. Gabbard has repeatedly praised Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who fled to Russia after he was charged in 2013 with illegally exposing government surveillance methods. Considered a traitor by many security officials, Gabbard called him a “brave whistleblower”. Gabbard traveled to Syria in 2017 to meet with then-President Bashar Assad, a visit that angered lawmakers from both parties who said she helped legitimize an accused war criminal and key ally of Russia and Iran.

Trump chose Pete Hegseth, a Fox News commentator and veteran, to be his secretary of defense. Hegseth has opposed women in combat roles and questioned whether the top American general was promoted to his position because of his skin color. He also lobbied Trump during his 2017-2021 term to pardon servicemembers who allegedly committed war crimes. He faces new allegations of alcohol abuse and misconduct. Hegseth paid the confidential settlement to a woman who accused him of sexually assaulting her at a Republican women’s conference in Monterey, California, in October 2017. She reported the matter to police, but no charges were ever filed against Hegseth. A former sister-in-law alleging that the onetime Fox News host was abusive to his second wife, to the point where she feared for her safety. Hegseth denies the allegations.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to run the nation’s top agency for health care — Health and Human Services. Trump’s own former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb said flatly that having Kennedy in charge of HHS “will cost lives in this country.” Seventy-seven Nobel Prize winners signed a letter in opposition to Kennedy citing his criticism of proven medical treatments such as fluoride in drinking water. He also has voiced conspiracy claims about COVID-19 and treatment for AIDS. “[RFK Jr.] wants to stop parents from protecting their babies from measles, and his ideas would welcome the return of polio,” warned Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), himself a polio survivor, criticized Kennedy’s efforts to undermine vaccines, calling them “not just uninformed — they’re dangerous.”

Private emails show RFK Jr. making false claims about Covid-19 shots, linking vaccines to autism.

Caroline Kennedy calls cousin RFK Jr. a ‘predator’ in warning letter to senators. She described her cousin’s basement, garage and dorm as being an epicenter for drug use, where he would also put baby chickens and mice in blenders to feed to his hawks. “It was often a perverse scene of despair and violence,” she wrote. RFK Jr.'s brother overdosed, died on Palm Beach. Caroline says he led family to addiction

Kennedy now “preys on the desperation of parents of sick children,” she told senators, noting that he has vaccinated his own children while discouraging others from vaccinating theirs.


Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, insisted to deeply skeptical Democrats on Thursday that he did not have an “enemies list” and that the bureau under his leadership would not seek retribution against the president’s adversaries or launch investigations for political purposes. Kash Patel’s only qualification for FBI director is his Trump sycophancy. Patel has a thin résumé, but he has indicated he’d use the power of the federal government to attack President Trump's perceived "enemies." For one, Patel has frequently been dishonest about his past government roles; he claims to have been the lead prosecutor against individuals who attacked a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012, but in fact, he wasn’t even part of the team that conducted those prosecutions. But even worse is Patel’s suggestion he will use the FBI to prosecute those on his “enemies list,” comprised of all manners of individuals who were mean to Donald Trump. Further, Patel has indicated he will use the power of the American legal system to mandate his level of sycophancy throughout the government. He won’t stop until the federal government is an orgy of obeisance to Donald Trump.

And the list goes on..........




<






PROJECT 2025 PDF

https://static.project2025.org/2025_Man ... p_FULL.pdf



<




The Trump administration will impose 25% tariffs against neighboring countries Canada and Mexico beginning Saturday, the White House announced Friday. The tariffs imposed against imported goods from Canada and Mexico -- two of the U.S.’ top three trading partners -- will likely increase the prices paid by U.S. consumers, including groceries and gas, experts said. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)AP




Gas, grocery prices likely to surge when Trump’s tariffs take effect Feb. 1

Published: Jan. 31, 2025, 2:49 p.m.

By Zach Mentz, cleveland.com

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump will impose 25% tariffs against Canada and Mexico beginning Saturday, the White House announced Friday.

The U.S. president previously stated his intentions to impose a 25% tariff on all products imported from Canada and Mexico beginning Feb. 1. On Friday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed those plans to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico beginning Saturday.

“I can confirm that, tomorrow, the Feb. 1 deadline President Trump put into place with a statement several weeks ago continues,” Leavitt said during Friday’s briefing.

However, the tariffs will include a process for both countries to seek exemptions for specific imports, Reuters reports.

Trump has taken aim at neighboring countries Canada and Mexico, specifically, as he says both countries are allowing an influx of fentanyl and illegal immigrants across the U.S. border.

