Brian Pavlack, the founder of Steelworkers for Trump, says the Democratic Party left steelworkers.
“When I first started U.S. Steel like 25 years ago, I’m a 25-year employee here. I was a Democrat. We all were Democrats. I mean, the Democrats, they said, were for the working-class, blue-collar workers. But years and years, I mean, they haven’t really done too much,” Pavlack told Newsmax TV’s “Saturday Agenda.”
“They have those policies that their policies shut us down or they want to move and send our facilities overseas. Like I said, we [steel workers] haven’t left the Democrat Party. They left the Democrat Party. The union hasn’t left the Democrat Party, the Democratic Party left the union,” he added.
Pavlack joined President Donald Trump on stage Friday at the U.S. Steel’s Mon Valley Works–Irvin Plant in suburban Pittsburgh.
There, the president told Pennsylvania steelworkers he’s doubling the tariff on steel imports to 50% to protect their industry, a dramatic increase that could further push up prices for a metal used to make housing, autos and other goods.
In a post later on his Truth Social platform, Trump added that aluminum tariffs would also be doubled to 50%. He said both tariff hikes would go into effect Wednesday.
Pavlack told Newsmax on Saturday that it is the shift in support for blue collar workers that has made so many steel workers rethink their party affiliation.
Harvard might be a mere pipe dream for most American college-hunting brainiacs, but for “so many Chinese communist officials” it rates as their top “party school,” The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.
Not only has Chinese President Xi Jinping’s own daughter been a student at Harvard, but a former vice president and Xi’s top negotiator with the first Trump administration studied there as leaders in China see Harvard education as a path to Chinese Communist Party positions.
And it is not a new thing.
If we were to rank the Chinese Communist Party’s ‘overseas party schools,’ the one deserving top spot has to be Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in the U.S.,” a 2014 Shanghai Observer online commentary piece read.
President Donald Trump sought to change the paradigm with China during his first administration just months before the COVID-19 pandemic exploded around the world.
Now, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are seeking to curb the stocking of America’s chief economic, if not military, rival with the state-of-the-world education, monitoring foreign student visas and putting new ones on hold to establish extreme vetting measures for students flooding to Harvard who might be seeking to work against American interests.
Rubio announced Wednesday the effort to “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.”
The move has Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning saying Chinese students have the rights of Americans, despite merely being permitted foreign student visa holders, saying Rubio’s move “seriously damaged the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese students.”
Rubio says foreign visa holders have the privilege, not the right, to be in the U.S.
Trump now wants to cut Harvard’s estimated foreign student visa base in half, down to 15% to make sure those attended from foreign rivals like China “are people that can love our country.”
I think Harvard has to get a kick in the rear end,” Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax‘s “Saturday Agenda.” “It’s not going to do it by itself. The president of Harvard would like to do the right thing, and he’s a very decent man.
“But there are too many radical left-wing faculty members that are Marxists and that are antisemites and that are anti-American and anti-Christian and want to see Harvard become the kind of woke institution that turns out the kinds of political leaders that they would like to see dominate the country.”
While Harvard is the Chinese Communist Party school of choice, this China education train is not exclusive. It extends to Biden’s alma mater at Syracuse University, too.
Syracuse offers executive training for Chinese officials and since the early 2000s its Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs has helped set up programs at Chinese universities.
Harvard’s China focus began in the 1980s, but it ramped up under former President Bill Clinton in the late ’90s, leading to the “China’s Leaders in Development” program to “help prepare senior local and central Chinese government officials to more effectively address the ongoing challenges of China’s national reforms,” according to the report.
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
Illinois’s Democrat governor, J.B. Pritzker, is about to sign a new bill into law that will allow illegal immigrants to become driving instructors. From Peoria’s NBC affiliate:
A proposal that’s passed both chambers would allow some immigrants to become driving instructors in Illinois. In the state, non U.S. citizens can apply for a special drivers license called a Temporary Visitor Drivers License or TVDL.
You might ask, “Where did that TVDL come from?” We’ve had a Democrat-controlled state legislature since 2003, and they currently have supermajorities in both chambers. Except for a single-term RINO governor in 2015–18, we’ve also had 100% Democrat governors since 2003.
The Democrats’ attitudes about illegal immigration have “evolved” considerably since Clinton, Obama, and Schumer talked tough about it 20–30 years ago. If Trump were to read any one of those speeches out loud on the air tonight, he’d be called a racist.
