Over 50 countries seek US trade talks after tariffs: Trump officials
The tariffs have been widely criticised around the world for threatening to push the global economy into a recession. More than 50 countries have directly contacted the White House to initiate trade talks following US President Donald Trump’s imposition of wide-ranging punitive tariffs, administration officials have said. The tariffs, which caused a nearly $6 trillion drop in US stock values last week and battered global markets, have drawn worldwide attention and sparked fears of a potential economic downturn. But the Trump administration has downplayed that and potential further catastrophic economic fallout. In the meantime, investors nervously awaited the open of US trading after Wall Street’s selloff last week, anticipating another week of turbulence as other nations react. Asian markets will open in the coming hours and expect a rocky day. In a series of Sunday-morning talk show interviews, Trump’s top economic advisers defended the tariffs, describing them as a strategic move to strengthen the US position in global trade. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent revealed that more than 50 nations had begun negotiations with the US since the tariffs were announced on Wednesday, but did not disclose the countries involved. Advertisement Bessent claimed the tariffs gave Trump “maximum leverage,” though their impact on the US economy remains uncertain. He dismissed concerns about a recession, citing unexpectedly strong job growth in the US. Trump’s wide-ranging tariffs came into effect on Saturday. The initial 10 percent “baseline” tariff took effect at US seaports, airports and customs warehouses, ushering in Trump’s full rejection of the post-World War II system of mutually agreed tariff rates. A decline in US GDP Despite this, economists have warned that the tariffs could lead to a decline in US gross domestic product (GDP), with JPMorgan economists revising their growth forecast from a 1.3 percent increase to a 0.3 percent decrease. The tariffs, aimed at pressuring foreign governments to make concessions, have also triggered retaliatory levies, including hefty ones from China, raising fears of a global trade war. US allies like Taiwan, Israel, India, and Italy have already expressed interest in negotiating with the US to avoid the tariffs. Taiwanese leader Lai Ching-te offered zero tariffs as the basis for talks, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought relief from the 17 percent tariff on Israeli goods. Meanwhile, the US continues to implement tariffs, with higher “reciprocal” duties expected to take effect on Wednesday. Critics have raised concerns over the method used to determine the tariffs, especially after they were applied to some remote, uninhabited territories. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick defended the strategy, claiming that it aimed to prevent countries from circumventing the tariffs with loopholes. Advertisement Adblock test (Why?)
Yemen’s Houthis say latest US air strikes kill at least four in Sanaa
The strikes targeting the capital hit a home and wound more than 20 other people, according to Houthi authorities. United States air strikes have killed at least four people in Yemen’s Sanaa, according to the Ministry of Health. The attacks on the capital on Sunday hit a home and wounded more than 20 other people, including four women and children, according to local sources. US warplanes launched three other air strikes on the Al Jabal al Aswad area in the Bani Matar district, west of the capital. No details were available regarding casualties. Earlier, the Houthis said US air strikes killed at least two people overnight in a Houthi stronghold, Saada, and wounded nine. Footage aired by the Houthis’ Al Masirah satellite news channel showed a strike collapsing what appeared to be a two-storey building. The intense campaign of air strikes in Yemen under US President Donald Trump has targeted the Iranian-aligned group over Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. The Yemeni group has been carrying out attacks in solidarity with Palestinians during Israel’s war in Gaza. Dozens of people in Yemen have been killed in the latest US strikes since Trump ordered them to resume last month. Civilians have been targeted, families wiped out, military sites destroyed and soldiers killed. Advertisement The White House said there have been more than 200 strikes so far. The US attacks started after the Houthis said they planned to resume targeting Israeli-linked ships over Israel blocking aid entering the Gaza Strip and its subsequent resumption of the war, which ended a six-week ceasefire on March 18. The Houthis targeted more than 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones from November 2023 until January this year. They also launched attacks targeting US warships. Adblock test (Why?)
