Trump only has one economic idea: tariffs. Oh, he’ll give tax cuts for himself and for other rich people in return for donations and favors, of course. But his only “economic” idea is that tariffs force other countries to stop laughing at us and bring in money for the government which is 100% nonsense. His tariffs cost the government when it is forced to compensate American producers for their losses when countries retaliate and the cost of the tariffs are born by consumers who pay higher prices for goods. Duh.
Former President Donald J. Trump is planning an aggressive expansion of his first-term efforts to upend America’s trade policies if he returns to power in 2025 — including imposing a new tax on “most imported goods” that would risk alienating allies and igniting a global trade war.
[…]
Essentially, Mr. Trump’s trade agenda aims at backing the United States away from integration with the global economy and steering the country toward becoming more self-contained: producing a larger share of what it consumes and wielding its might through one-on-one dealings with other countries.
Mr. Trump, who calls himself a “tariff man,” took steps in that direction as president, including placing tariffs on various imports, hamstringing the World Trade Organization and starting a trade war with China. If he is elected, he plans a more audacious intervention in hopes of eliminating the trade deficit and bolstering manufacturing — with potentially seismic consequences for jobs, prices, diplomatic relations and the global trading system.
His plans — which he has described as “a sweeping pro-American overhaul of our tax and trade policy” — would amount to a high-stakes gamble with the economy’s health, given that unemployment has dropped to 3.7 percent, inflation has substantially cooled from its post-pandemic spike, about 200,000 jobs are being created each month and the stock market is near a record high.
Mr. Trump’s plans have drawn warnings from trade experts with more traditional economic views. Daniel M. Price, a top international economics adviser in the George W. Bush White House, called the plans “erratic and irrational.” He said that the costs would be borne by U.S. consumers and producers, and that the plans would risk alienating allies.
Anyway, if you want a glimpse of what his big economic plan looks like for average Americans:
I hope people don’t like salad and fish because it’s not going to be affordable for most of us if Trump gets his way. Say goodbye to your morning coffee.
Q: What do you say to the 16 million Americans who have lost their jobs in the last three weeks?
Trump: Now, that's just my feeling. It's a strong feeling. I've had good, proper feelings about a lot of things over the years. I think we're going to do well pic.twitter.com/gCNjh8XK18
This doesn’t take into account the overwhelming horror of living in a woke country where transgender people exist and racial minorities are forcing the rightful white owners of the country to share power. The nightmare is real.
As the most consequential presidential election in a generation looms in the United States, get-out-the-vote efforts across the country are more important than ever. But multiple far-right activist groups with ties to former president Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee are mobilizing their supporters in earnest, drawing on one baseline belief: Elections in the US are rigged, and citizens need to do something about it.
All the evidence states otherwise. But in recent weeks, these groups have held training sessions about how to organize on a hyperlocal level to monitor polling places and drop boxes, challenge voter registrations en masse, and intimidate and harass voters and election officials. And some are preparing to roll out new technology to fast-track all of these efforts: One of the groups claims they’re launching a new platform for checking voter rolls that contains billions of “data elements” on every single US citizen.
These groups could have a major impact on the 2024 election. In addition to disenfranchising voters and putting additional pressure on already overstretched election offices, they could convince more and more people that US elections are fraudulent.
Catherine Engelbrecht and her organization True the Vote have effectively tried to disenfranchise voters for more than a decade by claiming that voter rolls are filled with phony voter registrations. Engelbrecht’s rhetoric was given an unprecedented boost in the wake of 2020, when Trump and other elected officials mainstreamed conspiracies that the elections had been rigged in favor of Democrats. Hundreds of national and local election denial groups were formed, and many of them amassed huge followings on social media platforms like Telegram. As the 2024 presidential election looms, they are ramping up efforts to do it again.
“It could be exponentially worse than what we saw in 2020, but we’re going to be awake, we’re going to be engaged, we are going to understand the process, and we’re going to have options to continue to hold to those truths,” Engelbrecht said during a March webinar titled “Election Integrity Team Building 101.” “We’re not going to back down. There’s too much to lose.”
