Democrat News

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President Donald Trump loves to crow about polling numbers, but he won’t be boasting about new polling from Pew Research, which shows that the longer Trump is president, the less Americans approve of what he’s doing.

It may seem like Trump has been in office for 1,000 days but it is actually just shy of 100, and according to Pew, 59% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s job performance so far. That is a 7 percentage point drop since February. Conversely, only 40% approve of how Trump is handling the country.

Those numbers match Americans’ feelings about Trump’s roller-coaster tariffs, with 59% saying they do not like the incoherent trade war that most experts and business owners know will raise costs for Americans.

As for Trump’s massive cuts to federal agencies, using top donor Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency shock troops, 55% of respondents disapprove. The disassembling of government agencies, already being felt by American farmers, has also produced concerns that public health will be deeply impacted by budget slashing by Trump and Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Trump’s immigration actions, according to Pew, are liked by 20% of respondents—making it his most-liked policy polled. However, 30% of respondents said that they liked “nothing” about Trump’s policies, and another 21% either refused or responded they didn’t know if they liked his policies. It turns out that the unconstitutional attempted deportations of people isn’t particularly popular with the public.

Chart: Andrew ManganSource: St. Louis Federal Reserve; news reportsCreated with Datawrapper

Probably most heartening is that the majority of people polled believe Trump should be following legal rulings made by both the federal lower courts as well as the Supreme Court. Trump, along with his new authoritarian friends, like President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, may enjoy thumbing his nose at federal rulings, but 78% of respondents believe he should be following that decision. That number goes up to 88% when asked about Supreme Court decisions, which includes blocking his illegal deportation of Venezuelans (and probably others) to a maximum security prison in El Salvador.

Trump’s supposed economic strength has also taken a hit. Confidence in his ability to make solid economic decisions has reached the lowest rating Pew has recorded since it began polling the question in 2019. This aligns with other polling showing a collapse in consumer confidence under Trump’s disastrous management.

The more Trump “governs,” the less faith Americans have that things are going to get better. If these trends continue, the 2026 midterm elections should be something to see.

Republished with permission from Daily Kos.

Editor’s note: Fox had some polling numbers too:

And they made Trump maaaad.

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They don’t call them a Vanity for nothin’.

Source: CBS News

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently ordered modifications to a room next to the Pentagon press briefing room to retrofit it with a makeup studio that can be used to prepare for television appearances, multiple sources told CBS News.

The price tag for the project was several thousand dollars, according to two of the sources, at a time when the administration is searching for cost-cutting measures.

“Changes and upgrades to the Pentagon Briefing Room are nothing new and routinely happen during changes in an administration,” a Defense Department spokesperson said in a statement to CBS News.

Hegseth, before becoming defense secretary, was a morning show co-host on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends Weekend.” Since his nomination, he has vowed to emphasize improvements in the armed forces’ warfighting abilities and military readiness.

An in-house construction crew renovated the adjacent green room earlier this year. The room previously had minimal furnishings — a table with chairs, a TV, photos of former defense secretaries and a mirror on the back of the door, one source said.

The table was removed and a new chair and large mirror with makeup lighting was installed, another source said.

Hegseth is doing his own makeup ahead of TV appearances, not paying for a makeup artist, a defense official told CBS News.

That’s mighty white of him.

And Chuck Schumer for the win.

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Earlier today Trump reiterated his obsession with destroying the US economy by glorifying tariffs and glorifying America of over one hundred years ago.

Trade deficits have no bearing stock markets on US economy, and our 401(k)s

Trump is stuck in a dementia type fog of yesteryear.

TRUMP: Everybody wants to be a part of what we’re doing. They know that they can’t get away with it any longer, but they’re still going to do fine. And we’re going to have a country that you can be proud of, not a laughingstock all over the world for many years.

Trump has turned the country into a laughingstock since foreign and domestic investors and trade partners know imposing yo-yo tariffs only causes chaos and destruction.

Then Trump opined on the good old days of 1913 and rattled off his dementia filled version of tariffs.

