Howdy, and welcome to the final Sunday before Trump’s second term reaches its 100th day. You can expect a special edition on the arrival of this milestone — Wednesday, April 30 — with lessons to take from what we’ve seen and thoughts about what to expect next. Right now, though, we aim to review key moments of Trump’s 14th week in the White House — and to share big-picture thoughts on how busy, frantic, and just plain nuts recent weeks have been.
A quick note: we plan to change the pace of updates from Trump Versus US, because too much news is happening to collect for a concise end-of-week overview. Starting with our 100th-day issue on Wednesday, we plan to send updates three times a week. Each issue will tick through top stories and make note of Trump administration attacks and stunts worth keeping an eye on — but by spreading our coverage across the week we hope to keep each issue engaging, readable, and timely. Thanks for reading us and supporting our work. 🫡
The Rundown: Trump Versus …
… Our Wallets: Tariff Tremors Rattle Markets
Trump’s trade war trundled on this week, with neither a sense of what Trump wants to do nor any relief in sight. CEOs at three big retailers, Home Depot, Target, and Walmart, told the President directly that steep import taxes “could disrupt supply chains, raise prices, and empty shelves, according to sources familiar with the meeting.”
Stock prices — and with them, Americans’ retirement accounts — have kept sagging, leading to this stark headline: “Dow Headed for Worst April Since 1932 as Investors Send ‘No Confidence’ Signal.” (When the outcomes of your economic policies draw comparisons to the pits of the Great Depression, that’s bad.)
(WSJ) – The Trump rout is taking on historic [email protected] www.wsj.com/finance/inve…
— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) 2025-04-22T11:12:04.389Z
This reality is forcing the White House to find ways to walk it back: the Wall Street Journal reported that administration sources say Trump may lower tariffs on imports from China, which are poised to force some goods from that country to sell at 2½ times their current prices. Supply disruptions for purchasers of Chinese-manufactured goods are already happening; officials at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., say that year over year, the number of vessels from China scheduled to arrive over the first full week of May has dropped by 44%.
"Huge decline at LA port is a hit to truckers—and a stark warning of coming tariff damage" fortune.com/article/huge…
— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome.bsky.social) 2025-04-25T11:45:21.541Z
Trump still insists that he’s working behind the scenes to reach an agreement with Chinese officials — but officials from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs say no talks with Washington have taken place. Meanwhile, small business owners face the question of whether to cut jobs — or even close shop — rather than deal with tariffs they can’t afford.
Devastating episode of The Daily in which a small manufacturer explains why Trump's tariffs are likely to cost her house, and how unfeasible it is for a small manufacturer to scale up manufacturing in the US: www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/p…
— Ethan Zuckerman (@ethanz.bsky.social) 2025-04-14T15:59:19.421+00:00
Other stories we’re following:
- Experts on the federal workforce say that Elon Musk’s DOGE-orchestrated firings may cost the country $135 billion in revenue this year. So much for savings. [The New York Times]
- Surprise, surprise: politically connected corporations are finding it easier to navigate the chaos of Trump’s tariffs than mom-and-pop shops. [ProPublica]
- Arkansans who survived a tornado but lost their homes face a hard road to recovery — made harder by Trump’s refusal to declare the March storms that killed 40 a disaster. This is despite the governor there, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, having served as Trump’s press secretary for most of his first term. [CNN]
… Our Rights: The Immigration Roundup Snares a Two-Year-Old American Citizen
The facts of this story are horrible, so we’ll tell them straight: the ACLU of Louisiana asserted late on Friday that federal officials in Louisiana had speedily removed from the country three children aged 2, 4, and 7. Their expulsion was so fast in fact, that officials failed to note that the three children — removed with other members of their families — were born as U.S. citizens. Citizens cannot be “deported” from the United States, so the children’s removal flight was (to put this charitably) legally dubious.
