International students will stop coming to American universities if their visas are going to be at risk. This will make our intellectual community poorer and also make tuition more expensive for domestic students.

"Conservatives and socialists believed in the power and influence of institutions and regarded them as a necessary safeguard against the chaos, injustice and cruelty caused by uncontrolled individualism." Isaiah Berlin, 1949. Could have been written yesterday.

BREAKING: Senate Republicans plugged away overnight and into early Saturday morning to approve their multitrillion-dollar tax breaks and spending cuts framework.

If "protests in all 50 states" wanted above-the-fold coverage in @nytimes.com, they should have been "seven random Americans" instead

If you or someone you know has been negatively affected by NIH-funded clinical trials being paused, disrupted, cancelled etc., I have a contact with the Senate HELP Committee eager to collect stories of everyday Americans affected by the NIH closures. Please DM me.

It's getting buried, but Houston will almost certainly not have representation in Congress until January 2027. Democratic Rep. Sylvester Turner died nearly a month ago and Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott has simply decided not to call a special election to fill the seat.

I mean, yes, this is bad, but also, like ... Baserates matter. For most of the market's history, a 2000 point drop would have been like it just got evaporated. Absolute drops aren't the right metric here. (My loyalty to baserates transcends any sort of partisan affiliation.)

Others have tried to capture the economic effects of the tariff bomb. Here’s another: Trump has destroyed US diplomacy. Forget the liberal international order. US diplomacy as we knew it is over. Thread: 1/

In the midst of everything else, don’t miss this story. (Gift link) www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/u...

The plot thickens, maybe

Princeton, Tufts, U Mich, Georgetown - some better responses starting to circulate

Every day cabinet members and GOP leaders are missing a chance to have their great-grandchildren read their names in history books. They could simply say that the mad emperor has no clothes and walk away from a disaster, live on air. And yes, they can afford security.

Everyone needs to call up their Republican members of Congress today & ask them why they’re raising taxes on their own constituents. Make them own this because they do.

You can totally see how this mf bankrupted a casino.

Those trying to understand the tariffs as economic policy are dangerously naive. No, the tariffs are a tool to collapse our democracy. A means to compel loyalty from every business that will need to petition Trump for relief. 1/ A 🧵 to explain his plan and how we fight back.

Two-thirds of both houses of Congress could undo this whenever they want by passing a bill over Trump's veto taking all power to set tariff rates away from him. Tariffs are set by law. The Constitution gives the president no power over tariffs--only our current laws do that.

The dam is starting to crack. -4 GOP Senators joined the Dems to rebuke his tariffs -a GOP Senator wrote a WaPo op-ed decrying his attacks on research and higher ed -Rogan & Coulter are questioning his immigration policies -his economic approval dropped to 40% -his right-hand man lost big in WI

What's absolutely wild about this is the way they've manufactured a global financial crisis for no reason at all. This isn't 2007-08, where it was a bubble bursting. This is taking a relatively thriving economy and deliberately destroying it in the first three months of your presidency.

Guess where they got their weird trade deficit math from?

To put this in actionable terms: everyone with a connection to any college or university (alum, parent, student, faculty, works there) should send a letter to their president's office urging them to issue a statement calling for due process for student detentions. Do it now! #DueProcessForAll

Every single university president should be asked, in public, why they are not speaking out this way to support all the students currently detained without due process, and all those terrified that they will be next, on every campus in this country. Yes, including Columbia's acting president.

Costco is gonna be 🔥 🔥 🔥 this weekend

Seriously, it would be a tremendous act of service journalism for some economics reporter to write the piece on what a) everyday household items b) major purchases will spike first.

james surowiecki has discovered where the completely fabricated trump tariff rate has come from for each country "...for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country's exports to us."

I spoke to a South Carolina woman today who is miscarrying - her fetus has no heartbeat - but the state's ban is preventing doctors from taking action. She has to walk around with a dead fetus for another week so she can get a FOURTH ultrasound. This is what bans do.

