Reporter: Wall Street analysts have a new term called the TACO trade.. Saying Trump always chickens out on tariffs… Trump: I kick out?Reporter: Chicken out.
Most of Trump's tariffs were just ruled illegal (because they were based on nonsense).This is the second best possible off-ramp for the U.S. economy. The best would be if Congress were to take back the power the Constitution gave it.www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/b…
“The term TACO trade was coined by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong earlier this month as the world struggled to make sense of Trump’s on-again-off-again trade wars.”
Trump gets asked about Wall Street’s “TACO trade” philosophy (“Trump Always Chickens Out”) on his tariffs. Needless to say, he did not appreciate the question.
Today I’m going to focus on the Trump administration’s attacks on Harvard University. Obviously, Trump’s war on Harvard isn’t just about Harvard. It’s a war on higher education. If he succeeds in destroying Harvard, he will move on to other universities. Thank goodness Alan Garber, Harvard’s president is standing strong against the blatant attacks on academic research, international students, and freedom of speech.
Here’s the latest news in the Trump-Harvard battle:
The Trump administration is set to cancel the federal government’s remaining federal contracts with Harvard University — worth an estimated $100 million, according to a letter sent to federal agencies on Tuesday. The letter also instructs agencies to “find alternative vendors” for future services.
The additional planned cuts, outlined in a draft of the letter obtained by The New York Times, represented what an administration official called a complete severance of the government’s longstanding business relationship with Harvard.
The letter is the latest example of the Trump administration’s determination to bring Harvard — arguably the country’s most elite and culturally dominant university — to its knees, by undermining its financial health and global influence. Since last month, the administration has frozen about $3.2 billion in grants and contracts with Harvard. And it has tried to halt the university’s ability to enroll international students.
The latest letter, dated May 27 from the U.S. General Services Administration, was delivered Tuesday morning to federal agencies, according to an administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official had not been authorized to discuss internal communications.
The letter instructs agencies to respond by June 6 with a list of contract cancellations. Any contracts for services deemed critical would not be immediately canceled but would be transitioned to other vendors, according to the letter, signed by Josh Gruenbaum, commissioner of the G.S.A.’s federal acquisition service, which is responsible for procuring government goods and services.
Contracts with about nine agencies would be affected, according to the administration official.
Examples of contracts that would be affected, according to a federal database, include a $49,858 National Institutes of Health contract to investigate the effects of coffee drinking and a $25,800 Homeland Security Department contract for senior executive training. Some of the Harvard contracts under review may have already been subject to “stop work” orders.
“Going forward, we also encourage your agency to seek alternative vendors for future services where you had previously considered Harvard,” the letter said.
The Trump administration is weighing requiring all foreign students applying to study in the United States to undergo social media vetting — a significant expansion of previous such efforts, according to a cable obtained by POLITICO.
In preparation for such required vetting, the administration is ordering U.S. Embassies and consular sections to pause scheduling new interviews for such student visa applicants, according to the cable, dated Tuesday and signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
If the administration carries out the plan, it could severely slow down student visa processing. It also could hurt many universities who rely heavily on foreign students to boost their financial coffers.
“Effective immediately, in preparation for an expansion of required social media screening and vetting, consular sections should not add any additional student or exchange visitor (F, M, and J) visa appointment capacity until further guidance is issued septel, which we anticipate in the coming days,” the cable states. (“Septel” is State Department shorthand for “separate telegram.”)
The administration had earlier imposed some social media screening requirements, but those were largely aimed at returning students who may have participated in protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza.
What does this policy mean?
The cable doesn’t directly spell out what the future social media vetting would screen for, but it alludes to executive orders that are aimed at keeping out terrorists and battling antisemitism.
Many State Department officials have complained privately for months that past guidance — for, say, vetting students who may have participated in campus protests — has been vague. It’s unclear, for example, whether posting photos of a Palestinian flag on an X account could force a student to undergo additional scrutiny.
The administration has used a variety of rules to target universities, especially elite ones such as Harvard, that it sees as too liberal and accuses of allowing antisemitism to flourish on their campuses. At the same time, it is carrying out immigration crackdowns that have swept up a number of students….
The news was met with frustration in much of the higher education community.
NAFSA: Association of International Educators, a group that advocates for foreign students, decried the decision. The group’s CEO, Fanta Aw, said it unfairly cast aspersions on hardworking students.
“The idea that the embassies have the time, the capacity and taxpayer dollars are being spent this way is very problematic,” Aw said. “International students are not a threat to this country. If anything, they’re an incredible asset to this country.”