Two of the children were expelled despite having cancer. One of them has a rare stage IV cancer — but according to the ACLU, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent that child away with neither medication nor a consultation with their doctors. A federal district judge appointed by Trump in 2018 wrote in a late Friday order that the two-year-old appeared to have been expelled — and separated from her father — “with no meaningful process.”
Donald Trump isn’t just illegally removing U.S. citizens from the country without due process.He’s illegally removing U.S. citizens who are literal children undergoing care for cancer.www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol…
— Hillary Rodham Clinton (@hillaryclinton.bsky.social) 2025-04-26T13:50:47.013Z
The Department of Justice will go before that judge in May to address whether federal officials in fact carried out an “illegal and unconstitutional” expulsion of U.S. citizens.
Other stories we’re following:
- FBI agents arrested a Wisconsin state judge on Friday, alleging that she had obstructed efforts to detain an undocumented resident. The charge seems outlandish — especially because the indictment notes that a federal agent saw and spoke with the person they hoped to detain on an elevator after leaving the judge’s courtroom. [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel]
- A White House executive order directed the Justice Department to investigate ActBlue, the left-leaning political and nonprofit fundraising platform — over supposed concerns about foreign and straw donations. Meanwhile, so we’re clear, the president last week also said the top buyers (some of whom are foreign nationals) of his crypto meme coin – which is a direct payment to Trump himself— will soon meet with him in the White House. [NBC News]
The White House roped the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — which traditionally works to address workplace violations of anti-discrimination laws — into its pressure campaign against big law firms. [The New York Times]
… Our Leadership: An IRL Shouting Match Over the IRS
A power struggle over control of the Internal Revenue Service recently turned into a shouting match outside the Oval Office. Axios reported that tensions between Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and special government employee Elon Musk came to a head in a face-to-face confrontation “in earshot of President Trump and other White House officials”:
On April 16 … Trump named Gary Shapley — Musk’s choice — as acting commissioner of the IRS. Bessent wanted Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender in the position [and] fumed that Musk was causing trouble by going behind his back. On Thursday, at a meeting in the White House, Bessent confronted Musk and, a source said, “the F bombs started to fly.” … The argument was so heated that an aide stepped in between the two men to separate them. It took place within earshot of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who was visiting Trump that day.
Bessent got his way, with Shapley lasting only a day as temporary leader of the IRS. The incident raises more questions, however, about who gives the orders in Trump’s administration.
@jamellebouie the absence is any actual leadership in the oval office will just make things all the more chaotic and disruptive.
Other stories we’re following:
- President Trump’s latest bid to pause the war in Ukraine “would essentially grant Russia all the territory it has gained in the war, while offering Kyiv only vague security assurances.” [The New York Times]
- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth went to the extreme of having a new, unsecured internet connection installed in his office so he could access Signal — the commercial chat app where Hegseth and other officials have repeatedly shared classified information — from the Pentagon. [Associated Press]
… Our Safety: Got Milk Inspectors?
In news that foretells changes that may not do a body good, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has suspended proficiency testing” — the process through which the agency benchmarks and verifies tests by food safety labs — for Grade A milk.
Under Trump 47, the Department of Health and Human Services (of which the FDA is a part) has shed roughly 20,000 employees, or about a quarter of its staff, which is why we’re here (despite a promise that food safety inspections would not be impacted by the cuts just four weeks ago). An HHS spokesperson said proficiency testing services would eventually shift to a new lab — and that in the meantime, testing of finished dairy products would go on.
Other stories we’re following:
- The Department of Agriculture pulled back a Biden administration regulatory effort to limit the level of salmonella bacteria, which can cause food poisoning, in raw poultry — because hey, who doesn’t enjoy a few extra forms of life with their boneless wings? [The Seattle Times]
- In case you missed it — which you likely did, because the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration buried this finding — according to the publication Climatewire — atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, a prime contributor to climate change, “grew at a record-breaking speed in 2024.” Gulp. [Climatewire]
… Our Health: Republicans Ready a Scalpel for Medicaid
We wrote last Sunday about a plan by congressional Republicans to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy by reducing Uncle Sam’s support for Medicaid — the state-administered insurance program for low-income and working-class Americans. A few days ago one Republican House member, Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.), spelled out what his party hopes to do.
