Trump Is In Control-Z
The president is frantically hitting "undo" on things he frantically done
Mar. 6: Trump issues exemptions to the tariffs Trump ordered … Veterans Affairs to lay off 76,000 … Social Security to lay off more … Trump ordered to restore funding, and people …
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Pres. Donald Trump is racing to undo the actions of his three predecessors, Pres. Joe Biden, whoever preceded Biden, and the guy who came after Biden but isn’t today-Trump.
To review: There’s the 2020 USMCA, the U.S. trade treaty with Mexico and Canada. This provided a framework for corporations to build supply chains across America and its two neighbors.
Tuesday-Trump tried to undo that disastrous deal — signed by 2020 Trump — with his new tariffs on Mexico and Canada that went into effect Tuesday.
More recently, Wednesday-Trump got busy undoing parts of the disastrous new tariffs that Tuesday-Trump implemented against Mexico and Canada that went into effect Tuesday.
Specifically, on Wednesday, Wednesday-Trump exempted the auto industry from the tariffs after seeing those tariffs in action helped him understand what everyone else in the known universe and Narnia had figured out beforehand: That these tariffs would hurt the U.S.
In fact, it turns out that Tuesday-Trump was lying in his joint address to Congress when he claimed automakers were “excited” about his new tariffs. (Unless “excited” refers to any state of excitement up to and including shrieking your head off while tied to train tracks.)
Officials from Ford, GM, and Stellantis actually begged Tuesday-Trump to put his tariffs in reverse, in a call on Tuesday hours before the speech, according to CNN, quoting whistleblowers from the Tuesday-Trump administration.
Republican officials who publicly praised the tariffs also flooded the White House with calls to explain that their public praise was lies and that please don’t do tariffs, CNN also reported.
So, on Wednesday, Wednesday-Trump undid the car-parts part of his Tuesday night speech.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump told the automakers on Wednesday that “[T]hey should get on it, start investing, start moving, shift production here to the United States of America, where they will pay no tariff.”
Trump, an astute businessperson on TV, gave the automakers one month to do that, with no apparent recognition of how much leverage he’s giving to American unions who now know that the automakers have to staff new factories here ASAP and can no longer threaten to outsource those jobs.
Although the back-and-forth disrupted global markets and upended corporate planning around the world, it could end up reversing the (non-existent) years-long decline in auto manufacturing jobs … which have actually been rising since 20091 and last year under Biden hit a peak never before seen in 34 years of federal data, according to those Commie agitators at Forbes magazine.
And now, Trump reportedly is considering undoing even more tariffs that Tuesday-Trump imposed and Wednesday-Trump stood by/said he’s open to undoing.
Politico reports that food exemptions are being considered, in the face of pressure from American farmers who export food to other countries and American people who import food to their mouths.
Politico says the White House has also gotten pressure about agriculture exemptions from Republican farm-state politicians who publicly lied about the greatness of tariffs, of Trump, and of his genitalia.
One big item under consideration is potash, used in fertilizer and mined in Canada. So far, not one company has agreed to move a single potash mine to the U.S., despite Trump’s brilliant tactics.
Only after the Big Three automakers got their exemptions did Republicans start admitting they’d been pressing for agriculture exemptions, too. Wednesday was the first time, for instance, that we learned from House Agriculture Chair G.T. Thompson (R-PA) that Tuesday-Thompson had asked for exemptions.
If the exemptions keep dominoing, trade analysts warn that Trump’s tariffs would only apply to a small sliver of imported products such as low-budget sitcoms and bad vibes.
One problem with all this undoing, however, is that it’s undone via the same shambolic process as Trump’s undone stuff got done in the first place. Undoing it doesn’t undo the uncertainty about what he’ll next do, redo, undo, or unredo.
His process — i.e., the lack thereof — forces every actor and stakeholder to act and stakehold as if Trump might do the worst. Because he might! Which means overseas companies will find reliable suppliers instead of U.S. ones, because no one in Canada or France knows where the putain Trump will strike next.
Fer instance, Power Curbers of North Carolina makes industrial paving machines. They were gonna ramp up production and hire five or six new workers next month. But now they’re expecting to lose sales in Canada — thanks to Canada’s reciprocal tariffs — so tough noogies, five or six workers.