TRUMP: You know, in 1913, they traded to the income tax system.

We used to be all tariff.

And we had no income tax, and we had the wealthiest country we’ve ever had, proportionately, from about 1870 to 1913, it was all tariffs.

And we did. We had more money than anybody. They had committees how to spend the money. They had so much money they didn’t know how to spend.

Then some brilliant person said, let’s go income tax. Let’s let the people pay.

We’re going to be able to substantially lower taxes when this is finished.

Baby needs his tariff binky, but he forgot the part where the people pay the tariff and goods are scarce because other countries won’t import their goods to the U.S.. He should read this story about the woman who made a small business out of importing mangos from Asia. We don’t grow mangoes in the U.S.

If only there was a 12-step program for being obsessed with tariffs and other issues which destroy people’s lives.

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Granted, the strip of land likely to be incorporated soon as Starbase, Texas, is small. But it’s a start for the billionaire Nazi fanboy who clearly thinks he deserves to be the king of the country if not the world. It’s pretty clear Musk plans to use this power to grab even more.

From The New York Times:

A little more than four years ago, Mr. Musk began publicly suggesting a fanciful new name for the stretch of coastal wetlands where SpaceX builds and launches its rockets. For a while, it seemed like just calling it Starbase would be enough. But as the company grew its footprint, moving its corporate headquarters and feverishly building housing to keep up with its swelling work force, the boss wanted a real town.

Now, voting has begun in an election whose outcome is all but predetermined in the boss’ favor. The Times calls it “the sort of lopsided victory that a titan of industry might expect but that rarely occurs in most free and fair elections in this divided nation.”

According to The Times, Starbase has only 279 eligible voters. But it looks like Musk will use his small fiefdom to override the will of the nearly 200,000 residents of the city of Brownsville and the 421,000 residents of Cameron County, Texas by wresting control of the local public beach. With a likely assist from the Texas legislature.

More from The Times:

The company has not described its reasons for wanting to incorporate a new city around itself. Neither a SpaceX spokesman nor Mr. Musk responded to requests for comment.

But it could try to use the new governmental entity to gain greater control over the local public beach, which must close for safety during nearby rocket launches — for years a point of contention with Brownsville residents. A bill in the state capitol, already approved by the Texas Senate, would give the new city of Starbase the power to close the beach during weekday launches, something that currently requires county approval.

“This will put beach closures directly in the hands of SpaceX, which at this time is handing the power to Elon Musk,” Craig Nazor of the Texas chapter of the Sierra Club said during a public hearing last month.

At least he’s not calling it Muskville or XTown… yet.

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With the Trump administration slashing budgets and threatening to revoke tax-exempt status for nonprofits, some Southern California social justice organizations have gone into a defensive crouch, hoping to wait out the passing storm.

They are not openly fighting President Trump’s program cuts. Some have scrubbed their websites of terms such as “equity,” “inclusion” and “transgender.” Others have been told they should drop land acknowledgments — proclamations paying tribute to the Indigenous peoples who were this region’s first human inhabitants.

But other local nonprofits intend to fight. They have slammed Trump’s policies. They declined suggestions to alter their mission statements. They have gone to court. And one, giant St. John’s Community Health — which has provided care for the region’s working class and immigrants for 60 years — is launching a campaign to call out congressional Republicans it believes are enabling Trump budget cuts that they believe will cripple healthcare for the poor.

The venerable system of health clinics, based in South Los Angeles, on Thursday joined about 10 other nonprofits in launching a media campaign that will focus on half a dozen U.S. House districts where Republican lawmakers have supported the president’s initial budget plan.

The campaign by the newly created Health Justice Action Fund will promote the theme “Medicaid matters to me.” The organization plans to spend $2 million in the coming weeks to focus petitions, phone banks, social media and radio ads on six GOP lawmakers across the country, telling them that their constituents do not support cuts to the principal federal health program for the poor and disabled.