Austin Scott previews how House Rs plan to cut Medicaid: "The federal govt is paying 90% of the Medicaid expansion. What we've talked about is moving that 90% level of the expansion back… nobody would be kicked off Medicaid as long as governors decided they wanted to continue to fund the program"
The scheme would all but repeal a major portion of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) by taking away the federal dollars states were promised in return for expanding Medicaid to cover working-class individuals and families. Twelve states have laws that automatically end the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid if federal cost-sharing is reduced in the way Scott described — and even in other states, the loss of federal money threatens to make Medicaid unsustainable:
The GOP know state budgets cannot fill the hole that their cuts to Medicaid would create.In Missouri, the proposed cuts to Medicaid & SNAP would blow a $2 BILLION hole in the budget, costing more than 20,000 jobs—all for another tax cut for billionaires.missouriindependent.com/2025/03/26/m…
— Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (@cleaver.house.gov) 2025-04-22T19:28:46.805Z
Policy analysts say that a plan like what Scott described could put health coverage for about 20 million people at risk.
Other stories we’re following:
- Federal regulators are delaying approval of the updated Novavax vaccination against Covid-19 — insisting that the company carry out new, expensive tests not previously required of other vaccine makers. [Wall Street Journal]
- HHS may pull Covid-19 shots from the recommended schedule of vaccinations for children — with department secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., reportedly arguing internally for the change, which might cause some insurers to stop covering the cost of the shot for kids. [Politico]
The Big Picture: A Chain Reaction of Chaos
Turns out that flooding the zone can lead to YOU going underwater as well, even when you have the hose. Trump’s 14th week marked the point when it became clear that events had begun to overwhelm even the White House. Administration officials were forced to walk back stances they had taken on issue after issue — and agencies found themselves peppered by judicial orders to stop their efforts to withhold funds, withdraw visas, or otherwise carry out Trump’s agenda.
To explain why this happened, let’s use an analogy. An uncontrolled nuclear reaction can essentially begin with a single particle hitting an atom, causing the atom’s nucleus to split. If enough of the correct kind are in the same place, the split of that first atom can set more particles loose — causing even more atoms to split, and setting loose still more particles with each split.
Once that first particle hits, in other words, it triggers a chain reaction. For the White House, these linked effects have been lawsuits. Every Trump executive order, “DOGE” mass firing, or move to stiff researchers and others with government contracts has triggered new cases in federal courts. As the cases multiply, administration officials — and their lawyers — find themselves stretched thin and on the defensive.
Donald Trump has lost almost 100 times in court & now he’s lashing outLitigation is the spark for social outcry & it’s already working—his approval rating is plummetingI discussed @theweekendmsnbc.bsky.social
— Norm Eisen (@normeisen.bsky.social) 2025-04-27T15:47:56.490Z
One place to see that dynamic playing out: the attempt to cancel thousands of student visas over issues as miniscule as a speeding citation. The administration reversed course last week, promising to restore the visas it canceled. Why? Because Justice Department lawyers were defeated in court after court.
More reporting confirming this. It seems that ICE is going to entirely reverse the THOUSANDS of SEVIS terminations for foreign students which had been occuring around the country.It's strongly suspected that process was a DOGE special; automated terminations based on law enforcement database hits.
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social) 2025-04-25T15:23:35.477Z
Politico devoted an article to covering the litigation backlash that caused the administration to retreat. “More than 100 lawsuits and 50 restraining orders from dozens of federal judges,” the article recounted, led to “20 days of court losses” that forced the administration to give up:
The Trump administration’s abrupt move … tacitly acknowledged what judges in two dozen states had been saying since early April: Terminating university students’ immigration records from a federal database — a step which appeared to jeopardize their legal authorization to remain in the country — was almost certainly illegal. And it was implemented so ham-handedly that judges felt compelled to intervene.