Anti-Trump activist boasts of being ‘undocumented, unafraid, queer’ at rally
An undocumented immigrant attending an anti-Trump “Hands Off!” rally on Saturday said she was “unafraid” to flash her immigration status and sexual orientation publicly. “I am an immigrant, I am undocumented, unafraid, queer and unashamed,” Greisa Martinez Rosas, a longtime left-wing immigration activist, told those in attendance at the Washington, D.C., demonstrations over the weekend, according to a report in the New York Post. The comments come as protests against the Trump administration’s immigration and cost-cutting policies have spread across the country in recent days, with critics slamming the president for his push to hasten deportations and gut federal agencies through the Department of Government Efficiency. US IMMIGRATION WILL ONLY RECOGNIZE 2 GENDERS GOING FORWARD, ENDS BIDEN-ERA PRACTICE Rosas is originally from Hidalgo, Mexico, but came to the U.S. as a child, the report notes, where she eventually grew up in the Dallas area. She has since gone on to serve as the executive director of United We Dream, a network of more than 400,000 young immigrants. Her comments were made in front of tens of thousands of protesters who attended the rally in the nation’s capital, one of more than 1,000 protests held around the country on Saturday. The report notes that Rosas’ comments quickly went viral on social media, where not all users were enthusiastic about her message. SOUTH CAROLINA AG TAKES ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT HIT-AND-RUN, PROMISES CRIMINALS ‘WE’RE COMING FOR YOU’ “Deport her. Now,” one user on X said, according to the Post. “Lock her up,” another said. Others quipped that her public declaration was likely to land her on the radar of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP “The only thing she didn’t tell ICE is her home address,” one X user said. “I’m confident they can look that up.” “I guess we will see her arrested later this week, thanks for coming forward to let ICE know where you are,” added another.
Musk slams ‘puppetmasters’ after protesters struggle to explain why they call Trump a ‘fascist’ in viral video
Elon Musk slammed the alleged “puppetmasters” behind anti-Trump demonstrations this weekend after viral video showed protesters struggling to explain why they believe President Donald Trump is a “fascist.” “The problem is the puppetmasters, not the puppets, as the latter have no idea why they are even there,” Musk posted to X on Sunday accompanied by video footage of protesters stumbling over what issues they have with Trump. “He just does everything he wants… He’s a convicted felon, you know, that’s all I know,” one protester in the video said after tripping over why he believes Trump is a “fascist,” while holding a sign reading, “The Fascist Trump Regime Must Go.” The footage was recorded by Ted Goodman, a political strategist who launched a livestream program with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, on Saturday in Washington, D.C. “One of the things is he’s trying to control the media,” another protester in the video responded when asked for evidence Trump is allegedly a “fascist.” WATCH: ANTI-TRUMP PROTESTERS SLAM BUDGET REFORMS, LABEL ADMINISTRATION ‘ROBBER BARONS’ “Doesn’t every president try to control the narrative?” Goodman pressed. “They try to control their own narrative. But one of the things that Trump has done, for example, is the renaming the Gulf of Mexico and then not allowing the Associated Press to come into the White House,” the protester continued. The first protester explained in the video that he was there after he “saw people were hanging out,” while the second protester explained he was there due to “executive overreach.” ‘ASTROTURF’: CRITICS SPECULATE TESLA PROTESTS ARE NOT A GRASSROOTS MOVEMENT, BUT CAREFULLY ORGANIZED CAMPAIGN The first protester added that he had been given a sign describing Trump as a “fascist,” as well as a printed one-sheeter that declared, “We are facing fascism… The time to act is now!” alongside a photoshopped image of Trump with a Hitler-styled mustache. Video of the protesters racked up more than 12 million views on X by Sunday afternoon. More than 1,200 protests were held across the nation on Saturday as critics gathered to protest the administration, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), reciprocal tariffs, federal layoffs and immigration reform. FEDS ON ALERT FOR TESLA ‘GLOBAL DAY OF ACTION’ AFTER NATIONWIDE VIOLENCE LEADS TO ARRESTS “[I’m] protesting how horrible things have become in our country,” one protester told Fox News Digital from a demonstration in New York on Saturday. “I mean, we’ve been taken over by a bunch of robber barons who are trying to take away all of our rights, benefits and liberty.” “I am protesting what is happening with this blessed country, the democracy that was advanced democracy now in transition to a dictatorship, and we are almost in a fascist state right now – only because the rule of law is bending right now, and it may break,” another protester told Fox Digital. The protests this weekend follow mass protests targeting Tesla last weekend. Elon Musk, who is helping lead DOGE and is a staunch Trump ally, is the CEO of Tesla and has seen anti-Trump critics physically attack, monetarily boycott, and protest the car company over his politics. VANDAL STRIKES CYBERTRUCK, TESLA OWNER HITS BACK “Who is funding and organizing all these paid protests?” Musk posted to X last weekend of the recent anti-Tesla protests. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Amid the protests, a local news outlet, media personalities and conservative critics speculated that the anti-Tesla protests were embroiled in “astroturfing,” which is defined by Merriam-Webster as a campaign “falsely made to appear grassroots.” Fox News Digitals’ Kaylee Holland and Madeline Coggins contributed to this report.
