“None of this will do much to stop “dangerous narcotics” from entering the United States, which is Trump’s avowed goal. Interdiction efforts are doomed by the economics of drug prohibition, a challenge that is compounded by fentanyl’s potency, which allows traffickers to distribute large numbers of doses in small packages by land or mail. And Mexican cartels are already working on domestic production of fentanyl precursors in case shipments from China are curtailed. Despite those realities, Trump can still falsely claim he is winning the war on drugs by citing misleading metrics.
Trump said the tariffs would remain in place until the targeted countries took “adequate steps to alleviate the opioid crisis.” Since that criterion is deliberately vague, Trump can simply declare that whatever Mexico, Canada, and China agree to do is “adequate.”
In case that seems too slippery, Trump could cite drug seizure numbers as proof of his success. The beauty of this approach is that Trump can claim victory no matter which way the numbers go.
Given Trump’s promise to “seal the border,” you might expect U.S. drug seizures to go up. But he has previously argued that increased seizures are a sign of failure rather than success.”
…
“Unlike “adequate steps” and drug seizure numbers, overdose deaths are a clear measure of whether the “opioid crisis” is getting better or worse. The good news is that drug-related deaths fell precipitously last year after climbing nearly every year for more than two decades. According to preliminary CDC estimates, the death toll during the year ending last August was about 22 percent lower than the total for the previous year—by far the biggest such drop ever recorded.
Inconveniently for Trump, that dramatic decrease happened on Biden’s watch, and there is little reason to think interdiction had anything to do with it. So even if the apparent turnaround continues this year, attributing it to Trump’s tariff-assisted war on drugs would be highly implausible. We can nevertheless expect that Trump will do just that.”
“while Americans are generally supportive of abortion rights, there was little evidence to show that abortion was going to end up mattering more than other issues, like the economy and immigration, and even less evidence that it would be a more motivating issue than it was in the 2022 midterms, which took place just months after the Supreme Court overturned federal abortion rights in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Generally speaking, Americans are supportive of abortion rights. When asked a standard polling question about whether abortion should be legal in all cases, legal in most cases, illegal in all cases or illegal in most cases, majorities of Americans typically say that it should be legal in all or most cases. And we saw that support show up in the 2024 election results: Six states* passed ballot measures that enshrined abortion rights in their state constitutions, and these measures significantly outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris in every state they were on the ballot.”
…
“Polling before the 2024 election did seem to show an increasing share of voters saying abortion was their top issue — on average, even more than in the months preceding the 2022 midterms. According to YouGov/The Economist’s weekly tracking survey, there was a slow but steady increase in the number of registered voters choosing abortion as their top priority over the course of the campaign, from around 5 percent in the summer of 2023 to around 10 percent before the election.
But 10 percent is still relatively low compared with other major issues in the election. The percentage of respondents choosing an issue related to the economy*** in the same surveys averaged 39 percent in polls conducted in October 2024, much higher than the percentage saying abortion was their top issue, which averaged 9 percent in October.
And the increase in Americans prioritizing abortion may be an artifact of a well-known quirk of political polling: partisans forming their political opinions based on what trusted elites are saying. In other words, the Harris campaign’s focus on abortion may have made Democratic voters more likely to say abortion was an important issue to them. Indeed, if we break down the YouGov/The Economist polling numbers by party, we see that abortion’s increasing prioritization as an issue in 2024 was driven almost entirely by self-identified Democrats.”
Serbia has been building up its military and has declared its intention to unite with Serbs living in other countries while also taking an authoritarian turn and having friendly relations with Russia and China.
“The annual number of drug-related deaths in the United States rose by 44 percent between 2016 and the last year of his first term. Now Trump blames foreign officials for his failure”
…
“As The New York Times reported in December, Mexican cartels already have a backup plan. They are recruiting “chemistry students studying at Mexican universities” to synthesize fentanyl precursors, “freeing them from having to import those raw materials from China.”
Trump thinks the Mexican and Canadian governments could do more to shut down fentanyl manufacturing within their countries. But to the extent they succeeded in doing that, production would simply shift elsewhere, as has happened repeatedly with drugs such as cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine.”
…
“Mexican drug cartels “move illicit fentanyl into the United States, primarily across the southwestern border, often in passenger vehicles,” the CRS noted. “The U.S.
Department of Homeland Security asserts that 90% of [seized] fentanyl is interdicted at ports of entry, often in vehicles driven by U.S. citizens. A primary challenge for both
Mexican and U.S. officials charged with stopping the fentanyl flow is that [the cartels] can meet U.S. demand with a relatively small amount.””
…
“Fentanyl also enters the United States by mail, and it is not feasible to intercept all of those shipments, especially given their small size and the enormous volume of packages.”
“the $8 million figure represents total government expenditures to Politico since 2016, not USAID dollars specifically. The amount paid by USAID to Politico totals $44,000.
A government agency directly transferring cash to a journalistic outlet that’s supposed to cover it impartially might still constitute a scandal; in general, the feds should not subsidize journalistic projects. But importantly, USAID was not generously donating the money to Politico—the government paid the money in exchange for subscriptions to Politico’s premium content. This is a pretty important difference; USAID is paying for the service Politico provides, in much the same way that a government agency has to pay for janitorial services, electricity, or office supplies. If a federal office buys a new printer, it isn’t necessarily malicious. It could be malicious, if the printer costs too much money, is defective, or was purchased as part of some kickback scheme—but the reality that government offices need printers isn’t really up for argument.