The hour-long presentation was delivered from a hotel room in Denver, with Engelbrecht laying out what could sound like a relatively benign plan to monitor elections and check voter rolls. “Keep a soft heart, keep a kind word in your mouth, approach people irrespective of party with love. You will find that things will be much better if that is the approach that is taken,” Engelbrecht said. The session, she said, was overbooked.
Engelbrecht then began speaking about elections being “perilously close to cracking in half,” and her presentation became a highlight reel of election conspiracies, references to crystals, Christian nationalist rhetoric, and militaristic jargon. “If this republic’s to be saved, it’s because [of] people like all of you that are on this webinar right now. There are some bad actors out there and we live in particularly chaotic and caustic times,” said Engelbrecht. “If we wait on somebody to do something, we will watch freedom slip away on our watch. That’s how close we are.”
This person is a proven wingnut liar:
Engelbrecht founded True the Vote in 2010, when she was an activist for the right-wing populist Tea Party movement. After the 2020 election, Engelbrecht and her collaborator Gregg Phillips became central figures in the Stop the Steal movement, and starred in the widely-debunked election conspiracy film 2000 Mules. They were also arrested for contempt of court after refusing to identify their source behind allegations that the Chinese government had accessed US election data. True the Vote also made wild allegations of widespread ballot stuffing in Georgia during the 2020 vote and a subsequent runoff in 2021. Earlier this year, True the Vote was forced to admit in court that the group had no evidence to back up its claims.
Apparently, nothing will stop them however. They have been developing lots of tools to help them steal it in 24:
In 2022, the group rolled out a slick new software tool known as IV3, based on technology developed by Phillips, that compared names on voter rolls to a database maintained by the US Postal Service, allowing anyone to challenge voter registrations across the country if they spotted a discrepancy. A WIRED investigation, however, revealed that the information used to challenge the registration of hundreds of thousands of people was based on unreliable data.
Undeterred, True the Vote announced last week that it was relaunching IV3. Phillips claims that the software’s database now has close to “100 billion data elements about every single voter in the United States.” WIRED has not seen proof of this claim. The new IV3 system will soon be available in all 50 states, the organization said. On Thursday, the group held a webinar to train local activists on how to use it. The new system also relies on data from the US Postal Service, but Engelbrecht claimed during the presentation that Phillips and his team had “normalized” the data from all 50 states to ensure the system would not produce inaccurate results. She also said that thousands of people across the country were already registered, and that they had a long waiting list.
Additionally, she said that another software tool developed by Phillips’ team, called Ground Fusion, would be released soon; it is aimed at organizations and PACs looking to identify voting irregularities across larger geographic regions.
True The Vote isn’t the only group doing this:
A secretive Georgia-based firm called EagleAI NETwork has developed a voter information database to fast-track the deletion of ineligible voters from the system. Voter rights groups have advised against its use, as insignificant errors—such as a missing comma before the suffix “Jr.”—have led to eligible names being removed. Still, at least one county in Georgia has agreed to use EagleAI to review voter challenges and conduct list maintenance activities.
One of EagleAI’s key backers is former Trump adviser Cleta Mitchell, who in the past two years has become central to the push to spread election conspiracies on a national level through her well-funded Election Integrity Network.
The group has held in-person training seminars in recent years, with session topics including how to protect “Vulnerable Voters from Leftist Activists” and “Monitoring Voting Equipment and Systems.” More recently, the group has made its training sessions available online, and is now once again ramping up its efforts ahead of the 2024 election with an initiative called Soles to the Rolls, aimed at boosting challenges to voter registration.
Read the whole thing. There are more groups organizing around a variety of different approaches, many of which are aimed at challenging the vote after the fact. I think we know that Trump will not accept a loss and he has a whole army of people ready to defend the sore loser in highly organized ways. Yes, they are mostly crackpots but you never know which ones might break through.
I think we all know by now that the only way the election will be over on November 5th is if Donald Trump wins and they will do everything in their power to make sure he does, by any means necessary. What happens if he loses is unknown but you can bet they aren’t going to go quietly.
