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      Jimmy Kimmel: ‘Somehow Donald Trump has managed to transform the stock market into Kanye West’

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      Late-night hosts recap Donald Trump’s escalation of a trade war that many expect will lead to a global recession.Jimmy Kimmel“What a crazy country we live in. It’s hard to remember what things we used to be worried about,” said Jimmy Kimmel on Tuesday evening, as the markets once again roiled with Trump’s escalation of his tariffs on nearly all countries. “The Dow, the Nasdaq, the S&P all down again today. Somehow Donald Trump has managed to transform the stock market into Kanye West.”Trump, meanwhile, didn’t seem bothered by the worst week on Wall Street since March 2020. Instead, he posted on Truth Social that he would undergo his annual physical examination at Walter Reed medical center on Friday. “I bet it’s going to be an excellent report,” Kimmel deadpanned. “Let me guess: his physical strength and stamina are extraordinary, his blood pressure is astonishing and he is by far the healthiest president to successfully tank the world economy overnight.“I will say, after all he’s put us through, it will be nice to know that on Friday, somebody will be squeezing his balls for a change,” he added.In light of the economic downturn, Kimmel referenced an old quote of Trump, saying: “There’s a lot of opportunity in the bad times.”“And now there’s nothing but opportunity as far as the eye can see,” Kimmel joked. “It’s a Chernobyl of opportunity right now.”On Tuesday, Trump heaped even more tariffs on Chinese imports, effectively a 104% tax on all goods. “How’s he even coming up with these numbers?” Kimmel fumed. “‘What do you think about a tariff of 100% on China? Not enough! Make it 104!’”In response, the Chinese ministry of commerce said the tariffs were “mistake on top of a mistake” – “which is also what Trump said when Eric was born”, Kimmel quipped.Stephen Colbert“The tariffs are already hitting Americans right in the joystick,” said Stephen Colbert on the Late Show. Gamers were supposed to be able to order Nintendo Switch 2 consoles on Wednesday, but now the company has delayed orders to the US because of Trump’s tariffs.“What am I supposed to do without a new Mario game?” Colbert wondered. “Take a bunch of mushrooms and jump on turtles in real life? That’s what got me banned from the petting zoo.”The markets had a brief upturn on Tuesday, when rumors circulated that Trump may back down from his trade war. Asked by reporters if he would back down or if the tariffs were permanent, Trump answered paradoxically: “It could both be true.”“No, you can’t say it’s temporary and it’s permanent,” said Colbert. “That’s like being asked to call heads or tails and saying ‘I call coin.’”But around noon local time on Tuesday, the White House confirmed that they would levy a 104% tariff on all Chinese imports starting at midnight on Tuesday, “and the market stepped on a rake and then stepped down a mineshaft”, said Colbert. “One hundred and four percent Chinese tariffs are going to make everything more expensive – iPhones, laptops, those wonderful knockoff toys you can find only at the gas station like New Style Ninja Tortoise.”As for the Chinese ministry of commerce’s response – “the US threat to escalate tariffs on China is a mistake on top of a mistake” – Colbert had a wisecrack: “Coincidentally, it’s also what it’s called when Don Jr gives Eric a piggyback ride.”Seth MeyersOn Tuesday, Trump welcomed the World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers to the White House, and praised star player Shohei Ohtani with “he’s got a good future, I’m telling you”.“Not exactly a bold prediction – ‘I think that guy who won three MVP awards is going to turn out to be a pretty good ballplayer,’” Seth Meyers joked on Late Night.In other news, Elon Musk and the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) are reportedly working with Boeing to resolve delays in the new model of Air Force One. “Because nothing inspires confidence like hearing ‘Boeing built this in a hurry,’” Meyers joked.On Friday, Trump headlined a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago that cost $1m a plate. “Unfortunately, due to the price of groceries, they only broke even,” Meyers quipped.And according to a new analysis by the Washington Post, Trump has spent one-third of his days in office at his golf courses. “And I think we might be better off if we could somehow get that up to three thirds,” said Meyers.The Daily Show“It’s been one week since Donald Trump announced his bold vision for destroying the economy,” said Desi Lydic on the Daily Show. “And guess what? His plan is working.”Lydic pointed to a graph of the Dow Jones since Trump took office, which plunged precipitously after the president announced his tariffs. “I’m not an economist, but it’s probably a bad sign when the chart itself looks like it jumped off the roof,” she said. “Look at that drop! Six Flags is going to make a roller coaster of that.”“The president may have singlehandedly tipped us into a global recession,” Lydic continued. “And with so much uncertainty, the world is glued to the financial news networks, who are surely focusing on this story 24/7, right Fox Business?”In fact, Fox’s business network focused on the LA Dodgers visiting the White House, and not Trump’s 104% tax on Chinese imports. “This is getting really serious. We’ll know exactly how serious one we get China to do the math for us,” Lydic joked. “But point is: Trump is out of control right now. I’d say he’s like a bull in a china shop, but at 104%, I can’t afford to say that.” More

