Wednesday, April 2 | By Alexis Simendinger & Kristina Karisch |
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| ▪ Showtime for Trump's tariff strategy ▪ Democrat wins in Wisconsin, GOP in Florida ▪ Proxy voting fiasco sends House home ▪ Trump flip-flops on Zelensky, Putin criticism |
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©️ The Associated Press | AP Photo |
Trump unpacks tariffs; voters speak in two states
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It's the moment of truth for President Trump's long-teased global trade agenda. He'll describe new U.S. tariffs and international products to be targeted as levies take effect immediately. And with each trade crackdown, his supporters say the president will achieve trade fairness, while many economists predict Trump risks choking off U.S. growth while shredding trading partnerships that for decades were foundations for international security. To date, financial markets have nosedived with each Trump tariff announcement, perhaps explaining why the president's Rose Garden event is set to begin as markets close this afternoon. Trump previously raised duties on Chinese imports, steel, aluminum and some goods from Canada and Mexico. Higher levies on cars made outside the U.S. are expected to take effect this week. The European Union promises countermeasures in response to Trump's 25 percent steel and aluminum tariffs but is waiting to learn what the U.S. policy entails. Will the levies be country- or industry-specific, or "reciprocal"? Will they be 20 percent, or "nicer" than that, as Trump recently suggested. Are they temporary — pending negotiations, or permanent? The president has suggested both are possible. "The world has been ripping off the United States for the last 40 years and more," Trump said last week. "And all we're doing is being fair, and frankly, I'm being very generous." The Hill's Niall Stanage in The Memo: Inside Trump's big gamble on tariffs. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday that "Europe holds a lot of cards" to react to the White House. "All instruments are on the table," she added. The overall effect of Trump's trade policies will be "lower economic growth, higher inflation, higher unemployment, the destruction of wealth and a tax increase on American families," predicted economist and Harvard professor Jason Furman, who chaired former President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers. "It will deal a blow to the rules underlying the global trading system and further empower China," he wrote in a New York Times column published on Monday. "SCATTERSHOT APPROACH": Trump, acknowledging that farmers may feel the pain of rising tariffs, has in mind some emergency aid similar to the $16 billion he gave farmers during his first term. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said last week that the administration may offer payments to farmers to "potentially mitigate any economic catastrophes that could happen" in a global trade war, The Times reported. The president's arguments for tariffs, which he championed during last year's campaign, have varied as he has repeatedly shrugged off skepticism about his promises of a boom in U.S. manufacturing and a projected $600 billion in new annual revenues. Frank Lavin, a Commerce undersecretary for international trade under former President George W. Bush, told CNBC that "one advantage for Trump of having this very scattershot approach of saying, `I want to see more homegrown U.S. manufacturing; I want to get reciprocity in tariff rates' … is that he can say, `I won, I got my goal,' because everything was his goal." The Hill and BBC: Big unknowns ahead of Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs. ELECTIONS: In Wisconsin on Tuesday, voters chose Democrat Judge Susan Crawford, who easily beat conservative Judge Brad Schimel for a key seat on the state Supreme Court, according to The Associated Press. Trump adviser Elon Musk spent more than $21 million to try to influence the state contest while campaigning for Schimel. He acknowledged becoming a target of criticism while leading the president's effort to shrink the federal government. In Florida, the victors in special elections for two House seats were Republican candidates in contests that Democrats hoped might reveal early clues about the political climate ahead of the 2026 midterms. While Florida Republicans held two of the most pro-Trump House districts in the country, both candidates significantly underperformed the president's November margins. In Florida's 1st Congressional District, Republican Jimmy Patronis captured the House seat previously held by former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R), who resigned in November. Republican Randy Fine won a special election in Florida's 6th District to succeed Mike Waltz, now Trump's national security adviser. The Hill: Five takeaways from Tuesday's contests in Wisconsin and Florida. |
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Smart Take
with Blake Burman |
| Welcome to what the Trump administration calls "Liberation Day." Later today President Trump is scheduled to outline a sprawling tariff plan. The White House argues it will help unleash a new economic golden age, but not all Republicans in Washington are willing to go that far just yet. "He understands this is kind of a high-risk proposition," Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told me last night. "You take a look at what's happened in the stock market. I'm surely concerned. We have a lot of constituents in manufacturing, farming, who are also concerned. But this isn't something that President Trump is not aware of." Things to watch going forward are how Republicans respond to the specific policy details and how they defend tariffs. |
Burman hosts "The Hill" weeknights, 6p/5c on NewsNation. |
