Happy Friday! Don’t look at your 401K.
Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
- U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink plans to leave her post early, the State Department confirmed Thursday. She was appointed to the role by former President Joe Biden in April 2022, shortly after the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She has not yet confirmed her resignation, but a senior U.S. official told CBS News it stemmed from a “mix of personal and policy concerns,” including the Trump administration’s layoffs at the U.S. Agency for International Development. “She’s been the ambassador there for three years—that’s a long time in a war zone. And frankly, the war has gone on for far too long,” a State Department spokesperson told the news agency. “The real issue is whether the Russians and Ukrainians are ready to do what’s necessary to end this war.”
- The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a lower court ruling requiring the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia—a Salvadoran national and U.S. legal resident who was deported to an El Salvador prison last month due to an “administrative error”—to the United States. The unsigned order followed the Supreme Court’s decision to grant an administrative stay pausing a Monday deadline set by a federal judge for Abrego Garcia’s return. The government has accused Abrego Garcia of being a member of the MS-13 gang, an allegation he and his lawyer dispute.
- President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed a pair of presidential memoranda directing government investigations into two top officials from his first administration. One of the orders revoked any security clearances held by Chris Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency responsible for securing the 2020 election, describing him as a “significant bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his government authority.” Meanwhile, a separate memo singled out Miles Taylor, chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security during Trump’s first term. In 2018, Taylor authored an anonymous New York Times opinion piece criticizing the president before resigning from the administration a year later.
- The House of Representatives passed a Trump-backed budget resolution with a 216-214 vote on Thursday, a day after House Speaker Mike Johnson stopped a vote on the measure to advance the president’s domestic agenda amid Republican opposition. Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune held a joint press conference ahead of Thursday’s vote, pledging to find the $1.5 trillion in savings outlined in the House’s original budget plan. The Senate version, which the House adopted Thursday, calls for a minimum of just $4 billion in spending cuts. Two Republican lawmakers joined all of the chamber’s Democrats in voting against the blueprint.
- A helicopter crashed into the Hudson River on Thursday afternoon, killing all six people aboard, including three children. According to the New York Times, the accident—New York City’s deadliest in at least seven years—occurred after a safety harness caught on the aircraft’s shut-off lever, stopping the engine. At least 32 people died in New York City helicopter accidents between 1977 and 2019, an analysis by the Associated Press found.
He Just Likes Tariffs
A Tariffs U-Turn
It’s been an eventful week for American financial markets. In response to the suite of tariffs announced by President Donald Trump on April 2, major stock market indices saw some of their greatest single-day declines of the postwar era, rivaled only by Black Monday in 1987, the 2008 financial crisis, and the beginning of the COVID pandemic.
“BE COOL!” Trump urged in a Truth Social Wednesday morning, as markets continued to plunge. “Everything is going to work out well. The USA will be bigger and better than ever before!” But hours later, Trump blinked. In another Truth Social post, he announced a 90-day pause of most of the “reciprocal,” or tailored, tariffs he had unveiled the week before—with the notable exception of duties on Chinese goods. “I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line,” he told reporters later in the day. “They were getting yippy.”
It took some time for the White House to clarify what, exactly, the change in policy meant, but by Friday, the outlines of the new new U.S. trade policy had emerged ...
As a non-paying reader, you are receiving a truncated version of The Morning Dispatch. You can read our 1,484-word item on Trump’s tariffs about-face in the members-only version of TMD.
Today’s Must-Read
A lot of the politics of trade have changed over the last four decades, including the fact that it’s the Republican Party, fully behind Trump, that is more closely associated with trade protectionism than the Democratic Party. Just as it’s no longer Ronald Reagan’s GOP when it comes to foreign policy, constitutionalism, and free-marketism, it’s no longer the pro-protectionist Democratic Party of Mondale, Dick Gephardt, and organized labor. Or is it?
Toeing the Company Line
Show Me the Man and I’ll Show You the Crime
‘Retribution’ comes for Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor.
Mike Lee Retreats on Free Trade
Why Utah’s senior Republican senator has no plans to reintroduce his bill to reassert congressional authority over tariffs.
Understanding the Trump Show
He doesn’t need your vote—he wants your attention.
When the GOP Seemed on the Verge of Extinction
In 1976, the party was in disarray. But in American politics, things are never as bad—or good—as they seem.
Our Failing Branches of Government
‘Stop playing 9-dimensional chess, you’re not good at it.’
Worth Your Time
- In a deeply reported feature for Switchboard Magazine, Nathan Rizzuti gave readers an inside look at Louisiana’s oddest odd job: hunting for long-submerged cypress trees. “Cypress – taxodium distichum – goes by many names: bald cypress, red cypress, swamp cypress, gulf cypress. But if you hack away at a living cypress tree on state property, the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry can, and will, serve you up to a 5-year prison sentence and a fine of up to $5,000. … Hamilton and Jack go for the wood that’s been dead a long time – sinker cypress, also commonly called deadhead logs. Sinker cypress is a term for mature cypress logs that were cut or felled anywhere between one hundred to five hundred years ago. A handful of factors determine a log’s value, but a large, mature stick can fetch a price upwards of $20,000,” he wrote. “In the case of the map thieves, Jack explained that they had to pay the perpetrators a courtesy visit. He looks at the gun with a smile. But the territorialism of the cypress game is understandable. Over half the work of getting a log is tedious surveying, slowly scanning the riverbed for potential hits. Then, the waiting is punctuated by short, suspenseful underwater wrestling matches as you yank a multi-ton object from its bed of three hundred years.”
Presented Without Comment
CNN: RFK Jr. Claims New Research Effort Will Find Cause of ‘Autism Epidemic’ by September
In the Zeitgeist
Readers will undoubtedly be relieved to learn that, after a decades-long feud they were apparently having, Elton John and Madonna have finally buried the hatchet. In honor of old rivalries and new friendships, please enjoy this 2000 performance of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” by John and Billy Joel.
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