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      Two visions within Trump world are battling for primacy. Which will win? | Ben Davis

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      The start of the second Trump administration has been chaotic, to put it mildly. It is difficult for Americans to understand what exactly the administration is trying to do and how it will affect them. It has been simultaneously a colossal remaking of the US state and the entire global order, but also seemingly haphazard, with significant policy decisions such as spending cuts and tariff rates clearly made with little thought or preparation. Analysts and commentators of all stripes have speculated on the motives and strategy behind the Trump administration’s huge overhaul of society. But what is the Trump administration’s plan for the US?The primary moves the administration has made are major cuts to federal government capacity through the “department of government efficiency” (Doge) and now an unprecedented tariff regime that has sent financial markets into a free fall. Some view these changes as part of a grand overarching strategy to rebuild some version of an imagined past America: globally hegemonic and able to exercise power nakedly over other countries, economically self-sufficient with a large manufacturing base, and a reassertion of the previous social norms and order around gender, race, and sexuality. But a deeper dive into the Trump administration’s explanation of their policies and vision reveals that rather than a single, coherent ideological project, the Trump administration is sclerotic and being used as a vehicle for more than one competing ideological project.While the first Trump administration had no real ideological project, with Donald Trump’s surprise win being based on a personalist coalition without the backing of an organized movement, and different factions within the administration battling for control over policy and favor from the president, the second Trump administration was backed and is staffed by two major ideological projects, representing different segments of capital: the oft-discussed “national conservatism” of the Claremont Institute, the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025, and tech capital, which has used Trump as a vehicle for its own priorities.These two overarching political projects and visions both see Trump as able to advance their goals, but these projects are competing with each other. Both have accepted that Republicans will lose the midterms in 2026, as the president’s party nearly always does, and are thus trying to radically reshape society in that time in ways that can’t easily be reversed. They have deeply different visions for the future, and whether one wins out or both of their incompatible sets of policies are carried out will have enormous implications for the lives of Americans and people around the globe.On tariffs, the administration has offered multiple, mutually exclusive visions: with some viewing tariffs as primarily a way to rebuild US manufacturing by incentivizing producers to build in the US; some viewing tariffs as primarily a way to raise revenue, cut the deficit, and in the long-term replace the income tax entirely; and some viewing tariffs primarily as a negotiating tool to force countries to make concessions to the US on a variety of issues.Trump personally has suggested that the US become an autarky, with no trade of any kind with the outside world. It’s unclear which of these will be the plan because they each have dramatically different implications for how the tariffs are structured in the long-term, how long they will last, and their effects on US workers.In the first two views, the tariffs are a part of the national conservative project of returning the US to a previous social order. They view the nation-state as the primary actor in a zero-sum anarchic global order of competing