GOP Senator Gets Howard Lutnick to Admit Insane Logic on Trump Tariffs

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the architect behind Donald Trump’s chaotic tariff policy, admitted in a Senate hearing Wednesday that there’s no real logic in how the trade talks are being conducted.

In a damning line of questioning, Republican Senator John Kennedy exposed that the Trump administration doesn’t even have a clear goal in mind, in terms of what it wants to see from other countries in the trade talks.

“If Vietnam, for example, came to you tomorrow and said, ‘OK, Mr. Secretary, you win. We’re gonna remove all tariffs and all trade barriers. Would the U.S. please do the same?’ Would you accept that deal?” Kennedy asked Lutnick.

“Absolutely not,” Lutnick quickly replied. “That would be the silliest thing we could do.”

“Vietnam has $125 billion exports to us,” he continued, his voice rising. “It imports from us $12.5 million. And you’re thinking, Vietnam exports $125 billion? But where do they get it from? They buy $90 billion from China, then they mark it up and send it to us. It’s just a pathway from China to us.”

“So you wouldn’t accept that deal?” Kennedy pressed.

“No, it’s a terrible deal. We’re the one with the money,” Lutnick said.

“What’s the purpose of reciprocity then?” Kennedy asked, surprised by Lutnick’s confession. “Is reciprocity not one of your goals? Are you telling the president that we shouldn’t seek reciprocity? If that’s what you’re telling me, why are you trying to do these trade deals?”

“What do we want?” Lunick asked in response, trying to answer Kennedy’s question as if he had never thought about it before. “We want to encourage Vietnam to get back to producing products they’re great at producing.”

“But I want to get back to reciprocity,” Kennedy pushed. “You just said you don’t believe in, you don’t accept reciprocity as a goal. What are you negotiating in these trade deals?”

“Why would we open our bank account and their bank account when ours is 10 times bigger?”

“Why are you negotiating trade deals? You’re trying to get other countries to lower their tariffs and trade barriers in return for us lowering ours. That’s called reciprocity,” Kennedy repeated, trying to explain to Trump’s commerce secretary the administration’s own talking point.

“Of course,” Lutnick replied.

“So are you or are you not seeking reciprocity in these trade deals?”

Kennedy’s line of questioning continued for a bit longer, until Lutnick said the Trump administration would “consider” a deal from Vietnam if they said they’d stop purchasing products from China.

The pivot is certainly different from what Trump said in April when he announced his tariffs on countries around the world (as well as uninhabited islands near Africa). At the time, Trump called his tariffs “reciprocal” and said they would remain in place until other countries remove their trade barriers for the U.S. Now it seems Trump’s logic has changed entirely—if there is any logic at all.

Chaos in the White House is preventing federal disaster relief from reaching its recipients, sparking fears that the government may face more delays and lapses during the upcoming hurricane season.

The Trump administration issued millions of dollars in relief to Virginia in early April after the state was battered by severe winter storms, but in doing so, the West Wing failed to alert a key player responsible for actually distributing the relief: the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Unidentified FEMA officials told CNN Wednesday that they only knew of the order thanks to newspaper headlines. Direct and official communication from the White House, according to the sources, did not reach FEMA for another four days. That left Old Dominion communities waiting an extra week for direly needed assistance.

Officials at FEMA claim that this is just one instance in a troubling pattern of miscommunication between the disaster relief agency and the Trump administration.

Typically, FEMA advises the White House as to which sites around the nation require federal assistance. That’s been true for practically every other administration, as well as Donald Trump’s first term. But since the MAGA leader has returned to the Oval Office, that relationship has been flipped.

“This is more than just who gets to tell who,” one longtime FEMA official told CNN. “There are regulatory timelines, especially for individual assistance, that are in play, and these delays do affect the delivery of assistance. It is very frustrating to the state and local partners because they think we should be doing things, but without the paperwork we cannot execute on the declaration.”

A similar slipup happened in early May, when the Trump administration failed to notify FEMA officials that it had reversed course on Arkansas’s aid request, approving distribution to the state. That stalled the process for an additional five days.

“A five-day lag is unheard of, as it prevents FEMA from fulfilling its statutory roles,” another longtime FEMA official told CNN. “It feels like a way to make it look like FEMA is being slow when we’re not yet authorized to act.”

Exactly who receives FEMA aid—and when they receive it—is no longer a guarantee under Trump’s direction.

