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Senators Make Modest Moves To Reclaim Tariff Powers From TrumpOn Wednesday, President Donald Trump made good on his promise to impose tariffs on nearly every nation, principality, and uninhabited island on the planet—an event he dubbed “Liberation Day.” The measure would place 10-percent tariffs across the board, with additional duties imposed on dozens of countries next week. Markets have plummeted in response. There is now a small but growing bipartisan movement in the U.S. Senate to narrow or undo Trump’s tariffs. While encouraging, the efforts so far are much too modest, especially since the power to impose taxes and tariffs belongs to Congress in the first place. Hours after the announcement on Wednesday, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution from Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) that would undo tariffs Trump had previously imposed on Canada. Trump justified that move at the time through an emergency declaration about “the extraordinary threat posed…

Elon Musk Lost His Big BetLast night, X’s “For You” algorithm offered me up what felt like a dispatch from an alternate universe. It was a post from Elon Musk, originally published hours earlier. “This is the first time humans have been in orbit around the poles of the Earth!” he wrote. Underneath his post was a video shared by SpaceX—footage of craggy ice caps, taken by the company’s Dragon spacecraft during a private mission. Taken on its own, the video is genuinely captivating. Coming from Musk at that moment, it was also somewhat depressing.X fed me that video just moments after it became clear that Susan Crawford, the Democratic judge Musk spent $25 million campaigning against, would handily win election to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Given Musk’s heavy involvement—the centibillionaire not only campaigned in the state but also brazenly attempted to buy the election by offering to pay voters…

Trump’s Tariffs Give Him a New Way to Dole Out Reward and PunishmentJust a few months ago, Americans’ optimism about the economy was on the rise. The stock market boomed after Donald Trump won the 2024 election, and measures of business confidence rose. But all the positive sentiment came with an asterisk: It assumed that Trump would not follow through on his campaign promise to dramatically raise tariffs. Yet on Wednesday, Trump unilaterally ended nearly a century of international trade norms by announcing a baseline 10 percent tariff, with rates double or triple that being applied to several major trading partners. This marked a significant escalation over the tariffs he had already pushed through, even as US stocks have tumbled on fears of inflation and recession. Trump, it turns out, wasn’t bluffing. “Tariffs are a tool the president enjoys… He doesn’t have to go through Congress. He can exercise personal…

Trump’s Day of ReckoningPresident Donald Trump said he pushed his so-called “Liberation Day” from yesterday to today to avoid April Fool’s Day—“because then nobody would believe what I said.” Now, instead of falling on a date devoted to pranks, Trump’s announcement about a new wave of reciprocal tariffs comes at a moment when his White House is facing a sobering reality.Last night, Republicans took a double-digit loss in a closely watched Wisconsin election—a campaign that became a referendum on top Trump adviser Elon Musk—and had to sweat out wins in a pair of deep-red Florida House districts. The first major scandal of Trump’s second term, his team’s use of Signal to discuss sensitive military attack plans, could spawn an independent investigation. Some influential MAGA luminaries and immigration hawks have begun to criticize the administration’s deportation tactics for lacking due process. Consumer prices aren’t falling, but the stock market sure is….

It’s Not Easy Being (Marjorie Taylor) GreeneWhere have you gone, Elmo, Cookie Monster, and Big Bird?In a more innocent time, the hallowed puppets of Sesame Street were recurring characters in congressional debates about public broadcasting. They served a vital and somewhat quaint Kabuki function: Whenever a politician questioned whether PBS or NPR should continue to receive government funding, public broadcast advocates predictably trotted out their furry or feathered friends to disarm the bullies and remind everyone how beloved these iconic creatures are. Especially by kids. Remember the kids!Sadly, Messrs. Elmo, Monster, and Bird were nowhere to be seen on Capitol Hill today. They would not have fit in, anyway, as the proceedings in a crowded basement-level hearing room of the Capitol Visitor Center were not sweet, accepting, or the least bit neighborly.[Tom Junod: My friend Mr. Rogers]Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, had invited the head of PBS, Paula…

New Lawsuit Challenges the Trump Administration’s Devastating Research CancellationsIn 2024, Brittany Charlton achieved what she now calls “one of [her] main career aspirations”: the launch of a research center at Harvard University’s medical school focused on LGBTQ health. Opening the LGBTQ Health Center of Excellence had been a goal for Charlton, an associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, ever since she first stepped onto the Cambridge, Massachusetts campus as a graduate student more than a decade ago. Those aspirations, according to Charlton, required a herculean, years-long campaign to convince the school that such an effort would be worth it. “It took so much advocacy to be able to help the university, and the general public, understand that LGBTQ health and health inequities are a legitimate field of inquiry, that it’s worthwhile, and that it’s fundable,” she told me by phone on Wednesday. But within…