Watch: Manchin testifies before House on China, critical minerals
Manchin, who now serves on the board of critical minerals producer Ramaco Resources, retired from Congress in January. Once considered the most moderate Democrat in the upper chamber, the staunch supporter of oil and gas later decided to leave the party and file as an independent.
Tuesday's hearing came weeks after President Trump announced a framework for a deal with China that focuses on rare earth exports to the U.S., building on previous talks between the nations that eased tariffs on imports from Beijing.
The event was scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. EDT.
Watch the video above.
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NBC News
25 minutes ago
- NBC News
Tariffs announced, tariffs delayed — tariffs denied? From the Politics Desk
Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team's latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail. In today's edition, our team looks at Trump's tariff agenda on the eve of his deadline for reimposing some of the duties he announced and then delayed in April, as well as a legal case looming over all of the tariffs. Meanwhile, Jonathan Allen outlines the thought process that awaits Kamala Harris ahead of the 2028 election. — Scott Bland Trump's tariffs face another inflection point, and a court test President Donald Trump's most sweeping tariffs, the ones he originally announced in April, are set to go into effect (again) on Friday. But on Thursday, his whole tariff agenda faced a stern test in federal court, NBC News' Steve Kopack reports. The Court of International Trade initially blocked the tariffs in late May, though they were allowed to stay in place pending appeal. The court said the law Trump cited in many of his executive orders did not 'delegate an unbounded tariff authority to the President.' It also said the tariffs did not meet the test of interceding against an 'unusual and extraordinary' risk to the country, after Trump implemented them by claiming a national emergency. All of Trump's tariffs on major trading partners, such as Canada, Mexico, China, the European Union, Japan, India, Brazil and a handful of other countries, have been deployed using the law. On Thursday, an appeals court took a skeptical view of the Trump administration's argument that imposing the tariffs is well within the president's authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, per NBC News' Ryan Balberman. Some of the judges noted that Trump's use of the law effectively cuts Congress out of tariff policy, though the law doesn't mention tariffs. Meanwhile, Trump extended the deadline for negotiations with Mexico before imposing new tariffs there. He's hit India, Brazil and South Korea with new tariffs as the deadline looms. Altogether, as NBC News' Rob Wile and Steve Kopack write, since the April tariff rate announcement Trump dubbed 'Liberation Day,' the president backed down — and since then has steadily been reintroducing elevated tariffs at levels not seen since the 1930s. What's next? We'll find out more on Friday. And more still when that appeals court makes its decision. What Kamala Harris will weigh ahead of 2028 Analysis by Jonathan Allen There are more than 2 million reasons for Kamala Harris not to run for president again: That's the margin she lost by in 2024. Moreover, no Democrat has lost a general election and come back to win the presidency since Grover Cleveland in 1892. The last Democrat to win the party's nomination, lose the general election and come back to win the nomination four years later was Adlai Stevenson in 1956. But what may ultimately be more compelling to Harris are the arguments for mounting a third bid for the Oval Office in 2028. In passing on a run for governor of California this week, she said that 'for now,' her focus is not on elective office. That left open the door to a future campaign, and there's only one job above the one the former vice president held most recently. If Harris does hope to make a comeback, she will have to reckon with the most glaring deficiency of the 107-day campaign she ran in the shadow of President Joe Biden: She didn't articulate a clear vision for the country that met the needs of voters who were dissatisfied with his leadership. While she has time to hear voters, develop an agenda and brush up her presentation skills, she would have to devote herself to executing on those goals to win a primary and the presidency. Still, Harris would walk into a primary race with a set of advantages over most of her rivals. For starters, and for better or worse, everyone in her party knows who she is. Most candidates have to spend exorbitant amounts of time and money to build name recognition outside their states. That's not a problem for Harris, who received more than 75 million votes in 2024. Candidates also have to spend money on television ads and field operations, which can be prohibitively expensive. Harris would start the race with the strongest record of raising money — much of it attributable, of course, to the fact that she was the party's nominee — and the biggest list of donors. Again, she would start the race farther down the track than prospective opponents. In her 2024 and 2020 campaigns, the latter of which actually ended in 2019 when she ran out of money and support, Harris showed she had a lot to learn about creating and communicating a message. In 2028, she would not be dealing with the scrutiny of the national media and the exhausting crunch of day-to-day campaigning for the first time. Again, these are edges she would have over first-timers. One question she will have to answer for herself — and it's one that helped dissuade Hillary Clinton from running in 2020 — is whether she would still run if she were convinced she could win the nomination but was unlikely