nation-states seeking to dominate each other. Tariffs are then a way of reasserting US national power relative to other states. This fits in with Trump’s rhetoric about the US, taking the country back and reasserting American nationhood, and is the primary way analysts and commentators have viewed the administration.The tech capital that oversees Doge, however, has a different project entirely. Elon Musk, who has personally overseen the large-scale slashing of the federal government, rejects tariffs entirely. The Doge project and the tariff project are at odds. The Doge project is cloaked in the rhetoric of retro America First nationalism that would seem on its face (and is understood as by its supporters) to be precisely the opposite of what it is in practice: the outmoding of the nation-state entirely.It’s notable that the first target for Doge’s cuts were not the New Deal programs conservatives have long wanted to cut, but instead the cold war-era nodes of American state power: scientific research, funding for education and the arts, foreign aid, and other programs that were created to allow the US to outcompete the Soviet Union and other countries. Musk does not care about American great power competition, such as with China, as Trump does. Indeed, Musk has close ties with the Chinese state.For Musk and his cohorts, the US must progress past the nation state model – where the state exist to project power against other nation states and part of this bargain is keeping a certain social compact of living standard with citizens – to the vendor state model where international firms are paramount and states exist instead to compete for their favor. The Doge project of Silicon Valley technolibertarianism aims to sublimate the state to capital entirely and to outsource state capacity to transnational tech firms. This is, rather than an end of globalization as the national conservatives want, the final conclusion of globalization, where international capital exists above and beyond the bounds of the nation-state.This is the reason large swathes of tech capital reversed course on Trump during the Biden administration and became his biggest financial backers. For them, Trump exists as a vehicle for their overall project.Both of these projects are disastrous for the American people on their own, but both being partially implemented in opposing ways is even worse and will lead to disaster for US workers and our society’s basic capacity to function.While the tariffs by themselves are devastating to US consumers and could lead to a major economic crisis, the Doge cuts strip state capacity that would be needed to implement the most positive vision of tariffs returning manufacturing jobs. While tariffs drive up prices on things like semiconductors or electric vehicles, the government is simultaneously slashing the programs designed to encourage these goods to be manufactured domestically. And while the Doge cuts have slashed the state and led to the direct capture of swathes of the state by tech capital, their overall project of global tech hegemony cannot progress in a world where international trade has broken down completely.Trump and the national conservative’s dream of a return to a pre-financialization manufacturing-based economy, where the US has security through economic self-reliance, and the tech right’s commitment to creating shareholder value at all costs, and whose entire model is based entirely on the result of financialization, are incompatible and on a collision course. Different sections of capital – tech on the one hand, and the revanchist small capital class who form national conservatism’s base on the other – have different and competing interests and control of different sections of administration policy. The consequences of this intranecine competition are enormous, but either way, the next four years look dire for the American working class. The damage may take generations to fix.