What is Trump’s supposed rationale for his attack on Harvard and high education?
After a weekend of threats and criticism from President Trump, the federal government on Tuesday severed the last of its remaining business ties to Harvard University.
Josh Gruenbaum, a top official at the US General Services Administration, instructed all federal agencies to terminate any contracts with Harvard or transfer them to other vendors. He also said in a letter sent to federal procurement officials Tuesday that government agencies should refrain from awarding any new contracts to Harvard in the future….
Although the Trump administration’s original rationale for targeting Harvard was campus antisemitism, Gruenbaum’s letter Tuesday focused more on the government’s allegations that Harvard’s admissions and hiring practices violate antidiscrimination laws. For that reason, he said, Harvard should not be allowed to receive federal funding….
Gruenbaum’s letter laid out the government’s expanded justification for targeting Harvard. The university,the federal government alleges, systematically discriminates against white people, men, straight people, and, in some cases, Asian Americans.
“As fiduciaries to the taxpayer, the government has a duty to ensure that procurement dollars are directed to vendors and contractors who promote and champion principles of nondiscrimination and the national interest,” Gruenbaum wrote.
Harvard has denied the government’s allegations and sued the Trump administration. In two cases in federal court in Boston, Harvard’s lawyers argued the administration’s tactics violate federal laws and the Constitution and amount to illegal retaliation. Many lawyers, including some conservatives who share Trump’s critiques of universities, have agreed some of the Trump administration’s tactics appear to be illegal.
The administration’s letter on Tuesday accuses Harvard of discrimination in its admissions and hiring practices, as well as at the Harvard Law Review. Federal agencies have launched investigations on all of those subjects.
The Department of Justice is investigating whether Harvard’s admissions practices run afoul of a Supreme Court ban on affirmative action in college admissions. And the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have launched an inquiry into alleged discrimination by Harvard against white people, Asian Americans, men, and heterosexuals in hiring and promotions.
The Trump administration is even suggesting there could be criminal investigations of university officials.
President Donald Trump has mostly justified his lawless attempt to restrict international students from attending Harvard University by pretending it’s designed to root out the antisemites, woke radicals, and dangerous terrorists supposedly nesting in their ranks. Now, however, Trump has a new rationale: It’s all about helping young, aspiring Americans, particularly those in the working class.
“We have Americans who want to go there and to other places,” Trump told reporters over the weekend, adding angrily that many of Harvard’s international students are “bad” and are taking Americans’ slots: “They can’t go there because you have 31 percent foreign.”
I am considering taking Three Billion Dollars of Grant Money away from a very antisemitic Harvard, and giving it to TRADE SCHOOLS all across our land. What a great investment that would be for the USA, and so badly needed!!!
Yeah, OK. If Trump really wants to facilitate the upward mobility of America’s working-class youth, here’s a better way to do it: Persuade his fellow Republicans in the House to drop their new budget’s changes to financial aid for higher education, which will restrict access to it for large numbers of working-class students, probably including many who want to attend—yup—trade schools.
With Trump’s fury at Harvard getting worse, this turn in the saga suggests another grotesque subtext to all of it: Telling working-class families that the real obstacle their kids face is zero-sum competition from foreign students makes it easier to take away resources previously appropriated to boost working-class kids to fund tax cuts for the rich.
What’s going on here?
Trump’s assault is a wildly unhinged abuse of power in every way. Last week, Trump revoked Harvard’s ability to host international students, due to Harvard’s alleged failure to share sufficient “information” about foreign students in response to an administration demand. That demand was itself absurdly intrusive, and seemed designed not to be met, creating a pretext for Trump to broaden his attack. The revocation appears wholly lawless, and after Harvard sued, a court blocked it within hours.
At this point, there’s no need to pretend there’s a genuine public-interest rationale at work here. Everyone knows it’s all about getting universities to surrender to flatter Trump, or about executing a broader hostile MAGA takeover of liberal institutions. For instance, in an article reporting that Trump is now nixing Harvard’s federal contracts on top of canceling billions in grants, The New York Times notes almost in passing that Trump wants to bring Harvard “to its knees,” as if this is unremarkable, when it should be depicted as the power-crazed ravings of a Mad King.
But there’s something particularly ghoulish about Trump’s suggestion that his blockade on international students is about helping American kids who are unfairly displaced by them.
