Trump Decides to Punish Rural America With Slower Internet

Trump thinks providing poor and rural Americans with high-speed internet is “racist” and “woke.” 

The president has decided to end the Digital Equity Act, Biden-era legislation that aims to expand high-speed internet across the country. 

“I have spoken with my wonderful Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, and we agree that the Biden/Harris so-called ‘Digital Equity Act’ is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Thursday. “No more woke handouts based on race! The Digital Equity Program is a RACIST and ILLEGAL $2.5 BILLION DOLLAR giveaway. I am ending this IMMEDIATELY, and saving Taxpayers BILLIONS OF DOLLARS!”

The Act does not explicitly mention race. All it says is that people can’t be blocked from using the Act “on the basis of actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, or disability.”  This language is straight from the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

The law provided many red states with grants to create and implement plans to make internet access more accessible. These plans have already been approved in conservative states like Indiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, and Kansas.

Internet access is a massive barrier to education, opportunity, and upward mobility. This legislation attempted to remedy that for people everywhere, especially in regions that went heavily for Trump. How is that a racist, woke handout?

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers faced a crowd of opposition while attempting to arrest a mother clinging to her baby on the streets of Worcester, Massachusetts, Thursday morning.

The brazen arrest, in which ICE agents were swarmed by close to 25 onlookers demanding a warrant and identification, was captured on video. Agents attempted to control the crowd as they formed a “human ring” around the ICE vehicle holding the detained woman. Local police were called to the scene amid the chaos.

“The crowd was unruly,” police said in a statement. They claimed that some individuals “put their hands on federal agents and Worcester officers.”

The woman’s daughter, a 16-year-old, was left holding her baby sister and stood in front of the agents’ car at one point, trying to block it. She allegedly kicked the car after handing the baby to someone else, and now faces four criminal charges, including reckless endangerment of a child, disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest.

Also arrested was a Worcester School Committee candidate, Ashley Spring, who allegedly threw an unknown liquid substance on police officers and pushed them while they tried to arrest the 16-year-old.

Worcester City Councilor Etel Haxhiaj was among the residents who protested the arrest.

“As an elected official, it is my obligation to stand up for my constituents,” Haxhiaj said in a statement. “The way immigrants in Worcester and across the Commonwealth are being targeted and terrorized by this federal administration for deportation is absolutely unconstitutional.”

It’s only the latest brazen action from immigration agents attempting a deportation arrest. The Trump administration’s immigration officers have tried to detain other immigrants in the street without warning, identification, or the production of a warrant. Last month, in another Massachusetts arrest, ICE agents smashed a car window to detain an immigrant with no criminal record.

Not even people on Donald Trump’s side think that his trade negotiations with the United Kingdom have gone well.

Conservative radio show host and far-right influencer Erick Erickson blasted the Trump administration’s deal with one its longest and strongest international allies Thursday, likening the minimum rate tariff to permanent taxes on the American people.

“It’s actually a pretty shitty deal with the UK,” wrote Erickson on X. “First, they told us the 10 [percent] tariff was just a baseline for negotiations to get to free trade deals. Now we’re being told the 10 [percent] tariff is for keeps.

“That’s just a tax on the American people,” he noted.

The U.K. deal—announced Thursday—was the first handshake that Trump had secured since announcing his sweeping tariff plans last month. But even the two countries’ “special relationship” (per deceased British Prime Minister Winston Churchill) could not spare the U.K. from a seemingly permanent 10 percent baseline tariff.

“Under the deal, the U.K. can export 100,000 vehicles each year at a 10 percent rate, with any additional vehicles facing 25 percent duties. British steelmakers and the aluminum industry will be able to export tariff-free, down from the 25 percent rate that the U.S. imposed in February,” reported NBC News.

The 10 percent hike is just the tip of the iceberg, according to Trump, who called it a “low number” for future deals.

“They made a good deal,” he continued. “Some will be much higher because they have massive trade surpluses.”