      Ben Davis works in political data in Washington DC. He worked on the data team for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign More

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      We are witnessing the destruction of science in America | Paul Darren Bieniasz

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      Like many scientists, I came to the US as a young adult, driven by idealism and ambition. I arrived with all my belongings contained in two suitcases, and just enough cash to cover the first month’s rent on a small apartment. But I also had something of greater value: an offer to work and train in one of America’s top biomedical research laboratories, a chance to participate in the revolution that is modern biological science.In the years that followed, I became an American scientist and raised an American family. Now, I lead a laboratory in one of the US’s great universities. I am a member of America’s National Academy of Sciences. From a scientist’s perspective, I have lived the American dream.My story is not unusual. Many of the best scientists in the world are drawn to the US, joining many Americans who choose to build a career in science. This attraction to American science is because more so than any other country, America values unfettered scientific enquiry. In the US, scientists have greater resources to pursue their work, and scientists are an integral part of a culture that has innovation and dynamism at its core.Simply put, the US is the best place in the world to be for smart, ambitious people to make discoveries, advance knowledge and improve people’s lives. Consequently, the US leads the world in science, by any measurable criterion. Twenty of the world’s top 30 universities are American, most Nobel prizes in science are won by Americans, half the world’s medicines are invented in the US. When “American exceptionalism” is spoken of, scientists, perhaps more so than any other profession, know exactly what is meant.The vast majority of fundamental scientific research in the US is funded by American taxpayers, through bodies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation, that make grants to universities and research institutes. These grants support scientific infrastructure, pay scientists’ salaries and fund specific research projects. While charities and individual donors also make contributions, these are dwarfed by federal support.Public funding for science is essential because most endeavors in science cannot be directly commercialized, and fundamental science is rarely done by the for-profit sector. Moreover, science, by definition, requires trial-and-error experimentation at the edge of knowledge – its outcomes are unpredictable. Therefore, science is, in a sense, inherently inefficient.Nonetheless, science is the only way to generate the foundational knowledge that enables technology, medicine and an understanding of how the world works, that can be applied for the benefit of humanity. The knowledge uncovered by taxpayer-funded science underpins American innovation and exceptionalism.The extraordinary success that has been American science makes it especially distressing to now witness its destruction. The public investment that has made American science exceptional also makes it dependent on political support.For the most part, both sides of the political divide have recognized the obvious value of American science to society and have broadly supported public investment in it. But this no longer appears to be the case.As I write, American science is being throttled. Funds promised for ongoing research projects are being withheld by the new administration. Executive orders of dubious legal basis have been issued that will slash resources for science. Some colleagues have already been forced to terminate the employment and training of the next generation of scientists, as funds previously promised to them are denied. Many more colleagues will need to take similar steps in the coming weeks and months as their research grants are withheld.Many science graduate schools are not accepting new students, many are rescinding earlier offers, and others are dramatically reducing their intake. Make no mistake, the scientific workforce is being gutted. The withholding of scientific resources as a form of punishment for certain high-profile universities has been widely publicized, but it is actually happening in nearly every American biomedical research institution. The US’s capacity to do science, and its ability to draw and retain scientific talent is being discarded.In addition to the withholding of resources, American science is being further corroded by the installation of leadership that does not value or even understand science, and is clearly incapable of effectively leading it.In the past, American science was led by distinguished scientists and administrators who grasped its foundational role in a society whose lifeblood is innovation. Under the new administration, science leadership roles have been assigned to those without notable achievement, whose only real distinction is infamy. We would never have heard of these individuals were it not for their ludicrous pronouncements, poor science or outright quackery.These new leaders are targeting specific areas of great scientific importance for elimination. They have commanded that NIH grant applications be screened for particular scientific terms; for example, projects on vaccines using a particular exceptionally promising technology, that is disfavored based on a whim of the leadership, are being weeded out. Entire programs that are intended to better prepare the US and the world for future pandemics are being terminated.As an example, in my own laboratory, a peer-reviewed and approved NIH project to devise ways to make better vaccines has been prematurely ended, without scientific justification. Meanwhile, the new leadership will embark on studies of their own inclination, ostensibly to address questions of vaccine safety. These issues are already long settled but will be re-examined by individuals with a track record of bias, appointed by leaders with a track record of bias.Finally, within the past few days, a purge of scientists at the NIH has commenced, including the capricious firing of distinguished individuals in management roles. This is clearly and obviously not how science should be done, and this is clearly and obviously not how science should be led. Science in the US is entering a phase resembling the Lysenko era in the Soviet Union.While the destruction of science will not immediately affect many Americans who are not scientists, the impact of its demise on all our children and grandchildren will be dire. Economic development is dependent on scientific innovation, and if the US does not lead the way in science, other countries will take the leadership role. In medicine, consider the impact of science done in decades past on American lives today; the survival of nearly all American children to adulthood is a fairly recent phenomenon that is largely attributable to fundamental scientific discoveries of the recent past.If we continue the destructive course plotted by this administration, medicines that would otherwise have saved lives in future generations, will not be invented. Technologies that would have ensured future employment and prosperity in the US will not be devised. Solutions that allow the generation of power while causing less damage to the environment, will never be developed. Clearly, if we decline to nurture science, the lives of future Americans will be shorter, sicker and poorer. Science may not be the only thing that makes the US great, but it is surely a cornerstone of American exceptionalism, and it is being destroyed by this government.