That’s because the “big, beautiful bill” that House Republicans passed last week—which Trump has urged Senate Republicans to adopt—could make attending college harder for countless such kids. For a detailed summary of its changes, see this piece by The New Republic’s Monica Potts: They would make it harder for full-time students to qualify for Pell Grants, bump off large numbers of part-time students, and restrict access to the program and other financial assistance for higher education in numerous other ways.
Indeed, a coalition of education advocacy organizations estimates that the bill’s changes to Pell Grants alone could deprive as many as 700,000 people of eligibility entirely and hit many more with higher costs. As Potts summarizes, all this “takes an ax to one of the few reliable ladders for working-class people seeking higher education” as an “engine for social mobility.” These are mostly poorer and working-class students by definition, many with jobs or young kids of their own.
Trump’s attack on Harvard and higher education hurts Massachusetts, which is home to 114 colleges and universities.
In her State of the City address in March, Mayor Michelle Wu spoke about her then-2-month-old daughter. The world she entered was “not the world I expected or hoped for her,” Wu said. “I want her to grow up in the America that Paul Revere rode for, that Dr. King marched for, that my parents left home for.”
A few weeks later, as Paul Revere’s ride was reenacted and scores of redcoats lined up with muskets on the Lexington Battle Green, you didn’t have to look far to see signs that Massachusetts’ centuries-long revolutionary spirit was being threatened. Sprinkled through the crowd, posters read “No King! No Tyranny! Support the Rule of Law” and “In America, the Law is King.” [….]
Our economy is deeply reliant on elite colleges, elite hospitals, and the elite minds who come here from around the world. In Massachusetts — like it or not — we have built an economy on expertise, excellence, and education.
In the early 2000s, after graduating from high school outside of Chicago, Wu was drawn — like so many others — to the educational opportunities here. Her parents “didn’t know too much about America” when they arrived in the 1980s from Taiwan. She says that they, “like so many, held such a reverence for the institutions that in some ways symbolized the American dream for them. Harvard was one of them.”
Now, the magnets that have attracted talent to Massachusetts have become liabilities. “ Boston is at the center of many of the most targeted industries and communities,” Wu says. “And so we’re feeling it very much — very urgently.”
The mayor notes that the city is “trying to plan for unpredictability. And so our city budget this year includes preparations for worst-case scenarios.” Although Boston’s financial foundation is “quite strong,” Wu says, “we need to be prepared for immediate, significant impacts to federal funding or larger macroeconomic impacts.”
Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey voiced support for her alma mater Tuesday night as Harvard University continues to battle President Trump’s attacks on the Cambridge institution’s autonomy and funding.
“This is about more than Harvard,” she told a virtual webinar of thousands of Harvard alumni.
In recent weeks, Harvard has filed litigation charging that Trump unlawfully froze billions in federal funding to the school after it refused to give the government control over academic decisions. More recently, the school also legally challenged Trump’sattempt to revoke the school’s ability to enroll international students.
On Tuesday night, a group of Harvard alumni held a pair of virtual events to discussthe impact of the administration’s actionson academic freedom, research, students, and employees of the Ivy Leagueuniversity.
Crimson Courage, which describes itself as “a nonpartisan community of Harvard alumni,” encouraged alumni to sign onto an amicus brief in ongoing litigation spearheaded by Harvard against the Trump administration.
The brief “supports the academic freedom and integrity of Harvard and higher education institutions across America—all of which must be able to educate students consistent with their missions and values, free from political interference.”
The brief, according to organizers, will be filed in a legal case where Harvard argues the government’s use of research funding cuts as leverage to exert control over its affairs is an abuse of federal power.
Healey, in her comments to alumni, said Trump’s moves against the university is undercutting American competitiveness and damaging the local and national economy. Harvard, she said, is the fourth largest employer in Massachusetts, and its international students alone contribute $400 million to the local economy annually.
If Trump succeeds in damaging Massachusetts, will other blue states be next?
With elite U.S. universities in President Trump’s crosshairs, the leader of Harvard University says institutions need to double down on their “commitment to the good of the nation” and be firm in what they stand for.
Harvard President Alan Garber told Morning Edition that he finds the measures taken by Trump to be “perplexing.” While he acknowledges there is work to be done on campus, he said he struggles to see a link between funding freezes and fighting antisemitism.
“Why cut off research funding? Sure, it hurts Harvard, but it hurts the country because after all, the research funding is not a gift,” Garber said, adding that these dollars are awarded to efforts deemed “high-priority work” by the federal government….