On its own, the scope of litigation over the student visas is remarkable — but it was only one of many fronts on which the administration was afflicted by legal defeats:
- A Tufts student snatched by ICE from a Boston-area street was ordered to be returned to New England from a Louisiana center where she had been held;
- A judge in Washington, D.C., blocked an executive order that tried to end collective bargaining for hundreds of thousands of federal workers with union contracts;
- In California, a federal judge blocked the administration’s plan to halt the flow of federal funds to so-called “sanctuary cities” — a term for municipalities that refuse to directly aid immigration enforcement efforts;
- A teachers’ union and the American Civil Liberties Union won a bid to stop plans by the Department of Education to carry out threats to block funds for school systems that refused to end diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
- An executive order that tried to make states require proof of citizenship during voter registration also got sidelined — with a federal judge noting that the Constitution gives regulatory power over elections to the states and Congress, not the president.
The defeat undercuts the administration’s efforts to portray itself as a juggernaut — by revealing as “fake news” the idea that Trump can rewrite the laws that govern American society by giant Sharpie. The courtroom challenges are also making it tough for government lawyers to stay on top of their workloads — and causing mistakes that are harming the administration’s ability to defend its actions.
Oops. DOJ Lawyers sent a memo to the Dept of Transportation outlining why its case against congestion pricing is weak. Then the DOT accidentally sent it to the judge presiding over the lawsuit. heatmap.news/sparks/conge…
— Emily Pontecorvo (@emilypont.bsky.social) 2025-04-24T16:43:30.043Z
With more lawsuits incoming, including a bid by states to halt Trump’s tariff spree, the pace of reversals — and the atmosphere of chaos — looks likely to continue to grow.
Waste, Fraud & Abuse Watch
Tesla’s Latest Feature: Full Self-Dealing
Regulators within the National Highway Traffic Safety Board gave billionaire and “DOGE” patron Elon Musk a gift this week — removing safety requirements such as a need for rearview mirrors from ‘self-driving’ vehicles, and eliminating the need for makers of “self-driving” cars to report most non-fatal crashes. The move was interpreted as a boon for Tesla Motors, the Musk-led company that has promised hands-free robocars “next year” every year for over a decade. That boost was sorely needed for the company, because … well, keep reading.
Win of the Week
Tesla Takedown Dents Musk Motors
Tesla’s financial reports revealed a bloodbath for the company last week. The company fell $2 billion short of revenue expectations, saw revenue from its car sales fall by 20% year-over-year, and watched profits shrink by two-thirds — only earning a profit because of emissions and electric vehicle tax credits.
Musk reacted by claiming he would soon step back from his job-chainsawing, money-costing efforts at “DOGE. Congratulations to protestors for making sure that Musk — after attacking government workers and Americans’ public services — began to earn a comeuppance.
As predicted. If Harvard Business School case studies still exist in four years, this is going to be a fucking doozy.
— Clara Jeffery (@clarajeffery.bsky.social) 2025-04-22T20:34:01.413Z
Chart of the Week
It’s easy to understand why embattled Republicans in the House want to hide; like the economy will soon be, the president’s job approval numbers are down in the dumps.
New AP-Norc poll is first major poll with Trump's job approval in the 30s, 39%-59% (-20). apnorc.org/projects/100…
— Simon Rosenberg (@simonwdc.bsky.social) 2025-04-26T21:37:50.421Z
And now, a laugh (to keep from crying) for young folks facing another ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ economic doozie:
@davejorgenson I’ve lived through 4 recessions and 3 prequels. Edited by Colin Chocola.
That’s all for now. Catch us on Bluesky, Facebook and YouTube for updates throughout the week — and look for us in your inbox again on Wednesday.
TTFN—
the TrumpVersusUS team