Trump Changes His Mind on Canada and Mexico Tariffs—Again

Just hours after he rolled back tariffs on Mexico, the president announced Canada will also not pay tariffs on any products that comply with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, until April 2. It’s Trump’s third flip on tariffs in 72 hours.

He signed an executive order Thursday solidifying the one-month tariff delay on products from both countries.

On Tuesday, Trump implemented 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada, a disastrous move that plummeted financial markets and prompted retaliatory actions from both U.S. trading partners.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded aggressively, immediately implementing retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods and condemning Trump’s betrayal of a longtime ally.

“Every country is very aware that if the American government is willing to do this to their own closest ally, neighbor, and friend, everyone is vulnerable to a trade war,” Trudeau said in a press conference on Tuesday, bypassing Trump and instead speaking directly to the American people.

“Your government has chosen to put American jobs at risk at the thousands of workplaces that succeed because of materials from Canada, or because of consumers in Canada, or both.”

Trump reacted to Trudeau’s address with hostility, and yet again suggested all of Canada’s problems could be solved by becoming the fifty-first American state. His dislike for Trudeau seemingly influenced his decision-making Thursday morning, when he initially retracted tariffs only on Mexico “out of respect” for Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, but not for Canada. Trump on Wednesday also granted a one-month exemption to U.S. automobile companies.

Unsurprisingly, the president has changed his mind yet again, drawing out a trade war that will have disastrous economic consequences.

Notorious Medicare thief and Republican Senator Rick Scott is the only one who wants to admit that his GOP colleagues are plotting to gut an essential health care program.

During an appearance at the Rescuing the American Dream Summit in Washington Thursday, Scott said it was only a matter of time before the government would have to cut spending to “any program you care about.”

“Because Medicare is going bankrupt, Social Security is going bankrupt. You know, inflation can’t go away, interest rates can’t come down. So, my belief is that … we’re gonna have to do this,” the Florida Republican said.

Scott knows a thing or two about bankrupting Medicare. He served as CEO of Columbia/HCA Hospital, which was fined a total of $1.7 billion in 2003 for filing false Medicare claims. At the time, it was the largest health care fraud in history, and while that particular honor has since been passed to another, Scott’s honor remains unrestored.

Scott is one of the few Republicans who doesn’t seem to be in denial about what having approved the latest budget bill to power Donald Trump’s agenda really means. The bill requires the Committee on Energy and Commerce, which oversees Medicaid, to reduce the deficit by at least $880 billion from 2025 to 2034. Mathematically speaking, cuts that big can only come out of massive programs such as Medicaid.

Cutting the incredibly popular program will undoubtedly prove, well, unpopular, but some Republicans have another strategy: Deny, deny, deny.

Republican Representative Brandon Gill tiptoed around the issue during an interview on Fox Business Thursday, driving host Maria Bartiromo up the wall.

“Congressman, I mean, with all due respect, you haven’t given me one offset,” Bartiromo pressed. “OK? You say that you’re not gonna have one problem finding an offset, and so far all I’ve heard you talk about is Elon Musk’s fraud, waste, and abuse cuts, as well as eliminating climate change rules. Again, 76 percent of the money is going to mandatory spending. You know that better than anyone! I’ve got the numbers in front of me. You’ve got $36 trillion in debt.

“Isn’t it time to start looking at the mandatory spending, and trying to figure out how you’re actually gonna cut—I mean, I know nobody wants to say this, but you’ve got stuff like Medicaid, don’t you?” Bartiromo asked.

Gill insisted he had described areas that could be cut, but noted that, “I agree with you, we are going to have to find some rationalizations.”

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency used the U.S. Marshals to physically take over a government agency Thursday, and now that agency head is suing.

Five employees of DOGE along with deputy acting head of the U.S. Agency for International Aid, Peter Marocco, tried to enter the U.S. African Development Foundation headquarters on Wednesday, but were prevented from getting into the building by security and were forced to leave.

USADF staff told a security guard to deny access to the DOGE team and Marocco, who illegally entered the Capitol during the January 6 insurrection, and whom Trump is trying to install as the agency’s new chief. The agency’s employees cited a letter from the USADF’s current chair, Ward Brehm, which stated, “In my absence, I have specifically instructed the staff of USADF to adhere to our rules and procedure of not allowing any meetings of this type without my presence.

“I will look forward to working with Mr. Marocco after such time that he is nominated for a seat on the Board and his nomination is confirmed by the Senate,” Brehm wrote in the letter. “Until these legal requirements are met, Mr. Marocco does not hold any position or office with USADF, and he may not speak or act on the Foundation’s behalf.”

