Surprising GOP Senator Breaks With Trump Over Tariffs

Senator Ted Cruz apparently has a limit on what he will tolerate from President Trump, and tariffs cross it.

The Trump sycophant told Fox Business’s Larry Kudlow Thursday that he didn’t think the president’s insane tariffs were a good idea, calling them “a tax on consumers.”

“I’m not a fan of jacking up taxes on American consumers,” Cruz said. “So my hope is these tariffs are short-lived and they serve as leverage to lower tariffs across the globe.

“Look, I think it is a mistake to assume that we will have high tariffs in perpetuity. I don’t think that would be good economic policy,” Cruz added. “I am not a fan of tariffs.”

Cruz qualified his comments, saying that if the tariffs cause trading partners to “dramatically reduce the tariffs they charge on U.S. goods, and services, and the consequence of that is the U.S. government dramatically cuts the tariffs that were announced yesterday, that would be a great outcome.

“But if the result is our trading partners jack up their tariffs and we have high tariffs everywhere, I think that is a bad outcome for America,” said the Texas senator.

Cruz’s mild criticism shows that even he sees the danger in blowing up the economy over a half-baked idea. Ever since his loss to Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary, Cruz has almost slavishly supported the president, even after Trump called his wife ugly and linked Cruz’s father to the John F. Kennedy assassination. But the Texas senator knows that tariffs will hurt his constituents, who depend on trade with Mexico, living in a border state. The question is whether he and his fellow Republicans are prepared to take legislative action over it.

Republicans aren’t happy about Donald Trump’s tariffs tanking the stock market.

In an appearance on Fox Business Friday, Senator Ron Johnson said he was worried about the direction the market was headed, after Trump’s announcement of sweeping “reciprocal tariffs” caused the Dow Jones Industrial Average to experience its biggest wipeout since 2020.

“From my standpoint, I’m certainly concerned about what’s happening right now in the markets, and I hope the administration is looking at it as well,” Johnson said.

Johnson noted that while Trump was convinced that tariffs were the answer to the country’s economic woes, “what’s also indisputable is the markets are down about 8 percent in just two days.

“I’m getting all kinds of reactions from businesses, farmers in Wisconsin that are highly concerned about what’s happening. So, those are the facts; all I can really do is report the reality to the administration, let them know how these actions are impacting my constituents,” he said.

Johnson said Trump’s tariff policy was a “bold, risky move.” Meanwhile, analysts at JP Morgan have raised their recession forecasts for the next year from 40 percent to 60 percent.

Unfortunately for the Wisconsin Republican, Trump seemed completely unbothered by the major stock market tumble.

“I think it’s going very well,” the president told reporters Thursday. “It was an operation like when a patient gets operated on, and it’s a big thing. I said this would be exactly the way it is.

“The markets are going to boom, the stock is going to boom, the country is going to boom, and the rest of the world wants to see, is there any way they can make a deal?” Trump added.

While White House aides have insisted that the administration is not open to negotiating on tariff rates, Trump has begun signaling that he is willing to cut deals, according to CNBC.

Trump’s new tariff policy is so unpopular in the Senate that it’s actually bringing together Democrats and Republicans.

On Wednesday night, the Senate passed a rare bipartisan rebuke of Trump, with four Republican senators joining the Democrats to approve a resolution that would limit the president’s ability to impose tariffs on Canada.

Senator Rand Paul appeared on Fox News Wednesday beside Democratic Senator Tim Kaine to criticize Trump’s tariffs, specifically the 25 percent tariff imposed on imports from Canada.

“Trade is proportional to wealth. The last 70 years of international trade has been an exponential curve upward, and the last 70 years of prosperity has been upward also,” the Kentucky Republican said. “We are richer because of trade with Canada, and so is Canada.”

Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana told CNN’s Manu Raju Wednesday that he was concerned about Trump’s decision to play the long game.

“In the long run, we’re all dead. Short run matters too,” Kennedy said. “Nobody knows what the impact of these tariffs is going to be on the economy.”

Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina warned that the economic pain threshold wasn’t the same for everyone. “Anyone who says there may be a little bit of pain before we get things right, needs to talk to my farmers who are one crop away from bankruptcy,” Tillis said.

On Thursday, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley co-sponsored a bill with Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat, that would allow Congress to review Trump’s tariffs. If passed, the Trade Review Act of 2025 would require Trump to give Congress 48 hours notice of tariffs he planned to impose and provide a 60-day window for Congress to approve the tariff or else have it scrapped.

In a post on X Thursday, Grassley insisted that his support of the bill was not a response to Trump’s tariffs. “If u r trying to make the Trade Review Act about current events/Trump tariffs U R MISSING THE MARK I’ve long expressed my view that congress has delegated too much authority on trade to the executive branch under Republican & Democrat presidents,” he wrote.

Donald Trump will be fine dining Friday, instead of attending a ceremony for four fallen U.S. soldiers.

The commander in chief chose to attend the LIV Golf dinner reception in Florida Thursday night, financed by the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, flying over Delaware’s Dover Air Force base where four service members who died on training grounds in a Lithuanian swamp were being honored.

Those soldiers include 25-year-old Sergeant Jose Duenez Jr. of Joliet, Illinois; 25-year-old Sergeant Edvin F. Franco of Glendale, California; 21-year-old Private First Class Dante D. Taitano of Dededo, Guam; and 28-year-old Staff Sergeant Troy S. Knutson-Collins of Battle Creek, Michigan.

The M88 Hercules armored recovery vehicle the team had been using was discovered 16 feet underground, a day after the soldiers went missing, but the massive machinery took days to unearth in its entirety. The last soldier’s body was recovered Tuesday, capping a weeklong search by hundreds of personnel in the U.S. military and Lithuania’s emergency services.

