Trump Crows About Tariffs as Recession Odds Skyrocket

Analysts at the world’s largest bank say that a recession is more likely to happen than not.

Analysts at JP Morgan, the marketing side of JP Morgan Chase & Co., adjusted their prediction Thursday that the United States would experience a recession in the next year, raising their forecasts to a whopping 60 percent from an already troubling 40 percent, according to The Wall Street Journal.

This decision comes after Donald Trump announced sweeping 10 percent tariffs on imports from nearly every country in the world, with additional country-specific tariffs levied on top.

Analysts predicted that retaliatory tariffs could lead to huge disruptions in the supply chain and that the tariff rate, which they expect to increase by 20 percentage points, would be equivalent to the biggest tax hike since 1968, which also led to a recession, according to Reuters.

Trump’s announcement continued to send the stock market tumbling Thursday, amid concerns over a global trade war. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 1,679.39 points, marking its worst session since June 2020, while the Nasdaq Composite saw its steepest drop since March 2020.

When Trump was asked about the crashing markets Thursday, he responded, “I think it’s going very well.” Blatant denial seems to be the name of the game, messaging-wise, as the White House insisted that it was not watching the market.

Trump also enacted a “permanent” 25 percent tariff on all imported vehicles and autoparts—which is already kneecapping the U.S. auto industry. The president has already levied steep 25 percent tariffs on America’s closest trading partners, Mexico and Canada.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Thursday that the era of U.S. global leadership on trade was “over,” and said his country would begin looking elsewhere for trade partnerships.

Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts University student brazenly abducted by masked immigration agents on a public street in Massachusetts, is suffering serious health issues in Homeland Security custody.

Representative Ayanna Pressley, whose district includes the university, posted on Bluesky Thursday night that Öztürk has had three separate asthma attacks in custody while being denied access to her required medications, “a violation of her fundamental right to medical care.”

“This is cruelty, it is neglect, and it is a damning moral and legal failure,” Pressley’s post said.

Öztürk, a doctoral student on Fulbright scholarship, was allegedly detained for engaging “in activities in support of Hamas,” a DHS spokesperson said last week without offering any evidence supporting that charge. Secretary of State Marco Rubio also refused to offer any explanation of why Öztürk was detained without a court order or access to legal counsel, attacking the student for coming “into the U.S. as a visitor” and creating “a ruckus for us.”

Rubio claims to have revoked the visas of “more than 300” international students so far, with no word on whether the State Department, DHS, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement is following due process. Tufts University has offered its support to Öztürk, making a declaration before the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts seeking “relief so that Ms Öztürk is released without delay so that she can return to complete her studies and finish her degree.”

Meanwhile, Öztürk continues to be held in an ICE facility in Louisiana without access to her medication as her attorneys seek to have her transferred back to Massachusetts. True relief, however, will only come if she is granted due process, released from custody, and given the chance to address the allegations against her, if they even have any merit.

A right-wing group with financial ties to Leonard Leo and the Koch network is aiming to halt Donald Trump’s tariff plan.

The New Civil Liberties Alliance sued the president Thursday, claiming that Trump’s decision to invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act did not give him the power to “usurp” Congress’s right to control tariffs or “upset the Constitution’s separation of powers.”

In a press release, the group argued that the emergency statute “authorizes specific emergency actions like imposing sanctions or freezing assets to protect the United States from foreign threats.” 

“It does not authorize the President to impose tariffs,” the NCLA wrote.

“Congress has sole authority to control tariffs, which it has done by passing detailed tariff statutes. The President cannot bypass those statutes by invoking ‘emergency’ authority in another statute that does not mention tariffs,” the group continued. “His attempt to use the IEEPA this way not only violates the law as written, but it also invites application of the Supreme Court’s Major Questions Doctrine, which tells courts not to discern policies of ‘vast economic and political significance’ in a law without explicit congressional authorization.”

The NCLA further argued that Trump had massively overstepped his presidential powers by leaning on the wartime statute.