On Thursday, Marocco and DOGE staffers returned to the agency—this time, with the U.S. Marshals. They were able to enter the building, which had no staff present, according to a government source.

Hours later, Brehm filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against Marocco and DOGE, which detailed how the group initially threatened to sue the security guard barring them access, and told the building’s property manager that they would bring U.S. Marshals and Secret Service agents if they weren’t allowed into the building.

“Their threats were unsuccessful” that day, the lawsuit states.

Marocco and DOGE staff were trying to carry out Trump’s February 19 executive order, in which he declared the USADF and three other agencies “unnecessary” and subject to elimination. The agency, created by Congress in 1980, supports small businesses and grassroots organizations helping marginalized people in Africa through grants. From 2019 to 2023, it funded 1,050 community enterprises serving 6.2 million people with $141 million in grants.

“Any attempt to unilaterally dismantle the USADF through executive action violates the law and exceeds the constitutional limits of executive authority,” wrote Democratic members of the House’s Foreign Affairs Committee in a letter to President Trump last month.

While DOGE eventually forced its way into the agency, its chief was able to file a lawsuit before any agency staff were fired. Will the maneuver protect the agency and force the Trump administration to close it through congressional action, or is USADF only delaying the inevitable?

California Governor Gavin Newsom shattered his reputation as an advocate for LGBTQ rights and betrayed the Democratic Party on Thursday.

In the debut episode of his new podcast, This Is Gavin Newsom, Newsom broke with his own party’s stance on trans rights and suggested that transgender athletes should not be allowed to participate in women’s sports, a spineless move from the Democrat who is likely preparing for a presidential run in 2028.

“I think it’s an issue of fairness, I completely agree with you on that. It is an issue of fairness—it’s deeply unfair,” Gavin said to his guest Charlie Kirk, a MAGA activist known for pushing Trumpism on college campuses through his organization Turning Point USA.

For decades, Newsom has been a strong supporter of LGBTQ rights, and even defied his own party by issuing same-sex marriage licenses as mayor of San Francisco in 2004, more than a decade before same-sex marriage was legal nationwide. Twenty years later, the governor is breaking with his own party yet again, this time in a weak-kneed turn to the right.

Trans athletes participating in women’s sports has long been a point of attack for Donald Trump and MAGA, and a contentious topic of debate between Democrats and Republicans. On February 5, Trump signed an executive order barring trans athletes from competing in women’s sports. The next day, the NCAA said only athletes assigned female at birth could participate in women’s competition, a heartbreaking move for trans women and nonbinary people competing in the NCAA.

In discussion with Kirk, Newsom touched on his background as a college baseball player and a father to four girls. “I revere sports, so the issue of fairness is completely legit,” Newsom said.

He went so far as to applaud the GOP for its demonization of trans people, praising Trump’s ad “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

“I saw that—the last couple years, boy did I [see] how you guys were able to weaponize that issue at another level,” Newsom told Kirk.

Why the governor of California chose a 31-year-old MAGA bigot as his companion in a conversation on the rights of a marginalized community remains to be seen. But, according to the trailer for This Is Gavin Newsom, Kirk is just the first of many MAGA guests Newsom will cozy up to in the coming months.

“It’s time to have conversations with people that agree AND disagree with us,” the podcast’s description reads. “It’s time to answer the hard questions and be open to criticism, and debate, without demeaning or dehumanizing one another.” Unless, of course, those in question are trans people.

Only one Democrat had the gall to call Donald Trump out for preaching endless falsehoods during his address to a joint session of Congress—and House Republicans are planning to punish him as a result.

Ten Democrats joined Republicans Thursday in voting to censure Representative Al Green after the Texas Democrat momentarily halted Trump’s speech.

But that was apparently not penalty enough. Hours later, the House Freedom Caucus announced it would be filing a resolution to strip Green from his committee assignments.

“We expect @SpeakerJohnson to bring it to the House floor for a vote next week,” the caucus chairman, Representative Andy Harris, posted to the extremely conservative coalition’s official X account. “Green was censured in a bipartisan vote but he needs real consequences to demonstrate that no one gets to disrupt the People’s business in lame attempts to derail President Trump’s agenda.”

When Trump claimed during his Tuesday night speech that he had been given a “mandate” by the American people to radically reimagine the federal government, Green interrupted the president by yelling, “You have no mandate to cut Medicaid!”

That got Green ousted by House Speaker Mike Johnson, who called on the sergeant of arms to remove the 77-year-old from the chamber against a backdrop of jeers from Republicans.

“I did it from my heart, and I will suffer whatever the consequences are,” Green told reporters the next day. “But truthfully, I would do it again.”