Am I right that that when COVID supply chain issues were available as an excuse to raise prices, those increases were quite sticky? So, even if these tariffs are somehow reversed, we may be stuck with price hikes for good?

I wrote a whole thing about how I think that of all he has done the first 100 days, this will be the thing that punctures the bubble. During COVID we got a glimpse of how cheap consumption has become a white identity. Remember how curbing that went? tressiemcphd.medium.com/the-meltdown...

Elon really did help to gin up massive turnout, as Lakshya points out over on the other site midterm turnout and a 10 point swing to the Dems, that is uh sure something

Good day to remember that a US President has no inherent power over tariffs whatsoever. It’s not like war powers or pardons. It’s entirely delegated by Congress to deal with emergencies. GOP Congress cld modify that law tonight and bring this to a screeching halt.

So the basic proposal, if I’m following correctly, is to wrench the whole American consumer economy back to Gilded Age protectionism by means of Executive fiat, right now, tonight, while Congress tries to relieve the tax burden on some rich people but everyone else goes on paying income taxes too.

One big point amid all the headlines: I was texting with press secretary Karoline Leavitt during the event and she confirms that the 34 percent tariff on China is ON TOP of the previous 20 percent. So that means the rate on China will be *54* percent when these tariffs take effect.

Guess everyone is about to live through a live fact check of this one. www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/tex...

Big things happening in Aurora, Illinois

The FTC has stayed its case against pharmaceutical benefit manufacturers accused of inflating the price of insulin because there are no commissioners available to rule on the case after President Trump fired the two Democratic members at the agency (and both GOP members are recused).

If they can do it, we can do it too.

Schmiel has no path to victory here: Easy win for Crawford, big loss from Trump and Elon Musk. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

The pattern of ICE apparently hustling its detainees over a state border to frustrate habeas petitions in the jurisdiction where they were detained continues. Remember that ICE didn’t disclose Öztürk’s location, publicly or to her counsel, until she reached Louisiana.

🧀🧀🧀

What’s most clear to me tonight is that this is just the beginning, that Americans across this country, no matter their title or party, are ready to be heard. I believe that history will show we rose to meet this moment.

Booker: "I confess that I have been imperfect. I confess that I've been inadequate to the moment. I've confess that the Democratic Party has made terrible mistakes that gave a lane to this demagogue. I confess we all must look in the mirror and say 'we will do better.'"

Sen. Booker’s speech was a substantive and moral account of this moment. He did not read the phone book. He did not babble. For 24 hours @booker.senate.gov laid out a detailed, damning, and critical narrative of truth, history, politics, morality, humanity. What will you do?

Polls have now closed in Wisconsin. If you're in line, stay in line and make sure your vote is counted

:: BREAKING NOW: Multiple polling places across Milwaukee are running low or have run out of ballots as turnout is at record levels. MKE Election Commission is aware and sending out fresh ballots. If you are in line -- or know someone who is -- ballots are on the way.

Dr. Richard Youle was fired today. He is an eminent scientist who has done important work on brain diseases like dementia and Parkinson’s. Musk and Trump are stopping NIH research into cures, for diseases from cancer to Alzheimer’s. Americans did not vote for this.

Not how I’d cover a swing from R+30 to R+9.5 in the span of a few months but as @mtsw.bsky.social says, The Times likes Trump and wants him to be king.

Musk's pac now offering $50 to people who "snap a picture outside of a voting location with a WI resident holding a photo of" Brad Schimel It's illegal in Wisconsin to "engage in electioneering" within 100 feet of polling place

“…The viral outrage disseminated on social media actually reduces the effectiveness of collective action. The result is a media environment that keeps us in a state of debilitating fear and anger, endlessly reacting to our oppressors instead of organizing against them.”

Multiple people have already died in custody. If this is not a concentration camp, what is? www.miaminewtimes.com/news/overcro...