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1 min read
The Big China Deal Is That You Keep Paying
Read more . . . →Trump announced a “trade deal” with China today. Here’s the deal: the 20% fentanyl tariff stays, the 10% reciprocal tariff stays, the effective rate on Chinese goods sits near 30% — the highest on any country on earth — and the bigger tariffs he threatened get paused for sixty days. That’s the whole agreement. He held a press conference to tell you nothing changed and that this is a tremendous win. A tariff is a tax, and you’re the one who pays it. The Tax Foundation put a number on it: this trade war is the largest tax hike as...
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Trump's Name Is Getting Etched in Marble at Penn Station. You're Paying For It.
Read more . . . →Penn Station has been a disaster for decades. Cramped, sweaty, falling apart — New Yorkers have been begging for a renovation forever. Now they’re getting one: $8 billion, raised ceilings, two new entrances. And “President Donald J. Trump” etched in marble next to a presidential seal, gold railings, columns, and escalators throughout. Of course. This is a public train station. The busiest in the country. Hundreds of thousands of commuters a day, most of them not billionaires. Design renderings leaked this week showing a monument to the sitting president built into a transit hub that working people depend on to...
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No Tax on Overtime. Also No Overtime.
Read more . . . →The Big Beautiful Bill is bragging about “no tax on overtime.” Zero percent tax on overtime pay — a real thing they announced as a worker win. What they didn’t announce, in the same breath, is that the Department of Labor just proposed a rule making it dramatically easier to call your employees “independent contractors.” Independent contractors don’t get overtime. They don’t get minimum wage. They don’t get workers’ comp or unemployment. There’s no tax on overtime when there’s no overtime to tax. This isn’t an accident. The rule rolls back Biden’s 2024 contractor classification protections — the rule that...
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1 min read
The $1.8 Billion Thank-You Note
Read more . . . →While the government cuts Medicaid for 12 million people, it’s apparently flush with cash for the important stuff: $1.8 billion in taxpayer money to compensate Trump’s MAGA allies who claim Biden’s DOJ wrongfully targeted them. Mike Lindell gets a check. Enrique Tarrio, former Proud Boys leader, gets a check. Pardoned January 6 rioters, a check. The kid who needs their insulin stays screwed. There’s also a White House ballroom in there — $220 million buried in the same reconciliation bill that stripped SNAP to the bones. A room for parties, a room for dancing. The Senate parliamentarian blocked that piece,...
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1 min read
China got Boeing planes. You got a $1,500 tax bill.
Read more . . . →The whole sales pitch was that China was going to pay. Not you — China. Tariffs were going to force them to capitulate, manufacturing was coming home, and American workers were going to win big. What actually happened: tariffs hit 145%, the US shed over 100,000 manufacturing jobs, small manufacturers watched their profit margins drop 24%, and the average household is out $1,500 this year in higher prices. Not China. You. So Trump flew to Beijing. First US president to visit China in nearly a decade. He came back with soybeans and Boeing planes. China agreed to buy American agricultural...
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1 min read
Your medication is a national security threat, apparently
Read more . . . →Trump just slapped 100% tariffs on patented pharmaceuticals. Not generic drugs — those are conveniently exempt. Patented ones. The cancer treatments, the specialty biologics, the drugs that exist because no generic alternative does yet. It kicks in July 31st for some companies and September 29th for the rest — right in time for your prescription costs to spike as the weather cools. The national security justification is real, in writing, in the presidential proclamation. The idea that your rheumatoid arthritis medication threatens American military readiness is the kind of logic that sounds like satire until you remember we’re fully in...
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Two Courts Down, Still Searching for a Legal Tariff
Read more . . . →The Supreme Court said Trump’s tariffs were illegal. Then a trade court struck down the replacement tariffs too. Now the administration is launching “forced labor” investigations into 58 countries — the EU, Canada, Brazil, basically anyone who trades with America — as the next legal vehicle to reimpose the same tariffs under a different statute. This is not economic policy. It’s a man running out of courtrooms. While the lawyers scramble, 98,000 manufacturing jobs have vanished since the tariff push started. The factories are not roaring back. The towns built around those jobs are not roaring back. What is roaring...
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They Investigated a Women's College for Having Too Many Women
Read more . . . →A women’s college admitted trans women for a decade and nobody cared. Then they invited Admiral Rachel Levine to give a commencement speech. A conservative legal group filed a complaint. Now the Department of Education is opening a Title IX investigation into Smith College for violating women’s rights — by admitting women the administration doesn’t recognize as women. Title IX was written to stop universities from discriminating against women. The Trump administration is using it to make women’s colleges decide which women count. Smith, Wellesley, and Mount Holyoke are all in range. The law that opened doors is now being...
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The Tariff Refund That Isn't Coming
Read more . . . →The Supreme Court killed most of Trump’s tariffs. The government owed $166 billion in refunds. They built a portal and said everyone would get their money back. Two-thirds of eligible importers couldn’t log in when it launched. Small businesses spent hours on hold with Customs and got no answer. Trade experts are now telling anyone who’ll listen that the government will probably just keep tens of billions it’s legally required to return — not out of malice, just attrition. The application process is complex enough that most small claims will time out or get buried, and nobody’s going to prison...
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Roaring back: 98,000 manufacturing jobs gone since the tariffs hit
Read more . . . →The promise was simple: slap tariffs on everything, factories come back, workers win. Trump said it enough times it started to sound like gravity. Twelve months in, the U.S. has shed 98,000 manufacturing jobs. Not some. Ninety-eight thousand. Since April’s tariff escalation alone, 72,000 more. The factories aren’t roaring back. The workers are just gone. He just announced 25% tariffs on EU cars and trucks. More factories coming, supposedly. Except supply chain managers surveyed by CNBC are now reporting double the layoffs compared to last year — 32% reporting job cuts, up from 16% in April. The tariffs didn’t bring...
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