In April, FEMA rejected North Carolina’s application for an emergency aid extension as the state grappled with recovery efforts in the wake of Hurricane Helene, a Category 4 storm that killed 250 people in September. It was the deadliest hurricane in state history.

Even Trump’s voting base has been left in the lurch. Months into his presidency, residents of devastated communities are still begging the president to send relief.

Since Helene, Trump and his allies have spread unfounded conspiracies that the lead response agency had run out of money and that the Biden administration had diverted funds from FEMA to assist undocumented immigrants enter the country. (FEMA administrators have fervently and repeatedly denied this.) Conservatives, at the time of the storm, claimed that working with the Biden White House to expedite disaster relief “seemed political” and even conspiratorially suggested that the hurricanes were a government manipulation.

Days after his inauguration, Trump pitched that it would be better to do away with FEMA altogether, in favor of handing the money directly to the states, though that plan never seemed to gain traction.

Since then, Trump has actively worked to dismantle the agency. The administration has blocked states across the nation, including California and Michigan, from accessing preapproved relief. A coalition of Democratic-led states have sued the federal government, claiming that “hundreds of millions of dollars in FEMA grants” are still inaccessible.

The Congressional Budget Office’s most recent score of President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act is the worst one to date.

The agency estimates the legislation would add $2.4 trillion to the national deficit over the next 10 years. Most of that deficit would happen “in the first four years when it has the most tax cuts,” wrote PBS NewsHour’s Lisa Desjardins

The bill is expected to cut $1.3 trillion in spending, but also cut $3.7 trillion in total revenue, leading to the massive deficit. (The report also estimates that 10.9 million people will lose their health care by 2034 because of cuts to Medicare and the Affordable Care Act.)

This report will make it even more difficult to get this bill through the Senate, as it gives Democrats, Elon Musk, and the few actual fiscal conservatives left in the GOP even more fodder for their criticism and opposition to the bill.

MAGA Republicans backing the bill continue to claim that the CBO is biased, rather than make any concessions, and it appears that the GOP will try to force the bill through regardless.

At its core, the OBBBA is a classic Republican budget bill that provides tax breaks for wealthy people and corporations while making unprecedented cuts to Medicaid and food stamps. For it to cut so much from social programs only to saddle the country with trillions of dollars in debt is unfortunately ironic, and will hurt poor, working Americans more than anyone else. This recent CBO report only reinforces that.

The Democratic candidate in a South Carolina special election swept to a landslide victory Tuesday night, becoming the youngest person elected to the state legislature in nearly a decade.

Keishan Scott, 24, was elected to the state House to represent South Carolina’s 50th district, which encompasses Lee County and parts of Kershaw and Sumter counties. He won just under 71 percent of the nearly 3,700 votes cast, beating his Republican opponent by about 41 percentage points.

It’s not entirely surprising that a Democrat won the district. Scott was running to replace Democratic Representative Will Wheeler, who shockingly announced his resignation in January right after winning a fifth term.

The big shock comes from how handily Scott beat his opponent. Wheeler ran unopposed in four of his five elections, but the one year he had a Republican opponent (2022), Wheeler won by about 20 points—half of Scott’s victory margin.

Kamala Harris won the district by only about five points in the November election, and Joe Biden won the district by 15 points in 2020.

Scott pledged to capitalize on his overwhelming support. “I can promise you that every day I go into the Statehouse, I will carry the people with me,” he said in a victory speech. “Because certainly, it’s about people more than politics.”

“Your vote of confidence, it means the world to me,” he added.

U.S. Representative Jim Clyburn, a fellow South Carolina Democrat, had endorsed Scott ahead of the race and stressed that the special election was a must-win for the liberal party.

Electing Scott “will be the beginning of a Democratic comeback here in South Carolina,” said Clyburn, whose endorsement was critical for turning around Biden’s struggling 2020 campaign. “Irrespective of where you live, how old you may be, whatever gender you may be, this is about the future of Democrats in South Carolina.”

Scott’s victory is a welcome morale boost for the state Democratic Party. Republicans currently hold a supermajority in the state House, with 88 seats to Democrats’ now 36.

Congressional Republicans are stuck between a rock and a hard place as their former financier, Elon Musk, threatens to use his gargantuan fortune to unseat anyone who supports the president’s “big, beautiful bill.”