“In its nearly 50-year history, no other president—including President Trump in his first term—has ever tried to use the IEEPA to impose tariffs,”  they wrote. “NCLA’s lawsuit does not quibble with President Trump’s declaration of an opioid-related emergency, but it does take issue with his decision to impose tariffs in response, without legal authority to do so.”

The group sued Trump on behalf of Simplified, a Florida-based home goods company whose business relies on imported materials from China, arguing that Trump’s move to impose even more tariffs on China would crush the company’s profits. In a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida, the NCLA asked the court to declare the tariff unlawful, vacate the increase reflected in the U.S. tariff schedule, and effectively block the tariff in its entirety.

“By invoking emergency power to impose an across-the-board tariff on imports from China that the statute does not authorize, President Trump has misused that power, usurped Congress’s right to control tariffs, and upset the Constitution’s separation of powers,” stated NCLA senior litigation counsel Andrew Morris.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen slammed Donald Trump’s outlandish bid to acquire Greenland Thursday, saying that the United States “cannot annex another country.”

During JD Vance’s own humiliating trip to the Arctic island last week, he whipped out some of his venture capitalist jargon to allege that Denmark had “underinvested in the security architecture” of Greenland.  

Frederiksen gave remarks Thursday alongside Greenland’s new Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and his predecessor, Mute Egede, where she voiced her disappointment in the U.S., arguing that Denmark had always been a good ally to the country. 

“When you ask our businesses to invest in the U.S., they do. When you ask us to spend more on our defense, we do; and when you ask of us to strengthen security in the Arctic, we are on the same page,” Frederiksen said. 

“But when you demand to take over a part of the Kingdom of Denmark’s territory, when we are met by pressure and by threats from our closest ally, what are we to believe in about the country that we have admired for so many years?

“This is about the world order that we have built together across the Atlantic over generations: You cannot annex another country, not even with an argument about international security,” Frederiksen said. 

Frederiksen added that she would still work to maintain relations with the U.S. “If we let ourselves be divided as allies, then we do our foes a favor. And I will do everything that I can to prevent that from happening,” she said. 

But it doesn’t seem like Trump intends to make that easy. On Wednesday, the Trump administration levied a 20 percent tariff on all imports from the European Union, including Denmark. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen in Brussels Thursday to reaffirm the “strong relationship” between the two countries, according to a statement from the State Department. 

Elon Musk isn’t leaving politics anytime soon, if his X posts are to be believed.

The tech mogul and fascism enthusiast posted “Fake news” Wednesday afternoon, in response to a Politico article saying that Musk is on the outs with the Trump administration following his disastrous intervention in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election, which saw Brad Schimel, who received more than $25 million from Musk, lose handily.

Shortly after the loss was announced, Musk didn’t cry fraud but instead claimed that he didn’t expect Schimel to win and that the real victory was a voter ID law being enshrined in Wisconsin’s state Constitution. But the alarmed reactions from Republicans both in the state and around the country suggest otherwise, and they now fear similar bloodbaths in the 2026 midterms and beyond.

Democrats, meanwhile, rallied behind the news, with DNC Chair Ken Martin saying, “We should put Elon Musk into every state” and Wisconsin Democratic Party chief Ben Wikler urging Musk to stay in the Trump administration and keep talking.

“When Elon Musk comes to town, Republicans should flee in panic,” Wikler added.

On Thursday morning, Vice President JD Vance told Fox News that “DOGE has got a lot of work to do, and yeah, that work is going to continue after Elon leaves, but fundamentally, Elon is going to remain a friend and an adviser of both me and the president,” referring to Musk’s efforts to overhaul the federal government.

Musk’s time in the federal government doesn’t appear to be ending, at least in the short term, but whether he’ll continue to get involved in elections remains to be seen. Democrats are hoping he does, much as he did in Wisconsin, while the GOP fears that the world’s richest man is now more of a liability than an asset.