As evidence of how his university’s work directly benefits the U.S. public, Garber points to recent honors awarded to Harvard faculty by the Breakthrough Prize, known as “The Oscars of Science,” for their work on obesity and diabetes drugs and gene editing, used to correct disease-causing genetic variations.
The Trump administration’s multi-billion dollar funding freeze came after Harvard refused demands to change policies around hiring and admissions, eliminate DEI programs, or screen international students who are “supportive of terrorism or anti-Semitism,” as the administration put it.
Impressively, the situation on this front has gotten even worse in the last 24 hours….
…consider the complete set of federal actions taken against Harvard that the New York Times’ Michael C. Bender has compiled. It’s an extraordinary list of punitive actions given that the Trump administration has been in office for just a little over a third of a year.
Now, as a professor at the Fletcher School, a direct competitor of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, readers might wonder if I think there might be some competitive advantage that might be gained from Harvard’s misfortune. And the answer to this is “not really, no,” for two reasons.
The first is raw politics: Harvard is the most prestigious university in the United States. It has the deepest pockets. If the Trump administration can force Harvard to acquiesce to its demands, that capitulation will make it that much harder for other universities to protect academic freedom.
The second is that while Harvard might be receiving the brunt of the administration’s malignant attention, Trump’s team is taking other actions that will harm most U.S. universities.
Examples: Threats to investigate foreign students’ social media and ordering embassies to stop vetting visas for international students applicants.
This administration seems bound and determined to force U.S. students to pay higher tuition, because it keeps stripping away alternative sources of revenue. Between slashing federal research funding to record-low levels, raising the transaction costs of accepting foreign grants, and this freezing the visa processing of foreign students, the Trump administration is disincentivizing scientific research and forcing universities to rely increasingly on the tuition payments of domestic college students.
“These various initiatives and policy changes are often regarded as discrete problems, but they comprise a unified assault. The Trump administration has launched a comprehensive attack on knowledge itself, a war against culture, history, and science. If this assault is successful, it will undermine Americans’ ability to comprehend the world around us. Like the inquisitors of old, who persecuted Galileo for daring to notice that the sun did not, in fact, revolve around the Earth, they believe that truth-seeking imperils their hold on power.”
Why are they doing it? Serwer attributes it to politics: “by destroying knowledge, Trumpists seek to make the country more amenable to their political domination, and to prevent meaningful democratic checks on their behavior.” I could proffer a variety of other ideological or political responses. As of now, however, such rationales are besides the point. The only thing I know for sure is that it’s not for the reasons proffered by the administration.
My wife and I are co-authors of a widely used textbook on the principles of economics, which is revised on a three-year cycle. When a new edition comes out, I normally visit a number of schools that might adopt it, usually giving a big public talk, a smaller technical seminar, and spending some time with students and faculty. I enjoy it, by the way; there are a lot of good, interesting people in U.S. education, and not just in the high-prestige schools.
So it was that at one point I found myself visiting Texas Tech in Lubbock. Yes, it seemed pretty remote to someone who has spent almost his whole life in the Northeast Corridor, but as usual the overall experience was very positive. And it was also surprisingly cosmopolitan: there were students from many nations. I just checked the numbers, and currently 30 percent of Texas Tech’s graduate students are international.
So it is all across America. Our nation’s ability to attract foreigners to study here is one of our great strengths. Or maybe I should say was one of our strengths.
According to Politico, a cable from Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, has directed U.S. embassies and consulates to halt all processing of visa applications from foreigners hoping to study in the United States. This is reportedly a temporary measure in preparation for a new system in which would-be students will be screened on the basis of their social media history. And you can be sure that the criteria for denying entry will go far beyond, you know, advocating terrorism. Probably asking “Why was Trump talking to West Point grads about trophy wives?” will be grounds for rejection.
This completely insane policy move is presumably a temper tantrum in response to a court’s rejection of the administration’s attempt to prevent Harvard from admitting foreign students, which was in turn a temper tantrum in response to Harvard’s rejection of demands from Trumpists that they be allowed to dictate the university’s hiring and curriculum.
The courts will probably reject this policy move, too, but I worry that Rubio and co. can put enough sand in the gears of the visa process to bring the entry of international students to a near halt. And even if they can’t, the clear message to students that they aren’t welcome (and may be arrested once here) will have an immensely chilling effect.
It’s hard to overstate the self-destructiveness of this move, and the war on higher education in general. This is madness even in purely economic terms.
The Trump administration would be getting slapped down in court even if the president and his minions didn’t constantly announce their intent to violate the law. But their incessant chest thumping does make things go a lot faster.