The tariffs imposed against imported goods from Canada and Mexico -- two of the U.S.’ top three trading partners -- will likely increase the prices paid by U.S. consumers, including groceries and gas, experts said. About 30% of all U.S. imports come from Canada and Mexico, and the two countries account for about 70% of all U.S. crude oil imports, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

“For example, 60% of oil and gas imports come from Canada,” Matthew Martin, a senior U.S. economist at the consultancy Oxford Economics, told AP. “A 25% tariff would lead to higher gasoline, diesel, and petroleum product prices for households and firms, especially in the Midwest and Rocky Mountain regions, where refineries are connected to Canada by pipeline.”

Timothy Fitzgerald, a professor of business economics at the University of Tennessee, echoed that sentiment.

“You could definitely be looking at 50 cent-a-gallon increases in a lot of parts of the country,” Timothy Fitzgerald, a professor of business economics at the University of Tennessee, told ABC News.

Nonetheless, the Trump administration remains undeterred in its plans to impose tariffs against Canada and Mexico. The president previously threatened 25% tariffs against Colombia, but relented when the South American country agreed to accept deported migrants from the U.S. The Trump administration also implemented a 10% tariff on all imports from China.

“Tariffs, I told you, most beautiful word in the dictionary,” Trump said during his inauguration Jan. 20. He later clarified that “tariff” is the fourth most-beautiful word, behind “God, love, religion.”




<

Trump’s tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China could mean higher inflation and economic disruption

Associated Press Economics Writer Joshua Boak. (AP Photo/J. David Ake)

By JOSH BOAK

Updated 8:14 AM CST, February 1, 2025

PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — New trade penalties against Canada, Mexico and China that President Donald Trump plans to impose Saturday represent an aggressive early move against America’s three largest trading partners, but at the risk of higher inflation and possible disruptions to the global economy.

In Trump’s view, the 25% tariffs against the two North American allies and a 10% tax on imports from Washington’s chief economic rival are a way for the United States to throw around its financial heft to reshape the world.

“You see the power of the tariff,” Trump told reporters Friday. “Nobody can compete with us because we have by far the biggest piggy bank.”

The Republican president is making a major political bet that his actions will not worsen inflation, cause financial aftershocks that could destabilize the worldwide economy or provoke a voter backlash. AP VoteCast, an extensive survey of the electorate in last year’s election, found that the U.S. was split on support for tariffs.

It is possible that the tariffs could be short-lived if Canada and Mexico can reach a deal with Trump to more aggressively address illegal immigration and fentanyl smuggling. Trump’s move against China is also tied to fentanyl and comes on top of existing import taxes.

Trump is honoring promises he made in the 2024 White House campaign that are at the core of his economic and national security philosophy, though Trump allies had played down the threat of higher import taxes as mere negotiating tactics.

The president is preparing more import taxes in a sign that tariffs will be an ongoing part of his second term. On Friday, he mentioned imported computer chips, steel, oil and natural gas, as well as against copper, pharmaceutical drugs and imports from the European Union — moves that could essentially pit the U.S. against much of the global economy.

Trump’s intentions drew a swift response from financial markets, with the S&P 500 stock index slumping after his announcement Friday.

It is unclear how the tariffs could affect the business investments that Trump said would happen because of his plans to cut corporate tax rates and remove regulations. Tariffs tend to raise prices for consumers and businesses by making it more expensive to bring in foreign goods.

Many voters turned to Trump in the November election on the belief that he could better handle the inflation that spiked under Democratic President Joe Biden. But inflation expectations are creeping upward in the University of Michigan’s index of consumer sentiment as respondents expect prices to rise by 3.3%. That would be higher than the actual 2.9% annual inflation rate in December’s consumer price index.

Trump has said that the government should raise more of its revenues from tariffs, as it did before the income tax became part of the Constitution in 1913. He claims, despite economic evidence to the contrary, that the U.S. was at its wealthiest in the 1890s under President William McKinley.

“We were the richest country in the world,” Trump said Friday. “We were a tariff country.”

Trump, who has aspired to remake America by using McKinley’s model, is conducting a real-time experiment that the economists who warn tariffs lead to higher prices are wrong. While the tariffs in his first term did not meaningfully increase overall inflation, he is now looking at tariffs on a much grander scale that could push up prices if they’re enduring policies.

Trump has fondly called McKinley, an Ohioan elected president in 1896 and 1900, the “tariff sheriff.”

Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted on the social media site X that the tariffs “if sustained, would be a massive shock — a much bigger move in one weekend than all the trade action that Trump took in his first term.”

Setser noted that the tariffs on China without exemptions could raise the price of iPhones, which would test just how much power corporate America has with Trump. Apple’s CEO Tim Cook attended Trump’s inauguration last month.

