Trump Reveals Tariffs Plan to Ruin American Farmers’ Lives

Trump issued an ominous message to American farmers as he announced his planned kneecapping of their most profitable market: foreign exports.

“To the Great Farmers of the United States: Get ready to start making a lot of agricultural product to be sold INSIDE of the United States,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday. “Tariffs will go on external product on April 2nd. Have fun!”

This will have a massive, direct impact on how much money farmers—many of whom are still reeling from the tariffs (and subsequent bailout) from Trump’s first term—will make from the products they grow. Agricultural exports like soybeans, grains, fruit, vegetables, and livestock products provided U.S. farmers with about $180 billion in annual revenue in the 2023 fiscal year.

It’s unlikely that the farmers will see the “fun” in having to radically readjust their processes for less revenue. This coincides with Trump’s tariff war, as he plans to levy massive 25 percent tariffs on imported goods from Canada and Mexico and 10 percent on goods from China. Chinese state media over the weekend reported that China planned to retaliate with tariffs on U.S. agriculture—perhaps leading Trump to decide to destroy American farmers himself.

Donald Trump is celebrating his administration’s move to ignore a law that targeted money laundering.

On Sunday, the Treasury Department announced that it would stop enforcing “any penalties or fines associated with the beneficial ownership information reporting rule under the existing regulatory deadlines, but it will further not enforce any penalties or fines against U.S. citizens or domestic reporting companies or their beneficial owners after the forthcoming rule changes take effect either.”

In effect, the government will no longer require shell companies to disclose their owners and beneficiaries, allowing wealthy corporations and individuals to hide their profits from the public. The rule was part of the Corporate Transparency Act, or CTA, passed in 2021, which required some businesses to report information on people who own or control a company, indirectly or directly, to the department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

Trump quickly took to Truth Social after the Treasury announcement, posting, “Exciting News!”

“This Biden rule has been an absolute disaster for Small Businesses Nationwide,” Trump’s post read. “Furthermore, the Treasury is now finalizing an Emergency Regulation to formally suspend this rule for American businesses. The economic menace of [Beneficial Ownership Information] reporting will soon be no more.”

Republicans have long opposed the CTA, claiming that the requirements are too steep for small businesses and companies to fulfill. The rule on beneficial ownership was supposed to go into effect in January, but a federal court order froze enforcement of the rule. The CTA was passed by the Biden administration to tackle tax evasion and corporate cronyism, which, unsurprisingly, is at odds with the Trump administration.

Since his inauguration, Trump has gone after financial regulation as well as government agencies that seek to curb corporate power, such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Earlier this month, the president also issued an executive order freezing enforcement of the 48-year-old Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits any person or company tied to the United States from paying money or offering gifts to foreign officials to help their business.

It seems that Trump wants his friends in the corporate world, as well as his own businesses, to be able to rake in profits with much less restrictions, and if they so choose, hide them from the public. It will now be easier for a business with unpopular practices, or a president with shady business interests, to avoid scrutiny.

The Democratic National Committee has decided to double down on the same losing strategies that lost it the last election.

Newly elected DNC Chair Ken Martin on Monday named Roger Lau as executive director of the committee. Lau has been serving as the DNC’s deputy executive director since 2021, joining the committee after running Elizabeth Warren’s unsuccessful 2020 presidential campaign.

Politico’s Lisa Kashinsky noted that Lau’s appointment was a sign that the party is “taking a stay-the-course approach to staffing despite the party’s losses in November.… Their selections reflect the DNC’s post-election preference for experienced operatives over shaking up the party apparatus on South Capitol Street.”

Former DNC chief of staff Libby Schneider will become deputy executive director, after previously serving as a senior adviser and national rural political director. Jessica Wright, who worked most recently as Biden’s State Department chief of staff for operations, will also join the DNC as deputy executive director as well as the new chief of staff to the chair. Ohio Representative Joyce Beatty, Washington State Democrats Chair Shasti Conrad, and union chief Stuart Appelbaum will be associate chairs.

The party faces a crossroads between business-as-usual moderate liberalism and a more aggressive attempt at large, progressive policy. It seems clear that it’s chosen the former, as centrists gather behind closed doors to blame identity politics for their loss and the party picks Senator Elissa Slotkin to respond to Trump’s joint congressional address on Tuesday. Only time will tell how far this 2016-esque approach to politics will get the party. Right now, it’s mostly just resulted in political failure.

Unable to acknowledge that Americans might actually be upset with his agenda, Donald Trump has cooked up a bizarre theory to explain the mass protests taking place in Republican lawmakers’ town halls across the country. But the rationale behind the idea sounds awfully familiar to his presidential election conspiracy.

“Paid ‘troublemakers’ are attending Republican Town Hall Meetings,” Trump posted on Truth Social Monday morning. “It is all part of the game for the Democrats, but just like our big LANDSLIDE ELECTION, it’s not going to work for them!”