In June 2023, Pritzker even started allowing illegal immigrants to get standard drivers’ licenses, phasing out TVDLs, which had become a “Scarlet Letter” for illegals:
Pritzker signs law giving driver’s licenses to noncitizen immigrants
‘This legislation is a significant step in eliminating the barriers to opportunity that many undocumented immigrants face,’ said Pritzker. ‘We’re ensuring every eligible individual can obtain a driver’s license, making our roads safer, decreasing stigma, and creating more equitable systems for all.’
Notice the careful use of terms like “noncitizen,” “undocumented immigrant,” or just “immigrant.” Nowhere do we see “illegal.” But that’s what these code terms mean. Notice also the deep concern about “stigma,” “incidents of discrimination,” and “creating more equitable systems.”
In 2019, Tom Homan described DUIs by illegal immigrants as a “public safety issue”:
‘Ten thousand people a year die from DUIs, twenty eight people a day die from DUIs,’ said Homan. ‘I’d rather put an illegal alien in jail for DUI than white-collar bank fraud. It isn’t about if it’s a felony or misdemeanor, it’s about, is it a public safety threat and is it threatening American citizens? DUIs, are you kidding me? That’s a public safety issue.’
I’ve collected the following anecdotal evidence — but as Dr. Paul Cameron and the Family Research Council learned in the 1980s, the dominant left-wing media and academia carefully discredit anecdotal evidence, if it doesn’t serve left-wing politics. As part of my volunteer work for our church, I regularly provide rides to low-income people for such things as medical appointments, job interviews, and court hearings. So I see the insides of public aid offices, driver services facilities, and courtrooms on a regular basis. (I live in a suburban-Chicago county that’s roughly 10% Latino, according to the Census Bureau—keep that in mind.)
After two months of monitoring, among DUI defendants on our traffic court docket, 19.7% had a Hispanic last name — nearly twice as many as the Latinos in the overall population. And it’s much the same in felony court.
The public aid office and the driver services office are practically wallpapered with notices in Spanish, and substantial portions of the respective staffs are bilingual.
White applicants for SNAP benefits (“food stamps”) are told they’ll get their SNAP debit cards in the mail in 10–14 business days — in other words, up to three weeks. But Latino applicants, who rarely know any English at all, frequently walk into the public aid office with three pieces of paper and walk out happily with an “emergency” SNAP card. So they get same-day service.
I also had extensive opportunities to observe English as a Second Language (ESL) teaching in action, at Chicago’s special school for children of illegal immigrants: Rodolfo Lozano Bilingual Academy, which is of course named for a socialist Latino political figure from Chicago’s past. As I previously wrote, Lozano has the lion’s share of speech therapists and speech pathologists employed by the Chicago Public Schools, because… equity. After all, they have to pronounce English correctly. And I concede that for any immigrant, that isn’t easy.
But they don’t teach “English as a second language” at Lozano. They teach just enough words of English to get by in a city like Chicago. The actual day-to-day lessons are given in Spanish, because “it’s just easier that way.”
So we need bilingual driving instructors. And to fill that quota, we need to hire illegals.
These are just the raw facts, as I’ve observed them. Here are a few more facts that arise, at least in part, from the left’s love affair with illegal immigrants.
Our national debt is now $37 trillion. That’s an average of $383,000 for every taxpayer. The state of Illinois has $159 billion in debt, which is largely unfunded pension liabilities for state workers (an overwhelming majority of whom, particularly at the top levels, are Democrats). This adds another $28,000 in debt per taxpayer.
Pritzker cheerfully doubled the state’s motor fuel tax without a corresponding increase in EV taxes, but deficit spending is a problem wherever Democrats are in charge. California’s debt is $520 billion; New York’s, despite a state constitutional amendment (ratified the last time the GOP was in charge) requiring a balanced budget, is $368 billion.
Next, let’s look at what happens when a leftist Western government goes too far to protect illegal immigrants. Our cousins across the pond in the United Kingdom went too far. The son of Rwandan “migrants” murdered three young British girls at a Taylor Swift dance party, and wounded several more. But as Pritzker said, we mustn’t stigmatize the poor dears.
Naturally though, there were a lot of negative reactions from British parents, and others involved with the care of British children. In the wake of the killings, professional babysitter Lucy Connolly posted an anti-immigrant tweet, which landed her in jail.