Recent research on Trump’s various tariff options by a team of economists suggested the trade penalties would be drags on growth in Canada, Mexico, China and the U.S. But Wending Zhang, a Cornell University economist who worked on the research, said the fallout would be felt more in Canada and Mexico because of their reliance on the U.S. market.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Canadians that they could be facing difficult times ahead, but that Ottawa was prepared to respond with retaliatory tariffs if needed and that the U.S. penalties would be self-sabotaging.

Trudeau said Canada is addressing Trump’s calls on border security by implementing a CDN$1.3 billion (US$90 million) border plan that includes helicopters, new canine teams and imaging tools.

Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum has stressed that her country has acted to reduce illegal border crossings and the illicit trade in fentanyl. While she has emphasized the ongoing dialogue since Trump first floated the tariffs in November, she has said that Mexico is ready to respond, too.

Mexico has a “Plan A, Plan B, Plan C for what the United States government decides,” she said.

Trump still has to get a budget, tax cuts and increase to the government’s legal borrowing authority through Congress. The outcome of his tariff plans could strengthen his hand or weaken it.

Democrats are sponsoring legislation that would strip the president of his ability to impose tariffs without congressional approval. But that is unlikely to make headway in a Republican-controlled House and Senate.

“If this weekend’s tariffs go into effect, they’ll do catastrophic damage to our relationships with our allies and raise costs for working families by hundreds of dollars a year,” said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del. “Congress needs to stop this from happening again.”


JOSH BOAK
Boak covers the White House and economic policy for The Associated Press. He joined the AP in 2013.




<

<






oneyWatch

What are tariffs? Here's everything you need to know about the import duties.

moneywatch

By Aimee Picchi

Edited By Alain Sherter

Updated on: January 31, 2025 / 3:28 PM EST / CBS News

President Trump, an avowed fan of tariffs, is set on Feb. 1 to unleash a wave of new import duties on America's three closest trading partners — Mexico, Canada and China.

Although tariffs are a bane to most economists, they are a widely used as a tool for regulating international trade and for shielding domestic industries from foreign competition. At the simplest level, tariffs are taxes placed on goods made overseas that are imported into the country. Notably, foreign companies aren't responsible for paying the duties. Instead, U.S. businesses directly pay the tariffs on their imported goods to the federal government, according to the Tax Foundation, a tax-focused think tank.

Because American businesses are on the hook for paying the tariffs on imports, they historically have passed on some or all of those costs to consumers. At the same time, tariff proponents like Mr. Trump argue that such levies can help protect manufacturers here at home. For instance, consumers may opt to buy U.S.-made products rather than newly pricier imports, while companies may choose to avoid tariffs by opening new plants in the U.S.

"Come make your product in America," Mr. Trump said last week at the annual World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland. "But if you don't make your product in America, which is your prerogative, then very simply you will have to pay a tariff."

Many economists and other trade experts say tariffs are not beneficial. The Peterson Institute for International Economics points out that tariffs "have a poor record" of sparking a resurgence in manufacturing.

On Friday, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Mr. Trump on Saturday will imposed 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico, 25% tariffs on Canadian imports and an additional 10% tariff on Chinese goods entering the U.S. She cited "illegal fentanyl they have sourced and allowed to distribute into our country" as the reason for the tariffs.

Mr. Trump has also floated the possibility of additional tariffs, such as an across-the-board duty of 10% on all goods imported into the U.S. Here's what to know about tariffs.

What exactly are tariffs?

Tariffs are duties paid on goods imported into the U.S..

The most common type are ad valorem tariffs (Latin for "according to the value, which represent a fixed percentage tax on the value of the imports. These are the tariffs Mr. Trump is proposing in putting a 25% import tax on goods shipped from Mexico or Canada, such as avocados or lumber.

There are also "specific" tariffs, which are levied as a fixed charge per unit, such as if the U.S. were to propose a $1 tariff on each imported Mexican avocado.

Another such type of levy are "tariff-rate quotas," which are taxes triggered by reaching a specific import threshold. For instance, this type of quota was used by the first Trump administration in 2018 on washing machines, when the first 1.2 million imported units faced a 20% duty, while units above that number were taxed at a 50% rate, according to the Coalition for a Prosperous America, which advocates for more restrictive trade policies.



Who pays for tariffs?



Companies that import the goods from abroad pay the tariffs to their own nation. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection collects tariffs from importers — say, Walmart or Target — and then deposits the money into the General Fund of the United States.

Mr. Trump has claimed that foreign countries pay the duties. As part of his campaign, he vowed that tariffs would help raise "trillions and trillions of dollars" from foreign governments.