Trump has argued that tariffs are the best solution to closing the country’s trade deficits, which he has incorrectly likened to taxpayer-backed “subsidies” for other nations. He has claimed that without tariffs, the U.S. is transferring wealth to other countries while receiving nothing in exchange. He has also pitched that hiking tariffs on other nations would bring jobs and manufacturing opportunities back to American shores, but economists don’t agree with either point.

Instead, droves of financial and economic experts have insisted that tariffs on other nations will only serve to harm America and its markets, making products more expensive stateside and making American consumers less likely to spend their money (something that Trump doesn’t seem to have any problem with, actually). The Harvard Kennedy Business School even floated in April that America’s trade deficit basically doesn’t matter, writing that “Americans earn more from, or earn just about as much from, their total investments abroad as foreigners earn in the United States.”

“So if you look historically, we have felt no additional pressure about sustainability of our position,” the school wrote in an early stage tariff explainer. “As long as we borrow the money and use it productively to increase investment in the United States, it is eminently sustainable, as with any investment.”

The president’s tariff shenanigans have not boded well for his popularity. The Cook Political Report observed Wednesday that Trump’s net job approval rating had plummeted since just April 15, dropping by seven points from -3.9 percent to -10.7 percent.

An ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll published last month found that Trump’s approval rating had sunk to 39 percent—a 6 percent drop from February—marking the lowest first-100-day rating of a president since modern polling began roughly 80 years ago.

And an April report by the Conference Board found that its consumer confidence index had fallen by 7.9 points, bringing overall U.S. consumer confidence to 86 points. Consumer futures were brought to a 13-year low, with outlooks on the economy dropping by 12.5 points to 54.5 points—well below the threshold of 80 that “usually signals a recession ahead,” according to the Conference Board.

The root cause of the instability was “high financial market volatility in April” that hit American consumers’ stock portfolios and retirement savings hard and fast, per the Conference Board’s report. That was almost singularly due to Trump’s machinations in the White House, which included releasing (and stalling) a sweeping and vindictive tariff proposal plan that economists observed (and the White House eventually confirmed) was founded on bad math.

The Trump administration is treating Afrikaners, white descendants of mainly Dutch colonizers in South Africa, as “refugees” and plans to bring them to the United States next week, according to The New York Times.

Trump is even planning on a welcome delegation of government officials to greet the first 54 people as they arrive at Dulles Airport near Washington, D.C., on Monday.

The 54 Afrikaners were given priority status, meaning they waited no more than three months for their resettlement. Many refugees from other countries are forced to wait 18 to 24 months, and sometimes even years, for their resettlement assignment. This comes as Trump banned virtually all other refugees on his first day in office.

“We are profoundly disturbed that the administration has slammed the door in the face of thousands of other refugees approved by D.H.S. months ago, notwithstanding courts ordering the White House to let many of them in,” Mark Hetfield, president of a Jewish resettlement organization, told the Times. “That’s just not right.”

Afrikaners in South Africa claim that they are being racially discriminated against, that they can’t get jobs and don’t feel safe with the current government and its progressive, redistributive policies. The South African government currently has a program that allows it to seize land from Afrikaners without providing compensation—the very same thing white colonizers did when they arrived, forcing Black South Africans from their land for nothing and relegating them to second- and even third-class citizenship.

Some feel as if the Afrikaners are simply using the reversal of the apartheid-era systems that they’ve benefited from for generations as justification for their resettlement in the U.S., casting themselves as victims in a situation where they’ve historically been the victimizers.

“Historically, in fact, farmers have been quite oppressed in South Africa, but those are Black farmers. Those are the people whose land was alienated over centuries of colonization and who, in many cases, worked as really poorly remunerated menial laborers in horrific conditions on white-owned farms,” said Yale professor Daniel Magaziner. “And so in many ways, what [Trump is] doing is he is implicitly, not explicitly, but implicitly downplaying the reality of South African history.”