Healey: He was quite clear today. There are 21 states in this country that have abortion bans total or nearly total including the majority that don't provide any exception for rape and incest. He supports right now his own home state's abortion ban pic.twitter.com/e5ghRKsRw4
What he said yesterday was that because he needs to get elected and he thinks this issue is hurting him so he’s just saying that he isn’t for a federal ban to get it off the table. But what Healey says above shows why he can’t take it off the table. He’s the reason all those states now have abortion bans and he’s proud of it. Normal people don’t care for the idea of women in neighboring states dying or young incest victims being forced into childbirth because Donald Trump is trying to split the difference. He created this problem when he and Mitch McConnell packed the court with wingnuts and now they have to live with it.
I noted yesterday that Lindsey Graham had come out with a big statement against Trump’s decision, pushing for a 15 week national ban, and Trump went on a tirade against him on Truth Social. By the end of the evening I became convinced this was a kabuki dance, at least on Graham’s part, to portray Trump as a “moderate.” “See, he’s not so bad!” I’m not entirely convinced Trump is in on that, however. His tirade went way farther than necessary to push that strategy. It sure sounded sincere to me…
As for the Republicans? Here’s a sample of the fatuous BS they’re trying to pull:
"Republicans do not support a federal ban on abortion/ That's a lie you're hearing from the Democrats to scare voters."
-GOP Senator @SteveDaines; 1 of 2 original co-sponsors of Lindsey Graham's 15-week federal abortion ban
Come on. A 15 week abortion ban is an abortion ban. Words mean something. Or, at least, they used to.
Saying the quiet part outloud:
Trump advocate Newt Gingrich says Trump’s abortion video yesterday was part of a scheme to trick voters so they can pass the most restrictive national abortion ban possible pic.twitter.com/F6Z1j2Ec9y
Oh my. Here’s one that Trump thinks is just fine and is the reason he proudly takes credit for overturning Roe:
BREAKING: Arizona Supreme Court rules a 160-year-old near-total abortion ban still on the books in the state is enforceable. pic.twitter.com/8qkTY6TQxv
Trump gave all of us more reason to vote this fall
If it was not clear before that reproductive freedoms will be the central issue of this presidential campaign, Donald Trump made that clear on Monday, as Digby noted. Every time he does, he’ll drown out his own party’s messaging about border security, age, inflation or any other bit of spaghetti they hope sticks to the wall. But then keeeping his mouth shut about “our Great Roe v. Wade Victory” is not one of Trump’s strong suits.
This is one Trump message the left should amplify, and Biden-Harris is on it.
This is a painful story that so many families around America now know too well: Amanda was denied the medical care she needed, and it nearly took her life.
More than 1 in 3 women in America now lives under an abortion ban, with more on the way.
The GOP wants to leave all our freedoms up to individual states. Where once we were North and South, segregated and less-so, MAGA Republicans want to make what freedoms we Americans enjoy contingent not on the Constitution but on where we live. They want to leave our freedoms up to the states.
When the eclipse reached totality Monday afternoon, we looked around and thought this one was much darker than the total eclipse that passed an hour away in 2017. Seven years ago when the celestial light dimmed it was dusky, but not dark. This time we were on the edge of night. What’s up with that?
It turns out that the explanation was out there. The geometry of the Earth, Moon and Sun were slightly different this time, making the path of totality wider (Mashable):
Setting aside weather conditions, the wider path of totality is also the reason some solar eclipse observers could be treated to a darker sky, Zeiler said, allowing people to see more stars against the backdrop.
If a person stood in the center of the narrower path in 2017, then went to the center of the broader 2024 path this April, the sky could appear darker the second time around. The duration of the eclipse and the level of darkness are related.
“If you’re in the center, then you’re a farther distance away from sunlight. That’s what it boils down to — how far you are from the edge of the shadow,” he said.