When confronted with these facts, many of the conservative social media accounts asserted that something must be awry, since $44,000 is still way too much for a Politico subscription. They assume that USAID is overpaying in exchange for favorable coverage of progressive causes and unfavorable coverage of Trump.
But that’s not what USAID and the other government agencies are paying for. In truth, Politico’s premium product isn’t political news coverage, progressively slanted or otherwise: It’s minute-to-minute updates on regulatory decisions that impact specific industries. This is information that political and government agencies need and that Politico supplies, for a premium price. As independent journalist Lee Fang points out, Politico isn’t the only game in town: Bloomberg and LexisNexis run similar services. Politico’s price tag is comparable to theirs.
“Politico provides paywalled ‘pro’ subscription services that cost over $10,000 per login for up-to-the-minute, detailed reporting on policy decisions and regulations,” writes Fang. “The $8.1 million in Politico subscriptions referenced above relates to years of subscriptions by agency officials across the government.”
These services are clearly valuable—in fact, Republican legislators pay for them, too. Customers of Politico’s services include Rep. Lauren Boebert (R–Colo.), Rep. Elise Stefanik (R–N.Y.), and even Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R–La.). Republicans want their staffers well informed of legislative updates. Corie Whalen, a communications director for former Rep. Justin Amash (L–Mich.), notes that it would be both impractical and ultimately more expensive to expect legislative staff to gather the necessary information some other way.”
“On Sunday, Trump ordered 25 percent tariffs on Canada, demanding that Canadians surrender their sovereignty to become “our Cherished 51st State.” He suspended the tariff order the next day, after Canada announced it was stepping up border security. The Canadian government, of course, was mostly rehashing a border security plan that it had already announced in December 2024.”
…
“Trump threatened economic sanctions on Colombia after it refused to take U.S. military flights carrying deportees, then claimed Colombia had backed down when it sent its own military to pick them up. Trump threatened to take back the Panama Canal, and the Trump camp claimed victory when Panama announced that it would let its Belt and Road Initiative economic agreement with China expire.”
…
“Trump’s threats to Greenland have alarmed Europe, which can act a lot more independently than U.S. neighbors can. European officials are having a “conversation” about whether to cozy up to China in response to U.S. pressure, The Financial Times reports.
“The European borders are sovereign whether it’s north, south, east and west,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said on the radio, offering to send the French military to defend Greenland. “Nobody can allow themselves to mess around with our borders.”
While it’s unlikely that the United States will get into a shooting war over Greenland, it seems pointless to alienate an important power bloc that was otherwise eager to cooperate against Russia and willing to play ball against China. And the payoff is unclear. Greenland’s population of 60,000, who largely don’t want to be ruled by either the U.S. or Denmark, have been otherwise happy to host U.S. military bases and mining companies, the main U.S. interests in the island.
The real test is how the Trump administration’s bluster fares against rival great powers of China, Russia, and Iran.”
“The International Emergency Economic Powers Act, passed in 1977, grants the president broad authority over economic transactions, and a wide range of abilities to deal with “any unusual and extraordinary threat,” stemming in whole or in part from foreign sources.
Presidents, including Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden, have used the law to impose economic sanctions on other countries, including on Russia after it launched its 2022 war on Ukraine.
But the closest a president has come to citing a national emergency to impose tariffs was when President Richard Nixon used a different law — the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917 — to levy a temporary universal tariff on all imports in 1971.
Trump justified his new tariffs Saturday by pointing to “the major threat of illegal aliens and deadly drugs killing our Citizens, including fentanyl,” which he claims Mexico, Canada and China are not doing enough to keep from coming into the United States.
But Bill Reinsch, a former Commerce Department official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Trump’s use of IEEPA to justify his trade actions “doesn’t really pass the red-face test,” setting the stage for a company or trade association whose members have been harmed by the action to sue.
“The question will be, can you find a judge who will write an injunction to stay the tariffs from going into effect,” Reinsch said. “And my prediction is that will be hard, because you’re asking a federal judge to essentially say, ‘I know more than the President does about what an emergency is.’ And I think judges are going to be reluctant to do that.”
That won’t stop a lawsuit from proceeding, most likely all the way to the Supreme Court, Reinsch said, but it could be years before there is a conclusion to the legal battle.
“The courts have historically upheld the president’s power to take emergency actions, especially when they are related to national security. But one important question is whether they will uphold the use of tariffs. In the past, [IEEPA] has only been used to impose sanctions,” said Tim Brightbill, a trade attorney at the law firm Wiley Rein in Washington, DC.
“While it is possible that companies or industry groups would seek an injunction, they probably face an uphill battle blocking the new tariffs,” Brightbill said.”
…
“the U.S. effectively killed the WTO Appellate Body during Trump’s first term by blocking the appointment of new judges, leaving it without the ability to adjudicate disputes. And there’s little to suggest the Trump administration would abide by a WTO ruling even if the organization were able to issue one.”