Case in point: the temporary restraining order barring the government from canceling student visas at Harvard University. The order was issued just hours after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem revoked Harvard’s visa “privilege” for foreign students. The administration teed up the ruling by declaring that it intended to flagrantly violate the First Amendment. But they telegraphed their punch so thoroughly that Harvard’s lawyers had a 72-page complaint with 28 exhibits ready to be filed the second Noem announced the plan.
Trump Hates Harvard
Just hours after being sworn in, Trump signed an executive order instructing federal agencies to “identify up to nine potential civil compliance investigations” of civic, corporate, and academic institutions, including “institutions of higher education with endowments over 1 billion dollars” for their supposed “illegal discrimination.”
Lowell House, Harvard University
The EO was clearly an attack on the Ivy League, long targeted by conservatives as a bastion of “wokeness” that should be brought to heel. And Project 2025, with its “big idea” to seize control of the budget from Congress, provided Trump with a blueprint to wield federal tax dollars as a weapon against state governments and institutions.
Part of the plan was for Trump to unilaterally announce new “laws” via executive order, and, instead of asking courts to enforce them, leverage federal funds to punish anyone who resists.
And so the president simply declared DEI “illegal,” and used the widespread adoption of anti-discrimination policies by corporations and academia as a pretext to go after anyone he doesn’t like. But, as a federal judge noted last week when he blocked an attack on the law firm Jenner & Block, “the defendants point to no case holding such diversity initiatives illegal.” This is simply the executive branch inventing a new legal theory and demanding that everyone treat it as settled law.
Dye describes how Harvard fought back successfully in court.
On April 11, Harvard sued in federal court in Massachusetts, alleging that the funding cuts were an arbitrary and capricious agency action in violation the First Amendment, the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause, and the Constitution’s separation of powers. That case landed on Judge Allison Burroughs’s docket, and when the school sued again 10 days later over a further round of funding cuts, it designated the cases as “related,” ensuring that it, too, would be assigned to the Obama appointee.
Harvard docketed voluminous correspondence demonstrating that the Trump administration is using federal funds to both coerce the school into changing its speech, and retaliating against it for speech conservatives don’t like. For instance, a letter signed by representatives of the General Services Administration and the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services presented an “agreement in principle” demanding sweeping changes to all aspects of the university’s hiring, admissions, disciplinary, and curricular programs as a precondition of preserving the school’s federal funds.
“The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” the university wrote in response. “Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government.”
That response was signed by longtime Republican lawyer Bill Burck, of the law firm Quinn Emanuel, and Robert Hur, the former special counsel tapped by Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate Joe Biden. (Burck was immediately fired by the Trump Organization as an ethics advisor.)
But Trump kept on making public threats and posting nonsense on social media.
Trump’s constant public screeds serve as potent evidence that the funding cuts are retaliatory, and any supposed DEI “crimes” are mere pretext.
On April 15, he suggested that Harvard “should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’” [….]
That’s an explicit attack on Harvard’s academic freedom, which is protected by the First Amendment. And he followed it up the next day by screeching that “Harvard is a JOKE, teaches Hate and Stupidity, and should no longer receive Federal Funds.” [….]
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon admitted in an interview with CNBC on May 7 that the administration is 100 percent targeting Harvard for disfavored speech.
“Are they vetting students who are coming in from outside of the country to make sure they’re not activists? Are they vetting professors that they’re hiring to make sure that they’re not teaching ideologies?” she said. “They’ve taken a very hard line, so we took a hard line back.”
All these comments — and so many more! — featured in Harvard’s lawsuits.
Please read the rest at Public Notice. It’s an excellent summary of what Trump has been doing and why it’s unlawful.
That’s all I have for you today. What’s on your mind?
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“No one knows immoral more.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Today is the day that the Nation pays tribute to many Americans who gave their lives in wars to support our Country. That is, everyone but #FARTUS. He’s ranting about how much our country sucks. This is from Alternet. “‘This is a disgrace’: Trump ripped for ‘outrageous’ and ‘divisive’ Memorial Day diatribe.” This comes on the back of one of the most bizarre and uninspiring graduation speeches ever given to the graduating cadets at West Point. I cannot believe this deranged monster was elected President. It’s beyond embarrassing.