to defeat a Republican in November. There's plenty of time for Harris to determine her own appetite for another campaign, the electorate's interest in her and the pure political calculation of her chances of ending up in the White House. It may be that Americans have seen the last of Harris on a ballot. But while a Democrat last avenged a defeat in the distant past, one very present politician did it less than a year ago: Donald J. Trump. Elon Musk gives millions to Republican super PACs ahead of the midterms By Ben Kamisar and Bridget Bowman Billionaire Elon Musk may be gone from President Donald Trump's White House, but he may not be done with Republican politics. Musk made a pair of $5 million donations on June 27 to the main super PACs backing House and Senate Republicans. That made Musk the largest individual donor to both groups in the first six months of 2025, according to new campaign finance reports filed Thursday. The new contributions are further proof of how Musk can make a big splash in politics by putting his signature on just one check. And they raise the question of how much more there might be before the midterms, despite Musk's messy post-White House breakup with Trump and his statements in July about starting a third party, made after the donations. Musk's June 27 donations supporting the Senate Leadership Fund and the Congressional Leadership Fund, the two GOP super PACs, came about a month after leaving his official post as an adviser to Trump and days before he began publicly discussing the idea of starting a new political party. Meanwhile, other new campaign finance reports show Musk pumped $45.3 million into his own super PAC in the first six months of this year. The tech billionaire gave nearly $17.9 million directly to the group and sent another $27.4 million in in-kind contributions, with Musk covering funds for million-dollar prizes to voters who signed petitions.


Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
Appellate judges question Trump's authority to impose tariffs without Congress
Brett Schumate, the attorney representing the Trump administration, acknowledged in the 99-minute hearing 'no president has ever read IEEPA this way' but contended it was nonetheless lawful. The 1977 law, signed by President Jimmy Carter, allows the president to seize assets and block transactions during a national emergency. It was first used during the Iran hostage crisis and has since been invoked for a range of global unrest, from the 9/11 attacks to the Syrian civil war. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Trump says the country's trade deficit is so serious that it likewise qualifies for the law's protection. Advertisement In sharp exchanges with Schumate, appellate judges questioned that contention, asking whether the law extended to tariffs at all and, if so, whether the levies matched the threat the administration identified. 'If the president says there's a problem with our military readiness,' Chief Circuit Judge Kimberly Moore posited, 'and he puts a 20 percent tax on coffee, that doesn't seem to necessarily deal with (it).' Schumate said Congress' passage of IEEPA gave the president 'broad and flexible' power to respond to an emergency, but that 'the president is not asking for unbounded authority.' Advertisement But an attorney for the plaintiffs, Neal Katyal, characterized Trump's maneuver as a 'breathtaking' power grab that amounted to saying 'the president can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, for as long as he wants so long as he declares an emergency.' No ruling was issued from the bench. Regardless of what decision the judges' deliberations bring, the case is widely expected to reach the US Supreme Court. Trump weighed in on the case on his Truth Social platform, posting: 'To all of my great lawyers who have fought so hard to save our Country, good luck in America's big case today. If our Country was not able to protect itself by using TARIFFS AGAINST TARIFFS, WE WOULD BE 'DEAD,' WITH NO CHANCE OF SURVIVAL OR SUCCESS. Thank you for your attention to this matter!' In filings in the case, the Trump administration insists that 'a national emergency exists' necessitating its trade policy. A three-judge panel of the The issue now rests with the appeals judges. The challenge strikes at just one batch of import taxes from an administration that has unleashed a bevy of them and could be poised to unveil more on Friday. The case centers on Trump's so-called 'Liberation Day' tariffs of April 2 that imposed new levies on nearly every country. But it doesn't cover other tariffs, including those on Advertisement The case is one of at least seven lawsuits charging that Trump overstepped his authority through the use of tariffs on other nations. The plaintiffs include 12 US states and five businesses, including a wine importer, a company selling pipes and plumbing goods, and a maker of fishing gear. The US Constitution gives Congress the authority to impose taxes — including tariffs — but over decades lawmakers have ceded power over trade policy to the White House. Trump has made the most of the power vacuum, raising the average US tariff to more than 18 percent, the highest rate since 1934, according to the Budget Lab at Yale University. The attorney general for one of the states suing Trump sounded confident after the hearing, arguing that the judges 'didn't buy' the Trump administration's arguments. 'You would definitely rather be in our shoes going forward,' Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield said. Rayfield said that Trump's tariffs — which are paid by importers in the United States who often try to pass along the higher costs to their customers — amount to one of the largest tax increases in American history. 'This was done all by one human being sitting in the Oval Office,' he said.

