‘Trump appears to have blinked first': Nicolle Wallace reacts to USA and China's tariff agreement
Jacob Soboroff, NBC News Correspondent joins Nicolle Wallace on Deadline White House live from the Port of Long Beach in California, joined by Mario Cordero, CEO of the Port of Long Beach to discuss the impact that the initial wave of Donald Trump's tariff's have had on the shipping industry and the trickle down effect it will have on the American economy, as long as what the temporary agreement made on tariffs between the United States and China will have.
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21 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Opinion: Thank You ‘Fewer Toys' Trump, You're a Bigger Grinch than Me
Trump made headlines this week for going all Marie Kondo on the American economy—and I am here for it. During an interview with Meet the Press's Kristen Welker, Trump answered a question about rising prices due to his tariffs on China by declaring his aversion to the excesses of American-style capitalism: 'I don't think that a beautiful baby girl—that's 11 years old—needs to have 30 dolls,' said the President, before continuing later in the interview, 'They can have three.' In that same interview, he also stated that the nation's rates of pencil ownership have gotten out of control: 'They don't need to have 250 pencils,' he decreed of the sick stationery addicts among us. 'They can have five.' Exactly right! Families across the nation going broke trying to keep up with the latest pencil innovations. Our strategic graphite reserves at an all-time low. Finally, an American president has the courage to stand up to those b----rds at Dixon-Ticonderoga. Is it surprising that the President of the United States is now dictating how many dolls, crayons, vaccines or eggs children need? Sure, a little bit. But why should it be? Many of the world's great leaders have advocated for a centrally planned command economy—Josef Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung come to mind. And funnily enough, I've been making the argument that we waste too much money on cheap plastic cr-p from China to my wife for years, especially at Christmas when the kids were young. 'A Grinch,' she used to call me, a charge I have never denied. So I'm delighted to discover that the First Family hates Christmas as much as I do, although maybe I should have guessed as much during the first Trump administration when Melania apparently took her seasonal decorating theme from The Shining. Speaking of which, I was also heartened to see Trump's intention to impose 100% tariffs on foreign films. Why do we need to shoot films abroad when we've already got the entire world built to scale in Las Vegas? And why stop there either? I'd also like to see a 100% tariff on subtitles and on elevator music that sounds a little too 'ethnic.' Economists are warning that the significant impacts of Trump's economic policies should hit our shores this week, as the first Chinese ships to leave port following the imposition of the tariffs begin arriving in the U.S. Speaking with CNN, Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, said that 'cargo coming into Los Angeles will be down 35% compared for a year ago.' Fewer shipping containers means less work for dockworkers, fewer hauls for truckers, fewer products for sale. Will shortages follow? Some economists think so, with consumers likely to experience scarcity and/or price hikes in toys, footwear, glassware, cutlery, furniture, bedding and clothing—as are U.S. companies that rely on China for plastic, iron, steel and electronic components. One has to wonder whether Trump's message of austerity will fly among his own base. Republican orthodoxy has always been 'buy, buy, buy!' Following 9/11, for example, George W. Bush's message to the nation was, in effect, 'Go shopping.' After any one of our nation's frequent mass shootings, Republicans respond to calls for gun control by saying it isn't a matter of needing to own more guns, but of having the right to own as many as we, the people choose. How many guns do Americans get, Mr. President? Is it more or less than the number of pencils? We are told that any pain caused by these tariffs is likely to be short-lived. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reassured investors at the Milken Institute this week, claiming that, 'the result of the president's economic plan will be more. More jobs, more homes, more growth, more factories, more critical manufacturing plants, more semiconductors, more energy, more opportunity, more defense, more economic security, more innovation.' That may end up being the case, although it's hard to see where all the new jobs are coming from, or the wood to build all those new homes. It's difficult to envision factories springing up across the heartland paying American wages to American workers. It's difficult to see how cutting ourselves from the world will lead to more opportunity. But while it's tough to see how destroying our trade relationships creates more economic security (or national security) rather than less, I do agree with the Treasury Secretary that we are likely to see more innovation. After all, nothing inspires creativity like empty shelves.