Connolly has been sentenced to 2-1/2 years in prison for her mean tweets, under British “hate speech” laws. Her sentence was upheld on appeal. As Matt Walsh observed at Daily Wire, this was a far harsher sentence than Muslim immigrants, and left-wing politicians, received for the following crimes:
Crime number one: Exposing yourself to a 13-year-old girl, and then stalking her through the streets when she spots you, forcing the girl to bang on the doors of random apartments so that she can hide. Crime number two: publicly threatening to murder an infidel who dares to insult Mohammed. Crime number three: Sexually assaulting a 12-year-old. And crime number four: domestic abuse, including physical abuse, over a three-year-period.
Think it can’t happen here? Think again. Our universities already have codes of conduct that can produce a suspension or expulsion for “hate speech” targeting any of the left’s favorite protected groups.
Jim Davis is an IT specialist and paralegal, with degrees in political science and statistical analysis: the underpinning of all science. His work has appeared in Newsmax and Daily Caller. You can find him as RealProfessor219 on Rumble.
Ahmed al Jabali sentenced to six years in prison for a hate crime attack after attacking a Jewish barber with scissors, leaving him injured.
A Yonkers man received a six-year prison sentence and three years of supervised release on Thursday for attacking a Jewish barber, News 12 Westchester reported.
Ahmed al Jabali, 34, was sentenced by Judge James McCarty at Westchester County Court in White Plains.
Judge McCarty condemned al Jabali’s actions, stating, “You admitted to and committed a reprehensible act, which hurt another person.”
The victim, 50-year-old Jewish barber Slava Shushakov, was attacked with scissors in his Yonkers Avenue barbershop last August. Police reported that al Jabali used expletives and expressed a desire to kill the victim during the assault, which left Shushakov with multiple cuts.
Al Jabali pleaded guilty in April to second-degree assault as a hate crime and expressed remorse in court through an interpreter, saying, “I’m very sorry for this.”
However, Shushakov expressed skepticism regarding the apology. “You know, I can see his eyes [in] that moment. I don’t know. ‘Sorry,’ You know,… can be just a word,” he remarked. Despite being satisfied with the sentence, Shushakov is now focused on raising awareness about antisemitism. “I [am] just a Jew and I can’t explain why different people, for some reason, hate us,” he stated.
A spokesperson for Westchester’s Jewish Council commented on the sentencing, stating, “We hope that the prosecution of this crime sends a strong message that this type of conduct is not tolerated in Westchester.”
More than 30% of Democrat voters support Pete Buttigieg as their preferred candidate for the 2028 presidential race, according to a new national poll, positioning him ahead of prominent party figures such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and former Vice President Kamala Harris, Breitbart reported.
A new AtlasIntel poll has found that the former transportation secretary leads the field of potential Democratic candidates for the 2028 presidential election, garnering support from 31.5 percent of Democratic-identifying respondents.
The survey, conducted from May 21-27 polled 3,469 adults across the United States. The margin of error was not provided.
Ocasio-Cortez received the second-highest level of support at 19.4%, followed by Harris at 16.6%. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., secured 10.4% of support, while California Gov. Gavin Newsom received 7.1%.
Election analyst Nate Silver has previously indicated that Ocasio-Cortez is a likely contender for the nomination. In an April report publishedon his “Silver Bulletin” Substack, Silver wrote that Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive member of the “Squad,” is “the one to lead Democrats into the next presidential cycle.”
Silver praised AtlasIntel as a “top-rated” firm, calling it the most accurate pollster of the 2024 presidential election.
Galen Druke, a former host of the “FiveThirtyEight” podcast, concurred with Silver’s assessment. Druke cited a Yale University survey that showed Ocasio-Cortez held one of the highest net favorability ratings among Democrats, with a favorable rating of 60 points. The same survey identified Harris as the second-most likely candidate to secure the nomination.
While receiving comparatively lower support, Newsom has been working to reshape his national image. According to the Associated Press, the California governor has been attempting to appeal “to the political center” and “shed his national reputation as a San Francisco liberal” as he considers his next political move.
Buttigieg addressed the possibility of a presidential bid during a “Substack Live” interview published May 13. “There are times I follow that process and decided to run, and there are times I followed that process and decided not to run — and the process can lead you to surprising places,” he said, adding that “any kind of decision process there is a long way off,” Newsweek reported.