Senate Republicans are working to pass a budget that even party members have recently admitted will result in a $880 billion cut to Medicaid, much to the chagrin of their own constituents. The multibillion-dollar cut is a trade-off for conservatives who were tasked by Donald 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.

Green’s protest was practically the only noticeable rejection of Trump’s agenda that Democrats could muster Tuesday night. Other liberal lawmakers were torched for flipping paddles that read “False,” “Musk Steals,” “Save Medicaid,” in a silent protest in the face of the administration’s apparent oligarchy and its systemic dismantling of the federal government.

And viewers watching live at home would never have known that a handful of Democrats stood up and walked out of the chamber in protest, as TV cameras never bothered to pan to their mute, “dignified” spectacle. Others, such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Patty Murray, opted to not show up at all.

A CNN Poll released this week found that just 39 percent of Americans felt the country was moving in the right direction, as opposed to 45 percent who believed it was moving in the wrong direction.

Even Republicans don’t seem to believe in the “mandate” decree coming from the White House. In Tennessee over the weekend, an angry town hall 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.

“We’re giving the billionaires tax cuts!” a man shouted at Harshbarger.

The United States’ new alignment with Russia is causing some of our longest allies to question if they should continue to share military intelligence with Washington.

Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the four other members of the Five Eyes spy alliance—Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom—are reportedly examining how they could revise their current protocols with Washington in order to safeguard foreign assets, according to four sources and a foreign official that spoke with NBC News.

“Those discussions are already happening,” one source with direct knowledge of the conversations told NBC. No actions have been taken as of yet.

“Every intelligence agency treats its commitments to foreign agents as sacrosanct, pledging to keep agents safe and shield their identities,” NBC reported. “Anything that jeopardized that obligation would violate that trust, former officials said, and that could lead some spy services to hold back on some information sharing with Washington.”

Decisions over whether to continue to include America in international intelligence alliances come part and parcel as countries around the globe question their economic, military, and diplomatic cooperation with Washington.

Droves of world leaders have denounced the U.S. in the weeks since Donald Trump was inaugurated. They have condemned his administration’s decision to backtrack on international treaties, his aggression toward the U.S.’s longstanding alliances, and his willingness to throw Western nations into a reckless trade war, and have cast aspersions on his seemingly warm relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

While withholding intelligence from the Pentagon would prove to be a drastic shift in world relations, it would also be little more than a reflection of Trump’s own foreign policy approach that has thrown the Western world into tumult in a matter of days.

Following a disastrous meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday, in which Trump and Vice President JD Vance effectively challenged the U.S.’s strongest alliances while ceding the world stage to America’s adversaries, the White House has ordered a pause on military aid and intelligence sharing with Kyiv in its ongoing war with Russia. That alone is expected to devastate Ukraine’s ability to target Russian forces in its fight against the dictator-led superpower.

Trump has repeatedly ducked reporters’ questions as to whether his administration’s actions have aligned U.S. policy with Moscow.

Several of Trump’s former advisers have criticized Trump’s approach to ending the war, including two of his first term national security advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton.

“Vladimir Putin couldn’t be happier,” McMaster told 60 Minutes on Sunday, sizing up the events of Trump’s explosive meeting with Zelenskiy “Because what he sees is all of the pressure on Zelensky, all of the pressure on Ukraine and no pressure on him.”

McMaster then went on to describe Putin as a “master manipulator” who had successfully worked Trump to Russia’s advantage.

The government email address of powerful unelected bureaucrat Elon Musk is now publicly available.

The Intercept reports that Musk has been assigned the email address erm71@who.eop.gov, due to his status with the White House Office and the Executive Office of the President. Erm71 refers to Musk’s full initials and his 1971 birth year and is different from other email addresses in the EOP, which usually include the employee’s full first and last name. 

The publication has already filed multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for Musk’s emails to his pet project, the Department of Government Efficiency, as well other agencies that have worked closely with DOGE, such as the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management. In addition, the Intercept filed FOIA requests with several agencies in DOGE’s crosshairs.  

The Trump administration has tried to classify DOGE, and by extension, Musk, under the EOP to claim that its administrator reports to the White House chief of staff, and therefore, White House lawyers argue, isn’t subject to FOIA. The administration has also argued in court that Musk is not in charge of DOGE, but merely is a senior adviser to the president, which President Trump has repeatedly contradicted publicly. 

Given DOGE’s massive reach within the federal government and its efforts to decimate federal agencies through mass purges of employees, its attempts at subterfuge are facing numerous legal challenges. Now that Musk’s apparent government email address is public, the lawsuits from government employees and watchdog organizations trying to exact some transparency and accountability over DOGE just got some new ammunition.