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©️ The Associated Press | Mark Schiefelbein |
HOUSE GOP TENSIONS FLARE: House Republican leaders on Tuesday canceled votes for the rest of the week after a band of GOP lawmakers staged a rebellion on the floor, bringing legislative action to a screeching halt. The announcement came after nine Republicans joined all Democrats in opposing a procedural rule that would have killed a bipartisan effort to allow proxy voting for new parents. The vote also blocked planned votes on GOP priorities to limit the power of federal judges and to require proof of citizenship to vote. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) successfully used an arcane and rarely successful discharge petition procedure to force a vote on Rep. Brittany Pettersen's (D-Colo.) resolution to allow members who give birth or lawmakers whose spouses give birth to have another member vote for them for 12 weeks. But amid opposition from Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) — who has argued that proxy voting is unconstitutional — the leadership-controlled House Rules Committee inserted language into a procedural rule to kill Luna's effort. That rule failed 206-222, with nine Republicans bucking Johnson and voting with all 213 Democrats. The failed vote means, for now, that those pieces of legislation cannot move forward for a final vote. "It's a very disappointing result on the floor there, a handful of Republicans joined with all Democrats to take down a rule," Johnson said after the vote. "That's rarely done." House lawmakers will now take the rest of the week to regroup and are expected to return Monday. ▪ The Hill: House Democrats are going after Johnson over the Republican leadership effort to sink legislation allowing proxy voting for lawmakers on parental leave, even after the bill won the support of the majority of the lower chamber. ▪ The Hill: These nine Republicans joined Luna to kill the rule. BUDGET: Senate Republicans are set to make the audacious play of bypassing the upper chamber's parliamentarian and moving forward with a budget resolution based on a scoring baseline set by Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) that would allow them to argue extending Trump's 2017 tax cuts won't add to the deficit. Senate Republicans are being careful to say they won't "overrule" the parliamentarian — the Senate's procedural umpire — but Democrats are already accusing Republicans of going "nuclear" by flouting the Senate's rules and precedents. "We think the law is very clear and ultimately the budget committee chairman makes that determination," Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters Tuesday, arguing Graham has the authority to decide whether extending the Trump tax cuts would add to the deficit and need to be offset by big spending cuts or revenue-raising proposals. ▪ The Hill: Democrats decried the "sloppy and rushed" release of JFK files during a task force hearing. ▪ The Washington Post: Trump's Joint Chiefs Chair pick tells senators he wants to earn trust. |
- The House abruptly went into an unplanned "district work period" on Tuesday, to last through Sunday.
- The Senate will convene at 10 a.m.
- The president will speak about tariffs at 4 p.m. in the Rose Garden.
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©️ The Associated Press | Alex Brandon |
GMAIL: National security adviser Mike Waltz and senior members of his staff used their personal Gmail accounts for government business, The Washington Post reports. The administration's handling of sensitive information is already under scrutiny after Waltz added a reporter to a Signal group chat discussing attack plans against the Houthis in Yemen. Gmail — Google's free email service — is even less secure than Signal. The Post reported a senior Waltz aide used the email service "for highly technical conversations with colleagues at other government agencies involving sensitive military positions and powerful weapons systems relating to an ongoing conflict." Waltz himself used Gmail to send information pertaining to his schedule and work documents. NSC spokesperson Brian Hughes said, "Waltz received emails and calendar invites from legacy contacts on his personal email and cc'd government accounts for anything since January 20th to ensure compliance with records retention, and he has never sent classified material over his personal email account or any unsecured platform." On Tuesday, the White House declared the controversy around a Signal chat for a military strike that inadvertently included a journalist to be "closed," but the episode has left some in Trump's orbit distrustful of Waltz and put a fresh spotlight on Trump's desire for unflinching loyalty. The Hill's Brett Samuels reports Trump has been annoyed by the saga, and with Waltz in particular, given he was the one who created the chat. The president has publicly praised Waltz as a "good man," and Trump is loath to be seen as giving in to what he views as calls from the media and Democrats to fire someone, sources close to the White House said. HEALTH CARE: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has initiated the layoffs that will impact roughly 10,000 of its employees as part of the reorganization announced last week, with staffers receiving emails Tuesday morning of their dismissal. Former HHS staffers, including those who were just laid off, took to social media to decry the layoffs and warned that the functions of HHS offices would suffer as a result. Robert Califf, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said the agency was effectively "finished." "The FDA as we've known it is finished, with most of the leaders with institutional knowledge and a deep understanding of product development and safety no longer employed. I believe that history will see this a huge mistake," Califf wrote on LinkedIn. ▪ Roll Call: HHS has seen its full-time employees