In fact, American consumers would likely bear the brunt of the cost, as big U.S. importers are likely to pass on the tariffs they pay to the customs department to consumers, economists say. In some cases, foreign manufacturers may also chose to lower their prices to offset the impact of those tariffs in order to maintain their sales. And some U.S. businesses could absorb some of the tariff costs to avoid driving away consumers and potentially losing market share to competitors.

If Mr. Trump enacts all the tariffs he's vowed to levy on imports, the typical U.S. consumer could face up to $2,400 in increased costs for every year the tariffs remain in force, according to an estimate from financial services firm ING.



Could tariffs boost inflation?



If fully enacted, Mr. Trump's tariffs would sharply push the current effective U.S. tariff rate from 2.4% to 31%. That would be a historic high and surpass those seen under President McKinley in the 1890s, when U.S. trade policies were far more protectionist, and during the 1930s under the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, according to Capital Economics.

As a result, inflation would likely jump, rising from an annual rate of about 2.9% currently to as high as 4%, or about double the Federal Reserve's 2% target, Capital Economics noted. That would put inflation back to its mid-2023 levels, when the Fed was keeping interest rates near a two-decade as it tried bring inflation under control.

"mposing any of these suggested tariffs would generate a rebound in consumer price inflation this year, taking it further above target and making it harder for the Fed to resume loosening monetary policy," Capital Economics said in a Jan. 28 report.



Why does Trump support tariffs?



President Trump cites tariffs as a way to accomplish several policy goals, including raising more money to fund the government and protecting domestic industries.

Both he and his allies, including his new Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, contend that tariffs enacted during the first Trump administration didn't boost inflation. But those tariffs, which applied to only some Chinese imports, "were too small to matter" and so didn't have an inflationary impact, Capital Economics said in its research note.

Mr. Trump has also cited the need to boost U.S. manufacturing, saying in an October interview at the Economic Club of Chicago, "No. 1 is for protection of the companies that we have here, and the new companies that will move in because we're going to have thousands of companies coming into this country."

The data to support to that claim is mixed. The tariffs Mr. Trump imposed in 2018-19 achieved that goal to some extent, with the Brookings Institution noting that jobs in a few industries may have rebounded, such as adding 1,800 new U.S. jobs at Whirlpool and other washing machine manufacturers.

Overall, the number of U.S. manufacturing jobs fell slightly during Trump's first term, from about 12.4 million to 12.2 million workers. A range of factors could account for that decline, such as the impact of the pandemic and broader economic issues facing manufacturing.

Aimee Picchi
Aimee Picchi is the associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch, where she covers business and personal finance. She previously worked at Bloomberg News and has written for national news outlets including USA Today and Consumer Reports.

<

Obviously the fumes from the toilets are affecting Jose Z !

The Real Reason Trump’s Purge of Career DOJ Officials Should Alarm You

by Sara Zdeb

January 30, 2025

Since taking office last week, the Trump administration has fired, demoted, and reassigned career investigators and prosecutors across the Department of Justice, moving rapidly to politicize an institution over which the president has reportedly said he has an “absolute right” to total control. Much has been said in recent days about the impact of these unprecedented personnel moves on the Department’s independence and continued ability to address urgent national security and public safety threats, not to mention the morale of its workforce. But the ouster of career Department officials creates another, more insidious potential threat: that Trump and his allies will use the Department to hold onto power in future election cycles, as they tried and failed to do in 2020.

As a former Senate investigator, I led the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation into efforts by Trump and his allies, including then-Acting Civil Division Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, to conscript the Department into helping overturn the 2020 presidential election results. Our investigation laid the groundwork for the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack’s (“January 6 Select Committee”) examination of the same misconduct, and was the first congressional inquiry to expose Trump’s repeated calls to Department leaders about the investigations he wanted them to conduct.

We also exposed Clark’s scheme to supplant then-Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and insert the Department in the appointment of swing state electors, along with other efforts by Trump and his allies to use the Department to overturn the election. By now, the ending of this chapter in the January 6 story is familiar: after Department leaders threatened mass resignations in a dramatic Oval Office meeting, Trump backed down from installing Clark as Acting Attorney General. As then-committee chair Dick Durbin said when we released our investigative findings, it was only because of “a number of upstanding Americans in the Department of Justice [that] Donald Trump was unable to bend the Department to his will.”

The Importance of Norms in Protecting the Department’s Work from Politics

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation underscored a basic feature of the nation’s chief law enforcement agency: much of its work is guided by internal norms, not laws passed by Congress. These norms were put in place after Watergate to protect the Department’s independence from politics and ensure its decisions to investigate and prosecute are based only on the facts and the law. Oversight by Congress and independent Inspectors General can expose when the Department strays from its norms, but their implementation ultimately comes down to the principles of 115,000 individual Department employees.