The Republican-controlled House and Senate have approved a Trump budget framework that calls for $880 billion in cuts over 10 years from operations overseen by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Trump and other Republicans insist Medicaid won’t have to be cut. But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office disagrees, saying the desired savings can be achieved only by slashing Medicaid.

The new campaign to head off those cuts has been organized by Los Angeles-based St. John’s Health and its president and chief executive, Jim Mangia.

“The Medicaid cuts being proposed by Republicans and President Trump would be devastating to the health of low-income families throughout the United States,” Mangia, who has led St. John’s for a quarter of a century, said in an interview. “There are tens of millions of people who depend on Medicaid and, in California, Medi-Cal, for their basic healthcare. To cut that to fund tax breaks for billionaires is a perversion of what this country is supposed to be about.”

Mangia and his board of directors said they understand that their sprawling healthcare organization, with more than 20 locations in Southern California, could be targeted for calling out the president and his budget.

“Our posture is to fight,” Mangia said. “A lot of community health centers have been scraping their websites and taking words like ‘trans’ and ‘African American’ off their websites. We’re not going to do that. We are not going to erase the people we serve.”

Leaders of nonprofits that serve the poor, immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community have been engaged in intense conversations for weeks about how to respond to Trump and his policies, which explicitly aim to curtail services to some of those populations.

When Trump said last week that he might begin trying to revoke the nonprofit status of some groups, anxiety among the agencies spiraled to a new high, said Geoff Green, chief executive of CalNonprofits, which represents thousands of organizations with tax-exempt status.

“There have been financial stresses and budget cuts before,” Green said. “But now it’s not only financial stress, it’s direct targeting of their very existence and challenges to the values that are at the core of a lot of their work.”

Leaders of smaller organizations, in particular, don’t feel they have the power or money to take the Trump administration to court. Others, representing immigrants, worry that their leaders or their clients could be targeted for deportation if they protest publicly.

“For some people in this community this is like a kind of code-switching,” said an executive at one social justice nonprofit, who declined to be named. “They might change some terms on their websites, but it’s not going to change their mission. They want to avoid conflict or attacks, so they can come out the other end of this and do the good work.”

In one instance, a nonprofit declined to receive an award sponsored by a member of the California Legislature, because the organization worried the award would bring unwanted attention to its service to immigrants.

“At the end of the day, it’s about protecting the most vulnerable of us,” said the social justice executive. “Some organizations have more privilege, they have more resources. They can afford to go to court. They can be more bold.”

Public Counsel is among the public interest law firms whose contracts the Trump administration has threatened with termination. The potential loss of $1.6 million puts in jeopardy the Los Angeles-based firm’s representation of hundreds of immigrant children, unaccompanied minors who often have no adult support.

Public Counsel Chief Executive Kathryn Eidmann said she believes her organization has a duty to call out what it sees as an injustice: leaving vulnerable children without legal representation.

“We have a responsibility to stand up for our mission and to stand up for our clients and the rule of law,” Eidmann said. Public Counsel is seeking to intervene in court on behalf of “sanctuary” cities such as Los Angeles, which have been threatened with a loss of federal funding, and the firm has come to the defense of law firms targeted for providing pro bono representation to groups out of favor with the Trump administration.

Public Counsel and other nonprofit law firms continue to wait to see whether the Trump administration will honor a judge’s temporary restraining order, requiring that funds continue to flow to those representing immigrant children. As of Wednesday, the funding had not been restored, a Public Counsel spokesperson said.

Another L.A.-area nonprofit threatened with the loss of federal funding under Trump’s anti-DEI push is the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust.

The group had won a $500,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to help ensure that redevelopment along the Los Angeles River in northeast L.A. protects housing, jobs and services for working-class families. But the money stopped flowing this year, without any explanation from the EPA, said Tori Kjer, executive director of the land trust.

“To them, this is probably a waste of money,” Kjer said. “To us, it’s about equitable development and building in a way that supports everyone.”