The poll also measured preferences among Republican-identifying voters, with 37.3% of Republican respondents saying they would vote for Vice President JD Vance in the 2028 Republican primaries. Secretary of State Marco Rubio followed with 18.7% support.
Other GOP contenders included Donald Trump Jr., who received 8.8%, while 15.6% of Republican voters said they would choose “none of the above.”
Jim Thomas is a writer based in Indiana. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science, a law degree from U.I.C. Law School, and has practiced law for more than 20 years.
How could it not raise eyebrows? Donald Trump is set to invest some $5.5 billion in Qatar, according to news reports, and he’s just received a $400 million jet from the Qataris.
This is the same Qatar that unabashedly hosted Hamas leaders, and funds the terror organization into the billions of dollars. It’s the same oil-rich country that is bankrolling Al Jazeera, a channel virtually synonymous with Jihadist propaganda, and that is also being sued for having alleged terror ties. To top it off, Qatar’s Deputy Prime Minister has a history of pro-Hamas tweets.
Yet, if Qatar’s place in the world could be described as a Facebook relationship status, it’d be “It’s complicated.”
Complicated, indeed. After all, Qatar has announced that it is no longer playing the role of mediator between Israel and Hamas, and that it is closing the terror group’s offices within its borders. The country the size of Connecticut has also invested $50 million in pro-Trump American media Newsmax in 2019 and 2020. It gave the green light to thousands of fresh kosher meals being provided to Israelis during the 2022 World Cup in Doha, which now hosts a recently opened Jewish center.
Additionally, Qatar also houses Al Udeid, the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East with 10,000 troops, a sign of cooperation that arose after the U.S.’s Saudi military base was shut down.
“It’s a massive amount of money that they have spent on an air base, that America got for free. And what they have done through this direct foreign direct foreign investment, is they have effectively convinced American decision makers, Congress people, the White House, to look the other way,” says Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
In an exclusive interview with this author, Schanzer described the country of 330,000 citizens as “this weird place” that, by his calculation, has “invested $150 billion to $300 billion in the United States’ influential spheres” — which has been revealed in detail lately by The Free Press.
In 2023, The New York Daily News reported that Qatar invested advertising contracts and sponsorships for A-list media and entertainment outlets such as Foreign Policy, VOX, Sundance, and Buzzfeed. $5 million was given to the L.A. Mayor’s Fund, and $20 million for the Nixon Foundation, and the Endowed Journalism Fellowship for the Carter Center. The “Qatari influence ecosystem” expands its reach to think tanks, influencers, PR firms, lobbyists and universities, and all of this “has effectively advanced the virulently antisemitic and anti-Israel views of the Al Thanis.”
With roughly 10-12% of the world’s energy resources, the Qataris can “do whatever they want, and they do. They have bought off so many levers of power that it makes it virtually impossible for the state to fight back,” Schanzer warns.
Qatari tentacles have taken hold in Canada, too. In August 2021, Canada and Qatar signed a Defence Cooperation Agreement (DCA), providing a framework for joint defense activities. In May 2024, both countries signed a Memorandum of Understanding to establish an annual bilateral political consultation mechanism, further formalizing their commitment to deepening ties.
Qatar is Canada’s fourth largest merchandise trade partner in the Gulf. Between January and July 2024, bilateral trade totaled $193.72 million, with notable Canadian exports including aircraft ground trainers, nuclear reactor components, and pharmaceuticals.
Major Canadian companies such as Bombardier, SNC-Lavalin, and CAE, have a presence in Qatar, and joint ventures are active in various sectors. Qatar Energy has entered into agreements with ExxonMobil Canada for LNG exploration licenses off Newfoundland and Labrador. Canadian healthcare institutions, such as SickKids and Accreditation Canada, have established partnerships with Qatari organizations.
Meanwhile, France received a $11.5 billion investment from Qatar, of which a fraction is transparent, according to a report by The Counter Extremism Project (CEP) last year. The Qatari government owns some $30 billion in French assets, such as luxury hotels in Paris, Cannes, and Nice; a stake in the French brand, LVMH, the Printemps department stores, and the majority of the shares of Paris Saint-Germain.
Qatari investments have secured nearly $2 billion over the past fifteen years in the UK.