The Republican Party isn’t even pretending not to be racist now.

The National Republican Congressional Committee published an atrocious social media post Wednesday calling Hispanic Caucus Chair Adriano Espaillat an “illegal immigrant,” after the New York Democrat gave a Spanish-language rebuttal to Donald Trump’s address to Congress.

Espaillat accused Trump of fostering an “environment of fear among the immigrant community” during his Tuesday night speech, and told a story about a U.S. citizen who had been wrongfully detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement as part of Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants.

The NRCC, which once posted a wildly xenophobic ad showing A.I.-generated images of immigrants flooding U.S. national parks, issued a new installment in its catalogue of extremely racist posts, this time targeting Espaillat.

“Democrats literally chose an illegal immigrant to give their response to President Trump’s address,” the NRCC wrote on X. “Predictably, this radical called Trump’s presidency a ‘reign of terror.’ Democrats couldn’t be more disconnected from the American people.”

Espaillat has been a U.S. citizen for more than 40 years and is the first formerly undocumented immigrant to serve in Congress. When his family first immigrated to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic roughly 60 years ago, they briefly overstayed their tourist visa but obtained green cards within the year, according to HuffPost.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus released a statement hitting back at the Republican group’s attack on its chairperson.

“This xenophobic rhetoric from Trump Republicans proves that you can follow the law, get your papers, become a citizen, get elected to Congress—swear multiple oaths to protect and defend the Constitution—and all you will ever be to Trump Republicans: an ‘illegal immigrant,’” the group wrote in a post on X Wednesday.

Since entering office, Trump has made clear that legal protections for all immigrants—not just those who are undocumented—are subject to rescission. It’s clear from the NRCC’s attack on Espaillat that Republicans are taking Trump’s rhetoric of targeting individuals based on their race, or skin color, to heart.

Just two days after he started a global trade war, Donald Trump is already walking back some of the tariffs he implemented—again.

In a Truth Social post Thursday, the president announced Mexico will not pay tariffs on any products that comply with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, until April 2.

On Tuesday, Trump implemented 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada, a disastrous move that plummeted financial markets and prompted retaliatory actions from both American trading partners.

Following the news, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum took a measured approach to dealing with the reactionary American leader. She promised to safeguard Mexico’s interests and announced she would implement tariffs of U.S. goods, but not until Sunday, giving her and Trump enough time to negotiate a deal. It worked.

“After speaking with President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico, I have agreed that Mexico will not be required to pay Tariffs on anything that falls under the USMCA Agreement.” Trump wrote on Truth Social Thursday. “I did this as an accommodation, and out of respect for, President Sheinbaum.”

It’s just the latest walkback from Trump, who is endlessly flip-flopping on a decision that would spur economic catastrophe across the U.S. and abroad.

He first threatened to impose tariffs on February 1, but later agreed to a 30-day pause after widespread backlash. After finally beginning the tariffs on Tuesday, he’s already granted a one-month exemption to U.S. automobile companies, and now to USMCA products.

Who knows what the next move will be in Trump’s relentless pursuit to implement tariffs, and rid the U.S. of its allies while he’s at it.

Donald Trump may introduce a new travel ban similar to the “Muslim ban” from his first term, possibly as soon as next week.

Reuters reports that the order would bar people from Afghanistan and Pakistan from entering the United States, based on a government review of security and vetting risks, citing three anonymous sources, who also said that other countries could be included.

In his first term, Trump used a series of executive orders that infamously banned visitors from the Muslim-majority countries of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Iraq was initially included, but later dropped after the country promised to improve vetting for its own citizens. Despite several legal challenges, the Supreme Court ultimately approved the ban in 2018, and Trump later added six more countries with large Muslim populations to the list.

If Trump’s new ban becomes a reality, it will complicate efforts to resettle tens of thousands of Afghans cleared to come to the U.S. as refugees or on “special immigrant visas” because they worked for the U.S. and fear retribution after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan.

According to one of the sources, the State Department Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts is trying to get an exemption for special immigrant visa holders, “but it’s not assumed likely to be granted,” especially since that office was told to plan for its closure by April.

While campaigning for president in 2023, Trump floated the idea of reinstating and expanding the “Muslim ban,” calling for a “strong ideological screening of all immigrants to the United States” and saying he would ban immigrants from Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen, “or anywhere else that threatens our security.”

In Trump’s first term, the travel ban caused a lot of confusion and chaos, with thousands of people, including immigration lawyers, gathering at airports to protest the move. If the ban comes back, Trump will have a more compliant judiciary. The question is whether protesters will show up in the same numbers with support from Democratic politicians.