Republicans Have Found Another Way to Kick-Start a Recession

Repealing the Inflation Reduction Act—something President Trump is currently trying very hard to do—could result in a $160 billion hit to the gross domestic product, according to Semafor.

A complete IRA repeal would devastate the country’s economy. It could lead to 790,000 lost job losses by 2030, while household energy bills would increase by up to $370 per year, on average, by 2035.

This is ominous news for an economy already on the brink of recession. That recession is being driven by Trump’s ongoing trade war with America’s closest allies—25 percent levies are currently being placed on many imports from Mexico and Canada—which Fed Chair Jerome Powell just admitted was making inflation worse. Cuts to the IRA would have a massive negative impact on American manufacturing, delivering a devastating blow to a sector that those tariffs are theoretically intended to boost. Slashing the IRA would also particularly harm red states, which have received a whopping 77 percent of clean energy manufacturing and deployment investment since the third quarter of 2022.

A full repeal of the IRA is not expected, of course, but Speaker Mike Johnson did describe his vision for the cuts as “somewhere between a scalpel and a sledgehammer.” Even if the bill is not repealed—or curtailed—by Congress, agency cuts made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have likely already affected its implementation.

The National Archives released thousands of declassified documents this week relating to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy—but in its effort to make the unredacted trove public, it published the Social Security numbers of over 200 former congressional staffers.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that buried within the 60,000 pages of mostly unredacted documents were the Social Security numbers of more than 100 staff members of the Senate Church Committee, and more than 100 staff members of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. The names of those who were doxxed include several high-profile figures, including a former assistant secretary of state, a former U.S. ambassador, and several prominent figures in the intelligence and legal fields.   

The Senate Church Committee was formed in 1975 to study the intelligence abuses of federal agencies, and the Committee on Assassinations investigated Kennedy’s death. 

Joseph diGenova, a former Trump campaign lawyer who previously investigated intelligence abuses in the 1970s, was not aware that his private information was included within the JFK files until the Post reached out to him. He called the move “absolutely outrageous,” “sloppy,” and “unprofessional.”

“It makes sense that my name is in there,” diGenova said. “But the other sensitive stuff—it’s like a first-grade, elementary-level rule of security to redact things like that.”

“It not only means identity theft, but I’ve had threats against me,” diGenova added. 

One former Senate staffer, who spoke with the Post under the condition of anonymity, directed their ire at the Trump administration, now that they had become a target for identity theft and fraud. 

“It just shows the danger of how this administration is handling these things with no thought of who gets damaged in the process,” they said. 

Following up on his executive order from January, Trump had promised Monday that all the files related to the assassination would be made public by Tuesday afternoon—setting off a scramble at the Department of Justice to make it happen as quickly as possible. Attorneys in the DOJ’s National Security Division were called to urgently provide a second set of eyes to review the documents for release, even though they had already received an initial review by the FBI. 

Mary Ellen Callahan, former chief privacy officer at the Department of Homeland Security, told the Post that the mass publication of sensitive information was “absolutely” a violation of the 1974 Privacy Act, which requires agencies to be careful in their handling of sensitive information. 

“Social Security is literally the keys to the kingdom to everybody,” said Callahan.

Some of the undocumented immigrants that the Trump administration deported to El Salvador were not hardened criminals or gang members, as it claims, but rather people without criminal records whose gang affiliations are dubious at best.

Linette Tobin, an attorney for detained Venezuelan immigrant Jerce Reyes Barrios, released a sworn statement about the accusations against her client Wednesday night. Reyes Barrios, her statement says, was a professional soccer player in his native country but sought asylum in the United States after being detained and tortured for marching in two political demonstrations against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Reyes Barrios’s petition for asylum was pending, with a hearing scheduled for April, when he was deported March 15 to El Salvador without any notice to his family or attorney. Tobin only was able to reach an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official three days later.

The government accuses Reyes Barrios of being a member of the Tren de Aragua gang based on two “Gang Membership Identification Criteria.” The first was a tattoo on his arm of a crown on top of a soccer ball with a rosary and the word “Dios,” which is Spanish for “God.” Reyes Barrios chose this tattoo because it resembles the logo for Spanish soccer team Real Madrid. The second was a social media post with a picture of Reyes Barrios making “rock and roll” or “I love you” hand gestures.