Schanzer states:
You could argue they’re the world’s largest political hedge fund. They are hedged across a wide range of political causes, political parties, lots of the United States, swaths of Europe, swaths of the Muslim world. They are hedged across all of it. What does that enable them to do? Access everywhere.
That includes as much the halls of power in Washington and London, as with leadership of the most infamous terror groups.
Schanzer likens Qatar to the Mos Isley cantina scene from Star Wars. “I mean, you will see Taliban, you’ll see Hamas, you’ll see al Qaeda,” but he believes the country is uninvolved in the dirty work of actual attacks. Schanzer also stresses that Qatari officials “hang out with Hamas people” in Turkey. To Western leaders, the cover story goes something like this: “it gives us the ability to speak to these bad actors,” but Schanzer isn’t buying it.
It’s all about influence, and part of the hedge fund deal is to buy as much of it, in as many ways, in as many countries, as possible.
Qatar has its hand in billions of dollars in donations to institutions of higher learning, as well as ties to US teachers’ unions and grade schools.The Middle East Forum just recently released a deep dive report of Qatar buying influence in elite institutions.
In a bygone day, the financial network of alumni used to line the coffers; now it’s “sovereign wealth.” And for good reason.
Schanzer asks: “If you can get a ten million dollar check from sovereign wealth, why do you want to go around asking for $10,000, in a laborious process that may yield you less money over a longer period of time?”
The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism & Policy (ISGAP) and the US Department of Justice have since 2012 worked jointly to examine the unlawful money trails flowing between foreign governments and donors, and American universities.
Their 2019 report discovered that billions of dollars of Middle Eastern donations – predominantly Qatar – had not been reported to the Department of Education, even though it was required by law.
The ISGAP 2024 report revealed that between 2001 and 2023, the Qataris donated $4.7 billion to US academia, including the largest direct foreign donation to any university, that of $1.95 billion to Cornell.
Other elite schools receiving nine or ten figure donations include: Carnegie Mellon, Harvard, MIT, Texas A&M, Yale, and Johns Hopkins. According to the Department of Education, Georgetown University received more than $870 million in gifts and contracts from Qatar since 2005.
This is just what is publicly known.
Although, there are some universities that have now cut ties, such as Texas A & M. And of late, Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern severed their relationship with Al Jazeera.
Those billions, meanwhile, have helped rev the engine of campus antisemitism in North America, in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023 terror attacks in Israel. The institutions receiving heavy donations “feel less responsive to the alumni networks that are talking with disapproval,” said Schanzer.
Administrators who were able to connect the dots, he said, “kept their hands folded, quite content with the money that’s coming through” lest the purse strings be not so coincidentally snipped.
Combined with the encouragement of leftist tenured professors, and radical campus groups bought and paid for by extremist elements, the malignant hate was given free rein to metastasize.
Given these red flags, the American government still isn’t paying close enough attention to the stranglehold Qatar has on US interests, Schanzer believes.
“I think that we should be heavily monitoring and restricting their investment in the United States. We should be far more critical where they spend their money abroad,” Schanzer states.
The U.S., he says, needs to “turn the screws” and remove itself from the al-Udeid Air Base, revoke Qatar’s status as a major non-NATO ally, force al Jazeera to be recognized as a political threat the same way as Russian and Chinese propaganda, send Hamas officials to the U.S. to stand trial, sanction Qatar, and revoke the visa waiver program that was recently introduced to Qataris.
Much to Schanzer’s consternation, he warns, “we’ve not held them to account. Not once.”
Dave Gordon is a writer in Toronto. His work can be found in Jewish News Syndicate, National Post, Globe and Mail, BBC News, New York Times, Washington Times, and many others. He is author of three books and editor of eleven.
Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said Friday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that Democrats had to “fight like hell” to take the government back from President Donald Trump.
Raskin said, “We got to take the government back from all of the grifters and autocrats and dictators and people who are just trashing the basic values of the country, whether we’re talking about a professional civil service, whether we’re talking about due process, which is what separates the rights and freedoms of the people from arbitrary governmental power and dictatorship, whether we’re talking about free speech or free press. You know, there kicking the Associated Press out of the White House because they dare to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of Mexico.”
