Happy Friday! The authors of today’s newsletter left this intro slot blank, so the editor decided to use the space to remind readers that the Chicago Cubs are 19-13 and have the best run differential in the league, despite having the hardest strength of schedule through the first month of the season. Carry on!
Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
- President Donald Trump removed National Security Adviser Mike Waltz from his position on Thursday, announcing on social media that he will nominate him to serve as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations instead. “Mike Waltz has worked hard to put our Nation’s Interests first,” Trump posted. “I know he will do the same in his new role.” Trump added that Secretary of State Marco Rubio would serve as interim national security adviser while continuing to run the State Department. Rubio is also currently serving as acting USAID administrator and acting archivist. Last month, Waltz was responsible for—and admitted to—accidentally adding Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic, to a Signal chat discussing attacks on the Yemen-based Houthi terrorists. Before becoming national security adviser, Waltz represented Florida’s 6th Congressional District in the U.S. House.
- Trump on Thursday also threatened new sanctions on entities that purchase Iranian oil and petrochemical products. “They will not be allowed to do business with the United States of America in any way, shape, or form,” the president wrote on social media. The warning came one day after the State Department announced sanctions against seven groups—five based in the United Arab Emirates, one in Turkey, and the other in Iran—that were found to have purchased or shipped illicit Iranian oil. In a statement on Wednesday, Rubio stressed the need to stop Iranian oil shipments, “including exports to China,” the largest importer of Iranian oil, per the State Department.
- Meanwhile, a meeting scheduled for this weekend between the U.S. and Iran—for what would have been the fourth round of nuclear deal negotiations—has been postponed, with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi citing “logistical and technical reasons.” A senior Iranian official told Reuters the date of the next round of talks will depend on “the U.S. approach,” adding that U.S. sanctions on Iran “are not helping” advance diplomatic relations.
- U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. ruled on Thursday that the Trump administration cannot detain or deport individuals under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), finding that the president’s use of the 18th-century law “is contrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statute’s terms.” The AEA authorizes the president in times of “declared war … or any invasion or predatory incursion,” to arrest and remove U.S. residents who are from the “hostile nation or government.” Trump previously invoked the AEA to deport alleged members of the Venezuelan-based gang, Tren de Aragua (TdA), to El Salvador’s sprawling, high-security prison. “As for the activities of the Venezuelan-directed TdA in the United States,” Rodriguez, appointed by Trump in 2018, wrote in his 36-page opinion, “the Court concludes that they do not fall within the plain, ordinary meaning of ‘invasion’ or ‘predatory incursion’ for purposes of the AEA.”
- The Trump administration on Thursday issued new sanctions against three Mexican nationals and two Mexican-based companies for trafficking fentanyl and transporting stolen crude oil. The illicit network was connected to a violent Mexico-based cartel, the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), which the administration designated as a foreign-terrorist organization in February. “Fuel theft and crude oil smuggling are cash cows for CJNG’s narco-terrorist enterprise,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a press release, “providing a lucrative revenue stream for the group and enabling it to wreak havoc in Mexico and the United States.”
- Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Thursday plans to revamp how the agency tests vaccine development, and will require any new vaccine to undergo placebo-trial testing to receive HHS licensing approval. It’s “a radical departure from past practices,” an HHS spokesperson told the Washington Post. The New York Times also reported that Kennedy’s plan will further prevent mRNA technology from being utilized in the development of future vaccines. Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines were developed using mRNA technology, and mRNA vaccines for influenza, Zika virus, and RSV are currently in development.
- The Justice Department (DOJ) announced on Thursday it is suing four Democratic-run states over state-level policies that it says “unreasonably” target fossil fuel companies. On Thursday, the DOJ filed complaints against New York and Vermont’s “climate superfund laws,” which increase energy companies’ legal liability in sourcing and refining fossil fuels, and charge them financial penalties that the states say are derived from climate change-incurred costs. One day earlier, the DOJ sued Hawaii and Michigan in an effort to block lawsuits the states brought against energy companies, which similarly sought “damages for alleged climate change harms.” The DOJ is arguing that the actions of all four states violated both the federal Clean Air Act of 1963 and the U.S. Constitution.
Forecast: Empty Shelves and Higher Prices
For all the kids out there reading TMD, a) you’re really cool, and b) President Donald Trump says you’re about to have some hard decisions to make.
“You know, somebody said, ‘Oh, the shelves are going to be open,’” Trump told reporters on Wednesday about the economic effects of his administration’s tariffs. “Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know? And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.”
But the sprawling tariffs announced by the White House in recent months are primed to cause far more economic disruption than just toy shortages. With shipping ports expecting demand to go into free fall, Americans should probably begin bracing for empty shelves and higher prices in the coming months. And if the levies stick around, the U.S. could be heading down the path to a recession before the end of the year.