One norm that is central to the Department’s independence is its longstanding policy restricting communications between Department officials and the White House about individual investigations, criminal prosecutions, and civil enforcement actions. This policy and a companion typically issued by the White House has been reaffirmed by Attorneys General and White House Counsels of both parties, and it’s designed to ensure that federal investigations and prosecutions are driven by facts, not politics. In 2020, these restrictions were flouted by high-ranking officials including White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who repeatedly asked Department leaders to open criminal investigations of false election fraud claims.

The Department’s norms don’t just insulate law enforcement decisions from politics—they also insulate politics from inappropriate law enforcement. Federal prosecutors have a well-established, legitimate role in enforcing criminal laws passed by Congress, including laws that punish the corruption of government processes (think bribery and fraud) and electoral processes (think campaign finance violations and ballot fraud). Because of the sensitivity of these types of enforcement actions, Department policy typically requires agents and prosecutors to consult with the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section before initiating them. These consultation requirements help ensure the Department applies the same standards to similar cases, so a Republican politician is treated no differently than a Democratic politician who engaged in the same misconduct. More broadly, they help ensure the Department makes decisions to investigate and prosecute based on the facts and the law, not politics or other improper considerations.

Norms also play a critical role in ensuring the Department stays in its lane during elections. The Public Integrity Section’s Election Crimes Branch has explained in longstanding internal guidance that the Department’s role in election crime cases is limited, and that “the Department does not have a role in determining which candidate won a particular election, or whether another election should be held because of the impact of the alleged fraud on the election.” This guidance also recognizes that “the fact of a federal criminal investigation may itself become an issue in [an] election”—a reality that undoubtedly motivated Trump’s demand that Department leaders “just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me.” For these reasons, internal policy makes clear that “the Department should not engage in overt criminal investigative measures in matters involving alleged ballot fraud until the election in question has been concluded, its results certified, and all recounts and election contests concluded.”

Department officials deviated from this longstanding norm in 2020 at the encouragement of then-Attorney General William Barr. Days after the 2020 election, when claims of a stolen election were in full swing, Barr issued a memo that loosened the Department’s longstanding restrictions on taking overt investigative steps in election fraud matters until the election is certified. The memo reportedly prompted objections by current and former Department prosecutors and led the longtime career head of the Public Integrity Section’s Election Crimes Branch to resign his position. Over the objection of career officials in the Public Integrity Section, Barr simultaneously directed federal prosecutors to investigate certain election fraud claims, including debunked allegations that Georgia election workers had secretly tabulated suitcases full of fake ballots. At the time Georgia’s elections had not yet concluded, with runoff elections scheduled a month later on January 5, 2021.

The extent of the Department’s deviation from longstanding norms during this period has never been fully examined, in part because the Department refused to divulge details of its work in response to bipartisan questioning by Senate staff, and in part because of the January 6 Select Committee’s understandable focus on Barr’s ultimate conclusion that there was no election fraud sufficient to alter the outcome of the election. Barr’s memo was withdrawn in early 2021, but the fact he issued it in the first place, and the way it enabled investigations beyond what the Department historically permitted, underscores how precarious even longstanding norms can be depending on who leads the Department.

The Purge of Career Officials

The ongoing purge of career officials should worry anyone who cares about keeping politics out of the Department and the Department out of the business of deciding elections. Since last Monday, the administration has fired, demoted, and reassigned career investigators and prosecutors across numerous Department offices and law enforcement components. Those impacted include senior leaders in the Department’s Criminal and National Security Divisions, at least a dozen career prosecutors previously assigned to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigations, and senior career leaders of the Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, among others.

The mass firing of Special Counsel Smith’s team has gotten significant attention, and deservedly so, for the message it sends to any Department employee thinking of investigating or prosecuting misconduct involving the president. But Americans should be just as alarmed by the reassignment and demotion of Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer, whose obscure-outside-the-Beltway title and low profile belie his critical role in upholding the Department’s norms. Until this week, he served as the Department’s senior-most career official. For decades and across administrations of both parties, Mr. Weinsheimer and his predecessors in that role advised Department leaders on ethics and recusal requirements and the longstanding requirements that keep politics and other improper considerations out of the Department’s work.