“You do have the reality that a lot of Black South Africans are still without any wealth, are still in very deep poverty and saying, hey, since the end of apartheid, those scales have not been equaled,” said John Eligon, The New York Times’ Johannesburg bureau chief.

Some on the Black South African left have a sharper view of the situation.

“Due to global and local economic processes, the rich continue to get richer, and the poor get poorer. Most of the white—of the farmland, more than 70 percent of it is owned by white farmers. So, basically, they are sitting pretty,” said activist Trevor Nganwe. “You know, there’s a saying, ‘The guilty are afraid.’ Perhaps they know that this unjust situation, where a tiny minority enjoys most of the country’s wealth and resources, is not tenable, and sooner or later, it will have to end.”

The influence of Elon Musk, who grew up under the benefits of apartheid in South Africa, cannot be understated. In March, he replied “absolutely!” to a post that incorrectly claimed that white Afrikaners are facing genocide—a deeply ironic statement given the historical context of the country.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is lying about the qualifications of his pick for surgeon general.

During an appearance on Fox News Thursday night, Kennedy attempted to defend his choice of Casey Means, a wellness influencer and author who has no active medical license and never completed her physician residency. But, as is typical for the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, in lieu of evidence, Kennedy just made stuff up.

“She was the top of her med—the very top of her medical class at Stanford,” Kennedy said.

“She is in every—during her residency, she won every award that she could win. She walked away from traditional medicine because she was not curing patients. She couldn’t get anybody within her profession to look at the nutrition contributions to illness,” Kennedy said.

But it would’ve been impossible for Means to be at the top of her class at the Stanford School of Medicine, because students aren’t actually ranked there. A spokesperson from the school told CNN’s Daniel Dale that medical students are graded on a pass-fail system.

Kennedy’s claim that Means quit her residency to walk away from traditional medicine is also untrue.

Dr. Paul Flint, a former chair of otolaryngology/head and neck surgery at Oregon Health and Science University, who helped oversee Means during her five-year residency program, provided a completely different explanation for why she had walked away from it after four and a half years.

“She wasn’t even sure she wanted to be in medicine. She wanted to do something different. She wanted to resign,” Flint told the Los Angeles Times.

Means was under so much anxiety that she was given three months paid time off. “She did that, came back and decided she wanted to leave the program. She did not like that level of stress,” Flint said.

Flint said there was “a lot of anxiety around” being a surgeon. “You become much more responsible the more senior you get,” he explained. Now Means may become the surgeon general, the highest-ranking doctor in the country. Or in her case, the highest ranking non-practicing “doctor.”

Kennedy argued in a post on X Thursday that Means’s lack of qualifications were exactly what made her such a great fit with his Make America Healthy Again agenda. No, seriously.

“The attacks that Casey is unqualified because she left the medical system completely miss the point of what we are trying to accomplish with MAHA. Casey is the perfect choice for Surgeon General precisely because she left the traditional medical system—not in spite of it,” he wrote.

Donald Trump has decided to appoint one of his favorite Fox News hosts, Jeanine Pirro, as interim U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., and she has quite a history.

Pirro has spent the last two decades with the conservative TV network as a legal analyst and host of the weekend show Justice With Judge Jeanine, and later co-host of The Five. During that time, she has shared some outrageous statements and views, including election denialism.

During Trump’s first term, Pirro said that the FBI and Justice Department were full “of individuals who should not just be fired but who need to be taken out in handcuffs.” She has not held back in sycophantic praise of the president, calling Trump “a nonstop, never-give-up, no-holds-barred human version of the speed of light.” Pirro also spoke onstage at a campaign rally for Trump, seemingly violating network policy (without getting punished).

On MSNBC Thursday night, Chris Hayes aired a montage of some of Pirro’s craziest takes, including how she’d make a deal with the devil to get opposition research on an opponent.