— The.Ink, from Anand Giridharadas (@AnandWrites) April 9, 2024
So it was near Bloomington, Indiana. The backroads drive up from Louisville, Kentucky through southwest Indiana was otherwise free of Confederate flags and Trump signs except for one house festooned with TRUMP you-name-it. But it was clear we’d arrived in one of Indiana’s few blue patches when a Bloomington church sign read:
Save The Earth It’s The Only Planet With Chocolate
The college town (Indiana University Bloomington) was flooded with people. You could tell by the offers of eclipse parking around town: $20, $30, $40. The frat houses brought couches out onto the lawns. A concert set up on a campus lawn for the afternoon. Security vehicles and personnel blocked entrances to empty lots around campus.
Out by the reservoir bridge (I spent 2017’s eclipse by a closer one) where the parking was free and less crowded, a family brought their 10-year-old from states away to celebrate her birthday. After the eclipse ended, the parking lot crowd sang Happy Birthday.
Most (including me) were too busy watching the sky to notice the shadow bands on the pavement the spouse and another woman witnessed:
As millions of Americans look to the sky on Monday to witness the total solar eclipse, a group of young astronomers from the University of Pittsburgh will be in a sparse pocket of the Texas Hill Country trying to crack a 200-year-old mystery.
Shadow bands are thin, wavy lines of alternating light and dark that seem to race across the ground in the minute or so right before, and right after, the moon completely blocks out the sun.
No one knows why this phenomenon occurs. But since German astronomer Hermann Goldschmidt wrote about it in 1820, a couple of theories have emerged.
The leading hypothesis is that shadow bands are caused by atmospheric turbulence. In the brief moments before and after the moon completely obscures the sun, just a sliver of light is visible. As that sliver travels down through the Earth’s atmosphere, it hits air pockets of different densities. That causes refraction patterns to create the undulating shadows.
As Digby noted in a tweet from her bunker, no virgins were sacrificed in the making of this eclipse. No Rapture either.
Former president Donald Trump has privately said he could end Russia’s war in Ukraine by pressuring Ukraine to give up some territory, according to people familiar with the plan. Some foreign policy experts said Trump’s idea would reward Russian President Vladimir Putin and condone the violation of internationally recognized borders by force.
Trump’s proposal consists of pushing Ukraine to cede Crimea and the Donbas border region to Russia, according to people who discussed it with Trump or his advisers and spoke on the condition of anonymity because those conversations were confidential. That approach, which has not been previously reported, would dramatically reverse President Biden’s policy, which has emphasized curtailing Russian aggression and providing military aid to Ukraine.
As he seeks a return to power, the presumptive Republican nominee has frequently boasted that he could negotiate a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine within 24 hours if elected, even before taking office. But he has repeatedly declined to specify publicly how he would quickly settle a war that has raged for more than two years and killed tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians.
Trump-aligned foreign-policy thinkers have emphasizedaddressing threats to U.S. interests from China and seeking ways to reverse Russia’s increasing dependence on China for military, industrial and economic assistance. They have also embraced limiting NATO expansion.
Privately, Trump has said that he thinks both Russia and Ukraine “want to save face, they want a way out,” and that people in parts of Ukraine would be okay with being part of Russia, according to a person who has discussed the matter directly with Trump.
Accepting Russian control over parts of Ukraine would expand the reach of Putin’s dictatorship after what has been the biggest land war in Europe since World War II. Some of Trump’s supporters have been trying to persuade him against such an outcome.
“I’ve been spending 100 percent of my time talking to Trump about Ukraine,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a onetime Trump critic turned ally. “He has to pay a price. He can’t win at the end of this,” Graham added, speaking of Putin.
I don’t really think Trump cares what Lindsey thinks. He cares what Vladimir thinks.
This plan has been on the table for a long time:
I was unaware of that one. But I sure remember this from the Mueller report:
Czech intelligence has busted a Moscow-financed network that spread Russian propaganda and wielded influence across Europe, including in the European Parliament, Prime Minister Petr Fiala said on Wednesday.
The group used the Prague-based Voice of Europe news site to spread information seeking to discourage the European Union from sending aid to Ukraine, which has been battling a Russian invasion since February 2022.
Fiala said the Czech Security Information Service (BIS) discovered that the pro-Russian network was indulging in activities that “would have a serious impact on the security of the Czech Republic and the EU.”