Kjer said a staffer for a liberal House member urged her group to take a low profile and to, for example, delete the Indigenous land acknowledgments that are in the signature line of all its emails. She declined to do that.

“We are not going to change our ways because of Trump,” Kjer said. “In California, as a state and in this region, we are still very progressive. If we can’t keep this kind of work going here, we are in real trouble. We feel we need to resist, if even in a small way.”

The campaign to protest potential Medicaid cuts will focus on six House districts where use of the federally funded health system is high and where Republicans hold, at best, a narrow electoral advantage.

The targeted districts include David Valadao’s in the Central Valley and Ken Calvert’s in the Coachella Valley. Nearly two-thirds of Valadao’s constituents use Medicaid, while about 30% in Calvert’s district do so.

Residents in those districts will hear how the Trump budget plan threatens to cut Medicaid for “everyday people,” and how substantial reductions could threaten to shutter rural hospitals that are already struggling to make ends meet.

The Health Justice Action Fund was created as a 501(c)(4) by St. John’s and about 10 other healthcare providers, who have chosen to remain anonymous. The regulations governing such funds allow them (unlike the nonprofits themselves) to engage in unlimited lobbying and some political activity.

St. John’s Community Health President and Chief Executive Jim Mangia, right, on a panel in 2022 with then-Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass.

(Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)

The rules also allow contributors to remain anonymous, which Mangia said is necessary for some of his partners, who believe they will be targeted for retaliation if it becomes clear they tried to thwart Trump’s policies.

House Republicans who have been pressed about their position have contended, despite a contrary view from experts, that the Trump cuts can be executed without taking services from Medicaid recipients.

Valadao was among a dozen House Republicans who sent a letter to party leaders saying they would not support the White House’s plan if it will force cuts to Medicaid. Republican leaders have assured their wobbling colleagues that they intend to root out waste, fraud and abuse only, not cut Medicaid benefits.

Mangia said the campaign he and his allies are waging should make it extra clear to the House Republicans that Medicaid can’t be cut.

“There is a very scary environment right now,” Mangia said. “But someone had to step up and defend Medicaid and the basic healthcare it provides for so many people. We weren’t going to let this happen without a fight.”

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History may not perfectly repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Two protectionist episodes — the infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 and the Trump-era tariffs of today — offer a striking example. Both emerged from economic nostalgia and fear of change. Both were politically attractive. And both were costly, backward-looking mistakes that undermined the economies they were meant to protect.

Smoot-Hawley was conceived in an America uneasy about economic transformation. In the 1920s, while the economy was otherwise booming, farmers were in crisis. After a postwar boom, crop prices had collapsed and rural debt soared. About one-quarter of the labor force still worked in agriculture, down from one-half a few decades before. Many Americans longed for an earlier era when agriculture was dominant and prosperous.

Foreign competition was the scapegoat. Politicians seized on this frustration. Promising protection from cheap imports was an easy way to win votes. The result was a tariff that raised duties on more than 20,000 goods by an average of about 20%.

Smoot-Hawley’s intent was to reduce imports and raise domestic prices, especially for farmers. But the plan backfired quickly. U.S. trading partners retaliated as Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Britain, France and others imposed their own tariffs. Exports plummeted, imports became more expensive, and global economic conditions deteriorated.

The timing couldn’t have been worse. The Great Depression had begun and the stock market, which had been slowly recovering from the 1929 crash, dropped again when the bill became law. Instead of stabilizing, the U.S. sank further into depression. Far from rescuing American farmers, the tariffs deepened their crisis. Between 1929 and 1934, global trade collapsed by 65%.

Today, Smoot-Hawley is widely regarded as a catastrophic error.

Now fast-forward to the new wave of protectionist nostalgia, this time aimed at restoring manufacturing. Trump’s 2016 campaign promised to revive the lost era of factory jobs and industrial strength. And like 1920s Republicans blaming foreign crops for the collapse of agriculture, Trump blamed imported manufactured goods.

