Trump has sat for only 12 ‘daily’ intelligence briefings since taking office
Trump has sat for only 12 ‘daily’ intelligence briefings since taking office
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/09/trump-intelligence-briefing-frequency-00338946
Tag: Donald Trump
49 white South Africans leave for US after Trump offered them refugee status
“A group of 49 white South Africans departed their homeland Sunday for the United States on a private charter plane having been offered refugee status by the Trump administration under a new program announced in February.
The group, which included families and small children, was due to arrive at Dulles International Airport outside Washington on Monday morning local time, according to Collen Msibi, a spokesperson for South Africa’s transport ministry.
They are the first Afrikaners — a white minority group in South Africa — to be relocated after U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Feb. 7 accusing South Africa’s Black-led government of racial discrimination against them and announcing a program to offer them relocation to America.
The South African government said it is “completely false” that Afrikaners are being persecuted.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/11/49-white-south-africans-leave-for-us-after-trump-offered-them-refugee-status-00341204
How Trump’s last-minute contract decision sent brains to the grave
“President Donald Trump’s push to cut billions of dollars in government contracts is rattling the niche community of scientists who collect, study and share human brains.
Two of the country’s brain banks, which have worked with the government to store and distribute specimens to researchers studying diseases like Parkinson’s and ALS for more than a decade, told POLITICO they had temporarily stopped taking new donations for fear the administration would not renew their contracts. Even though both facilities — home to nearly 8,000 brains between them — eventually received six-month extensions from the National Institutes of Health, the relief came too close to a May 1 deadline.
The director of the University of Maryland Brain and Tissue Bank said it turned away as many as 30 brains from people hoping to do something positive with the remains of a loved one who lived with a neurological disease. The Mount Sinai Brain Bank in New York would have accepted roughly 10 more if it had known its contract was being renewed, according to its program director.
The funding whiplash demonstrates some of the practical consequences of the Trump administration’s rapid-fire approach to cutting federal spending, where even the potential for funding lapses create real setbacks.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/09/trump-injected-uncertainty-into-federal-contracting-donor-brains-went-to-the-grave-00337337
Are Trump’s tariffs making money? Watch this chart.
“The United States has generated $46.6 billion this year from tariffs as of May 8, the latest data available — 46.3% more than the same time last year. Federal income taxes, meanwhile, brought in $2.4 trillion in 2024.
And the $14.7 billion difference in tariff revenue year-on-year is just part of the story. High levies can cause huge surges in revenue that later level off as trade patterns shift and businesses seek to lower costs along their supply chains.”
https://www.politico.com/interactives/2025/trump-tariff-income-tracker/
Paradox of Authoritarian Regimes
To a lesser degree, he just described the Trump administration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD8BhZEJcjI
Markets Don’t Want More Coal. Trump Is Propping Up the Industry Anyway.
“Coal’s decline was not caused by a federal plot to transition away from coal, like Trump thinks, but rather by markets and innovation. Advancements in renewable energy technologies—which were, and continue to be, supported by subsidies—made the energy source more attractive to investors. Breakthroughs in horizontal drilling in the early 2000s brought a flood of cheap and abundant natural gas to the market. These technologies priced coal out, which lowered energy bills for consumers and significantly reduced greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.
The energy source is also not as cost-effective as the executive order claims. Coal plants are expensive to build and operate, and transportation costs can exceed the price of coal at the mine. These economic factors have informed investors and utilities not to build coal-fired power plants—the most recent large plant was built in 2013—which has made the current fleet of these power plants less efficient than other energy sources.
To be sure, some regulatory barriers, including federal air quality standards and state-level bans, have made coal less competitive. However, “it is the market that explains coal’s decline better than regulations,” Philip Rossetti, an energy policy analyst at the R Street Institute, tells Reason.”
https://reason.com/2025/04/10/markets-dont-want-more-coal-trump-is-propping-up-the-industry-anyway/
Senate Republicans Voted Overwhelmingly To Continue Trump’s Trade War
“As a legal matter, President Donald Trump’s trade war rests on the claim that imports to the United States constitute an “unusual and extraordinary” threat requiring urgent executive action.
That’s an absurd argument, of course. The fact that Americans choose to buy or sell goods across international borders is not an emergency—it’s not even a minor worry—and certainly should not justify a massive expansion of executive power.
But Trump is going to do whatever he wants until someone stops him. On Wednesday, the Senate had a chance to do that. Instead, Republicans voted overwhelmingly to keep the “emergency” going, and thus to keep the trade war going too.
The Senate voted 49–49 on Wednesday evening to block Sen. Rand Paul’s (R–Ky.) resolution that sought to end the emergency declaration Trump signed on April 2 to impose his so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs on nearly all imports to the United States.”
https://reason.com/2025/05/01/senate-republicans-voted-overwhelmingly-to-continue-trumps-trade-war/
Federal Judge Rules Trump’s Alien Enemies Act Proclamation Is Unlawful
“The Trump-appointed judge found that the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act “exceeds the scope of the statute and is contrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statute’s terms.””
https://reason.com/2025/05/01/federal-judge-rules-trumps-alien-enemies-act-proclamation-is-unlawful/
5 Times the Trump Team Told Americans To Accept Being Poorer
https://reason.com/2025/05/02/5-times-the-trump-team-told-americans-to-accept-being-poorer/
The Trump Administration Is Using Tattoos, Logos, and Clothes To Identify Supposed Gang Members
“When Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained Venezuelan makeup artist Andry Hernandez Romero in 2024, it suspected he belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang. Yet ICE provided no “official records, media reports, and correspondence,” “intelligence information received from other agencies,” or “validation” or “confirmation” by “law enforcement, Corrections, or sending jurisdiction,” to prove that Hernandez Romero was tied to the gang.
Instead, ICE officials flagged Hernandez Romero as a potential Tren de Aragua associate based on two of his tattoos: the words mom and dad, topped with crowns, on each wrist.”
https://reason.com/2025/05/05/deported-for-tattoos/