      Paul Darren Bieniasz is a British-American virologist whose main area of research is HIV/Aids. He is currently a professor of retrovirology at the Rockefeller University More

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      ‘HillmanTok’: how The Cosby Show inspired resistance to Trump’s war on Black education

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      In 1987, the Cosby Show spinoff A Different World made its US TV debut and followed the elder child, Denise Huxtable (Lisa Bonet), as she studied at her parents’ alma mater. The fictional historically Black college (or HBCU), Hillman, would go on to become a byword for Black excellence. “The influence of kids wanting to go to school, period, I think is very powerful,” one of the stars of the series, Jasmine Guy, said while touring HBCU campuses with her former castmates in 2024, 35 years after the sitcom ended. “Because they could see themselves there.”Hillman College is credited with driving record levels of enrollment at actual HBCUs in the 1980s and 90s, and remains a source of inspiration for Black creatives to this day. The actor-screenwriter Lena Waithe had the fabled campus in mind when she launched her production company, Hillman Grad. “I want to call it something that is close to my heart, and that is the world of A Different World and what that show represented for me and so many other people,” she said.View image in fullscreenFour decades later, that fantasy world lives on and finds itself reckoning with the reality of a second Donald Trump administration hellbent on rolling back diversity programs and gutting the Department of Education. On TikTok, the hashtag HillmanTok has become a free online space where Black scholars share their expertise in subjects that the administration is trying to excise from libraries and school curricula. Anyone who scrolls to their content on TikTok and sticks around for the lesson is part of the class. “I’m mindful of the weight of this particular teaching and this particular time,” says Leah Barlow, a liberal studies professor at North Carolina A&T, the country’s largest HBCU. “Honestly, it feels a little ancestral.”Last fall, Barlow posted an introductory two-minute TikTok video for her African studies class; 250,000 users subscribed to the class channel overnight and within a week it hit 4m views. “I thought it was going to be a trend for a short time, and then we’d move on to the next thing,” says Barlow, who posted the video on the same day Trump retook office and rescinded a federal TikTok ban.But then a sixth-grade math teacher named Cierra Hinton seized on the enthusiasm and started the hashtag HillmanTok. She encouraged Black educators to post instructional videos under the banner, and was inundated with hashtagged submissions. Like Black Twitter and Black Lives Matter, another digital social justice movement was born – the world’s first crowd-sourced HBCU. In an emotional response video, Hinton took a measure of satisfaction in helping “people come together and build something that is bigger than we ever imagined, something that means so much”.HillmanTok class subjects run the gamut from US history to mathematics to culinary arts. There are even electives on African American food studies and Stem careers. “I am finally about to post the syllabus,” Carlotta Berry says in the greeting for her Engineering 101 HillmanTok course. “You can learn asynchronously by watching any of my videos.”The HillmanTok educators aren’t limited to real-world academics like Berry, an electrical and computer engineering professor at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Indiana. Shannan E Johnson, a former creative executive at the Syfy channel, has a course on screenwriting. The music journalist Touré has a course on the prehistory of hip-hop. “This is actually a reprise of the class I did 20 years ago at NYU,” he joked. “We’re overenrolled, as usual.”Just as A Different World regularly dealt with weighty subjects such as war, homelessness and the Aids epidemic at the risk of losing advertiser support, HillmanTok also offers culturally urgent lessons on resistance and restorative justice. “People have always been trying to limit and marginalize the impact and effect of Black education,” says Jelani Favors, the director of North Carolina A&T’s Center of Excellence for Social Justice. “But it was those teachers opening up their classroom doors, pouring into young idealists and finding ways to unlock their potential to engage in the deconstructing of Jim Crow and white supremacy.”This is all happening against the backdrop of a Black college enrollment gap in which Black men account for 26% of the student body. All the while Maga donors add insult to injury by trashing the value of HBCU education overall. “Howard was not Harvard,” the billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel said in a dig at the former vice-president Kamala Harris’s scholarship at Howard University, the most prestigious HBCU. “You couldn’t even point this out [when she was running]. This is probably a racist thing to say.”That’s just the start of the slights against HBCUs, which were founded to provide educational opportunities for Black students at a time when it was illegal or impossible to attend college in the US. A 2023 investigation by the Biden administration found that HBCUs had missed out on more than $13bn in federal funding for more than three decades because state governors blocked the funds. North Carolina A&T, which has a 14,000-student enrollment, was owed more