21 minutes ago
A US territory's colonial history emerges in state disputes over voting and citizenship
WHITTIER, Alaska -- Squeezed between glacier-packed mountains and Alaska's Prince William Sound, the cruise-ship stop of Whittier is isolated enough that it's reachable by just a single road, through a long, one-lane tunnel that vehicles share with trains. It's so small that nearly all its 260 residents live in the same 14-story condo building. But Whittier also is the unlikely crossroads of two major currents in American politics: fighting over what it means to be born on U.S. soil and false claims by President Donald Trump and others that noncitizen voter fraud is widespread. In what experts describe as an unprecedented case, Alaska prosecutors are pursuing felony charges against 11 residents of Whittier, most of them related to one another, saying they falsely claimed U.S. citizenship when registering or trying to vote. The defendants were all born in American Samoa, an island cluster in the South Pacific roughly halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand. It's the only U.S. territory where residents are not automatically granted citizenship by virtue of having been born on American soil, as the Constitution dictates. Instead, by a quirk of geopolitical history, they are considered 'U.S. nationals' — a distinction that gives them certain rights and obligations while denying them others. American Samoans are entitled to U.S. passports and can serve in the military. Men must register for the Selective Service. They can vote in local elections in American Samoa but cannot hold public office in the U.S. or participate in most U.S. elections. Those who wish to become citizens can do so, but the process costs hundreds of dollars and can be cumbersome. 'To me, I'm an American. I was born an American on U.S. soil,' said firefighter Michael Pese, one of those charged in Whittier. 'American Samoa has been U.S. soil, U.S. jurisdiction, for 125 years. According to the supreme law of the land, that's my birthright.' The status has created confusion in other states, as well. In Oregon, officials inadvertently registered nearly 200 American Samoan residents to vote when they got their driver's licenses under the state's motor-voter law. Of those, 10 cast ballots in an election, according to the Oregon Secretary of State's office. Officials there determined the residents had not intended to break the law and no crime was committed. In Hawaii, one resident who was born in American Samoa, Sai Timoteo, ran for the state Legislature in 2018 before learning she wasn't allowed to hold public office or vote. She had always considered it her civic duty to vote, and the form on the voting materials had one box to check: 'U.S. Citizen/U.S. National.' 'I checked that box my entire life,' she said. She also avoided charges, and Hawaii subsequently changed its form to make it more clear. Amid the storm of executive orders issued by Trump in the early days of his second term was one that sought to redefine birthright citizenship by barring it for children of parents who are in the U.S. unlawfully. Another would overhaul how federal elections are run, among other changes requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship. Courts so far have blocked both orders. The Constitution says that 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.' It also leaves the administration of elections to the states. The case in Whittier began with Pese's wife, Tupe Smith. After the couple moved to Whittier in 2018, Smith began volunteering at the Whittier Community School, where nearly half of the 55 students were American Samoan — many of them her nieces and nephews. She would help the kids with their English, tutor them in reading and cook them Samoan dishes. In 2023, a seat on the regional school board came open and she ran for it. She was the only candidate and won with about 95% of the vote. One morning a few weeks later, as she was making her two children breakfast, state troopers came knocking. They asked about her voting history. She explained that she knew she wasn't allowed to vote in U.S. presidential elections, but thought she could vote in local or state races. She said she checked a box affirming that she was a U.S. citizen at the instruction of elections workers because there was no option to identify herself as a U.S. national, court records say. The troopers arrested her and drove her to a women's prison near Anchorage. She was released that day after her husband paid bail. 'When they put me in cuffs, my son started crying," Smith told The Associated Press. "He told their dad that he don't want the cops to take me or to lock me up.' About 10 months later, troopers returned to Whittier and issued court summonses to Pese, eight other relatives and one man who was not related but came from the same American Samoa village as Pese. One of Smith's attorneys, Neil Weare, grew up in another U.S. territory, Guam, and is the co-founder of the Washington-based Right to Democracy Project, whose mission is 'confronting and dismantling the undemocratic colonial framework governing people in U.S. territories.' He suggested the prosecutions are aimed at 'low-hanging fruit' in the absence of evidence that illegal immigrants frequently cast ballots in U.S. elections. Even state-level investigations have found voting by noncitizens to be exceptionally rare. 'There is no question that Ms. Smith lacked an intent to mislead or deceive a public official in order to vote unlawfully when she checked 'U.S. citizen' on voter registration materials,' he wrote in a brief to the Alaska Court of Appeals last week, after a lower court judge declined to dismiss the charges. Prosecutors say her false claim of citizenship was intentional, and her claim to the contrary was undercut by the clear language on the voter application forms she filled out in 2020 and 2022. The forms said that if the applicant did not answer yes to being over 18 years old and a U.S. citizen, 'do not complete this form, as you are not eligible to vote.' The unique situation of American Samoans dates to the 19th century, when the U.S. and European powers were seeking to expand their colonial and economic interests in the South Pacific. The U.S. Navy secured the use of Pago Pago Harbor in eastern Samoa as a coal-refueling station for military and commercial vessels, while Germany sought to protect its coconut plantations in western Samoa. Eventually the archipelago was divided, with the western islands becoming the independent nation of Samoa and the eastern ones becoming American Samoa, overseen by the Navy. The leaders of American Samoa spent much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries arguing that its people should be U.S. citizens. Birthright citizenship was eventually afforded to residents of other U.S. territories — Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. Congress considered it for American Samoa in the 1930s, but declined. Some lawmakers cited financial concerns during the Great Depression while others expressed patently racist objections, according to a 2020 article in the American Journal of Legal History. Supporters of automatic citizenship say it would particularly benefit the estimated 150,000 to 160,000 nationals who live in the states, many of them in California, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Utah and Alaska. 