Never mind that America had long since shifted to a service-based economy or that manufacturing accounted for just 10% of jobs by 2016. The emotional appeal of “Make America Great Again” rested on a nostalgia-drenched longing for the age of smokestacks and assembly lines — and a broad and homogeneous middle class — before globalization and automation transformed the economy.

When Trump took office again in January, he inherited a robust economy that had further improved after his election, based on investors’ anticipation of pro-growth policies. Instead, the administration turned toward economic nationalism and shot the economy in the foot.

The culmination came on April 2, when Trump announced sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs of 10% on all imports and additional steep, targeted tariffs against counterparts such as China, Japan, Vietnam and the European Union. He pitched it as a patriotic effort to restore sovereignty and rebuild industry.

As we know, the fallout was immediate. Markets tanked, and trade partners threatened retaliation, with some even taking action. Economists warned of rising costs, damaged supply chains and diplomatic tensions. Australia, among others, condemned the move as economically hostile. Small businesses sued the administration, arguing that the tariffs exceeded presidential authority and inflicted serious harm.

And just as Smoot-Hawley hurt the farmers it was meant to help, Trump’s tariffs are hurting manufacturers. Far from delivering industrial renewal, they’ve led to layoffs at manufacturing plants.

In the end, despite its populist packaging, Liberation Day marked a dramatic escalation of failed protectionist thinking. It also revived 1930s-style nationalist rhetoric.

The two blunders have one more thing in common: cronyism. According to economic historian Douglas A. Irwin, Smoot-Hawley was not primarily about ideology. It was about interest-group politics: an ad hoc scramble driven by constituent demands, sectoral lobbying and legislative bargaining.

In the same way, Trump’s tariffs have revived the lobbying for tariff exemptions we saw in his first term. Apple got an exemption for the iPhone and now, understandably, everyone else wants one. As the Cato Institute’s Scott Lincicome commented on X, “The cronyism buffet line is now open.” National Review’s Dominic Pino calculated that tariff lobbying spending is up by 277%.

The lesson is clear: Economic nostalgia is a poor guide to sound policy. Smoot-Hawley and Trump’s tariffs represent attempts to re-create a romanticized past — one of small farms or bustling factories — rather than to embrace the reality of a changing world. But economies are dynamic. Trying to freeze them in place with trade barriers doesn’t stop change; it just makes the transition harder, costlier and more painful.

History judged Smoot-Hawley harshly. The final verdict on Trump’s tariffs is not yet written, but the early signs are familiar. If we want prosperity, we must look forward, not backward. The future belongs to those who embrace change and creative destruction, not those who resist it.

Veronique de Rugy is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate.

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I put off writing about this, because it’s so complicated and my brain is on constant overload FOR SOME REASON. But it’s sounding more and more like Ron and Casey might actually have to pay for their sins this time, so I thought you’d be interested! (It will be helpful if you watch the above video.) Via The Florida Phoenix:

The Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times obtained a copy of an early iteration of the settlement agreement between Centene and the state that confirms the $10 million “donation” Centene made to the Hope Florida Foundation represented the return of taxpayer dollars stemming from Medicaid overpayments.

DeSantis administration officials have told the House that the money wasn’t taxpayer dollars.

Moreover, the governor has said the accusations of wrongdoing at Hope Florida are partisan in nature as First Lady Casey DeSantis is mulling a potential gubernatorial run to replace her husband, who is hitting his term limits.

Hope Florida is the non-profit headed up by Casey “Lady MacBeth” DeSantis, who seems to want to run for governor now that husband Ron has term limits. Now, what seems to have happened is, an assorted cast of Republican miscreants from the DeSantis orbit collaborated to move $10 million of that Centene payment to Hope Florida and then, almost immediately, to two PACs pushing to help Ron DeSantis claim victory in stopping recreational marijuana.

Now, here’s the thing. When Ron looked like a possible president, he could do no wrong — and the Florida legislature couldn’t do enough for him. But times have changed, and this Friday, the state house boys have a long list of witnesses to grill — including the recently appointed Attorney General, James Uthmeier. (One of the major players planning to take Ron and Casey down is Rep. Don Gaetz, father of Matt. Ha, ha!)