than $2bn alone. HBCUs could well end up suffering more under Trump, who has made a U-turn from allocating $250m in funding to freezing educational grants and loans – which is how most HBCU students cover tuition. Last month, he signed an executive order to close the Department of Education – a critical lifeline for HBCUs, which have a much harder time fundraising than predominantly white institutions.View image in fullscreenThat HillmanTok is poised to become a resource for a Black student population that could find itself locked out of the traditional college experience makes it more relevant than just another Khan Academy, YouTube University or MasterClass. Inevitably, that momentum faces new headwinds from the rush to capitalize on the Hillman name – not unlike the Black Lives Matter movement did at the end. Some HillmanTok supporters have taken exception to attempts to sell merchandise and live events under the name. What’s more, as a number of trademark claims have been filed for the name, Black TikTok users have raised concerns about a white business interest winning control.“Anytime something looks like it’s going to make some money or turn into a movement, you see this,” says the Howard University law professor Nicole Gaither, who adds that the case for each filing also holds potential ramifications. It just really depends on how the US Patent and Trademark Office is going to view this. “Lena Waithe has Hillman registrations that are related to entertainment services, but she also has education services related to manners and etiquette. And she sells apparel,” Gaither aded.While that plays out in the background, Barlow remains strictly committed to the work. Last month TikTok and the United Negro College Fund hosted an event in Washington to connect HillmanTok instructors with Capitol Hill lawmakers and bring awareness to inclusive education and Black history preservation. While there, Barlow conducted TikTok interviews with the Democratic senator Raphael Warnock and the representative Jasmine Crockett for her class. Crockett implored her students to “take advantage of this moment and realize we don’t have a million Leahs running around. Please value her and value your education.”HillmanTok continues a tradition of Black self-determination through education that dates back to the flouting of anti-literacy laws during slavery. “We always find a way, regardless of what is happening – we, meaning Black people,” says Barlow. “We have always been resilient, autonomous and used agency to get information where it needs to go.”View image in fullscreenThe Hillman brand wasn’t always such an easy sell. Where The Cosby Show was largely written and produced by white people for white audiences as a showcase for Black respectability, A Different World boldly entrusted young Black creatives with the task of relating the cultural experiences that young Black students were having in real time. A Different World faced bitter critical reception when it debuted. One newspaper reviewer called it “a greed-motivated sitcom” in a slam of the show’s creator, Bill Cosby – who patterned the college after the women’s HBCU Spelman College, where he was once a major benefactor.After that rough first season, control over the sitcom was passed to the Fame alumna Debbie Allen (sister of The Cosby Show matriarch Phylicia Rashad) – who not only brought her own college experience at Howard into the production process, but also an army of Black writers and consultants. She empowered actors to give feedback and introduced clauses into their contract that freed them up to write and direct episodes, adding to the show’s diverse perspectives. For a kicker, Allen enlisted Aretha Franklin to record the theme song.Also in the middle of that first season, Bonet became pregnant with her first child, Zoë, with her then husband Lenny Kravitz. Cosby, scoffing at the cultural optics of Denise being portrayed as an unwed mother in college, had Bonet written off the series and reabsorbed into The Cosby Show. “I thought that show just wasn’t going to come back because she was and is the star,” Guy said. But after reconfiguring around the romance between Whitley (Guy) and Dwayne (Kadeem Hardison), A Different World became a ratings colossus alongside The Cosby Show and a mainstay in Black households for generations.Among others, the sitcom introduced the world to Jada Pinkett Smith and the Oscar winners Halle Berry and Marisa Tomei – who took the role playing Bonet’s white roommate after Meg Ryan passed. (It certainly worked out for the both of them.) And unlike with The Cosby Show, the disgraced Cosby’s involvement has not dinted A Different World’s popularity over the years. (He only appears briefly in the pilot.) Last fall, the cast reunited for a national HBCU tour to spark enrollment and scholarship fundraising and found that many of the students who remain inspired by the show had been born long after its initial 144-episode run.In February, A Different World finally made its debut on Netflix – six months after the streamer announced the development of an Allen-produced sequel that would focus on the Hillman experience of Whitley and Dwayne’s daughter, with the pilot to begin shooting over the summer. It remains to be seen whether this new version of the series will address Magaworld’s assault on Black education. It wouldn’t be the same show if it didn’t. “The issues we were dealing with then,” said the series co-star Dawnn Lewis, “we’re still dealing with in some shape or form today.”HillmanTok roll call: five to follow