And no matter whether or when Trump exempts industrial paving machines, Power Curbers’ former Canadian customers will find new suppliers and if you think they’ll go back to Power Curbers with an exemption, they’ll politely laugh in your face.
And tariffs aren’t the only previous-Trump triumphs that more-recent-Trump is undoing.
Trump Undoes All His Support from Veterans on Social Security
The Veterans Affairs (VA) Department is moving forward with plans to lay off at least 76,000 people — many of them veterans, some of whom have had affairs — according to a memo obtained by USA Today.
That would undo all the staffing increases under Pres. Joe Biden and return the department to its staffing levels under previous-Pres. Donald Trump. When Biden handed the VA to Trump, it had 479,000 staffers. Then Trump laid off 2,400.
That included workers who staffed the VA’s suicide hotline. Then Trump hired some of them back.
Now Trump’s decided to lay off 76,000 more.
It’s worth noting that much of the increase under Biden was due to new federal law, which wasn’t a Trump law but still counts, requiring the VA to cover veterans exposed to toxic substances such as burn pits and Trump policies.
The Trump White House says that losing more than 15% of its staff will make the VA better able to serve veterans. However, the Trump White House sometimes says shit that’s not true.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) warned that the cuts will impact wait times and response times. And she also said breaking the VA will create justification for Republicans to privatize it, thereby exposing taxpayers to toxic profit margins and veterans to the burn pits of capitalism.
VA Secretary Doug Collins, a former pastor, said in a video, “We’ll be making major changes, so get used to it.” Adding in his mind, “fucking veterans.”
Now, your usually-explaining-stuff TFN didn’t mention Social Security once, so how can I claim that Trump is undoing support of veterans on Social Security? Well, imagine how all those veterans who get screwed by the VA cuts will feel if pretty much the same thing happens at Social Security!
Pretty Much Same Thing Happening at Social Security
Pres. Donald Trump is racing to undo the promises of previous-Pres. Trump not to touch Social Security.
The Social Security Administration is planning “significant” layoffs of as much as half of its workforce, which could force thousands of Social Security workers into early retirement, leading them to file early for Social Security benefits, the processing of which could require the Social Security Administration to hire back as much as half of its workforce.
Unnamed sources tell The American Prospect’s David Dayen that acting Social Security Commissioner Leland Dudek is trying to prevent a public-relations nightmare by covering up the intent to halve the workforce. So far so good!
The layoffs will hit Washington and field offices around the country equally. More than 73 million people rely on Social Security benefits.
The Dept. of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has already identified dozens of Social Security field offices for closure in Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina, and other states.
In an internal meeting Tuesday, Dudek reportedly called DOGE “outsiders who are unfamiliar with nuances of SSA programs” and said “they will make mistakes.” Fact check: True.
Also making mistakes: Trump. During his speech Tuesday, he shared a litany of lies about Social Security. He claimed, for instance, that benefits are being collected by impossibly old people such as Methuselah, Galactus, and Vandal Savage. That and other Trump lies had already been refuted by Dudek himself.
THE EFFECTS Dayen reports that Dudek intends to replace humans who assist Social Security applicants with chatbots and AI, with whom the elderly are notoriously comfortable and adept. Data show that older retirees are most familiar with well-known AI entities such as HAL 9000, R2-D2, and the Fembots from Six Million Dollar Man and Austin Powers.
Social Security Works President Nancy Altman said the cuts “will deny many Americans access to their hard-earned Social Security benefits … [and] wait times for the 1-800 number will soar.” And that’s for people who don’t have much time!
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) warned that “field office closures … will hit seniors in rural communities the hardest.” Elderly Trump voters in rural communities, however, will still be able to drive to the next-nearest field offices in their karma.
And Dayen found a new study that looked at previous Social Security cuts under Pres. Ronald Reagan. Turns out, reducing the staff makes it harder for some people to enroll for benefits. If that holds, the Trump staff cuts could mean hundreds of thousands of people relegated to poverty without Social Security.
Former Commissioner Martin O’Malley warns that the SSA could start missing payments.
Trump Ordered to Undo Even More Than He’s Undone
Pres. Donald Trump failed to remove Cathy Morris from the Merit Systems Protection Board, and now she’s getting payback by ordering him to pay back fired federal workers.