Reyes Barrios’s account is one of many sworn statements from immigrants detained and immediately sent off to El Salvador as part of an agreement with the country, without any due process. Some, like Reyes Barrios, were detained merely because they have tattoos that look suspicious to immigration officials but are in fact harmless. Many had pending hearings about their asylum claims.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has pursued a hard-line immigration policy that disregards due process in favor of swift deportations, cutting a deal with a friendly autocrat in El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele without much in the way of legal justification. Unlike any of President Trump’s other Cabinet picks, Rubio got the vote of every single Senate Democrat in his confirmation. Some Democrats now regret their votes, and it’s easy to see why.

Corporate executives are allegedly trying to talk the president “off the ledge” of his tariff plan, according to an ex-Trump official.

In an interview with MSNBC Wednesday, former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci claimed that Donald Trump’s weekends are consumed by fearful phone calls from CEOs looking to reverse the clock on the president’s trade war.

“Remember, he’s living alone in the White House, Nicolle,” Scaramucci, who was fired after serving just 11 days during Trump’s first term, told host Nicolle Wallace. “I think it’s important for people to understand that there’s nobody there to hand-check him. There’s no family in there.

“And so he’s taking calls over the weekend from various CEOs that I know that are trying to talk him off the ledge of this sort of stuff,” Scaramucci said.

Scaramucci further predicted that Trump’s economic actions won’t only fail to bring manufacturing back to American shores but could also lead to a recession—something that he argued won’t bode well for the president or his allies in upcoming elections.

“The stock market will. I mean, you take the market down another 15 percent, we go into a recession, you’ll flip the Congress, even though the Democrats weren’t really doing so well from an approval rating right now,” said Scaramucci. “You knock the economy off the grid, the Democrats will be back in power, and that will liquidate some of President Trump’s power.

“So he’s doing this thinking that it’s going to restore manufacturing, but it’s actually going to have the opposite effect, and market participants know this,” Scaramucci said, pointing to the flow of capital into European markets since Trump announced the tariffs.

Trump has repeatedly attempted to spin the tariffs to claim that foreign countries will pay the difference on the rising cost of goods, but economists point out that’s not how tariffs work. Instead, Trump’s global tariff war is expected to affect just about every sector of life for the average American.

Products that will see prices rise include groceries such as avocados, maple syrup, ground beef, cherry tomatoes, sugar, bananas, nuts, cooking oil, squash, cucumbers, strawberries, and pineapples. The order also had immediate ramifications for countless other business sectors, raising the price on everything from liquor to gas.

Children’s toys, shoes, beer and alcohol, and crude oil were all hit in Trump’s 25 percent tariff hike on Canada and Mexico, alongside an additional 10 percent tariff on China. Car manufacturers BMW, Audi, Nissan, and Mazda were also affected, as was American-owned Ford. And every industry that relies on lumber, aluminum, and steel—from artisan goods to construction—will see markups as the materials themselves become more costly.

Four major political organizations focused on young voters—the Sunrise Movement, College Democrats of America, United We Dream of Action, and Voters of Tomorrow—are calling on Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to either stand up to Donald Trump or step down from leadership.

“Chuck Schumer, your leadership is failing to meet the moment. Your decision—along with nine other Senate Democrats—to cave and support the MAGA budget bill is just the latest example of how you and other Democratic leaders are driving young people away from the Democratic Party,” the groups wrote in a joint letter released on Thursday. “Instead of taking a stand against Trump’s illegal actions to gut our healthcare, dismantle public education, attack immigrants and trans people, and tear up climate action, you supported a budget that gave tax cuts to Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their billionaire buddies. You sided against us.”

This is just the latest call for Schumer’s resignation. Representative Glenn Ivey was the first national elected official to call for him to step down as Democratic Senate leader, with Representative Delia Ramirez following soon after. Even Nancy Pelosi recently expressed her doubts in Schumer. While the longtime Democratic Senate leader insists that a shutdown would have granted the Trump administration control of the narrative, Democrats young and old are begging him to resist rather than capitulate.

“Gen Z voters want leaders with a backbone who will stand up to billionaires and fight for working people,” the letter continued. “If you want our support, it’s time to get bolder, get louder, or make way for leadership who will. If you don’t get this right, we are ready to take the reins of this party ourselves to shape it into a force that can fight for working people and defeat growing authoritarian power.”