Pirro is only getting the job because Trump’s previous pick, Ed Martin, faced too much Republican opposition in the Senate over his connections to the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, as well as his own election denialism. Martin also used his brief time as acting U.S. attorney to make legal threats against everyone from Georgetown University to Democratic members of Congress.

What will Pirro do as the top federal prosecutor in the nation’s Capitol? Her rhetoric as a TV host rivals Martin’s insane background, and it remains to be seen how she’ll handle the position—or even if the Senate decides to confirm her at all.

Trump is lowering his tariffs on China before he even sits down at the negotiating table.

“CHINA SHOULD OPEN UP ITS MARKET TO USA — WOULD BE SO GOOD FOR THEM!!!” he posted on Truth Social Friday morning. “CLOSED MARKETS DON’T WORK ANYMORE!!!”

“80% Tariff on China seems right! Up to Scott B.,” he posted just minutes later, referring to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Eighty percent tariffs is still a humongous number for taxes on imports, but it is a significant decrease from Trump’s current 145 percent tariffs on the country.

The unprompted concession suggests that Trump does not have as much leverage with China—which accounts for $143.5 billion in U.S. exports and $438.9 billion in U.S. imports—as he thinks he does. Or at least he doesn’t have as much leverage as he wants us to think he does.

Bessent and U.S. trade representative Jameson Greer are set to meet with Chinese officials in Switzerland this weekend to discuss a potential trade deal.

Vice President JD Vance has his own particularly bad explanation for Donald Trump’s already ridiculous way of dismissing the rising prices of consumer goods.

In an interview on Fox News Thursday, host Martha MacCallum asked Vance what he thought about the president’s strange warning that American children might need to only have two dolls, instead of 30, in the face of his sweeping reciprocal tariff policy.

“Do you tell the people of this country that you need to make some sacrifices in order to reorganize this bad trade relationship?” MacCallum asked.

“Well, I think the president’s point here is that yeah, we do need to become more self-reliant, and that’s not gonna happen overnight, and it’s not always gonna be easy, Martha,” Vance replied.

“But what I’d ask people is not whether they want two dolls, or five dolls, or 20 dolls for their kids, I’d ask American moms and dads, ‘Would you like to be able to go into a pharmacy and know that the drugs your kids need are actually available to you as an American parent?’” Vance continued.

“Would you like to—God forbid—if your country goes to a war, and your son or daughter are sent off to fight, would you like to know that the weapons that they have are good American-made stuff, not made by a foreign adversary?” he said.

But Vance’s weird pivot to fearmongering about war legitimately makes no sense. America is already the world’s largest arms exporter, accounting for a whopping 43 percent of global weapons exports between 2020 and 2024, according to CNN. Trump’s past efforts to invest in weapons production benefited defense contractors more than soldiers.

As for Vance’s remark about pharmacies, it’s not evident that Trump’s tariffs will actually help increase access to drugs. Trump has said that he plans to make a decision on pharmaceutical tariffs within the next two weeks, but the Trump administration’s efforts to boost the domestic manufacturing of medicines may come at a cost to the people who need them, while U.S. manufacturing struggles to meet demand. Ahead of Trump’s announcement, imports of pharmaceuticals have seen a significant spike.

One by one, different members of the Trump administration have attempted to make sense of the president’s weird “dolls” comment. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller argued that Trump wanted a higher degree of quality for American-made goods, while in the same breath promising that the president would strip the very regulations that ensure that quality in an effort to make production less expensive. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent insisted that a little pain now would lead little girls to a “better life,” while sidestepping concerns that economic damage Trump was threatening now could last generations.

President Trump’s acting FEMA chief was fired Thursday for apparently wanting the agency to continue functioning.

On Wednesday, Cameron Hamilton was asked at a congressional hearing what he thought about the Trump administration’s reported plans to get rid of the emergency management agency. His answer was probably the reason why he was axed.

“I do not believe it is in the best interests of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency,” Hamilton said to members of Congress, adding that he wasn’t in a position to decide the agency’s future.