The board said the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture must rehire more than 5,600 fired probationary workers for at least 45 days while the board assesses just how egregiously their terminations violated federal guidelines and/or what remains of “the law.”
Although the directive only affects the USDA, Politico reports that it could signal similar rulings coming for other agencies. Trump is still trying to re-fire Morris, whose firing was undone by a court.
Her ruling came in response to a filing by Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger, who argued that the USDA’s bullshit claims of employee performance issues were bullshit. Trump is still trying to re-fire Dellinger, whose firing was undone by a court.
And the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Trump has to undo his undoing of $2 billion in payments for foreign aid.
The four dissenting judges — no points for guessing Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas — argued that if the payments go through, the government might not be able to recoup the money if the contracts were later found to be unjustified or fraudulent.
Which is how paying for things generally works.
Trump Administration Violates No-Takebacks Rule
Known for violating federal and democratic norms, Pres. Donald Trump yesterday expanded his norm-violating to include a cherished playground norm: The “no takebacks” principle that dates back to the Magna Carta.
On Tuesday, the Washington Post reports, Trump’s General Services Administration (GSA), which oversees federal real-estate, released a list of 443 office properties for sale.
Later on Tuesday, Trump’s GSA removed 123 properties from its for-sale list, the first no-takebacks violation.
Yesterday, the remaining 320 properties disappeared from the list, which was no longer a list, representing yet another Trump undo and a total violation of the no-takebacks ethos.
The GSA described the initial 443 listed properties as “not core to government operations.” That included Justice Department headquarters. And the Census Bureau headquarters. And the Labor Department headquarters. And the GSA’s own headquarters.
The Justice Department HQ is also known as the Robert F. Kennedy building. Meaning, yes, Trump is trying to get rid of the wrong RFK.
Also listed was the Oklahoma City federal building that replaced the one destroyed by white supremacist Timothy McVeigh, making this the second Oklahoma City federal building targeted by white supremacists.
Here’s a look at some of the places that would get screwed by having a massive amount of office space suddenly injected into already weak office-space markets:
It’s not clear where the government would get the money to relocate its non-fired workers, or how the GSA will manage to liquidate all of these properties, since people who would do that have been laid off.
As it’s worth pointing out always and across multiple platforms, the Trump administration is looking to sell off office space at the same time it’s requiring remote workers to return to the office. Because, Newsfuckers, that’s how stupid billionaires are.
Also, this stupid:
Trump Undoing Biden Economy and the Successes Thereof
Pres. Donald Trump has both the left and the right wondering whether he’s purposely trying to undo the successful economy2 he inherited from Pres. Joe Biden.
Better than most countries, America navigated its way out of Covid and then to a soft landing from its inflation-fighting attempts. Trump’s tariffs and cuts have observers on both sides of the political spectrum wondering whether he’s trying to engineer a Trumpcession or even a Trumpression on purpose.
No, not to create a dystopian hellscape to justify filling Gitmo with every American to the left of Steve Bannon.
MarketWatch yesterday quoted Wall Street analyst Charlie McElligott, whose theory goes like this, and no I don’t get it all as much as I’d like, either:
McElligott says that a recession could spur the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates — something Trump began pushing for as soon as it wouldn’t benefit Biden. With money cheaper to borrow — and the fantasized economic stimulus of tax cuts and deregulation — the economy will begin to rebound without the government having to do it with spending, like Biden did.
In reality land, of course, and as I’ve been yelling since 2017, tax cuts for corporations and their rich owners do not fuel job creation, let alone higher wages. Why not? Because rich people either sit on their now-higher stacks of Sauron loot, or, if they do invest it, they invest it in stuff that kills jobs. Robots. AI. Offshoring. Outsourcing. Mergers and/or acquisitions.
Deregulation will fail for the same reason. Suppose Company X (not that Company X) saves $100 million because it no longer has to stop its pollution from entering the lungs of the young Black people who live nearby. What does it do with that $100 million? The same thing it would do with its tax cuts (see previous paragraph).
And also, asthma is expensive. Monetarily, I mean, since obviously we don’t give a polluted shit about humanly.
And the left, too, sees signs of possible intentionality in Trump undoing the economy.