      @amfamstudies Clip highlights from North Carolina A&T’s Leah Barlow from her actual African American studies course.

      @toureshow The music journalist offers a deep rewind on the prehistory of hip-hop.

      @dr.clo.flo The University of Oklahoma education studies professor Christy Oxendine unpacks the history of US education.

      @drdre4000 The Holy Cross chemistry professor Andre Isaacs puts the fun in functional groups.

      @iamalawyerinreallife The Atlanta defense attorney Danielle Obiorah shows civil servants how to protect themselves against Doge cuts in Federal Employee Rights 101. More

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      Trump’s tariffs come into full effect after he signs executive orders boosting coal production – US politics live

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      Good morning and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the latest news over the next few hours.We start with news that president Donald Trump’s new tariffs have gone into full effect today.When Trump announced the latest round of tariffs on 2 April, he declared that the US would now tax nearly all of America’s trading partners at a minimum of 10% – and impose steeper rates for countries that he says run trade surpluses with the US.The 10% baseline had already gone into effect on Saturday. Trump’s higher import tax rates on dozens of countries and territories took hold at midnight, Washington DC time, AP reported.The steeper levies run as high as 50% – with that biggest rate landing on small economies that trade little with the US, including the African kingdom of Lesotho.Some other rates include a tax of 47% on imports from Madagascar, 46% on Vietnam, 32% on Taiwan, 25% on South Korea, 24% on Japan and 20% on the European Union. Some of these new tariffs build on previous trade measures.Trump last week announced a tariff of 34% on China, for example, which would come on top of 20% levies he imposed on the country earlier this year. He has since threatened to add an another 50% levy on Chinese goods in response to Beijing’s recently promised retaliation. That would bring the combined total to 104% against China.China said it will take “resolute measures” to defend its trading rights, but gave no details on how it will respond.In other news:

      Donald Trump signed four executive orders boosting coal production yesterday. The orders direct government agencies to “end all discriminatory policies against the coal industry,” including by ending the leasing moratorium on coal on federal land, accelerating all permitted funding for coal projects, protecting coal power plants scheduled to be shuttered, and investigating state or local governments that “discriminate against coal”.

      During his executive order ceremony, Trump tried to assuage fears of a recession, saying that tariffs are bringing in $2bn a day. The White House has also said that nearly 70 countries have reached out looking to begin negotiations to lower or postpone their tariffs.

      A federal judge ruled that the White House’s decision to block the Associated Press from its press pool is unconstitutional. The ruling comes nearly two months after the White House first barred an AP reporter from the Oval Office over the outlet’s decision to continue using the term “Gulf of Mexico” after Donald Trump issued an executive order renaming the body of water the “Gulf of America.”

      The US will take back the Panama canal from Chinese influence, US defense secretary Pete Hegseth said during a rare visit to the nation still unsettled by Trump’s threats to take back the canal. Just hours after his visit, the Chinese embassy in Panama issued a statement calling Hegseth’s comments part of “a sensationalistic campaign” to “sabotage Chinese-Panamanian cooperation”.

      A New York judge will hear arguments tomorrow about the legality of Donald Trump’s deportations of Venezuelan immigrants, one day after the supreme court issued a ruling saying immigrant rights advocates had filed their case in the wrong state. After the supreme court issued its ruling yesterday, the American Civil Liberties Union re-filed its case in Manhattan.