He added, “I don’t think that we’re going to be able to wave a magic wand and make all of this go away but we are fighting every single day in the House and the Senate and the state legislatures and the councils, the city councils and county councils, and we’re fighting in court and we are winning every day. And people need to understand that we have totally boxed in Donald Trump and all of the lawlessness,. You know, their attempt to dismantle birthright citizenship in America, his attempt to usurp the powers of Congress by just launching a trade war against the whole world, except for Vladimir Putin. All of these tariffs were struck down last week as an absolute abuse of the president’s powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. It doesn’t mention tariffs. Nobody’s ever used it that way. And as the court stated it’s up to Congress to regulate international commerce. It’s always been Congress that has decided on tariffs before.”
Raskin concluded, “So I guess my answer to your question is we’re just going to have to go and fight like hell every single day. And we have to educate people about what the Constitution really stands for, what the rule of law is in America, and how our basic freedoms and rights are under attack by these people.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called on former first lady Jill Biden to “answer for” her role in the massive cover-up of her husband’s declining mental aptitude, accusing her of still “lying to the American people.”
Leavitt unleashed her fiery tirade against the wife of former President Joe Biden while speaking to reporters on Thursday:
“I think, frankly, the former first lady should certainly speak up about what she saw in regards to her husband… Because I think anybody, looking again at the videos and photo evidence of Joe Biden, with your own eyes and a little bit of common sense, can see that this was a clear cover up,” she said. “And Jill Biden was certainly complicit in that cover up.”
Headlines on Biden’s suspected mental decline have dominated the media since the May 20 release of Original Sin by journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, who allege that White House staffers and other Democrat insiders lied to hide the reality of the president’s poor health.
Five former White House employees, including Biden’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, are now in the scope of House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY), who sent them all letters last week demanding interviews for his official probe, the New York Post reported.
In a new hidden-camera video dropped by investigative group Project Veritas, Democratic National Committee (DNC) Vice Chair David Hogg accused Jill Biden’s chief of staff, Anthony Bernal, of wielding unchecked power in the White House as the president’s health worsened.
Thompson, a reporter with Axios, also recently told MSNBC’s Morning Joe that Biden’s inner circle, including Bernal, was essentially running the country.
“The people in charge were Mike Donilon, Steve Riccheti, Bruce Reed, Anthony Bernal, the first lady’s chief of staff, the first lady, and Annie Tomasini. Those are the people that saw him the most and that had the most control over what he was doing and his day-to-day,” he said.
Leavitt went on to say during her press briefing, “There is documentation, video evidence, of [Jill Biden] clearly shielding her husband away from the cameras. They were just on The View last week, she was saying everything is fine.”
The former first lady attempted to discredit Original Sin and other similar reports during the Bidens’ early May appearance on the daytime talkshow, saying, “The people who wrote those books were not in the White House with us. And they didn’t see how hard Joe worked every single day.”
The press secretary added, “She’s still lying to the American people. She still thinks the American public are so stupid that they’re going to believe her lies. And frankly, it’s insulting, and she needs to answer for it.”
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.
President Donald Trump said on Friday that billionaire Elon Musk will remain a close adviser, even after the Tesla CEO departs the administration following a chaotic four-month tenure that saw him disrupt dozens of foreign agencies in his effort to slash government spending.
During a joint press conference in the Oval Office, Trump lauded Musk and defended his cost-cutting campaign as the head of the Department of Governmental Efficiency. The group has eliminated thousands of jobs and canceled billions of dollars in spending — including the majority of U.S. foreign aid — but has thus far fallen far short of Musk’s lofty initial promises.
“Elon is really not leaving. He’s going to be back and forth,” Trump said from behind the Resolute Desk, as Musk stood to his right, wearing a black DOGE hat and a T-shirt that read “The Dogefather” in the style of the movie “The Godfather.”
The press conference appeared aimed at showing unity after Musk prompted frustration among White House officials this week by criticizing Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill as too expensive. Some senior aides, including Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, saw Musk’s remarks on the tax bill as an open break from the administration, with Miller particularly irked by the comments, a source familiar with the matter said.
Trump gave Musk a large golden key inside a wooden box bearing his signature, a gift he said he reserved only for “very special people.” Musk, in turn, admired the gold finishings that Trump has installed around the Oval Office.
The White House and senior aides had insisted earlier in Trump’s term that Musk, the world’s richest man, was a key figure who wasn’t going anywhere.