Trump has said on multiple occasions that he wants to get rid of FEMA, including days after he was sworn in as president while Los Angeles County was struggling to cope with massive wildfires.

“I like, frankly, the concept when North Carolina gets hit, the governor takes care of it. When Florida gets hit, the governor takes care of it. Meaning the state takes care of it,” Trump said at the time. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who is in charge of overseeing FEMA, has also called for eliminating FEMA.

“The president has indicated he wants to eliminate FEMA as it exists today, and to have states have more control over their emergency management response,” Noem said this week to Congress. “He wants to empower local governments and support them and how they respond to their people.”

The White House has already slashed funding for natural disaster recovery and preparedness, putting the country at serious risk. Hurricane season is only weeks away with the start of summer, and the southeastern U.S. is still recovering from Hurricanes Helene and Milton. The president’s budget proposal calls for cutting $646 million to FEMA.

The Trump administration is already trying to deny FEMA relief on a selective basis. The White House was found to have violated a court order by withholding FEMA relief to at least 19 states, all of whom have Democratic attorneys general. States that were particularly affected were those with immigration policies conflicting with Trump’s priorities.

Hamilton’s firing is a bad sign for the future of FEMA, and an even worse sign for disaster response in the U.S. The past few decades have seen some big government mistakes in disaster relief, notably Hurricane Katrina in 2005 in Louisiana and Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico during during Trump’s first term eight years ago. Now, we’re about to see what will happen after massive cuts to emergency disaster relief.

Within just a few hours of white smoke rising out of the Vatican, MAGA is already fuming over the new pope.

Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected the new leader of the Catholic Church Thursday, becoming the first American pontiff. But like any American, Pope Leo XIV seems to have his own opinions about President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. (Spoiler alert: He doesn’t seem like a fan!)

Charlie Kirk, the Christian nationalist founder of Turning Point USA, started out backing Prevost’s selection, pointing to his apparent Republican voting record, but seemed to descend into doubt.

In a video posted to X, Kirk initially appeared nonplussed as he aired his concerns about Pope Leo’s “not-so-great tweets.” The right-wing fanatic was referring to several old reposts by an X account associated with the name Robert Prevost, which has been confirmed as belonging to the new pope. 

Kirk mused that perhaps an American pope had been selected because “they want a voice that is also for the opening of American borders while we have President Trump!”

“God Save the Church,” Jack Posobiec, the pitiable MAGA activist covering the papal conclave for The Charlie Kirk Show, wrote in a post on X.

The “End Wokeness” account on X posted screenshots of reposts from Prevost’s account, including posts that criticized Trump’s first-term immigration polices, one that advocated for gun reform, and another that advocated to “end racism in our hearts and in society,” in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

While Kirk seemed less certain about what exactly Pope Leo’s appointment meant for the future, far-right internet troll Laura Loomer was decidedly more … decided. “Just another Marxist puppet in the Vatican,” she wrote in a post on X. “Catholics don’t have anything good to look forward to.”

Loomer spread her vitriol across several posts about the new pope’s supposed online activity. “The new Pope once retweeted a post about how we need to keep praying for career criminal & drug addict George Floyd,” she wrote in another post. “The tweet said, ‘May all hatred, violence and prejudice be eradicated.’ What prejudice? Is that another way to spell FENTANYL OVERDOSE? MARXIST POPE!”

In another post, she simply wrote, “WOKE MARXIST POPE.”

This is the same woman who met with the president last month to advise that he oust multiple staffers on his National Security Council—and he did.  

Other MAGA voices weren’t quite as disturbed—even the really far-right ones. Ryan Girdusky, a political consultant who previously wrote for notorious neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, counseled caution, in a post on X. 

“Trying to fit the ideology of the Pope in the context of American politics is a fruitless endeavor,” he wrote. “If you’re Catholic, pray that he’s a good steward of the Church and defends the throne of Christ as the successor of Peter.”

This story has been updated.