Source: Antiwar.com
by Ted Snider
“Though the real crime in the conversation will go unquestioned and unpunished, the leaked top-level discussion of the principals group could lead to a number of less serious issues that could cause trouble for the Trump administration.” (04/01/25)
Source: US News & World Report
“Two Kenyan police officers in Haiti have been seriously injured in clashes with gangs over the past week, three officers told Reuters, adding to the mission’s growing list of casualties as it comes under increasingly frequent attack. Kenya first deployed officers last June to the Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission, which currently has around 1,000 security personnel, about three-quarters of them from Kenya. The mission, aimed at restoring enough security for Haiti to hold elections by February 2026, has faced morale issues almost from the start and uncertainty about its possible expansion amid escalating gang violence. It suffered its first fatality in February, and the MSS reported another Kenyan officer missing last week. The three officers, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal, said he was believed to be dead.” (04/01/25)
Source: The Dispatch
“Aliens and Enemies.” (04/01/25)
https://thedispatch.com/podcast/advisoryopinions/aliens-and-enemies/
Source: The American Conservative
by Ted Snider
“The intelligence community is the eyes and ears of the White House. Presidents only know what it tells them. The most up-to-date intelligence tells President Donald Trump that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon. Yet Trump continues to threaten war unless Iran agrees to give up the nuclear weapons program that Washington knows Tehran does not have.” (04/01/25)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/to-get-an-iran-deal-trump-should-stop-threatening-war/
Source: Fox News
“Elon Musk said that an alleged scammer who reportedly ripped off 400,000 Americans by selling their Social Security numbers is facing imminent arrest. ‘I believe someone is going to be arrested tomorrow, because there’s someone who actually stole 400,000 Social Security numbers and personal information from the Social Security database,’ Musk said during a tele-town hall with Wisconsin voters Monday evening. Wisconsin is holding a high-stakes state Supreme Court election Tuesday that will determine if the state’s highest court will hold a liberal or conservative majority by filing a retiring justice’s seat. The person was ‘selling Social Security numbers and all the identification information in order for people to basically steal money from Social Security,’ he continued. Musk was responding to a phone call from a Wisconsin voter who asked if Attorney General Pam Bondi had plans to investigate and prosecute fraud surrounding Social Security.” (04/01/25)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Molly O’Neal
“Recent polls show the center right Christian Democrats (CDU-CSU) headed by prospective chancellor Friedrich Merz losing ground against the populist right Alternative for Germany (AfD), even before the new government has been formed. The obvious explanation is widespread popular dissatisfaction with last month’s vote pressed through the outgoing parliament by the CDU-CSU and presumptive coalition partner the SPD (with the Greens) to allow unlimited increases in defense spending. This entailed disabling the constitutional ‘debt brake’ introduced in 2009 to curb deficits and public debt. The new parliament, with the AfD as the main opposition party, took its seats last week. The AfD opposes financing rearmament by a massive upsurge in public debt, and supports negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.” (04/01/25)
Source: The American Prospect
by David Dayen
“I was content to sit out the Abundance[TM] deliberations. Two years ago, I wrote a long piece about the ways in which adherents to the new paradigm of ‘a liberalism that builds’ neglected any analysis of power, or the need to build coalitions to counteract that power. Ezra Klein engaged with my argument in his New York Times column and I responded. As a journal on the left, we were, I believe, contractually obligated to review Klein and Derek Thompson’s Abundance book, and we did so. But I personally felt like I said what I wanted to say. … However, I got a call last week from an NPR program called Open to Debate. They were having Derek Thompson on to talk about his book and wanted me to join.” (04/01/25)
https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2025-04-01-last-abundance-agenda/
Source: Axios
“The Trump administration’s pace of removing immigrants from the U.S. continues to lag behind Joe Biden’s pace last year, even as detentions have jumped under President Trump, new numbers show. … In Trump’s first full six weeks in office, the administration removed 27,772 immigrants from the U.S., according to data from the ICE detention management database and collected by the nonpartisan Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). That’s a daily average of 661 removals — an 11% decrease from the daily average of 742 under President Biden last fiscal year. From Jan. 26 to Feb. 8, the Trump administration removed an average of 693 immigrants daily, a 6.5% decline from Biden’s last days in office.” (04/01/25)
https://www.axios.com/2025/04/01/immigrant-removals-deportations-trump
Source: Antiwar.com
“Trump to Houthis, Iran: ‘Real Pain Yet To Come,’ Israel Kills 1,000 in Gaza Since March 18, and More.” (04/01/25)
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob
“‘To this day I cannot tell you what Trump truly believes about tariffs,’ Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles recently confessed. ‘Does he want tariffs instrumentally, to increase trade? Does he believe in tariffs as a revenue-raising mechanism? And is he hard-core on tariffs? I couldn’t tell you; the man is inscrutable.’ In ‘Tariffs Are Awful, But The Income Tax May Be Worse,’ economist Walter Block seems less confused. ‘Donald Trump supports them on the ground that the McKinley administration was prosperous, and relied upon tariffs,’ Walter’s Eurasia Review op-ed posits. Our free-market economist notes that this rests on a fallacy: ‘since A precedes B, A must be the cause of B.’ Professor Block offers a better ‘historical episode to shed light on this matter, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930.’ You know, the tariff hike that worsened the Great Depression.” (04/01/25)
https://thisiscommonsense.org/2025/04/01/the-trump-tariff-question/