But more recently, they began pointing to the expiration of his 130-day mandate as a special government employee, which was set to end around May 30, as a natural endpoint.
Musk said he intends to devote most of his energy to his business empire, including Tesla and SpaceX, after some investors expressed concern that DOGE was occupying too much of his time.
He has also said he plans to ratchet back his political donations, after he spent nearly $300 million backing Trump’s presidential campaign and those of other Republicans in 2024.
But he told reporters on Friday that he would continue to be part of Trump’s circle of advisers.
Say, weren’t we supposed to fall into the Tariff Apocalypse this month? See runaway inflation? According to the Chicken Littles, the consumers were poised to flee the consumer-driven economy as a trade war ravaged Middle America.
Looks like consumers missed the memo on the Tariff Apocalypse. After a hiccup on Liberation Day, the economic indicators all trend in the right direction this month. For example, the runaway inflation not only failed to show, inflation has actually gone down the last three months, including Liberation Month. Today’s PCE Index report shows the best month for consumers on prices in months. At the same time, personal disposable income soared:
🚨Personal income is UP!
Democrats were screeching about the economy crashing, but it’s IMPROVING for the average American.
Personal income increased $210.1 billion (0.8 percent at a monthly rate) in April, according to estimates released today by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Disposable personal income (DPI)—personal income less personal current taxes—increased $189.4 billion (0.8 percent) and personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $47.8 billion (0.2 percent).
Personal outlays—the sum of PCE, personal interest payments, and personal current transfer payments—increased $48.6 billion in April. Personal saving was $1.12 trillion in April and the personal saving rate—personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income—was 4.9 percent.
In case anyone needs a visualization of this data in relation to the past year, the Bureau of Economic Analysis provides this chart:
It’s worth pointing out that consumers may have been a little spooked in April. The PCE increase was minimal relative to the previous six months, although it still outdid January’s small negative dip. That may be why the savings rate accelerated in April to 4.9%, too. Consumption didn’t come to a halt, though, and it’s likely rebounding in May, especially if that represents any pent-up demand.
Another positive indicator needs a little context too. The Census Bureau reported a sharp drop in imports in April, giving us the lowest monthly trade deficit in years:
Goods imports fell by 20% to $276.1 billion, while exports rose 3.4% to $188.5 billion, the Commerce Department said.
It was the biggest one-month drop in goods imports on record.
That yielded a goods trade deficit of $87.6 billion, down from $162.3 billion in March.
Yes, but. The reason imports fell so sharply in April is that importers front-loaded goods in the previous three months. I warned about this a month ago when the Q1 GDP report came back as slightly negative (0.3% annualized). The US experienced an increase of imports more than 40% over the previous quarter, an unheard-of spike that anticipated the coming tariffs that Trump imposed on April 2. It took at least four full points off the final real GDP score (the BEA scored it as closer to five full points, masking a strong result in Q1.
Having moved all that import activity to Q1 means that we will see much lower amounts of that activity for the next few months, perhaps most of the year. That doesn’t mean that we have solved the trade deficit with the tariffs; we just paid for those imports in an earlier reporting period. And even with that in mind plus the application of global tariffs in April, our trade deficit is still pretty large.
However, that’s more of a caution against irrational exuberance than a warning of doom, such as the media has been touting for the last two months. The overall outlook is remarkably sunny, and even consumers who held back in April seem cheered up now, as the consumer confidence report earlier this week suggests:
The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index leaped to 98.0, a 12.3-point increase from April and much better than the Dow Jones consensus estimate for 86.0.
Much of the positive sentiment, according to board officials, came from developments in the U.S.-China trade impasse, most notably President Donald Trump’s halting of the most severe tariffs on May 12.
“The rebound was already visible before the May 12 US-China trade deal but gained momentum afterwards,” said Stephanie Guichard, the Conference Board’s senior economist for global indicators.
May’s rebound followed five straight months of declines. Consumers and investors had grown sour on economic prospects amid the intensifying trade war that Trump has launched against U.S. global trading partners, with China a particular target.
Again, that suggests that we will see PCE activity jump in May and June after a less-dynamic but still positive April. That bodes well for the Q2 GDP report we will see in late July. And it makes clear that we have a very strong economy despite some of the turbulence around “Liberation Day,” and that most Americans realize it despite the steady diet of Chicken Littleism coming from the Protection Racket Media.
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 