cut from 82,000 to 62,000 — about a 24 percent reduction since the beginning of the year. ▪ The New York Times: Millions of women will lose access to contraception as a result of Trump aid cuts. VOTER ID: Democrats are gearing up to challenge one of Trump's latest executive orders, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. The order directs state and local officials to record on voter registration forms "the type of document that the applicant presented as documentary proof of United States citizenship," including a passport, Real ID, or another state or federal issue identification that proves citizenship. Critics say the order will only result in large swaths of voters being disenfranchised, with groups like the American Civil Liberties Union already vowing to challenge the executive order in court. ▪ The Hill: The Trump administration acknowledged late Monday that it mistakenly deported a Salvadoran man protected from removal, sending him to a facility in El Salvador where they argue they are unable to secure his return. ▪ The Hill: The Supreme Court appears poised to uphold a law that allows Americans injured by acts of terror to take Palestinian leadership groups to U.S. courts for damages. ▪ The Hill: A New Jersey-based federal judge on Tuesday declined the Trump administration's request to transfer pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil's immigration detention challenge to Louisiana, where is he is being held. |
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©️ The Associated Press | Evgeniy Maloletka |
UKRAINE: Trump accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of "trying to back out" of the minerals deal expected between the two countries, adding that would face "big problems" if he didn't sign an agreement. "I see he's trying to back out of the rare earth deal. And if he does that, he's got some problems. Big, big problems," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force Once on Sunday. The comments came after Trump in recent days levied criticism at Russian President Vladimir Putin, threatening Moscow with secondary oil tariffs. Meanwhile, Zelensky said last week that the conditions of the deal being negotiated are "constantly changing," but overall, Ukraine feels positively toward a future agreement. BBC: Election rumors swirl in Ukraine — could Zelensky be mulling a summer poll? GAZA: Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced a major expansion of the military's operation in Gaza that would involve the seizure of large areas of land to be "incorporated into Israel's security zones." Meanwhile, the U.S. said it expects "all parties on the ground" in Gaza to comply with international humanitarian law but did not confirm whether it was carrying out its own investigation into the Israeli military's killing of 15 people — paramedics, civil defense workers and a United Nations official. ▪ The Hill: More Americans now see a permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip as a priority, according to a new poll. ▪ Foreign Policy: A new report accuses Israel of waging an "unrelenting war on the press" in Gaza. ▪ The New York Times: Israel launched airstrikes on the southern outskirts of Beirut on Tuesday for the second time in less than a week, killing at least four people and throwing the fragile ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon into question. ▪ NBC News: The death toll from Friday's 7.7-magnitude earthquake in Myanmar climbed to more than 2,700 Tuesday. ▪ The Washington Post: The White House is preparing an estimate of what it would cost the federal government to control Greenland as a territory. |
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- Americans know how to defeat a tyrant, by Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.), guest essayist, The Washington Post.
- Johnson inexplicably doesn't want to help out new parents in Congress, by Jessica Grose, columnist, The New York Times.
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©️ The Associated Press | Senate Television |
And finally … Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) on Tuesday officially broke the record for the longest speech given on the Senate floor, with remarks that started Monday and lasted for 25 hours and 5 minutes. The previous record was held by the late Sen. Strom Thurmond (D-S.C.) in 1957. In the 24-hour, 18-minute speech, Thurmond opposed the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Booker's floor event is part of an effort by Democrats to retake initiative and more assertively oppose Trump's policies as "wrong," "reckless" and a "crisis." Booker divided his remarks into sections about the administration's policies, including health care, education, immigration and national security. As he approached the record, Booker reflected on the legacy of his late colleague, the civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.). "This is our moral moment. This is when the most precious ideas of our country are being tested," Booker said. "Are we going to do something different like John Lewis would call us to do? He would call us to get into good trouble, necessary trouble." At the exact moment when he surpassed the previous record, Booker forgave Thurmond for trying to block the protections that allowed him to be where he is today. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) then interrupted Booker to ask a question, telling him he'd broken the record. Since 1915, many of the 48 all-night sessions in the chamber — defined as those lasting past 4 a.m. — have gone well over 24 hours. ▪ The Hill: After his speech concluded, Booker said it "irked" him that Thurmond held the previous record to "stop people like me from being in the Senate." ▪ USA Today: No food or bathroom breaks: How Booker pulled off his Senate talk-a-thon. |
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