Republican lawmakers were met with fire and fury over the weekend as their constituents hounded them for failing to intervene in a budget resolution that will result in billions in cuts to Medicaid, as well as refusing to speak out against Elon Musk’s unchecked dissolution of federal agencies and, with it, thousands of federal jobs and popular social programs.

On Saturday, Kansas Senator Roger Marshall ended his town hall early, walking out to a cacophony of boos after a couple of attendees brought up concerns over DOGE’s decision to fire some 6,000 veterans.

In Tennessee, a crowd before Representative Diana Harshbarger screamed “No!” when the Republican lawmaker asked if there had been a “mandate to the president from the American people,” who she claimed “overwhelmingly” voted Trump in.

“The Congressional Budget Office—do you know what it’s going to be by 2035?” Harshbarger asked the crowd, referring to the federal deficit. “It’s going to be $59 trillion.”

“We’re giving the billionaires tax cuts!” shouted a man in response.

The seismic cuts to the federal government—which include a $880 billion slash to Medicare—are a trade-off for conservatives who were tasked by Trump to extend his 2017 tax plan, which will overwhelmingly benefit corporations and is projected to add as much as $15 trillion to the national deficit.

In Texas, more than 100 attendees at Representative Keith Self’s town hall in deep-red Collins County shouted at the Republican for so long that it was difficult for Self to get a word in. At one point, the crowd stood up and chanted and clapped to “vote him out!”

The venomous protests are a warning sign for the Trump administration that public patience is already wearing thin for his aggressive agenda. Last month, Missouri Representative Mark Alford was practically shut down at his own town hall after he expressed support for Musk’s massive layoff plan. At one point, while suggesting to the crowd that they could vote for someone else in the next election if they didn’t approve of Musk’s appointment, one person shouted back, “We didn’t elect Elon!”

Alford seemed to take a page out of Trump’s own playbook in the immediate aftermath, refusing to chalk up the local frustration to his own inaction. In an interview with CNN, Alford referred to his own constituents as “outside agitators.”

Donald Trump’s recent spate of crackdowns and reshuffling at the Voice of America reveal the administration’s plan to transform the award-winning newsroom into a MAGA propaganda machine.

VOA’s chief national correspondent, Steve Herman, was placed under investigation last week, for allegedly expressing political bias against the Trump administration in his social media posts, according to The New York Times.

A memo sent to Herman listed a swath of reasons he’d come under scrutiny. One of the reasons cited is Trump’s executive order titled “One Voice for America’s Foreign Relations,” which includes the provision that “failure to faithfully implement the President’s policy is grounds for professional discipline, including separation.”

Herman said he has been placed under a paid “excused absence” and expects to lose his job, according to NPR.

This isn’t the first time Herman has been the subject of this kind of investigation: He was the subject of a probe about the same supposed issue during the last year of Trump’s first administration. That time, leadership at the U.S. Agency for Global Media, or USAGM, which oversees VOA, had claimed that Herman’s posts relaying criticism of Trump betrayed a political bias. A federal judge found that former USAGM CEO Michael Pack had violated journalists’ First Amendment rights by interfering with VOA.

By comparison, this probe is coming directly from VOA’s acting senior program director, John Featherly, with the approval of VOA’s director, Michael Abramowitz, a Biden-era figure. But again, the probe specifically cites Herman’s engagement with social media posts regarding the second Trump administration’s trove of controversies.

Crucially, Herman himself is not expressing any attitudes, only sharing perspectives critical of the Trump administration—not atypical for a journalist.

At the same time, VOA moved its White House bureau chief, Patsy Widakuswara, who has 27 years of experience, to another beat. Journalists at VOA told NPR that no rationale was given for the reshuffling.

That wasn’t the only shakeup at VOA last week.

Former TV anchor turned failed MAGA Senate candidate Kari Lake was made a special adviser at VOA, pending her confirmation to run the agency. Trump’s pick to head USAGM, Brent Bozell III, needs to be confirmed before Lake can formally take the reins from Abramowitz.

Lake has alleged liberal bias at VOA but promised that the agency “won’t become Trump TV.”

In an email announcing her appointment, USAGM’s chief, Roman Napoli, wrote that Lake’s experience “will be invaluable as we continue our mission to clearly and effectively present the policies of the Trump Administration around the world.”

As Brian Stelter, CNN’s chief media analyst, pointed out in a series of posts on X Monday, “That is NOT the assignment that Congress gave USAGM.” Rather, the mission statement of USAGM, which is codified into U.S. law, is to “inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy.”

Herman’s likely dismissal and Widakuswara’s reassignment are “having a chilling effect on the entire institution,” one VOA staffer said, according to Stelter.

Some staffers believe that the changes are part of management’s efforts to obey in advance of true scrutiny from the Trump administration, Stelter reported. And apparently, it’s been going on for a while. “Four sources told CNN on condition of anonymity that multiple Trump-related stories have been watered down in recent months,” Stelter wrote.