And the Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson is absolutely gleeful:

The words being whispered in town are “FBI,” “jail,” and “RICO.”

You’ve likely never heard of Uthmeier, but he’s one of the DeSantis goons noted for loyalty over any other quality, and DeSantis tends to plop him into jobs where he needs a hatchetman who won’t question orders. He’s a peach:

“The state’s new A.G., James Uthmeier, has a history of thumbing his nose at the laws he’s now supposed to enforce. He tried to hide his cell phone records last year, prompting a judge to order him to turn them over. And now it appears that Uthmeier was involved in the scandal unfolding around Hope Florida, a program that was supposed to help Floridians in need but instead seems to have been used to funnel money to DeSantis’s cronies.”

DeSantis thought he was above all this. He thought he was the golden boy who could do no wrong. DeFuture.

Now? He held a desperate, cranky, and screechy presser this week where he tried to assert that Tallahassee, a city and a political space utterly dominated by the GOP since 1994, somehow made far-right Republicans like the Speaker of the House and the Senate President into Soros-controlled deep state actors conspiring with the liberal media.

This assertion is as insane as it sounds. The man making it was someone, once upon a time.

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The announcement called it “the most EXCLUSIVE INVITATION in the World,” a chance to have “an intimate private dinner” with the Talking Yam at his members-only golf club in Virginia, followed by a tour of the White House. A seat would be reserved for each of the top 220 investors in $TRUMP, the cryptocurrency that El Cheatolini launched on the eve of his inauguration. Via The New York Times:

In an astonishing escalation of the Trump family’s efforts to profit from cryptocurrencies, a website promoting Mr. Trump’s so-called memecoin announced on Wednesday that the coin’s largest buyers would be invited to meet with him. The effort was, in effect, an offer of access to the White House in exchange for an investment in one of Mr. Trump’s crypto ventures.

Astonishing to the New York Times maybe, but not to many other sentient beings.

“Have Dinner with President Trump and the $TRUMP Community!” the invitation said. “Let the President know how many $TRUMP coins YOU own!”

For months, Mr. Trump’s forays into the crypto industry have created ethical conflicts with little precedent in presidential history. As he markets digital currencies to the public, Mr. Trump has also appointed regulators who are scaling back crypto enforcement and called for legislation that would boost the industry’s prospects in the United States.

As news of the dinner invitation spread on social media, the memecoin’s price surged more than 60 percent, suggesting that investors were rushing to accumulate the coin to qualify for a seat at the dinner.

https://bsky.app/profile/sassydenise.bsky.social/post/3lnfxhzasvs2w

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It turns out the only thing standing between Donald Trump, us and a full-blown economic Chernobyl was…his own staff leaking to the press and whispering mono-syllabic common sense into his ear with the kind of panic one might reserve for talking down a monkey with a machine gun. I wish I were joking here, folks.

Trump, with his usual brilliant combination of megalomania and economic illiteracy, wanted to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell, because interest rates made him feel some sads inside. Trump is mad, you see, because he’s an idiot who’s worked hard to destroy the economy, but is having trouble finding someone else to blame for it. So, Powell it would be, because…who the hell knows, to be honest. There’s a good chance it involved a snorted-lb-of-adderall delusion or whatever Fox & Friends segment he happened to have just watched.

But, according to reports cabinet members staged an intervention worthy of an after-school special, warning him that nuking the Fed would tank the markets, rattle global investors and basically light the dollar on fire. That’s right, the only thing standing between a stable economy and a full-blown financial meltdown was a handful of staffers trying to reason with a guy who thinks interest rates are decided by vibes and how many McNuggets he’s had that day. So, before he could fire Powell, they quietly leaked his tantrums to the media and the coming economic catastrophe if he went forward with his plan.

For the details on this insanity–the who/what/where/when, watch the video! And don’t forget to subscribe to Cliff’s Edge, as we continue to grow the power of independent media.