Trump, writing in all caps, posted, “HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO ALL, INCLUDING THE SCUM THAT SPENT THE LAST FOUR YEARS TRYING TO DESTROY OUR COUNTRY THROUGH WARPED RADICAL LEFT MINDS, WHO ALLOWED 21,000,000 MILLION PEOPLE TO ILLEGALLY ENTER OUR COUNTRY, MANY OF THE BEING CRIMINALS AND THE MENTAO INSANE,THROUGH AN OPEN BORDER THAT ONLY AN INCOMPETENT PRESIDENT WOULD APPROVE, AND THROUGH JUDGES WHO ARE ON A MISSION TO KEEP MURDERERS, DRUG DEALERS, RAPISTS, GANG MEMBERS, AND RELEASED PRISONERS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD, IN OUR COUNTRY SO THEY CAN ROB, MURDERERS, AND RAPE AGAIN, PROTECTED BY THESE USA HATING JUDGES WHO SUFFER FROM AN IDEOLOGY THAT IS SICK, AND VERY DANGEROUS FOR OUR COUNTRY. HOPEFULLY THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT, AND OTHER GOOD AND COMPASSIONATE JUDGES THROUGHOUT THE LAND, WILL SAVE US FROM THE DECISIONS OF THE MONSTERS WHO WANT OUR COUNTRY TO GO TO HELL.”
But Trump, according to Mediaite, later deleted that post and replaced it with a much shorter post that read simply, “HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY!
Who voted for this kind of shit? He also went off on Putin over the weekend. There’s some blowback on that as well as questions about the ongoing mental health crisis Trump is experiencing.. This is from Reuters. “Kremlin on Trump’s remark about Putin being ‘crazy’: there is some emotional overload.” Trump must be still pissed Obama got that Nobel Peace Prize when all he can get is a wink, wink, nod, nod of respect from Putin.
The Kremlin on Monday said that U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim that Vladimir Putin had “gone absolutely CRAZY” might be due to emotional overload, but thanked the U.S. leader for his assistance in launching Ukraine peace negotiations.
Trump said Putin had “gone absolutely CRAZY” by unleashing the largest aerial attack of the war on Ukraine and said he was weighing new sanctions on Moscow, though he also scolded Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
“We are really grateful to the Americans and to President Trump personally for their assistance in organising and launching this negotiation process,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said when asked about the Trump remarks about Putin.
“Of course, at the same time, this is a very crucial moment, which is associated, of course, with the emotional overload of everyone absolutely and with emotional reactions.”
Every man just loves to be told he is overly emotional. Believe me, I’ve had some bad experiences on that account in my past life in Omaha when I moved a lamp from my computer desk to my secretary’s. I told him that I never imagined he would get so emotional over a lamp. He got worse about it, needless to say. Men can be such toddlers.
The Federal Reserve just bought $43.6 billion in US treasuries in the span of a week, sparking concerns that a quiet quantitative easing operation is underway.
New documents show the Fed purchased $8.8 billion in 30-year bonds on May 8th via its System Open Market Account (SOMA) – a move that followed a $34.8 billion purchase earlier that same week.
The move has triggered allegations that “stealth QE” has arrived, with a MarketWatch op-ed by Charlie Garcia calling the move “monetary policy on tiptoes.”
The Fed has long stated such purchases are routine reinvestments of maturing securities to adjust the money supply and influence interest rates to meet its targets.
The Fed’s buying spree follows a major Treasury sell-off from China.
New numbers from the Treasury Department show China sold $18.9 billion in US bonds in March, while most other countries increased their holdings.
China now holds $765.4 billion in US Treasuries and is in third place behind the UK and Japan, which hold $779 billion and $1.13 trillion, respectively.
Since you buy US Treasuries with U.S. Dollars, one has to wonder what the Chinese are going to do with the cash. Yam Tits once again, changed his plan on tariffs which might sound good, but remember, no on likes uncertainty and we’ll see what all this means tonight when the futures markets open up. This is from CNN. “Trump delays 50% EU tariffs until July 9.” I guess he thinks blowing up the markets over the Independence Holiday may cause a silversmith to jump a horse and ride into the countryside. Looks better to do it after.
President Donald Trump said Sunday that he has agreed to delay a 50% tariff on European Union imports until July 9, the latest instance of Trump declaring an impending tariff and throwing markets into confusion only to later walk back the threatened levies.
Trump said he and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had a “very nice call” that led to the delay.
“(Von der Leyen) said she wants to get down to serious negotiation,” Trump told reporters at Morristown Municipal Airport in New Jersey. “July 9 would be the day, that was the date she requested. Could we move it from June 1 to July 9? I agreed to do that.”
“She said we will rapidly get together and see if we can work something out,” he added.