'We pay taxes, we do exactly the same as everybody else that are U.S. citizens,' Smith said. 'It would be nice for us to have the same rights as everybody here in the states.' But many in American Samoa eventually soured on the idea, fearing that extending birthright citizenship would jeopardize its customs — including the territory's communal land laws. Island residents could be dispossessed by land privatization, not unlike what happened in Hawaii, said Siniva Bennett, board chair of the Samoa Pacific Development Corporation, a Portland, Oregon-based nonprofit. 'We've been able to maintain our culture, and we haven't been divested from our land like a lot of other indigenous people in the U.S.,' Bennett said. In 2021, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to extend automatic citizenship to those born in American Samoa, saying it would be wrong to force citizenship on those who don't want it. The Supreme Court declined to review the decision. Several jurisdictions across the country, including San Francisco and the District of Columbia, allow people who are not citizens to vote in certain local elections. Tafilisaunoa Toleafoa, with the Pacific Community of Alaska, said the situation has been so confusing that her organization reached out to the Alaska Division of Elections in 2021 and 2022 to ask whether American Samoans could vote in state and local elections. Neither time did it receive a direct answer, she said. 'People were telling our community that they can vote as long as you have your voter registration card and it was issued by the state,' she said. Finally, last year, Carol Beecher, the head of the state Division of Elections, sent Toleafoa's group a letter saying American Samoans are not eligible to vote in Alaska elections. But by then, the voting forms had been signed. 'It is my hope that this is a lesson learned, that the state of Alaska agrees that this could be something that we can administratively correct,' Toleafoa said. 'I would say that the state could have done that instead of prosecuting community members.'
Yahoo
21 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Opinion: The Fool's Gold in Trump's White House Is Already Looking Tarnished
Donald Trump is back in the White House, and this time around, he's done some major renovations. A home, any decent designer will tell you, should in its aesthetic reflect its inhabitants: Their lifestyles and their values. And Trump has certainly remade the White House in his image. It's tacky, showy, and narcissistic—but luckily his changes don't seem built to last. The Trump White House also appears to have more gold in it than the Federal Reserve. It's as if Liberace joined forces with Scrooge McDuck. Trump has added copious amounts of gold to every conceivable surface: More paintings with thick gold frames, more gold vases and urns and tchotchkes, even gold paint on the crown molding. There's even a gold-framed New York Post cover with Trump's mug shot on it. The golden doorknobs are polished to maximum gleam; when shadow President Elon Musk showed up to his farewell event in the Oval Office (with a black eye), Trump handed him a golden key. He probably wants that back now but still. There are no reports of golden toilets—yet—but virtually no other surface seems untouched. 'A gilded rococo hellscape' is how one photo editor and creative consultant described it in The New York Times. The president who purports to want to make America great again seems to actually want to make the American capitol Versailles. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told The Wall Street Journal that, 'It's the Golden Office for the Golden Age.' Really though, it's more of a gilded office for a new gilded age: A time when the rich swill champagne in their mansions and members-only clubs while the masses suffer through profound political polarization and extreme inequality. Today, the world's uber-wealthy can buy a Trump Gold Card—of course—visa to get into the US; immigrants who aren't flush, on the other hand, see the doors slam shut. Donald Trump has always loved the ostentatious and ornate. His apartments are notoriously gaudy, as are the buildings he slaps his name on (typically in huge gold letters). He first announced his presidential run a decade ago by descending down a golden escalator. But it all seems to quickly lose its sheen. The Trump name is so deeply associated with grift and chintz that many once-affluent buyers have fled his building. When the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino imploded in Atlantic City after years of neglect, crowds gathered to cheer. This is not a man who builds things that last. This is a man who makes things shiny for as long as it takes him to cash his checks. For all his new-money fixation on expensive, shiny things, Trump's economic policies have badly tarnished his presidency. The president has managed to repeatedly roil global markets, earn a downgrade of America's credit, raise consumer prices and make it impossible for businesses to adequately plan for anything; various tariffs have been removed and revised, put back and removed again, threatened and teased and so on. The back-and-forth has been so endless that Wall Streeters have a nickname for it: TACO, or Trump Always Chickens Out. The president seems to now be saying he will negotiate individual trade deals with countries the world over, an endeavor that will at least keep him too busy to hang up any more gold-framed paintings of himself. (He has thusfar been unable to make very few such deals, instead telling Americans they should simply expect to buy fewer toys for their children.) But what else is Trump himself busy with? Cashing in. He's started a small crypto empire, enjoying the spoils of those foolish enough to buy into his schemes, or canny enough to know buying in can get them access. A state-owned Emirati company has invested some $2 billion in one of the Trump family's enterprises. He's accepting a free luxury jet from Qatar. Unlike previous presidents, he has not put his own assets in a blind trust. He has used his position to extract free work from some of the country's top law firms, who he has intimidated out of challenging him or his agenda. As his administration is cutting basic services for Americans, he's trimming the White House with gold, and sitting on a growing pile of it. The question now is what will come first: The flaking of the White House gold leaf, or the falling-apart of Trump's presidency itself.