Equally concerning is the reassignment and subsequent resignation of Corey Amundson, the longtime career head of the Department’s Public Integrity Section. That office’s apolitical career prosecutors play an indispensable role in ensuring politically sensitive cases are handled appropriately, and that the Department doesn’t overstep its role in election-related matters. The Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation revealed that in at least one instance, Mr. Amundson pushed to restrain the Department from inserting itself in a 2020 election-related investigation, warning that doing so “risks great damage to the Department’s reputation, including the possible appearance of being motivated by partisan concerns.”

The ousters of Mr. Weinsheimer and Mr. Amundson aren’t surprising, but they should alarm anyone who cares about the Department’s adherence to norms that uphold the rule of law. Of course, the Department’s norms aren’t just the province of high-ranking career officials—every investigator and lawyer must follow them, and the Department is filled with principled career and non-career employees at all levels who do. But the ongoing purge of the very officials responsible for policing those norms signals to the Department’s entire workforce that their jobs are at risk if they, too, prioritize rules that keep politics out of law enforcement.

In 2020, Trump tried and failed to use the Department to hold onto power. Although some Department officials strayed from certain norms, enough principled individuals took a stand when it mattered. He is now ousting the apolitical career officials responsible for ensuring the Department upholds its norms and traditions of independence. In doing so, he is laying the groundwork not only to use the Department for his own personal, political goals throughout his administration, but also to succeed in doing in the next election what he failed to do in 2020.

Sara Zdeb
Sara Zdeb (LinkedIn) served as Chief Oversight Counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Democratic staff from 2019 through 2022. She served more recently as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department’s Office of Legislative Affairs. The views expressed here are based on the author's work in the Senate and do not reflect any nonpublic information about the Department of Justice.

<

Colonel Nathan R. Jessup said it correctly.....

Exclusive: Musk aides lock Office of Personnel Management workers out of computer systems

By Tim Reid

February 1, 20258:27 AM CSTUpdated 7 hours ago

WASHINGTON, Jan 31 (Reuters) -

Aides to Elon Musk charged with running the U.S. government human resources agency have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees, according to two agency officials.

Since taking office 11 days ago, President Donald Trump has embarked on a massive government makeover, firing and sidelining hundreds of civil servants in his first steps toward downsizing the bureaucracy and installing more loyalists.

Musk, the billionaire Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab CEO and X owner tasked by Trump to slash the size of the 2.2 million-strong civilian government workforce, has moved swiftly to install allies at the agency known as the Office of Personnel Management.

The two officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said some senior career employees at OPM have had their access revoked to some of the department's data systems.

The systems include a vast database called Enterprise Human Resources Integration, which contains dates of birth, Social Security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades and length of service of government workers, the officials said.

"We have no visibility into what they are doing with the computer and data systems," one of the officials said. "That is creating great concern. There is no oversight. It creates real cybersecurity and hacking implications."

Officials affected by the move can still log on and access functions such as email but can no longer see the massive datasets that cover every facet of the federal workforce.

Musk, OPM, representatives of the new team, and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

OPM has sent out memos that eschew the normal dry wording of government missives as it encourages civil servants to consider buyout offers to quit and take a vacation to a "dream destination."

Don Moynihan, a professor at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, said the actions inside OPM raised concerns about congressional oversight at the agency and how Trump and Musk view the federal bureaucracy.

"This makes it much harder for anyone outside Musk's inner circle at OPM to know what's going on," Moynihan said.

MUSK INFLUENCE

A team including current and former employees of Musk assumed command of OPM on Jan. 20, the day Trump took office. They have moved sofa beds onto the fifth floor of the agency's headquarters, which contains the director's office and can only be accessed with a security badge or a security escort, one of the OPM employees said.

The sofa beds have been installed so the team can work around the clock, the employee said.

Musk, a major donor to a famously demanding boss, installed beds at X for employees to enable them to work longer when in 2022 he took over the social media platform, formerly known as Twitter.

"It feels like a hostile takeover," the employee said.

The new appointees in charge of OPM have moved the agency's chief management officer, Katie Malague, out of her office and to a new office on a different floor, the officials said.

Malague did not respond to a request for comment.

The moves by Musk's aides at OPM, and upheaval inside the Treasury building caused by other Musk aides that was reported on Friday, underscore the sweeping influence Musk is having across government.

David Lebryk, the top-ranking career U.S. Treasury Department official, is set to leave his post following a clash with allies of Musk after they asked for access to payment systems, the Washington Post reported on Friday.

The new team at OPM includes software engineers and Brian Bjelde, who joined Musk's SpaceX venture in 2003 as an avionics engineer before rising to become the company's vice president of human resources. Bjelde's role at OPM is that of a senior adviser.

The acting head of OPM, Charles Ezell, has been sending memos to the entire government workforce since Trump took office, including Tuesday's offering federal employees the chance to quit with eight months pay.