      Hours after the Internal Revenue Service formalized an agreement to share tax information of undocumented immigrants with Homeland Security, the acting head of the Irs has decided to step down. The acting Irs commissioner, Melanie Krause, is the third person to lead the tax agency since Donald Trump took office in January. More

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      ‘Go Trump’: Florida shoppers back tariffs – but others are worried

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      In Gainesville, Florida, a small city in the north-central part of the state, small businesses and shoppers are bracing for the impacts of Trump’s sweeping tariffs.The Trump administration announced a baseline of 10% tariffs on nearly every country in the world last week, with much higher rates on countries such as China, Taiwan and Vietnam, and 20% tariffs on European Union countries.The tariffs are expected to increase prices on household goods, clothing, electronics and groceries; the Budget Lab at Yale University reported the tariffs could cost the average US household $3,800.As criticism of the tariffs has mounted, the White House has touted support for the tariffs from “everyday Americans”. And in Gainesville, that message seems to have worked – for now.“Make America great again,” said Justin Godwin, an electrical contractor in Ocala, Florida, just south of Gainesville. “We are not the world police, nor are we the global providers of welfare.”Kim Roberts Rogel, a retiree in Lakeland, Florida, added: “Go, Trump. He’s a businessman and knows exactly what he is doing.”Samantha Gore, a stay-at-home mom in Interlachen, Florida, just west of Gainesville, repeated a claim from Trump that Canada has 250% tariffs on some products, though the truth is more complicated: there are also zero tariffs on thousands of metric tons of US dairy that Canada imports, thanks to a deal brokered by Trump in his first administration, and the US dairy industry isn’t reaching the levels of import quotas on any dairy products to receive the maximum tariffs from Canada.“Why is it OK for the rest of the world to charge us, but when we start doing the same, everyone has a fit? This is a short-term sacrifice for long-term gain,” Gore said. “The gain will be for the American people because this will bring back better-paying jobs, better-quality goods, not China-sweatshop or slave-labor goods, and it will keep our money in our economy instead of sending it overseas.”But others are worried. And nationally, consumer and small-business confidence is falling as the tariffs loom.Gainesville, home to the University of Florida, with a population of just more than 145,000, is a blue dot surrounded by counties that voted for Trump. Trump won the state in 2024 by 13.1% points.View image in fullscreenGainesville, along with Tallahassee, Orlando, Broward and Palm Beach counties in southern Florida, had among the last vestiges of Democratic support in the 2024 election, as the state trended from a swing state that Barack Obama won in 2008 and 2012 to a Republican stronghold.“As far as shopping goes, we have cut back considerably on spending for several months,” said 74-year-old Cynthia Bertelsen of Gainesville, who is fearful of a looming economic recession and anticipating price increases on coffee, olive oil, paper products, wine and other food items.“Trump’s unyielding stance on the tariffs has caused my family to lose money we can ill afford to lose.”Grocery prices in Florida are among the highest in the US, ranking fifth out of 50 states in a 2024 analysis of US Census Bureau data.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Prices are already too high,” said Sammie Bartz of Gainesville, who said they’ve been pre-buying their kids’ clothing for the next school year from Shein, as well as some electronics. “I’m done spending for a while on anything that is not absolutely essential.”Sweetwater Organic Coffee Company, a coffee-roasting company based in Gainesville that supplies coffee to several grocery stores, coffee shops and restaurants in the area, was already anticipating having to hike prices as coffee costs had just hit a record high before the tariffs were enacted.“All of our fellow importers with whom I have spoken will be passing the cost of tariffs along to their roastery clients. Our margins at the importing and roasting point in the supply chain are quite slim in normal times, and I know no one who will or can absorb these tariff costs on behalf of the next point in the supply chain,” said Bill Harris, chief financial officer of Sweetwater.Harris explained the company had been in the process of adding $0.60-$1.20 per pound of coffee to wholesale prices before the tariffs, noting the tariff taxes will have to be passed along, with at least $1-$3 per pound added for high-tariff origin coffees from Indonesia, Laos and Nicaragua.Coffee can only be grown in tropical climates and is often sourced from developing countries, several of which have received higher tariff rates, such as Indonesia at 32%, Nicaragua at 18% and Laos at 48%.“Everyone that I have spoken to about these tariffs in our industry feels that this administration’s chaotic ‘liberation day’ tariff rollout is only hurting importers, roasters and thousands of coffee shops across the country, which were already struggling due to the unprecedented rise in coffee prices and the uncertainty and disruptions created by this administration’s first three months in office,” added Harris.“The net result of our president’s short-sighted tax grab is inflation for consumers, destabilizing our supply relationships and added stress on thousands of coffee businesses that were already struggling.” More