Hello, and welcome to a week when Trump tried to “liberate” the country from prosperity and good health. Because this has been a frantic week of news already, we’re writing a pulse check (pun intended) to tick through the big stories and how they’ll affect you. So let’s get started:
Trump ‘Liberates’ Us From Economic Growth
With economic indicators already flashing red, President Trump gave the United States a sharp shove down the slope toward recession on Wednesday by announcing tariffs on nearlyevery American trade relationship. Economists and expert observers said the size of the tariffs announced exceeded their worst-case expectations:
CNBC reacts right after Trump's "Liberation Day" tariff announcement: "And the market reaction after hours — I’ve never seen anything like it. This — I think, fair to say — is worse than the worst-case scenario of the tariffs that many in the market expected the president to impose."
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona.bsky.social) 2025-04-02T21:12:51.042Z
Here’s why this matters: Tariffs are import taxes on people who buy things. Raising import taxes in the United States to levels higher than people pay in any other wealthy country will make stuff that Americans import — from smartphones and car parts to clothes, fruits and vegetables — more expensive and less affordable.
There's no question that today's tariff announcement will give the United States the highest tariff rates of any industrialized country. And it's not even close.
— Justin Wolfers (@justinwolfers.bsky.social) 2025-04-02T21:23:28.452Z
What’s more: people who can afford to pay import taxes on stuff they want or need will ratchet down their spending on other stuff — such as meals out, home improvements, or streaming-service subscriptions. That downward pressure on consumer spending in the United States will put U.S. jobs at risk.
Americans are tapping the brakes on spending — pulling back on dining out, hotel stays and other expenses, as they boost their savings ahead of new tariffs and continued economic uncertainty.
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost.com) 2025-03-31T12:41:13.295Z
News of steep new import taxes has sent stock markets plunging — cutting the monetary value of Americans’ retirement accounts.
Dow drops 1,500 points, S&P 500 loses 4% as stock market rout on Trump’s tariffs worsens.WATCH THE U.S. MARKETS BOARD LIVE HERE: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELPg…
While we face potential job losses at home, make sure to have somesympathy for the penguins of the Heard and McDonald Islands, an Antarctic territory with no human residents — which bizarrely faces a new Trump import tax of 10 percent. (In retaliation, Happy Feet 3 has been canceled.)
Imagine if Biden had imposed tariffs on an island full of penguins
— Laura Bassett (@lebassett.bsky.social) 2025-04-02T23:47:01.039Z
“Health”? Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need “Health”
When the administration fires federal workers, it destroys services that work for us — services that your representatives and senators in Congress created for our benefit. So when Trump takes a chainsaw to entire departments, as he did Tuesday across agencies that focus on public health, Americans pay a cost by losing services that protect and save lives.
Let’s talk about some of the services the Trump administration destroyed this week:
- The Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, which amassed data on maternal and child health — crucial to helping mothers and babies survive in a country with a higher maternal mortality than any of its wealthy peers.
Everyone who works for PRAMS (the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System) at CDC was terminated today. That appears to be the end of a critical program which monitored infant and maternal health nationwide across pregnancy, childbirth & postpartum. talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/prams…
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) 2025-04-01T22:11:27.046Z
- LIHEAP, or the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program — which literally keeps lower-income Americans in parts of the country with cold winters from freezing to death in their homes. In the 2023-24 season, it heated 5.9 million homes.
CNN reporting that everyone who administers LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program) has been terminated. The program provides about $4 billion to help millions of Americans with their heating and cooling bills.www.cnn.com/2025/04/01/h…
— Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) 2025-04-01T20:18:55.750Z
- The heart of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — which, er, works to prevent and control the spread of disease.
“We’re going to have patients die,” says Jade Pagkas-Bather, an infectious disease doctor at the University of Chicago who also specializes in HIV prevention. “Unnecessary, preventable death.”www.wired.com/story/cdc-gu…
— Angela Watercutter (@waterslicer.bsky.social) 2025-04-01T15:58:10.432Z
- The CDC team that focused on in-vitro fertilization and other ways of helping Americans with infertility to become parents:
Trump — the "fertilization president" who has promised via EO to make IVF more accessible — just cut a highly specialized team that focuses on infertility & other assisted repro technology as part of the larger CDC cuts.
— Alanna Vagianos (@alannavagianos.bsky.social) 2025-04-01T19:17:33.250Z
- Much of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products — in a massive gift to tobacco companies, whose fees fund the office — and the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health.
At FDA, I'm told Center for Tobacco Products's office of compliance and enforcement was slashed by 50%. All CTP contractors too. All pending CTP compliance cases will be affected.(Note that CDC's Office on Smoking & Health division was eliminated entirely – so there seems to be a theme here.)
— Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) 2025-04-01T19:48:58.389Z
- … and family-planning funds for clinics that serve thousands of low-income patients and patients who lack insurance, cutting off their access to birth control, cancer screenings, and more. This last one is also a political hit because one of the biggest providers of these services is Planned Parenthood — making this move a low-key defund.
You can read the full story at the newsletter, but here's the quick rundown of what's coming from the Trump admin on Title X tomorrow. What a nightmare:
— Jessica Valenti (@jessicavalenti.bsky.social) 2025-04-01T00:38:36.435Z
If you want to understand how “thoughtful” these cuts are, here’s an anecdote. Some laid-off employees were told if they felt targeted by discrimination, they should reach out to a former department director. Trouble is, the official named died last year.
While Trump and the people around him take away services that we and our neighbors rely on — services that save lives — they also line their own well-stuffed pockets. In their minds, our government isn’t here to help us — it’s something to control for their personal benefit. So when Elon Musk’s “DOGE” cut 15% of workers at the Internal Revenue Service, it cut over twice that percentage from the part of the agency that audits billionaires like Elon.
The IRS unit that audits billionaires lost 38 percent of its employees in DOGE cuts — a far higher loss rate than the IRS as a whole: icij.org/news/2025/03… @icij.org
— Spencer Woodman (@spencerwoodman.bsky.social) 2025-03-29T14:28:59.440Z
If you’re struggling to square the circle of pledging to “Make America Healthy Again” while gutting the department responsible, you’re not alone. To keep up with the Trump administration’s attacks on Americans’ health, visit us on the web — wheere we’ll add more details about this week’s onslaught of cruelty.
Musk Mugged by Badger State Voters
Silicon Valley’s best boy king, Elon Musk, got a rude awakening from Wisconsinites on Tuesday night. Having plowed millions from his fortune into supporting a Republican-aligned candidate, Brad Schimel, in a race for a seat on the state’s Supreme Court, Musk received a resounding “hell no” from state voters.
With nearly all of the votes counted, Wisconsin Democrats won the Supreme Court election by 10 points and will keep their majority through at least 2028.Democrats overperformed the presidential results by double-digit margins in the three most prominent state/federal elections on Tuesday
— Stephen Wolf (@stephenwolf.bsky.social) 2025-04-02T11:55:00.700Z
Schimel wound up losing by a wider margin than the other Republican-supported statewide candidate on the ballot — meaning, in other words, that Musk’s votes arguably cost votes for Schimel rather than attracting them.
Elon's involvement in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race cost his candidate around 5% of the vote–even though he spent $25 million dollars on his behalf. Elon's endorsee ran 5 points behind the other statewide Republican candidate. That's an unbelievably negative return on investment.
— Max Berger (@maxberger.bsky.social) 2025-04-02T03:15:15.561Z
Perhaps in an effort to distance his administration from Musk’s unpopularity, or to help distract from a dismal quarter for Tesla Motors (where Musk is CEO), Trump leaked through conversations with his cabinet that Musk intends to soon leave his job-slashing, service-destroying role at “DOGE” soon. Maybe that will happen — who knows? — but given that Musk has promised self-driving cars “next year” for over a decade now, we won’t take his or Trump’s word for it.
A spirit of backlash appears to be swelling across the country — not only in Wisconsin, but also in the massive public enthusiasm for a record breaking 25-hour-long speech by Cory Booker (D-N.J.) in the Senate.
@msnbc BREAKING: Sen. Cory Booker set the record for the longest speech in Senate history in marathon remarks that tore into what he called the Trump administration’s “grave and urgent” threat to the country. #breakingnews #senate #speech #politics #trump
In one of the most moving sections of his remarks, Booker apologized to voters — offering a public concession “that the Democratic Party has made terrible mistakes that gave a lane to this demagogue.”
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.'"
Demonstrations are expected to further increase this weekend, when the 50501 movement plans sit-ins and protests on Saturday, Apr. 5, in all 50 states.
April 5th: REMOVE / REVERSE / RECLAIM50 Protests, 50 States, 1 Movement. Add your action by 3/28/25 to have your flyer shared on 50501 socials. Go to www.FiftyFifty.one and click “Add An Action.”#50501movement #FiftyFiftyOne #PeoplesMovement #NoKings #ImpeachTrump @polrev.bsky.social
— 50501: The People’s Movement (@50501movement.bsky.social) 2025-03-06T17:46:47.647Z
That’s all for now. Keep up with the latest on Bluesky, take deep breaths, center yourself — and watch for us in your inbox again on Sunday. 🫡
Stand strong ’til then—
The TrumpVersusUS team