An early rally on Wall Street disappeared and the S&P 500 ended the day down 1.6 percent, bringing its total loss since mid-February to almost 20 percent, after the White House reaffirmed that as of 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday, American importers of some Chinese products will pay a tax of up to 129 percent.
Conservative supply-side economists Jude Wanniski and Alan Reynolds have argued that the immediate cause of the Wall Street crash of 1929 was investor fears about the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act, which was being negotiated in the U.S. Senate at the time, but President Donald Trump is steadfast about impose=ing high tariffs on China and other countries at midnight.
An Overton Insights survey of 1,103 registered voters found that former President Barack Obama would defeat Trump in a hypothetical 2028 election, 53 percent to 47 percent, if the 22nd Amendment were amended to allow presidents to serve three terms.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have moved to dismantle a number of federal agencies, push out hundreds of thousands of civil servants and gain access to the U.S. government’s most sensitive payment systems and troves of personal data.
DOGE attacks on Social Security aren’t about efficiency, and a more accurate description of what Trump’s billionaire advisor is doing to Social Security is sabotage.
The Trump administration intends to shutter or shrink dozens of Social Security Administration offices around the country as it cuts Social Security staff by 7,000 workers—12% of the workforce.
Administrative costs are less than one percent of Social Security spending, so gutting the agency won’t save money for participants, but slashing the workforce will make it hard for people to access benefits they’ve earned.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will substantially increase payments to private insurance companies in 2026, when Medicare Advantage plans will get a 5.06% rate increase, generating more than $25 billion in additional revenue for the industry.
“Despite its promises to crack down on wasteful spending, the Trump administration just handed a $25 billion windfall to the very Medicare Advantage Big Medicine insurers accused of denying medically-neccessary care, upcoding, patient steering, and regulatory gaming,” said Emma Freer, a policy analyst at the American Economic Liberties Project. “This massive overpayment rewards wasteful, fraudulent, and abusive behavior, and comes at the direct expense of seniors in this program and traditional Medicare, which could use these dollars to expand benefits and reduce out-of-pocket costs.”
“Medicare Advantage is like a flat spare tire,” said Lisa McCormick. “It costs less to keep in your trunk than a fully inflated one but is useless if you run over a nail. Medicare Advantage may cost less when your health is good but it’s useless when you need insurance to pay.”
McCormick, who suggested that while the private sector alternative might initially seem like a good option that has added features and costs less, it can be unreliable and inadequate when needed for serious medical needs.
Despite dangerous economic fallout brewing from Trump’s reckless tariffs—set to go into effect tonight—and unpredictable policymaking environment, Congress is ignoring the chorus of recommendations to curb a potential financial crisis.
“With unsteady and erratic policymaking, Trump is fueling an economic and financial crisis, and potentially a credit crunch. There are two causes — a reckless and chaotic tariff plan and DOGE decimating government capacity to respond to these kinds of crises,” said the American Economic Liberties Project.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is targeting individuals simply for exercising their right to free speech, even going as far as repealing the immigration status of those who are lawfully in the United States and removing them without any due process. Further, ICE has wrongfully detained a growing number of U.S. citizens in Trump’s crackdown on immigration.
Today, Trump signed executive orders aimed at boosting coal production in the United States in part to support artificial intelligence data centers, after he cut funding for coal miner health and safety protections and shuttered Mine Safety and Health Administration offices across the country.
Trump invoked an outdated wartime law that allows the Department of Energy to compel power plants to temporarily remain open past their scheduled retirement dates, a similar strategy attempted during his first term, when nearly 100 coal plants closed.