Last month, Musk confessed in an interview with CBS that he believed Donald Trump’s spending package—which would add trillions to the national deficit in order to extend his 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy—was actually a bad idea. But the tech billionaire has become more brazen in his read of the bill in the weeks since he’s left the White House.

“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” Musk wrote Tuesday afternoon on X, the social media platform he owns. “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”

In a separate post, the world’s richest man—who had promised to bankroll Republican primaries mere months ago—made clear what he now planned to do with his cash.

“In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people,” wrote Musk.

The bill passed the House by a vote of 215–214, with two Republicans joining all Democrats in voting against it. Republicans plan to offset the expensive tax cut by slashing more than $800 billion from Medicaid. But Musk’s issue with Trump’s plan has little to do with slashing programs aimed at supporting and uplifting the most vulnerable Americans—instead, he condemns the bill because it would effectively undo his work atop the Department of Government Efficiency, which was tasked with paring down government spending.

Senator Rand Paul quote-tweeted Musk, arguing that Congress knows adding another $5 trillion to the national debt would be a “huge mistake.” Senators Ron Johnson, Rick Scott, and Mike Lee have also spoken out against the bill’s price tag. Senators Josh Hawley, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Joni Ernst have claimed that slashing Medicaid—the third rail of American politics—could prove to be a fatal political move. Senators John Curtis and Thom Tillis have drawn red pen under the bill’s elimination of green energy tax cuts.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene told NewsNation Tuesday that she agreed with Musk “to a certain extent,” hitching herself to the tech billionaire as another conservative who entered government because she was irate with Republicans.

“However, I don’t want to continue this government on a CR that’s funding Democrat and Biden policies and funding, and this bill was important to transition over to exactly what the American people voted for,” Greene said. The Georgia lawmaker further specified that she was wary of some of the inclusions tacked onto the bill, one of which would prevent states from drafting regulation around the artificial intelligence industry for the next decade.

“I think that’s pretty terrifying,” she told NewsNation. “We don’t know what AI is going to be capable of within one year; we don’t know what it will be capable of in five years, let alone 10 years.”

(Greene had admitted earlier Tuesday that she hadn’t actually read the bill before voting in favor of it.)

Representative Scott Perry also hailed Musk as “right to call out House leadership” over the bill. “We expect MASSIVE improvements from the Senate before it gets back to the House,” he wrote on X Tuesday. (Perry voted for the bill.)

Still, Republican leadership has continued to defend the spending bill.

“It’s very disappointing, OK?” House Speaker Mike Johnson told CNN, reacting to Musk’s threat. “I’ve come to consider Elon a good friend. But with all due respect, my friend Elon is terribly wrong about the One Big Beautiful Bill.”

The White House similarly brushed off Musk’s threat.

“The president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, during a press briefing Tuesday. “It doesn’t change the president’s opinion.”

Musk was Trump’s top financial backer in the 2024 election, spending at least $250 million in the final months of the president’s campaign after Trump was shot in July. Musk had also promised to funnel funds toward other Republicans, declaring in the wake of the November election that his super PACs would “play a significant role in primaries.” In the following months, Musk threatened to use his money to fund primary challengers to Trump’s agenda and go after Democrats, and that he would be preparing “for the midterms and any intermediate elections, as well as looking at elections at the district attorney level.”

Trump officials blocked the written analysis on an economic report because it predicted an increase in the farm goods trade deficit, a direct contradiction of his stated plans to reinvigorate domestic agriculture.

According to Politico, the Trump administration delayed the report itself by five days before releasing it with numbers that were the same as they were in the original unredacted report.

This is a quarterly report from the Agriculture Department that farm organizations, traders, and elected officials have relied on for years for information on the status of U.S. import and export markets. Now, the Trump administration is openly threatening government transparency because the report doesn’t fit the narrative of Trump’s tariffs somehow being a positive for our domestic production capabilities. A trade deficit clearly shows that we’re buying more than we’re selling on agricultural goods, and Trump blocking that information from the report, at least in part, proves he knows exactly how bad it is.

“The report was hung up in internal clearance process and was not finalized in time for its typical deadline,” said USDA spokesperson Alec Varsamis. “Given this report is not statutory as with many other reports USDA does, the Department is undergoing a review of all of its non-statutory reports, including this one, to determine next steps.”

It is unknown whether the full and unredacted analysis of the report will ever be released.

“Objectivity is really key here and the public depends on it,” former USDA chief economist Joe Glauber told Politico. “To lose that trust would be terrible.”

