From The Hill
Centrist Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) on Thursday broke ranks with Republican leaders and most GOP colleagues by voting for a war powers resolution sponsored by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) to halt military actions against Iran, the first Republican senator to change her position on curtailing President Trump’s military authority. Collins joined Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.)…
From The Hill
The Senate on Thursday passed a 45-day extension of the nation’s warrantless spy powers, rejecting a longer House-backed proposal and teeing up continued debate over how to reform the program. In turning to a 45-day extension, the Senate rebuffed a House package passed Wednesday that included modest reforms but failed to include the warrant requirement demanded by…
From The Hill
President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that expands retirement benefits for employees who do not have access to such benefits through their employers. The executive order does not create a new government retirement plan but rather helps match workers with existing plans from private companies. Under the order, the Treasury Department will launch TrumpIRA.gov where…
From The Hill
President Trump said Thursday that he is removing tariffs on Scotch whiskey after the visit from King Charles III and Queen Camilla. “I will be removing the Tariffs and Restrictions on Whiskey having to do with Scotland’s ability to work with the Commonwealth of Kentucky on Whiskey and Bourbon, two very important Industries within Scotland…
From The Hill
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) on Wednesday slammed the Supreme Court’s ruling that Louisiana’s addition of a second majority-Black congressional district was unconstitutional, which limited the scope of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, as “Jim Crow in new clothes.” The court’s justices determined the district’s addition to be an unconstitutional racial gerrymander in a 6-3 decision…
Evangeline Lilly is blasting The Walt Disney Company over the layoffs at Marvel, which saw their workforce reduced by about 8%. The company-wide cuts at Disney affected most departments, including film and TV production, comics, franchise, finance, legal, and visual development. Marvel’s visual department was severely affected by the cuts, even after a small round […]
Source: Deadline.
The prime minister said the use of the chant on marches had left Jews feeling scared and intimidated.
Source: BBC.
Kamala Harris was bringing the passion at dinner — and one musician was apparently bringing … a pillow? At Wednesday’s Public Counsel Awards Dinner inside the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, the former VP had the room tuned in during a serious onstage…
From TMZ.
Evangeline Lilly’s stepping up to defend the real superheroes behind the Marvel characters onscreen … blasting parent company Disney for letting some high-profile crew go. Here’s the deal … the House of Mouse recently laid off about 1,000…
From TMZ.
Louisiana suspended its upcoming primaries for the U.S. House, following Wednesday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the state’s congressional map is an “unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”
(Image credit: Mark Schiefelbein)
Source: NPR.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s decision to stay on the central bank’s board as a governor once his term as chair expires on May 15 is a great example of how President Donald Trump’s authoritarian pressure tactics can backfire.
Although Powell’s term as chair is ending, his tenure as one of the seven governors on the board doesn’t expire until 2028. Typically, Fed chairs step down from the board altogether after their term as chair ends — the The Wall Street Journal notes that “every chair for the past 75 years has left the central bank at the end of his or her leadership term.” Powell said that he had expected to follow that tradition, but that he’s breaking the norm because of the Justice Department’s bogus criminal investigation of him, meant to press him to lower interest rates.
Powell is showing that the Federal Reserve can withstand immense political pressure.
“I’m literally staying because of the actions that have been taken,” Powell said at a news conference Wednesday when he was asked whether his decision would be seen as a political act. “I have long planned to be retiring.”
Powell said his hand was forced because the DOJ’s probe into cost overruns tied to the Fed’s renovation of its headquarters was such a transparent bid to strong-arm him into compliance with Trump’s demands.
In March, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg blocked subpoenas issued in that criminal investigation because, he said, there was “essentially zero evidence” to suspect Powell of a crime. “There is abundant evidence that the subpoenas’ dominant (if not sole) purpose is to harass and pressure Powell either to yield to the President or to resign and make way for a Fed Chair who will,” Boasberg wrote in that ruling.
Last week the Justice Department indicated that it is dropping its investigation into Powell but said that it could restart the probe, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the investigation was “not necessarily dropped” but instead was “just being moved over to the inspector general.” Powell said he’s waiting until the investigation is “well and truly over, with finality and transparency.”
