Raw Story: Trump’s Treasury secretary ‘looking for an exit door’ after two months on the job: MSNBC

Rat deserts sinking sh*t!

In the wake of Donald Trump’s highly controversial decision to put in place a wall of international tariffs that has roiled the business world, the president’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reportedly looking to move on from his current job slightly more than two months after being sworn in.

That is according to MSNBC host and former Wall Street executive Stephanie Ruhle, who appeared on “Morning Joe” on Friday.

Speaking with co-host Jonathan Lemire, Ruhle first pointed out that she has been unable to find people who support Trump’s decision to begin a trade war that is causing worldwide economic chaos.

Trump’s Treasury secretary ‘looking for an exit door’ after two months on the job: MSNBC

Ok! Magazine: Donald Trump Ridiculed for Wearing Too Much Makeup During ‘Liberation Day’ Speech

Bronze or orange? You decide!

Donald Trump was mocked for his botched bronzer job on his face during a White House press event on “Liberation Day.”

Donald Trump Ridiculed for Wearing Too Much Makeup During ‘Liberation Day’ Speech

Daily Mail: Marjorie Taylor Greene makes stock market play days before tariffs

Trumps Cronies rake in the bucks while the “little people” suffer:

US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene made hefty trades days before Donald Trump‘s tariffs announcement tanked the stock market.

The MAGA proponent made 15 investments between March 16 and March 24. Her three largest moves were putting hundreds of thousands of dollars towards US Treasury Bills, also know as T-Bills.

On March 16, March 19 and March 24, Greene spent $100,000 to $250,000 per transaction on T-Bills, according to Capitol Trades, a platform devoted to sharing politician trading data. 

The Trump ally invested between $300,000 and $750,000 in Treasuries, according to the filings. 

These massive purchases were sprinkled among multiple smaller ones that spanned from $1,000 to $5,000 in companies including Apple Inc, AbbVie Inc and Costco Wholesale Group. 

Marjorie Taylor Greene makes stock market play days before tariffs

Guardian: Doge’s attack on social security causing ‘complete, utter chaos’, staff says

Understaffed agency sent into ‘death spiral’ as employees warn Musk-led cuts will lead to structural collapse

Office closures, staffing and service cuts, and policy changes at the Social Security Administration (SSA) have caused “complete, utter chaos” and are threatening to send the agency into a “death spiral”, according to workers at the agency.

The SSA website has crashed several times this month. Wired reported Doge staff want to migrate all social security data and rewrite code in months, which could cause system collapse and further outages.

The agency plans to eliminate the jobs of 7,000 workers at the agency through voluntary buyouts, resignations or firings, though the union representing SSA employees anticipate even more firings beyond cutting staff to 50,000 workers.

Acting commissioner Leland Dudek has acknowledged to staff that Doge are making the decisions at the agency. Musk, Donald Trump and others have claimed action is being taken to tackle widespread fraud at the agency.

Dudek was appointed acting commissioner after he reportedly secretly shared information with Doge staff. He has threatened to shut down the agency in response to a court order barring Doge from accessing the data.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/06/musk-doge-social-security

El País: Latino businesses collapse under deportation terror: ‘What is happening now is worse than what we experienced during Covid’

In January, just days after Donald Trump was sworn in as president, immigration agents came to Dana Beauty Salon in Mount Rainer, Maryland, located just two minutes from the Washington D.C. border. They were looking for one of the employees, an undocumented migrant, who was taken into custody and is being held at a detention center in New Hampshire pending a court hearing. That day changed the life of the salon’s owner, Daysi García. “They showed up one day, I think it was a Thursday. By the time the weekend came around, no one was coming in, our workers weren’t coming in for their shifts, not even the clients were coming in,” she recalls sadly.

“What is happening now is worse than what we experienced during Covid. Back then, people could put on a mask and come in. Now, they don’t even want to leave their homes,” says García.

Latino businesses collapse under deportation terror: ‘What is happening now is worse than what we experienced during Covid’

Meanwhile, Nero fiddles, Trump plays golf.

Guardian: Vance’s posturing in Greenland was not just morally wrong. It was strategically disastrous

Thanks to Trump’s administration, the US could soon have to fight wars to get things that, just a few weeks ago, were there for the asking

The American vice-president, JD Vance, visited a US base in Greenland for three hours on Friday, along with his wife. National security adviser Mike Waltz and his wife also went along. Fresh from using an unsafe social media platform to carry out an entirely unnecessary group chat in which they leaked sensitive data about an ongoing military attack to a reporter, and thereby allegedly breaking the law, Waltz and Vance perhaps hoped to change the subject by tagging along on a trip that was initially billed as Vance’s wife watching a dogsled race.

The overall context was Trump’s persistent claim that America must take Greenland, which is an autonomous region of Denmark. The original plan had been that Usha Vance would visit Greenlanders, apparently on the logic that the second lady would be an effective animatrice of colonial subjection; but none of them wanted to see her, and Greenland’s businesses refused to serve as a backdrop to photo ops or even to serve the uninvited Americans. So, instead, the US couples made a very quick visit to Pituffik space base.