Donald Trump was up late at night whining about how hard it is to make a trade deal with China.

“I like President XI of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!!!” he posted at 2:17 a.m. on Wednesday.

The post came ahead of an expected call between Trump and the Chinese president on how to negotiate a deal on the two countries’ $600 billion trade relationship—which Trump threatened when he imposed tariffs.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also tried to bully China into quickly accepting a deal. “They either want to be a reliable partner to the rest of the world, or they don’t,” he warned on Tuesday.

But Trump’s own decision seems to be driving him crazy.

“The president is obsessed with having a call with Xi,” one person familiar with the trade talks told Politico, adding that the president seems convinced he can personally come up with a deal with Xi.

In May, the United States and China reached a preliminary trade deal—as Trump lowered his 145 percent tariffs to 30 percent, while Beijing slashed levies on U.S. imports to 10 percent. That came with a 90-day deadline to reach a broader trade deal, but it looks like there’s been little progress since then.

President Trump, notoriously quick to post, has been publicly mum as Elon Musk continues to excoriate his One Big Beautiful Bill. 

The world’s richest man came out in opposition to the bill on Tuesday afternoon, on the grounds that it will sharply increase the national debt. And he posted well into the night about how he thinks the legislation is a total disaster.

“Mammoth spending bills are bankrupting America! ENOUGH,” Musk wrote Tuesday evening. 

“In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people,” he said, above a post directly chastising the GOP for not being fiscally responsible. He also reposted an article titled, “It’s Rand Paul and Elon Musk vs. Donald Trump over the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, and replied with the American flag emoji over a post from Rand Paul stating that the GOP “can and must do better” on the deficit.  

Trump has made time to attack every critic of his OBBB except Musk, perhaps the loudest and certainly the richest detractor. The president’s silence feels deafening, as his former right hand man continues to disparage what he sees as the defining legislation of his second term—especially after they just appeared together in the Oval Office and made a big deal about Musk leaving DOGE but not actually leaving. 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have arrested the entire family of the suspect involved in Sunday’s attack in Boulder, Colorado, after also revoking their visas.

“Today the Department of Homeland Security and ICE are taking the family of suspected Boulder, Colorado, terrorist and illegal alien Mohamed Soliman into ICE custody,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a video message posted on X on Tuesday.

Soliman has been charged with a federal crime and attempted murder for attacking a group of peaceful demonstrators calling for the release of Israeli hostages held captive in Gaza. His attack left 12 people injured.

Soliman, an Egyptian national, entered the country legally on a tourist visa in August 2022. He filed for asylum the next month, and has been in the country legally since then with a pending asylum application. Presumably, his family was in a similar situation, though DHS hasn’t provided information about their immigration status.

Noem said DHS would be investigating whether the family knew about Soliman’s attack ahead of time, an indication that the department currently has no proof that this is the case. Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokesperson who like other Trump officials falsely claimed that Soliman was in the country illegally, said that the family’s visas have been revoked.

A DHS official said that six people—Soliman’s wife and their children—were taken into ICE custody and will be processed under expedited removal. That will allow the Trump administration to deport them without any proof they were involved in the attack and without any court hearing, Trump’s preferred method when it comes to deportations.

The Navy is considering renaming multiple ships dubbed for prominent Americans who apparently don’t align with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s anti-woke “warrior” ethos. And one of those ships—just in time for Pride Month—is named after assassinated LGBTQ rights leader and Navy veteran Harvey Milk.

CBS News reported Tuesday it had obtained official documents to brief the Navy’s secretary on proposed timelines for revealing the new name for USNS Harvey Milk. The documents do not indicate what the ship’s new name could be.

The Navy documents also list other ships that are being considered for renaming. They include USNS Thurgood Marshall, USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg, USNS Harriet Tubman, USNS Dolores Huerta, USNS Lucy Stone, USNS Cesar Chavez, and USNS Medgar Evars. All of the eponymous figures are prominent people of color, women, and/or civil rights leaders from American history.

Since Hegseth was sworn in, he has made it his personal mission to scrub all traces of diversity from the Department of Defense. This has included dismantling DEI hiring and recruitment initiatives and temporarily erasing posts about racial history from the department website.

He announced that the military would no longer recognize Black History Month, Women’s History Month, and other heritage months, declaring the observations “dead” on January 31. He also has happily carried out Trump’s executive order to ban transgender people from serving in the armed forces.