The soldiers were honored during a dignified departure ceremony in Lithuania attended by Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda. Trump’s decision to not attend the arrival ceremony suggests that the U.S. military leader cares less about America’s armed forces than the leaders of foreign countries.

Meanwhile, this very important dinner kicks off a three-day LIV Golf tournament hosted at Trump National Doral Golf Club.

Trump has had a bad history with honoring the Army’s dead. In 2020, HuffPost reported that Trump stopped attending dignified transfers after the father of slain Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens refused to meet or shake Trump’s hand. Owens died during a controversial raid on Yemen that Trump greenlit just one week into his first term.

“I told them I don’t want to meet the president,” Bill Owens told the Miami Herald at the time. Owens would go on to accuse Trump of trying to “hide behind my son’s death” in order to avoid an investigation into the incident.

But it’s possible that the deceased servicemen don’t matter at all to Trump. Last week, the president was caught completely in the dark more than 24 hours after the soldiers first went missing.

At an Oval Office news briefing, Trump casually admitted that he was not aware that the U.S. army members had disappeared during a training exercise in Lithuania.

“Have you been briefed about the soldiers in Lithuania who are missing?” a reporter asked.

“No, I haven’t,” Trump said, failing to offer the soldiers or their families any well wishes.

Trump is slated to visit Saudi Arabia in the coming weeks, marking his first trip abroad since reentering the White House, reported The Wall Street Journal. Saudi Arabia is currently the center of peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.

The Trump administration is attempting to use the positive jobs report from March to assuage widespread economic panic over the unprecedented trade war the president launched on Wednesday.

“Today’s jobs report shows the private sector is roaring back under President Donald J. Trump—smashing expectations for the second straight month as the Golden Age of America is well on its way,” the White House announced in a press release emailed to reporters with the subject line “JOBS, JOBS, JOBS.” “In March, the U.S. added 228,000 jobs—nearly 100,000 more jobs than economists predicted and the fourth-highest month for private payroll growth in the past two years.… The report highlights a resilient labor market as companies aggressively onshore jobs amid President Trump’s bold trade and economic agenda.”

The administration’s rhetoric is the living embodiment of the “This is fine” burning-house meme. It’s baffling to watch it try to fool Americans with this faux excitement over a jobs report as the stock market craters, panic grows, and tariff-related layoffs begin. How can manufacturers hire more, how can consumers continue to spend and invest when everything across the board becomes more expensive?

“GREAT JOBS NUMBERS, FAR BETTER THAN EXPECTED. IT’S ALREADY WORKING,” the president wrote on X, referring to his massive tariffs on virtually every U.S. trading parter. “HANK TOUGH, WE CAN’T LOSE.” (Trump later changed his misspell from ‘Hank” to “Hang.”)

“GREAT NEWS! The economy is starting to roar with a strong 228,000 jobs added in the month of March—well ahead of the market’s expectation,” wrote press secretary Karoline Leavitt. “There was also a sharp increase in transportation, construction, and warehousing employment. The President’s push to onshore jobs here in the United States is working. The Golden Age of America is on its way!”

These are insane messages to broadcast to the country as fears of stagflation set in. Even Trump’s cheerleaders at Fox Business weren’t buying the fake joy over last month’s jobs numbers.

“These numbers aren’t gonna make any difference at all,” one host said plainly. “What the market is worried about is what’s gonna happen in the future. Who’s gonna hire now in this uncertain environment? I think people are very very concerned, and that’s why … we need to get to work, we need to act on negotiating now, we need to get tax cuts now, we need to get deregulation now before this gets out of control the other way.”

“We want as quick a deal on these tariffs as soon as possible because every country would benefit,” another host chimed in. But Trump himself has made it crystal clear that there will be no deal—or, for that matter, negotiations. These tariffs are final, and help is not on the way.

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.

Judge James Boasberg thinks Stephen Miller, Tom Homan, and the rest of the Trump administration “acted in bad faith” when they invoked the Alien Enemies Act to extrajudicially deport 200 Venezuelan men to a megaprison in El Salvador on March 15.

Judge Boasberg—whose restraining order to halt the deportation plans was defied by the administration—noted that he is considering contempt for the administration’s actions. And if he does, he wants to know who to blame.

“If I don’t agree, I don’t find your legal arguments convincing, and I believe there is probable cause to find contempt, what I’m asking is how—how should I determine who [is at fault]?” Judge Boasberg raised, wanting to know who exactly decided to disobey his order to turn planes carrying deportees around. The Trump administration insists that it somehow complied with the order.

“It seems to me, there is a fair likelihood that that is not correct,” Judge Boasberg responded. “In fact, the government acted in bad faith throughout that day. You really believed everything you did that day was legal and could survive a court challenge? I can’t believe you ever would have operated in the way you did.

“Why wouldn’t the prudent thing be to say, ‘Let’s slow down here. Let’s see what the judge says. He’s already enjoined the removal of five people; certainly in the realm of possibility that he would enjoin further removal. Let’s see what he says, and if he doesn’t enjoin it, we can go ahead. But surely better to be safe than risk violating the order,’” Boasberg asked the Justice Department lawyers.

The Justice Department also invoked the state secrets privilege to avoid having to give Judge Boasberg any more information about the deportation flights, which Boasberg called “pretty sketchy-looking.” The Justice Department insisted that revealing the information could have “diplomatic consequences.”

“Like what?” Judge Boasberg replied, noting that he has discussed confidential matters in closed sessions before.

The Trump administration insists that all 200 of these men are dangerous, hardened members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, hence the wartime Alien Enemies Act. This is completely false. Now innocent people are sitting in one of the most brutal prisons in the world.

Judge Boasberg plans to issue a ruling this week.