“This group sought to carry out operations and activities on EU territory aimed against the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine,” Fiala told reporters.
“The group’s activity… also reaches the European Parliament,” he said, refusing to disclose further details.
Aaaand this:
.@RepMikeTurner tells @jaketapper it's "absolutely true" that Russian propaganda has "infected" a portion of the GOP base, calling out "anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor." pic.twitter.com/Jv4fAiCNf4
I guess we can see all this as one big coincidence but that would be foolish. Russia is targeting right wing politicians in Europe and the US and it’s working, especially here. Republicans know that but they seem unwilling to do much about it.
I’m going to get out my worn copy of “The Guns Of August” and force myself to read it again.
After claiming abortion should be an issue for the states to decide, Trump concludes his new video by saying the country is "at the brink … we have to win … we are a failing nation." Bleak stuff. pic.twitter.com/d2jyI2yryH
Yeah, whatever. He made it clear yesterday that he’s just doing this to get elected. I mean, he said it out loud:
Basically Trump said that he’s fine with making little 10 year old rape victims go through childbirth because a “state” says that’s how it should be. He also took credit for ending Roe v Wade — I don’t think he realizes just how much that’s going to hurt him in swing states that are trying to ban abortion.
The Biden campaign came out swinging:
NEW AD: Donald Trump just took credit for extreme abortion bans across the country.
Former President Donald Trump went after Sen. Lindsey Graham Monday for knocking Trump’s stance on abortion, saying that “Democrats are thrilled” with Graham pushing a federal ban on the procedure.
Trump, 77, rebuked his ally on Truth Social hours after Graham (R-SC) said he would “continue to advocate that there should be a national minimum standard limiting abortion at fifteen weeks.”
“Senator Lindsey Graham should spend more time focusing on all of the many people being killed because of our now non-existent Border, and the millions of people dying in senseless, never-ending Wars that he constantly favors and promotes, and should spend less time on taking away our Great Roe v. Wade Victory of sending a complicated and controversial Issue back to the States where, according to Highly Respected Legal Scholars on both sides, it belongs,” Trump said.
“The Democrats are thrilled with Lindsey, because they want this Issue to simmer for as long a period of time as possible,” the 45th president went on.
“They are destroying our Country, and they don’t want to talk about Inflation, a Bad Economy, the Horrible Open Border, Rigged Elections, Afghanistan, Ukraine/Russia, or the Attack on Israel, all of which would never have happened if I were President. Great job Lindsey!”
He seems a little agitated don’t you think?
Interesting that he thinks the Democrats are doing the same thing on abortion that has admittedly done on the border — purposefully keeping the issue on a high boil for political purposes which is ridiculous. Democrats are certainly going to urge people out to vote by making it clear who is responsible for this reversal of a fundamental human right that had been acknowledged in the US constitution for 50 years. “Leaving it up to the states” which he is trying to claim is the middle ground (and he doesn’t even believe) does not solve that problem. Republicans, on the other hand, had the opportunity to take action at the border using methods that Democrats had to hold their noses hard to vote for and Trump told them not to vote for it because it could harm his election chances if there was a bipartisan agreement.
He always assumes that others are operating from the same corrupt motivations that he is and most people can see through it in cases like this.
Oh my. Somebody needs to lay off the diet cokes:
He’s still going on about it:
It appears he thought this was some kind of magic bullet that would remove the issue from the campaign. I don’t think so..
I’m not sure where she’s getting this stuff but she’s one step away from QAnon with crap like this:
Marjorie Taylor Greene once again does Putin’s bidding:
“This is a war on Christianity. The Ukrainian government is attacking Christians…Russia is not doing that. They are not attacking Christianity. As a matter of fact, they seem to be protecting it.” pic.twitter.com/QEMYN1BLDn
— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) April 8, 2024
This woman is very powerful. (I know that’s hard to accept but it’s true.) In this Republican Party she is a force to be reckoned with and she’s on the verge of defenestrating the current Speaker over this if he doesn’t do her bidding. There’s a good chance he will bend to her will because it does not conflict with his Christian Nationalist beliefs. In fact, she’s probably trying to rally his right wing Christian base to pressure him not to bring Ukraine aid to the floor.