In fact, the economy has already begun to contract, though that might have more to do with how businesses are preparing for the tariffs than indicating a cut-and-dried drop in economic health. On Wednesday, the Commerce Department reported that real gross domestic product (GDP) decreased at an annual rate of 0.3 percent in the first quarter of 2025—the first quarter of negative growth since Q1 2022. Imports increased by more than 40 percent on an annualized basis, evidence that companies were stockpiling inventory in anticipation of upcoming trade restrictions.
To better understand the drop in GDP, it’s helpful to dive into how the statistic is calculated. GDP measures the total monetary value of domestic goods and services, adding together private consumption, business investment, government spending, and net exports—exports minus imports. Although that calculation on its face appears to subtract imports from overall GDP, they theoretically actually have “no direct impact” on the figure, as they are included in consumption and investment and then removed in net exports, in theory keeping them out of the calculation entirely. However, exports tend to be measured more precisely than imports, at least in initial GDP estimates like Wednesday’s. As The Economist notes, this could result in a later revision upward for inventories or “catch-up growth” in later quarters.
Despite the numbers making it difficult to draw broad conclusions, the clear takeaway for many economists is that businesses were gathering inventory in anticipation of the tariffs. “The reason GDP came negative was because of that import surge, which is not necessarily an actual drag on economic growth, but it just means everybody was stockpiling,” Scott Lincicome, the author of our Capitolism newsletter, told TMD. Because companies knew that importing inventory would become drastically more expensive, they ...
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Today’s Must-Read
The departure of Mike Waltz from his post means national security hawks in both parties have lost a vital ally in a White House that is otherwise broadly more dovish in its foreign policy. From a vice president hand-selected by Tucker Carlson to the powerful aide keeping Reaganites out of key positions, Hill hawks are looking at an administration more hostile to the idea of using American power abroad than they would prefer. Members of Congress certainly sound concerned about the change, especially since Marco Rubio seems to be only a temporary replacement until the White House can settle on a permanent one.
Toeing the Company Line
Scarcity Mindset
Learning to be happy with less under MAGAnomics.
Judge Dread
Chaos begets chaos.
Ukrainian Mine Workers Express Hope, Skepticism About Minerals Deal
They support an arrangement that aids their nation, but worry it might be too late for one of the largest mines in Europe.
Supreme Court Appears Poised to Rule in Favor of Faith-Based Charter Schools
Is it anti-religious discrimination to allow any nonprofit except a faith-based group to operate a school?
David Hogg and the Bully Test
Democrats code talking their way to oblivion.
Intellectual Crisis Hotline
On lesbian gymnastics studies and Constitutional rights for chatbots.
Worth Your Time
- In Jonathan Haidt’s After Babel Substack, Sam Pressler and Pete Davis pondered whether America is on the verge of a new, social awakening. “The moment we find ourselves in may feel unprecedented, but it follows a pattern familiar throughout American history: new technologies disrupt our communities, cultures, and constellations of meaning and, in the wake of that disruption, community renewal movements emerge to re-order, re-humanize, and re-knit our communal lives,” the pair wrote. “As Americans become more dislocated by technology, we also become more receptive to prophetic calls to rethink the good life and how society should be organized.” For example, “As more of life was shifted online (especially for the so-called ‘laptop class’), more Americans began to see the dystopian absurdity of spending so much of our time in a disembodied, disembedded digital reality.” Technology has its uses, but it is no substitute for in-person interaction and socialization. “And with that realization, small groups of Americans across the country have begun to sow the seeds of community renewal.”
- Writing in National Review, Chadwick Hagan observed that the American car market has undergone a dramatic shift in recent years. “Sedans, once a common sight on American roads, have vanished, replaced by an endless parade of oversized SUVs and crossovers,” he wrote. “What happened? It wasn’t consumer demand alone that drove this transformation. Policy played a pivotal—and ironic—role.” How did regulations inadvertently shape consumer vehicle preferences? “Under the revised Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, fuel efficiency targets were tied to a vehicle’s physical footprint,” Hagan wrote. “The larger the vehicle, the easier the target became to meet. So-called light trucks—a category that miraculously expanded to include nearly anything with four wheels and a squarer back end—were given significantly lower efficiency requirements than passenger cars. As a result, automakers responded exactly as rational actors do under irrational rules: They made everything bigger. Traditional sedans were bulked up into crossovers. Ground clearance was raised, cargo space was squared off, and vehicles were quietly reclassified as trucks to game the system that Washington had so thoughtfully built for them.”
Presented Without Comment
National Review: [Minnesota Gov.] Tim Walz Says Kamala Harris Chose Him for VP to Talk to White People
“I could code talk to white guys—watching football, fixing their truck, doing that, that I could put them at ease,” Walz said. “I was the permission structure to say, ‘Look, you can do this and vote for this.’”
In the Zeitgeist
Seth MacFarlane is best known for creating the long-running animated show Family Guy and the Ted movies. But few know that MacFarlane—famous for his raunchy comedic humor—is also a jazz musician and singer. His upcoming album features 12 never-before-heard arrangements made for Frank Sinatra, but which the legendary singer never recorded.
Ahead of the album’s June 6 release, MacFarlane recently debuted the first single: “Lush Life.”
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