"No-one here knew that the memos were coming out. We are finding out about these memos the same time as the rest of the world," one of the officials said.

Among the group that now runs OPM is Amanda Scales, a former Musk employee, who is now OPM's chief of staff. In some memos sent out on Jan. 20 and Jan. 21 by Ezell, including one directing agencies to identify federal workers on probationary periods, agency heads were asked to email Scales at her OPM email address.

Another senior adviser is Riccardo Biasini, a former engineer at Tesla and most recently a director at The Boring Company, Musk's tunnel-building operation in Las Vegas.

Reporting by Tim Reid Reuters;
Editing by Ross Colvin and Howard Goller


<

BREAKING NEWS



Trump Kicks Aside Congress With Sweeping Claims of Presidential Power
With aggressive reading of Constitution, president aims to upend balance of power in Washington
By
Aaron Zitner
Follow
Feb. 2, 2025 10:00 am ET
WSJ



With tariffs signed, Trump warns of ‘pain’ to come for Americans
Kevin Liptak Veronica Stracqualursi
By Kevin Liptak and Veronica Stracqualursi, CNN
Updated 1:52 PM EST, Sun February 2, 2025
A day after signing steep new tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China, President Donald
Trump acknowledged what economists, members of Congress and even some of his own aides
— in their previous lives —
have been saying all along:
Americans may find themselves paying the costs.



Canada announces retaliatory tariffs on long-time ally
By Promit Mukherjee
Reuters
February 2, 202510:16 AM CSTUpdated 3 hours ago



Canada, Mexico and China slam Trump's tariffs
U.S. allies Canada and Mexico said that they would implement tariffs on the U.S.
a move that signals further economic upheaval among the close trading partners.
Feb. 1, 2025, 8:46 PM CST / Updated Feb. 1, 2025, 11:27 PM CST
By Megan Lebowitz
NBC News



Trump’s Canada and Mexico Tariffs Could Hurt Carmakers
General Motors and a few other companies make as much as 40 percent
of their North American cars and trucks in Canada and Mexico,
leaving them vulnerable to tarif
NYT 2/2/25



Here are some goods in the crosshairs of Trump’s tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China
By PAUL WISEMAN
Updated 10:32 AM CST, February 2, 2025
AP
Auto Production
Higher prices at the pump
Computers, Clothes and Toys
Trouble in Margaritaville - tequila or Canadian whisky
Expensive avocados, just in time for the Super Bowl




Musk vows to cancel grants after gaining access to US Treasury payment system
System disperses trillions of dollars in US government spending each year, including social securit
The Financial Times
Joe Miller in Washington an hour ago



Kristi Noem says 'due process will be followed' for migrants at Guantanamo Bay
The Homeland Security secretary detailed plans to use Guantanamo Bay as a migrant detention center,
not ruling out that women and children could be housed there.
Feb. 2, 2025, 9:07 AM CST
By Alexandra Marquez
NBC



DOGE staff were denied entry into USAID offices and threatened to call US Marshals, sources say
Federal workers balk at Trump’s ‘buyout’ offer
By Jennifer Hansler and Alex Marquardt, CNN
Updated 1:35 PM EST, Sun February 2, 2025



Gas prices set to rise as Trump tariffs hit Canadian and Mexican oil
The U.S. imports some 4 million barrels per day of Canadian oil,
70% of which is processed by refiners in the Midwest. It also imports over 450,000 bpd of Mexican oil.
Feb. 2, 2025, 6:20 AM CST / Source: Reuters
By Reuters



Republicans downplay worries about rising costs due to Trump’s tariffs
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt both dismissed concerns about rising costs of consumer goods.
Feb. 2, 2025, 9:56 AM CST
By Alexandra Marquez
NBC News



Egg prices have soared as farmers contend with bird flu outbreak
The price increase poses a political problem for Trump, who won, in part, by hammering Biden for rising food costs
Feb. 2, 2025, 12:27 PM CST
By Corky Siemaszko
NBC News



North American companies brace for fallout from Trump tariffs
By Siddharth Cavale
Reuters
February 2, 202511:58 AM CSTUpdated an hour ago
CEOs are bewildered by these non-strategic tariff tantrums

<

BREAKING NEWS


Trump administration drafting executive order to initiate Department of Education’s elimination
Alayna Treene Katie Lobosco
By Alayna Treene and Katie Lobosco, CNN
Updated 5:29 PM EST, Tue February 4, 2025


At least 20,000 federal workers have taken Trump's buyout offer as deadline nears
Portrait of Joey GarrisonJoey Garrison
USA TODAY
Feb 4, 2025


What does Elon Musk get out of remaking the government?
February 4, 20255:56 PM ET
The billionaire entrepreneur and his team have gained access to a sensitive government payment system in the Treasury Department.
How did the world's richest man come to have such a big role in the federal government. And why does he want it?