Politico
an hour ago
- Politico
A Democrat in the middle of the Israel firestorm
BALANCING ACT — Democratic Rep. Sara Jacobs personifies the conflict within her party over U.S. support for Israel and the nightmare in Gaza — and the increasingly precarious balancing act for any politician trying to navigate it. The third-term member of Congress from San Diego is Jewish. She has family in Israel. So the country's security is not an abstract notion. As a millennial, and the youngest member of Democratic leadership in the House, she doesn't view criticism of Israel as off the table. But she also sits on the Armed Services Committee and represents one of the nation's most military-centric districts, so she is acutely aware of Israel's security needs and its role as a key U.S. ally in the Middle East. All of those roiling elements were on full display last night, in Washington and at a town hall meeting in her district. The Senate voted down a resolution from Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) to block the sale of U.S. weapons to Israel. The measure failed, but 27 Democratic senators, more than half the caucus, voted in favor — a sign that the horrific images of starvation coming out of Gaza in recent months are starting to erode the largely unconditional support that Israel has long enjoyed among many Democrats. Jacobs says she would have voted in favor of the resolution, though she wants the U.S. to continue supporting Israel's defense, including by helping to pay for the Iron Dome missile defense system. She tried to lay out her nuanced position at the town hall, where pro-Palestinian protesters gathered noisily outside the high school auditorium in a suburban section of San Diego where the event was held. Inside, one of the first questions was what is she doing to ensure the people of Gaza are receiving humanitarian aid and whether Israel has committed genocide. Jacobs, who worked for the United Nations and State Department before she was elected to Congress in 2020, tried to thread the needle — saying that Israel 'might' have committed genocide. 'But I am not a lawyer, and that is a legal determination,' she told the restive audience. 'I think we've clearly seen serious atrocities. I think we've likely seen war crimes, and we've definitely seen forced displacement that could amount to ethnic cleansing.' Soon, members of the audience were yelling at her — and each other. Her efforts to explain her support for a ban on offensive weapons, but not for defense, were drowned out. 'Weapons are weapons,' a woman shouted. A man stood and chanted 'free free Palestine' while waving a black-and-white keffiyeh. Members of the crowd shouted back at him. After about 20 minutes, police escorted the man with the keffiyeh out of the auditorium and the town hall turned to other topics — mostly expressions of anger about various actions by President Donald Trump wrapped into a question. Jacobs said the next day that she welcomed the protests and is less worried about the politics of the issue within the Democratic Party than she is about addressing the larger issues. 'The thing that needs to be worked out is how we get unimpeded humanitarian access to Gaza, and then how we get back on a path to a situation where you have two states where Israelis can live safely and securely and where Palestinians can live with dignity and autonomy and self determination,' she told POLITICO today. The bitter politics of the conflict aside, Jacobs contends there's a middle position in which people can condemn both the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas and the Israeli response that authorities say has led to about 60,000 deaths, mostly civilians in Gaza. 'I truly believe both that Oct. 7 was horrible and we should be calling for the release of the remaining hostages, and that what's going on in Gaza right now is horrible, and those don't have to be mutually exclusive,' she said. 'Civilians shouldn't be blamed for their government actions, and that's true of Israeli civilians, and it's true of Palestinian civilians, and it's true of American civilians.' Despite what happened at her town hall, the protests over the war in Gaza around the U.S. have, for now at least, ebbed since last year and many Democratic voters in general have turned their attention to other issues. But it's not clear how long politicians like Jacobs, or her party, will be able to walk this precarious middle ground. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@ Or contact tonight's author at bfox@ or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @ben_foxed. What'd I Miss? — Witkoff and Huckabee to visit Gaza, inspect food distribution centers: Special envoy Steve Witkoff and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee will visit Gaza on Friday to inspect aid distribution sites and meet with Gazans, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced today, amid intensifying global criticism of the humanitarian crisis in the region. The administration officials' planned trip into the besieged Gaza Strip comes amid escalating pressure both globally and from within MAGA circles to intervene, as well as a string of declarations from U.S. allies who plan to support Palestinian statehood ahead of a United Nations General Assembly meeting in September. — State Department sanctions Palestinian leadership organizations amid global statehood push: The State Department announced sanctions against the Palestine Liberation Organization and Palestinian Authority today, denying organization members visas for the United States, citing claims that the groups are 'continuing to support terrorism.' The move comes as Canada and a growing number of European countries have vowed to recognize Palestinian statehood ahead of September's United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, amid warnings from global leaders that Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip face mass starvation due to Israeli aid blockages. — Kamala Harris to release book focused on presidential campaign: Kamala Harris announced today that she will release a book recounting her 2024 campaign for the presidency. 'I believe there is value in sharing what I saw, what I learned, and what I know it will take to move forward,' the former vice president said in the announcement, posted to X. 'In writing this book, one truth kept coming back to me: sometimes, the fight takes a while.' The announcement comes just one day after Harris announced she would not run for governor in California next year, while still not closing the door on a 2028 run. — White House raising the pressure ahead of Friday tariff deadline: President Donald Trump has settled on tariff rates for most of the country's largest trading partners. The rest of the world stands in limbo. A White House official confirmed that Trump plans to sign new executive orders today imposing higher tariff rates on several countries that have been unable to reach negotiated trade agreements by his self-imposed Friday deadline. It could include a number of America's biggest trading partners, including Canada, Mexico and Taiwan. That's sent their leaders, as well as officials from other sizable economies scrambling to try and secure a last-minute deal or extension — although most are downbeat about that prospect. — Trump's tariffs get frosty reception at federal appeals court: Federal appeals court judges sharply questioned President Donald Trump's authority to impose sweeping tariffs on foreign trading partners today under an unprecedented use of emergency powers. Several judges of the Washington, D.C.-based Federal Circuit Court of Appeals repeatedly wondered how Trump could justify the broad tariffs using a 1977 law known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, that presidents have used to set economic sanctions and other penalties on foreign countries — but never previously tariffs. FLIPPING THE SCRIPT — Past German governments sought to temper Europe's most hardline impulses on migration. Now, under Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Berlin is vying to lead Europe's anti-immigration charge. The stark shift in Germany's migration stance under its new government promises to accelerate the EU's hard-right turn on migration as the bloc prepares to implement a series of new measures aimed at drastically reducing the number of asylum seekers entering Europe — and deporting more of those who do make it. As European leaders negotiate on how to put these measures into place, those from some of the EU's most hardline countries are welcoming Germany's new role. TRADE TALKS STALL — President Donald Trump said late Wednesday that Canada's move to recognize Palestinian statehood threatened to jeopardize trade deal talks between the two countries. On Wednesday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that his country intends to recognize a Palestinian state ahead of September's United Nations General Assembly, joining France and the U.K. on that path. With a Friday deadline looming to strike a deal or face steep U.S. tariffs, negotiations between Canada and the U.S. have stalled, and no deal framework has been set. Nightly Number RADAR SWEEP THE WORLD'S HARDEST EXAM — Are you smart enough to get a public sector job? In India, college graduates spend years studying for job entrance exams to learn general knowledge like the pH of the human body and the largest Bauxite producing state in the country. Even though these general knowledge exams have no set schedule, lifetime public sector jobs are coveted and respected for their pension and benefits. But as the number of public sector jobs shrink and private sector roles aren't growing to meet graduation numbers, the competition for jobs has reached new levels. In the most recent round of exams for the Ministry of Railways, about 30 million people applied for 90,000 spots. Harriet Shawcross and Dipanjan Sinha report on the world of Indian job entrance exams for The Economist. Parting Image Jacqueline Munis contributed to this newsletter. Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.