At the base, in the far north of the island, the US visitors had pictures taken of themselves and ate lunch with servicemen and women. They treated the base as the backdrop to a press conference where they could say things they already thought; nothing was experienced, nothing was learned, nothing sensible was said. Vance, who never left the base, and has never before visited Greenland, was quite sure how Greenlanders should live. He made a political appeal to Greenlanders, none of whom was present, or anywhere near him. He claimed that Denmark was not protecting the security of Greenlanders in the Arctic, and that the US would. Greenland should therefore join the US.

It takes some patience to unwind all of the nonsense here.

Vance’s posturing in Greenland was not just morally wrong. It was strategically disastrous | Timothy Snyder | The Guardian

The Atlantic: The Hungarian Model

MAGA conservatives love Viktor Orbán. But he’s left his country corrupt, stagnant, and impoverished.

But the nationalist kitsch and tourist traps hide a different reality. Once widely perceived to be the wealthiest country in Central Europe (“the happiest barrack in the socialist camp,” as it was known during the Cold War), and later the Central European country that foreign investors liked most, Hungary is now one of the poorest countries, and possibly the poorest, in the European Union. Industrial production is falling year-over-year. Productivity is close to the lowest in the region. Unemployment is creeping upward. Despite the ruling party’s loud talk about traditional values, the population is shrinking. Perhaps that’s because young people don’t want to have children in a place where two-thirds of the citizens describe the national education system as “bad,” and where hospital departments are closing because so many doctors have moved abroad. Maybe talented people don’t want to stay in a country perceived as the most corrupt in the EU for three years in a row. Even the Index of Economic Freedom—which is published by the Heritage Foundation, the MAGA-affiliated think tank that produced Project 2025—puts Hungary at the bottom of the EU in its rankings of government integrity.

Tourists in central Budapest don’t see this decline. But neither, apparently, does the American right. 

What is this Hungarian model they so admire? Mostly, it has nothing to do with modern statecraft. Instead it’s a very old, very familiar blueprint for autocratic takeover, one that has been deployed by right-wing and left-wing leaders alike, from Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to Hugo Chávez. After being elected to a second term in 2010, Orbán slowly replaced civil servants with loyalists; used economic pressure and regulation to destroy the free press; robbed universities of their independence, and shut one of them down; politicized the court system; and repeatedly changed the constitution to give himself electoral advantages. During the coronavirus pandemic he gave himself emergency powers, which he has kept ever since. He has aligned himself openly with Russia and China, serving as a mouthpiece for Russian foreign policy at EU meetings and allowing opaque Chinese investments in his country.

Orbán’s Hungary Could Be America’s Future – The Atlantic

Guardian: Greenland’s new PM rejects Trump’s latest threat: ‘We do not belong to anyone else’

Newly sworn in Jens-Frederik Nielsen says ‘Trump says that the United States is getting Greenland. Let me be clear: the United States won’t get that’

The US will not get Greenland, its new prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, has said in response to Donald Trump’s latest statements that he wants to take control of the vast Arctic country.

“President Trump says that the United States is getting Greenland. Let me be clear: the United States won’t get that. We do not belong to anyone else. We determine our own future,” Nielsen said.

During an interview with NBC on Saturday, the US president said: “We’ll get Greenland. Yeah, 100%” and argued that while there’s a “good possibility that we could do it without military force … I don’t take anything off the table.”

Trump said he “absolutely” had had real conversations about annexing the semi-autonomous Danish territory.

Greenland’s new PM rejects Trump’s latest threat: ‘We do not belong to anyone else’ | Greenland | The Guardian

Express: Greenland’s new prime minister explodes at Donald Trump – ‘We don’t belong to you’

Jens-Frederik Nielsen has told Donald Trump “We don’t belong to anyone else”.

Greenland’s new prime minister has issued a strong message to Donald Trump following the US president’s claims over the island. In a defiant message, Jens-Frederik Nielsen said: We must listen when others talk about us. But we must not be shaken. President Trump says the United States is ‘getting Greenland.’

“Let me make this clear: The U.S. is not getting that. We don’t belong to anyone else. We decide our own future. We must not act out of fear. We must respond with peace, dignity and unity.

Greenland’s new prime minister explodes at Trump – ‘We don’t belong to you’ | World | News | Express.co.uk

TAG24 News: Elon Musk furiously reacts as Tesla Takedown protests rage around the world

Poor Muskie just doesn’t seem to understand the concept of a popular movement. Nobody elected this creep in the first place. Most Americans just want him GONE to somewhere, anywhere!

According to CNN, Saturday marked a “global day of action” for the Tesla Takeover movement, which planned over 200 demonstrations at Tesla locations across the US and 300 more around the world.

In response, Musk spent his Sunday sharing reactions and memes on social media, insisting that Democrats are trying to “destroy my influence” by pushing “negative propaganda about me like the fake Nazi stuff.”

“Sure is insanely ironic that the people shooting bullets into Tesla stores, burning down cars, and generally being violent are calling me a Nazi when I have done literally zero violence at all,” Musk shared in one post.

In recent weeks, Tesla has been the target of protests and acts of vandalism. In some cases, activists have set fire to Tesla vehicles.

Protesters have taken issue with Musk’s role as head of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which he has used to slash government jobs and dismantle agencies.

Musk also claimed in his posts that the protesters were being paid, and those who are funding them need to be taken care of.

They’re being paid? Where do I apply?

Elon Musk furiously reacts as Tesla Takedown protests rage around the world