USAID upheaval is paralyzing global delivery of food and medicine
Though humanitarian aid was supposed to be exempt from the Trump-ordered disruption,
shipments of lifesaving food and drugs are held up in ports and warehouses.
Shipping containers packed with lifesaving antibiotics and antimalarial drugs are being held at the Port of Sudan, where they sit in limbo.
Millions of pounds of American-grown soybeans that were bound for refugee camps overseas are being diverted to warehouses instead.
Trump’s mission to upend the U.S. Agency for International Development,
has paralyzed efforts to distribute essential food, medicine and other lifesaving supplies around the world, according to nonprofit organizations, farm industry groups and federal lawmakers.
Feb. 4, 2025, 5:09 PM CST / Updated Feb. 4, 2025, 6:14 PM CST
By Suzy Khimm

<

Where’d that dam water go?
Criticism flows after Trump’s discharge order

By Ryan Fonseca

Staff Writer

Feb. 4, 2025 6:30 AM PT

Criticism flows after Trump’s water release order

Early Friday morning, two dams in Tulare County started sending massive amounts of water down river channels toward the San Joaquin Valley.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers turned on the tap after a recent executive order by President Trump, who has railed against California’s water management policies.

“Federal records show that more than 2 billion gallons were released from the reservoirs over three days,” my colleague Ian James reported Monday. “The action occurred after Trump’s visit to fire-devastated Los Angeles, when he pledged to ‘open up the valves’ to bring the region more water — even though reservoirs that supply Southern California’s cities were at record levels (and remain so).”

Local water managers say they were caught off-guard by the decision when they were informed just a day before the water started flowing. They scrambled to alert local farming communities downstream about the potential for flooding. Due to those risks, local officials were able to persuade corps officials to reduce the amount of water initially planned for release.

The three-day water dump “has led to criticism from some residents, water managers and members of Congress, who say the unusual discharge of water seems to have been intended to make a political statement — to demonstrate that Trump has the authority to order federal dams or pumps to send more water flowing as he directs,” Ian wrote.

Trump’s water dump stems from a misunderstanding of California’s water systems, experts say.

The president has repeatedly asserted that the local water supply problems that hampered firefighting efforts during last month’s devastating L.A. fires were connected to state water management policies he opposes.

“I only wish they listened to me six years ago,” Trump posted on X last week. “There would have been no fire!”

An Army Corps of Engineers spokesperson told Ian and fellow Times reporter Jessica Garrison that water was released “to ensure California has water available to respond to the wildfires.”

State officials and experts say that’s not how our water works; regional reservoirs in Southern California are at record-high levels, they said.

According to CalFire, the only active fire in the state (as of Monday) is the Palisades fire, which is 100% contained.

And given that the first of three atmospheric rivers is expected to arrive this week and douse the region, it’s unclear what role river water that drains into the Tulare Lake Basin, roughly 150 miles north of Pacific Palisades, would play — or how (or if) federal officials intended to get it to L.A.






So where did those billions of gallons of water end up?

Ian traced its path:

“Coursing from rivers to canals to irrigation ditches, much of the water eventually made its way to retention basins, where it soaked into the ground, replenishing groundwater.”

Tom Barcellos, a farmer who is president of the Lower Tule River Irrigation District, told Ian the amount discharged was equivalent to about two days of maximum water use during the summer irrigation season.

For Peter Gleick, a water scientist and senior fellow at the Pacific Institute, Trump’s actions amounted to wasting billions of gallons of water “for a political photo op and a social media post.”

“[The water will] not be used or usable for firefighting, not be used by farmers since this isn’t the irrigation season, and won’t be saved for the dry season, which is coming,” Gleick told Ian.

And despite Trump’s claims that the “beautiful, clean water” will flow to farmers in desperate need of it, Dan Vink, former general manager of the Lower Tule River Irrigation District, told Ian and Jessica that the president’s order will mean less water when those fields need it the most.

“This is going to hurt farmers,” Vink said. “This takes water out of their summer irrigation portfolio.”

Trump’s order and the corps’ response also drew criticism from several state leaders, including Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla, who demanded answers in a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“Unscheduled water releases require close coordination with local officials and safety personnel, as well as downstream agricultural water users, in order to reduce flood risks to communities and farms,” Padilla wrote. “Based on the urgent concerns I have heard from my constituents, as well as recent reporting, it appears that gravely insufficient notification was given, recklessly endangering residents downstream.”

<