As recently as Friday, Trump said he was “not looking for a deal” with the EU, and that their tariff rate was set at 50% and would go into effect on June 1. That rate would have come after he had imposed a 20% reciprocal tariff on the EU in April — which itself was also delayed, as were other so-called reciprocal tariffs.
Minutes after speaking with reporters, Trump posted on Truth Social that “talks will begin rapidly.”
Earlier in the day, von der Leyen had posted on X that there was a “good call” with Trump.
Leah Litman has a new book out for all of you interested in watching the Supreme Court blow up the Constitution. She is a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School. Her book is “Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes”. She describes it as “an assessment of the Court’s supermajority and how it serves Republican interests instead of the public good.” She writes on the issues at Public Notice.
Last Thursday evening, the Supreme Court all but demolished the legal basis for the independent agencies that are part of the modern administrative state.
In a brisk four paragraphs, only two of which contained any attempt at legal reasoning, the Court’s six Republican justices allowed the president to fire members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) in violation of federal law. The decision highlights the lawlessness of the Court and is likely to further embolden a president who is very keen to place himself above the law.
The Court’s order in Trump v. Wilcox allows the president to violate the federal laws that prohibited him from removing NLRB and MSPB members without cause for doing so. Laws that insulate the heads of multimember commissions such as the NLRB are a common feature of the administrative state. The Supreme Court upheld one such law almost a century ago in Humphrey’s Executor v. Federal Trade Commission, the case that now undergirds modern independent agencies.
It was therefore a little surprising to read the Supreme Court’s order in Wilcox, which permits the president’s statutorily prohibited removal of officers on multi-member commissions, and see no mention of Humphrey’s Executor, the decision upholding statutes that prohibited such removals. Humphrey’s didn’t appear until the dissent.
But this dismissal of important precedents structuring modern society and government has become a hallmark of the Roberts Court. In a decision few years ago, the Court confidently declared that an earlier precedent on the Establishment Clause had been “abandoned.” Did that mean overruled? Unclear, but it at least meant the Court didn’t have to follow it!
Last term, the Court formally overruled the Chevron doctrine that had allows agencies to interpret ambiguous statutes they administer, as the Republican Justices turned tail on a a precedent they had previously embraced. The year before that, the Court announced that the time had come to end affirmative action programs in higher education, as if it was just closing up shop on the precedents upholding such programs.
It’s beginning to feel like the Supreme Court is bringing back slavery. It’s not like any of the current heads of agencies are going to actually do the work of the agencies anyway. But Alito just loves to dismantle democracy.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” is still hobbling its way through the Senate. Politico has this story on the man with the smallest gavel in the world. “Mike Johnson urges Senate not to make major changes to megabill. “We’ve got to deal within the realm of what’s possible,” the House speaker said Sunday.” After all, once you’ve blown up democracy, the Constitution, and the economy, what’s left but to hand the remainders over to the Kleptocracy?
House Speaker Mike Johnson is urging GOP senators to exercise caution in making changes to the sweeping megabill passed through the House last week.
“I encourage them to do their work, of course, as we all anticipate,” Johnson told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday on “State of the Union.” “But to make as few modifications to this package as possible, because remembering that we’ve got to pass it one more time to ratify their changes in the House. And I have a very delicate balance here, very delicate equilibrium that we’ve reached over a long period of time. And it’s best not to meddle with it too much.”
But key senators are already looking to make modifications, with different factions holding that the bill goes too far in its approach to Medicaid and clean-energy tax credit cuts. Others, such as Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), say it doesn’t move the ball far enough. Johnson wants to cut spending by roughly $6 trillion.
“This is our only chance to reset that to a reasonable pre-pandemic level of spending,” Ron Johnson told Tapper, also on Sunday. “And again, I think you can do it in the spending that we would eliminate, people wouldn’t even notice. But you have to do the work, which takes time.”
“The problem is the math doesn’t add up,” Paul told host Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday.” “They’re going to explode the debt by the House says $4 trillion, the Senate’s actually been talking about exploding the debt $5 trillion.”
The speaker pointed to Republicans’ tiny majority in the House, with margins that may make sweeping changes unrealistic.
Yes, he also has a “tiny minority.” Should I mention he’s getting overly emotional, too?
So, I will close with that horrid West Point graduation speech. It’s really time for someone to question Trump’s mental health and send him to Walter Reed for a real test or 10. This is from US Today. James Powel has the analysis. “Trump tells West Point grads to avoid ‘trophy wives’ in commencement speech.” I’m not sure you’ve ever seen the average salary of a soldier, but I’m certain trophy wives and yachts are not likely to be in their future.