That would explain this as well:
She got roasted on social media and responded on Sunday:
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Sunday defended an earlier statement saying Monday’s eclipse and Friday’s New York-area earthquake were signs from God telling people to repent.
After two days of backlash, Greene addressed a community note that was added to provide context to her original post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. She said that while eclipses are predictable, they still are created by God and can be signs for those who believe.
“Many have mocked and scoffed at this post and even put community notes,” Greene said in Sunday morning’s post on X.
“Jesus talked about that in Luke 12:54-56,” Green continued. “Yes eclipses are predictable and earthquakes happen and we know when comets are passing by, however God created all of these things and uses them to be signs for those of us who believe.”
On Friday, an earthquake shook the New York region, which infrequently experiences such incidents. On Monday, people across the country will witness a total solar eclipse, a rare phenomenon that is next slated to occur in two decades.
In a post Friday, Greene wrote that “God is sending America strong signs to tell us to repent. Earthquakes and eclipses and many more things to come. I pray that our country listens.”
The idea that this cretinous horror is a “good Christian” is laughable to me but apparently you can be as evil as you like in the name of the lord. I suspect she’s the one who’s going to need to repent but what do I know?
By the way, this is her boyfriend, a youtube broadcaster on RBN:
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s boyfriend warns of potential “fallout” from the total eclipse “combined with several earthquakes,” a resurgence of once dormant locusts “who will all of sudden attack mankind,” and threw in a line about Joe Biden for good measure. pic.twitter.com/pXs51EraKV
They didn’t even show Florida, which is a real shocker:
It’s about time the MSM took notice of this phenomenon. There’s been a ton of talk about the Biden “uncommitted” vote because of Gaza but very little about the fact that Trump’s getting a smaller percentage of the GOP vote than Biden gets from Democrats. And a bunch of these races have happened long after the other candidates have dropped out:
A month after Nikki Haley dropped out of the Republican race, former President Trump is still dealing with a contingent of voters showing up to cast primary ballots for candidates who aren’t him.
Why it matters: PresidentBiden has more successfully unified his voters despite never facing a strong primary opponent and an organized protest vote over the war in Gaza.
-In 10 recent primary contests, more than one-quarter of GOP primary voters cast a ballot for a non-Trump candidate.
-“Joe Biden has a real golden opportunity to capture all those disaffected people who voted for Nikki Haley,” said Arizona-based GOP strategist Barrett Marson.
Driving the news: In the key battleground state of Wisconsin on Tuesday, 20.8% of Republican primary voters cast a ballot for a candidate other than Trump.
-Haley, the former UN ambassador who suspended her campaign a month ago, drew more than 12%, or 76,000 votes, in Wisconsin, which Biden won by just over 20,000 votes against Trump in 2020.
-“Those are significant numbers,” longtime Wisconsin Republican strategist Bill McCoshen told Axios.
-“Will those voters come home in November? I think it’s possible they will, history suggests that most of them will, but I think it’s also a signal to the Trump campaign that his pick for a VP could be very critical to bringing these voters back.”
-Trump saw a larger share of protest votes in Wisconsin than Biden in the Democratic primary, where 8.3% of voters, or about 48,000, supported the “uninstructed” vote in protest of Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
The big picture: In another key presidential swing state, Arizona, Haley won about 18% of the vote in the GOP primary last month, despite having suspended her campaign about halfway through early voting.
[…]
It’s possible that some of the non-Trump votes in recent contests were from voters who cast a ballot while Haley was still in the race — and are planning to back Trump in November.
But the sizable shares of protest votes could also be a sign of Trump’s vulnerabilities ahead of an election that’s likely to be decided by the margins in a few key swing states.
Yes it could. It’s possible that there are more disaffected Trump voters than are being measured in the opinion polls. These are real elections and while they can’t tell us exactly what’s going to happen in November, they are certainly a clue. The Trump campaign should be worried.