In his news conference, Powell said, “I worry that these attacks are battering the institution and putting at risk the thing that really matters to the public, which is the ability to conduct monetary policy without taking into consideration political factors.”
Powell is concerned with protecting the credibility of the Fed. As my colleague Hayes Brown observed in a recent column, Powell knows that what’s at stake is the entire reputation of the central bank:
Elected officials are always focused on the next campaign cycle, but central banks are meant to have a longer-range vision of the economy and monetary policy. It’s only through their independence that banks are able to credibly say that their focus is on stabilizing inflation, versus making short-term gains to please their political patrons.
By staying on, Powell is showing that the Federal Reserve can withstand immense political pressure. He’s also denying Trump the ability to appoint a new governor, and he could act as a counterweight if Kevin Warsh, the likely next chair, takes actions to please the president. Trump had a minor meltdown Wednesday in response to the news that Powell was staying on, saying on Truth Social, “Powell wants to stay at the Fed because he can’t get a job anywhere else — Nobody wants him.”
Powell’s decision to break this norm only happened because Trump defied norms in the first place, by trying to intimidate him. It speaks to how authoritarian pressure tactics can be counterproductive when they’re deployed against people who show resilience in the face of threats and put the public welfare before themselves. Such a concept might be alien to Trump, but that kind of character trait has been at the heart of resistance to despots throughout human history.
Warsh, Trump’s pick for the new Fed chair, displayed a red flag at his Senate hearing last week when he refused to straightforwardly say whether Trump lost the 2020 election. His refusal to say Trump lost suggested that he may be the kind of chair who succumbs to pressure from the president. But Powell has demonstrated why he shouldn’t.
This is a preview of MS NOW’s Project 47 Newsletter. As President Trump continues implementing his ambitious agenda, get expert analysis on the administration’s latest actions and how others are pushing back sent straight to your inbox every Tuesday. Sign up now.
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From MS Now.
In the aftermath of the incident at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, which an armed gunman attempted to breach, countless Republicans — from the White House to the halls of Capitol Hill, from the Justice Department to every available media platform — cried out in unison, shouting one word to anyone who would listen: “ballroom.”
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham even led a group of White House loyalists in demanding American taxpayers pick up the tab for the president’s legally dubious vanity project, despite Donald Trump’s promises about private financing. The South Carolinian went so far as to suggest that his proposal would enjoy broad support.
“I want a vote,” Graham told reporters on Monday. “I want to see, where is America on this? I’ll bet you 90% of the people would love to have a better facility than the Hilton hotel to make sure this crap never happens again.”
The senator appeared to be overestimating public appetite on the subject, and by a wide margin. The Washington Post reported:
Americans reject President Donald Trump’s planned White House ballroom by a 2-to-1 margin, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, and they appear largely unmoved by the intensified calls from the president and his allies in Congress to allow the project to go forward.
Fifty-six percent of Americans oppose Trump’s decision to tear down the White House’s East Wing to make way for his planned ballroom, funded by about $400 million in private donations, while 28 percent support the project. That is the same division found in an October poll. … There is also a notable enthusiasm gap: Nearly three times as many people “strongly” oppose the project as strongly support it, the poll found.
Note that the poll specifically asked respondents about a ballroom financed by “private donations from U.S. businesses and individuals.” It’s likely Graham’s proposal for a taxpayer–funded project would generate even broader opposition.
There were some questions about whether Saturday night’s developments would alter public attitudes, the way they affected GOP politicians and their sudden obsession with the project. But that wasn’t the case: The result of the latest Post-ABC-Ipsos survey, which overlapped with the incident at the correspondents’ dinner, were effectively identical to the same poll conducted in October.
The ballroom project, in other words, isn’t just wildly unnecessary, it also remains quite unpopular.
To be sure, Trump, Graham, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and their partisan allies will probably keep championing the project anyway, and with the midterm elections roughly six months away, it’s likely that Democrats hope they do. But to the extent Republicans care about voters’ wishes, the American mainstream is looking for a lot of things from policymakers. A White House ballroom isn’t one of them.
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From MS Now.