President Donald Trump told graduates to avoid “trophy wives” during his commencement address at the United States Military Academy at West Point on May 24.
“He ended up getting a divorce, found a new wife. Could you say a trophy wife? I guess we can say a trophy wife,” Trump said, referring to real estate developer Bill Levitt. “But that doesn’t work out too well, I must tell you, a lot of trophy wives, it doesn’t it work.”
“The job of the U.S. armed forces is not to host drag shows, to transform foreign cultures (and) spread democracy to everybody around the world at the point of a gun,” he said. “The military’s job is to dominate any foe and annihilate any threat to America, anywhere, anytime and any place.”
The military academy shut down a slew of on-campus organizations, including the Corbin Forum, a leadership club for female cadets, and Spectrum, a gay-straight alliance, in February following an executive order ending diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the federal government, according to Military.com.
“We’ve liberated our troops from divisive and demeaning political trainings,” Trump said. “There will be no more critical race theory or transgender for everybody forced onto our brave men and women in uniform — or on anybody else for that matter, in this country.”
Trump, wearing his campaign’s red MAGA hat, also pulled a common campaign reference in the speech, saying, “I went through a very tough time with some very radicalized sick, people. I say I was investigated more than the great, late Alphonse Capone.”
If there are any active gods flying around this solar system, could you please send a few burning bushes or thunderbolts at our truly evil president? I’d also settle for a few comic book characters with the same abilities, too! Oh, wait, one woman did call out the White House dingbat! “Unfit to Serve? Jasmine Crockett: ‘It’s Time for Republicans to Question Trump’s Mental Acuity’. The congresswoman wants the GOP to ask whether the president is “equipped to serve mentally.” This is reported by Peter Wade at Rolling Stone.
Following Donald Trump‘s bizarre speech to West Point graduates, where the president opined on topics ranging from yachts and trophy wives to drag shows and golf, Rep. Jasmine Crockett is calling on Republicans to “start calling him out and start questioning his mental acuity, and whether or not he is equipped to serve mentally.”
“I don’t think that those who have gone through West Point expected to have their commander in chief address them and start talking about trophy wives or start talking how he has so many investigations,” she said. “What a great reminder that you are not qualified to be the person that potentially will command troops to go into war. That is not instilling confidence whatsoever.”
“It is time for Republicans to start calling him out and start questioning his mental acuity, and whether or not he is equipped to serve mentally,” Crockett added. “We know when it comes down to his criminality, he is not qualified to serve, but this is just absolutely deplorable.”
Okay, so I know you have better things to do today than worry about the sanity of the President and the state of our democracy and economy. Please remember the people who died fighting for our democracy instead of the ones fighting to destroy it in your activities today.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
Who voted for this kind of shit? He also went off on Putin over the weekend. There’s some blowback on that as well as questions about the ongoing mental health crisis Trump is experiencing.. This is from 
Every man just loves to be told he is overly emotional. Believe me, I’ve had some bad experiences on that account in my past life in Omaha when I moved a lamp from my computer desk to my secretary’s. I told him that I never imagined he would get so emotional over a lamp. He got worse about it, needless to say. Men can be such toddlers.
Since you buy US Treasuries with U.S. Dollars, one has to wonder what the Chinese are going to do with the cash. Yam Tits once again, changed his plan on tariffs which might sound good, but remember, no on likes uncertainty and we’ll see what all this means tonight when the futures markets open up. This is from
Leah Litman has a new book out for all of you interested in watching the Supreme Court blow up the Constitution. She is a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School. Her book is “Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes”. She describes it as “an assessment of the Court’s supermajority and how it serves Republican interests instead of the public good.” She writes on the issues at
It’s beginning to feel like the Supreme Court is bringing back slavery. It’s not like any of the current heads of agencies are going to actually do the work of the agencies anyway. But Alito just loves to dismantle democracy.
Yes, he also has a “tiny minority.” Should I mention he’s getting overly emotional, too?
If there are any active gods flying around this solar system, could you please send a few burning bushes or thunderbolts at our truly evil president? I’d also settle for a few comic book characters with the same abilities, too! Oh, wait, one woman did call out the White House dingbat! “Unfit to Serve? Jasmine Crockett: ‘It’s Time for Republicans to Question Trump’s Mental Acuity’. The congresswoman wants the GOP to ask whether the president is “equipped to serve mentally.” This is reported by Peter Wade at 
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