The Prospect’s Robert Kuttner wrote, also yesterday, that Trump appears to be deliberately sabotaging the economy. Unlike McElligott, Kuttner doesn’t hypothesize a sane reason for it. Kuttner just thinks that Trump is deliberately doing things he should know pose an economic threat: Tariffs, spending cuts, government layoffs, threat of a government shutdown.
As Kuttner puts it, the “key question is whether Trump has any master plan for the economy here, or whether he is just batshit crazy.” Well, he is a billionaire.
Three Quickies
Pres. Donald Trump today is expected to issue an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon, the former fake-wrestling executive, to start preparing for the end of her job and department. The order will acknowledge that the department can only be destroyed by federal law — which (still) requires Congress to be at least tangentially involved — but directs McMahon to start outlining functions to transfer to other departments and functions to be ended entirely such as preventing schools from neglecting and/or hurting vulnerable students. (FLASHBACK: TFN’s epic history lesson on the Civil War/racism roots of the Education Department.)
One of Pres. Trump’s antisemitic hires who somehow slipped through the rigorous vetting process is getting a closer look today, raising the possibility that he’ll undo her hiring. Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson’s social-media posts reportedly include some unrapturous thoughts about Jews. She defamed the Anti-Defamation League for defending a Jewish man lynched a century ago for a rape and murder that he’s now believed not to have committed, so oops. According to the Jewish Insider, “Wilson has frequently boosted the antisemitic ‘Great Replacement Theory’; celebrated Christian nationalism; called Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general, ‘one of the greatest Americans to ever live’; praised the far-right Alternative for Germany party, which has downplayed the Holocaust, while using a slogan with ties to neo-Nazis; suggested that women should not be police officers; and compared the murder of Israeli babies by Hamas to abortion shortly after the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, among other claims.” Even Republicans are unhappy. Hey, at least Wilson didn’t defend Palestinian human rights.
The U.S. African Development Foundation yesterday told members of DOGE to go back where they came from. The Washington Post reports the DOGE squad was denied entry to the USADF when they tried to come in and fire people. They got past the guard downstairs but then no one let them into the USADF offices upstairs. After wandering aimlessly the way efficiency workers do, the DOGErs threatened to come back today with U.S. marshals.
TCB
ROAD TRIP / GRATITUDE TRIP Thanks to your financial support of TFN, it turns out I can afford to take my son to look at some California colleges.
Our trip starts tomorrow — thank you! This may, however, affect my newsfucking bandwidth for the next week. Please bear with us through this trying time, and if it gets too bad I may issue exemptions for imported car parts and potash.
THE WOODS We may get a chance to see the redwoods, but we’re not yet out of the financial woods. Day to day, TFN is only economically sustainable if we keep growing at our current rate. That means if Newsfuckers continue upgrading to paid subscriptions, at some point this year, TFN will reach actual financial sustainability.
And that’s not a crazy prospect. We are, after all, one of the Top 100 political Substacks! (Thank you!)
TFN’s mission is to bring you Newsfuckers the facts — in a way that’s not warped by corporate-media framing — digging up context they’re missing and sharing it with you to help you understand it without succumbing to despair. You make that possible.
TAKING ACTION Upcoming days listed for action/inaction:
March 7: Stand Up for Science (list of local rallies) (h/t Steve)
March 7-14: Amazon Blackout — No Amazon, no Whole Foods, no Prime orders, and TFN is gonna throw in the Washington Post, too.
March 14: National Strike and march on Washington.
March 21-28: Nestlé Blackout (water wars, child labor)
March 28: Economic Blackout #2
April 7-13: Walmart Blackout (‘nuff said)
April 18: Economic Blackout #3
April 21-27: General Mills Blackout (no idea why, but sign me up on general principles)
Resources
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Go get ‘em, kids! No one’s gonna wake up if we don’t make noise…
TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.
Not counting Covid, as we’ll say about historical data for the rest of our lives.
I meant to put a footnote here acknowledging that, as I said while Biden was president, that the Biden economy was a success by many traditional measures, but those measures increasingly fail to capture burdensome costs and economic anxieties about the future.
You are so intelligently funny that it’s almost painful (in a hurts-so-good kinda way). Thanks again making me laugh when the rest of the news makes me want to cry.
The effectiveness of Americans relies heavily on the presence of both people and government departments. Simply eliminating government departments does not contribute positively to the well-being of Americans; rather, it undermines their ability to function effectively.