With President Donald Trump’s second term approaching its 100-day mark, 40% of Americans approve of how he’s handling the job – a decline of 7 percentage points from February.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is locked in open warfare with his own Pentagon, a hotbed of distrust and dysfunction that commands the most powerful military on the face of the Earth.
No Trump Cabinet official has endured more turmoil in less time than Hegseth, who survived a nasty confirmation battle only to be burned — again and again — by leaks, blunders and now backlash from his own handpicked aides.
President Donald Trump on Monday dismissed a deepening controversy surrounding Pete Hegseth, declaring the embattled defense secretary is “doing a great job” despite seismic dysfunction within the Pentagon amid political infighting, numerous firings, and reports he divulged to his wife, brother and lawyer the highly sensitive details of an imminent military operation.
Some Democrats fear they’re playing into Trump’s hands by fighting his mass deportations rather than focusing on his failures on bread-and-butter issues like the cost of living.
But it’s not either-or. The theme that unites Trump’s inept handling of deportations, his trampling on human and civil rights, his rejection of the rule of law, his dictatorial centralization of power, and his utterly inept handling of the economy is the ineptness itself.
In his first term, not only did his advisers and Cabinet officials put guardrails around his crazier tendencies, but they also provided his first administration a degree of stability and focus. Now, it’s mayhem.
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/ineptitude-incompetence-stupidity
The outlooks for the U.S. and global economies have significantly worsened in the wake of President Donald Trump’s tariffs and the uncertainty they have created, the International Monetary Fund said Tuesday.
The IMF said that the global economy will grow just 2.8% this year, down from its forecast in January of 3.3%, according to its latest World Economic Outlook. And in 2026, global growth will be 3%, the fund predicts, also below its previous 3.3% estimate.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) became the first House Republican to suggest that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is no longer fit to keep his job, in scathing comments made to Politico’s Rachel Bade on Monday.
“I had concerns from the get-go because Pete Hegseth didn’t have a lot of experience,” Bacon told Bade, following the bombshell revelations over the weekend that Hegseth had shared national security details in a second Signal group chat – this time one that included his wife.
Bacon, a retired Air Force general, added, “ … I find it unacceptable, and I wouldn’t tolerate it if I was in charge,” …,
As President Donald Trump’s tariffs begin to kick in around the world, The Washington Post analyzed two of his claims: “we were losing $2 billion a day [under President Joe Biden], and “now we’re making $3 billion a day.”
In an analysis, Glenn Kessler wrote, “both the Treasury Department and the data released by Customs and Border Protection show Trump is way off the mark.”
During a break from discussing the Donald Trump administration’s growing battle with the judiciary, Axios founder Jim VandeHei reminded the panel on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that the president has a lot on his plate right now with problems of his own making.
According to the Washington insider, Trump’s tariff war has done what appears to be irreparable damage to the reputation of the U.S. and he has put himself into a box he can’t escape from to get the economy back on track.
Apple’s iPhone and other technology hardware, from chips to PCs, received a China tariff reprieve from President Trump on Saturday, but for much of the U.S. economy and small business owners, the damage will soon be irreversible from the 145% tariffs being imposed on Chinese imports.
Canceled freight orders and abandoned freight from China are quickly becoming the norm in the trade war between the U.S. and China, according to supply chain executives, as businesses across U.S. industries put a full stop on container exports, with the tariffs hitting like a ton of bricks.
“Furniture producers in China have seen a complete halt in orders from U.S. importers, and we’re hearing the same across toys, apparel, footwear, and sports equipment,” said Alan Murphy, founder and CEO of Sea-Intelligence.
“We had the same across Southeast Asia, but after the 90-day reprieve those bookings have restarted,” said Brian Bourke, chief commercial officer for SEKO Logistics, while the cancelled bookings for containers out of China continue.
“Almost everything is on hold as it relates to China business,” said Alan Baer, CEO of OL USA.
“Trump’s 145% total tariff on Chinese imports would stop most trade between the U.S. and China,” economist Erica York, vice president of federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation’s Center for Federal Tax Policy, said on Thursday on CNBC’s “The Exchange.”
“There may still be some things without any substitutes that companies just have to foot the bill, but for the most part, that cuts it off,” York said.
European Commission officials heading to IMF and World Bank spring meetings advised to travel with basic devices
The European Commission is issuing burner phones and basic laptops to some US-bound staff to avoid the risk of espionage, a measure traditionally reserved for trips to China.
Commissioners and senior officials travelling to the IMF and World Bank spring meetings next week have been given the new guidance, according to four people familiar with the situation.
They said the measures replicate those used on trips to Ukraine and China, where standard IT kit cannot be brought into the countries for fear of Russian or Chinese surveillance.
“They are worried about the US getting into the commission systems,” said one official.
The treatment of the US as a potential security risk highlights how relations have deteriorated since the return of Donald Trump as US president in January.
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Officials said the guidance for all staff travelling to the US included a recommendation that they should turn off phones at the border and place them in special sleeves to protect them from spying if left unattended.
The advice was unsurprising, according to Luuk van Middelaar, director of the Brussels Institute for Geopolitics, a think-tank.
“Washington is not Beijing or Moscow, but it is an adversary that is prone to use extra-legal methods to further its interests and power.”