Legacy media, DC journos come around to investigating Dem scandals years after conservatives sounded alarm
Legacy media and longtime politics reporters are increasingly reporting on scandals that rocked the Democratic Party ahead of the November election, shining additional light on political issues that Republicans had long spotlighted and railed against. “A full 4½ years after The Post’s bombshell series on Hunter Biden’s influence-peddling schemes, The New York Times has deigned to take an interest in the former First Son’s corruption,” the New York Post’s editorial board wrote in a piece last week slamming the New York Times for reporting on Biden corruption allegations years after other outlets had already uncovered reported details. “We’d say the Times’ willingness to at long last cover this comes better late than never, but it only published the story now that it doesn’t remotely matter anymore,” the editorial board continued. The New York Times declared in an article published on Friday that former first son Hunter Biden “sought support from the State Department” to aid his former employer, Ukrainian energy company Burisma, while his father served as vice president. Hunter Biden allegedly leveraging his last name and father’s political status in the U.S. has long been criticized by conservatives, who have alleged that Hunter and his father engaged in influence-peddling through Burisma. BIDEN’S CLAIM TO HAVE NO KNOWLEDGE OF HUNTER’S BUSINESS DEALINGS IS BECOMING HARDER TO MAINTAIN Hunter Biden was paid millions of dollars while serving on the board of Burisma after joining the company as legal counsel in the spring of 2014 before being elevated to the Board of Directors later that year. The Bidens were accused by Republicans of having “coerced” the Burisma CEO into paying them millions of dollars in exchange for their help in getting the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating the company fired during the Obama administration. The 46th president denied any involvement in his son’s business dealings. Biden issued his son a sweeping 10-year pardon before exiting the Oval Office in January that protects Hunter Biden from offenses he “has committed or may have committed” from Jan. 1, 2014, to Dec. 1, 2024. Alleged Biden family influence-peddling has echoed from the halls of Congress to social media channels on X, but legacy outlets and left-wing media outlets often didn’t give a platform to the allegations. CNN’S JAKE TAPPER GETS RIPPED ON SOCIAL MEDIA FOR ‘TRYING TO REWRITE HISTORY’ WITH NEW BOOK ON BIDEN’S DECLINE Jonathan Turley, Fox News’ contributor and Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, published an op-ed for Fox News Digital on Sunday remarking on the NYT’s piece that was published years after other outlets and experts investigated alleged Biden family influence-peddling. “For years, some of us have written about the Biden family’s multimillion-dollar influence-peddling operation and the Justice Department’s refusal to charge Hunter Biden with being an unregistered foreign agent. Now, years later, The New York Times has found evidence suggesting that the former president’s son was acting as a foreign agent as early as the Obama administration, when his father was vice president,” Turley wrote. Media veterans and legacy outlets have leaned into reporting on and investigating a handful of other scandals and political news that conservatives had long sounded the alarm on, including that the coronavirus likely originated out of a lab in China, as well as on President Biden’s mental decline in the lead-up to the election last year. PUBLIC WAS MISLED BY THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY ABOUT COVID ORIGINS, NY TIMES COLUMNIST ARGUES The New York Times ran a column last month claiming the scientific community “badly misled” the public in an effort to suppress the theory that COVID-19 originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, even after the paper’s own science writer called the theory “racist.” “We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives,” the March 16 piece published by NYT columnist and Princeton sociology professor Zeynep Tufekci, argued that the scientific community long suspected COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan lab, but purposefully “hid or understated crucial facts,” to mislead the public about the lab’s “terrifyingly lax” safety precautions. ‘MOST DAMNING EVIDENCE’: HUNTER BIDEN’S FULL PARDON RESURFACES DECADE OF CONTROVERSIES, ‘INFLUENCE-PEDDLING’ “We have since learned, however, that to promote the appearance of consensus, some officials and scientists hid or understated crucial facts, misled at least one reporter, orchestrated campaigns of supposedly independent voices and even compared notes about how to hide their communications in order to keep the public from hearing the whole story,” Tufekci wrote. The Trump administration’s CIA reported earlier this year that the lab leak was the likely origin of the COVID-19 virus, which had previously been passed off by media outlets and scientists as a likely conspiracy theory. The New York Times defended that it had reported on the lab leak theory multiple times across the years, including in 2021, when approached for comment by Fox News Digital on the recent articles on both Hunter Biden and the lab leak theory. “The New York Times has intensely pursued every theory and lead on the origins of Covid-19, documented the political debate, funding, influence, and shifts in thinking among the scientific community, and reported on China’s censorship campaign that has stifled the search for truth. The Times has helped readers navigate the coronavirus pandemic through independent, verified reporting, and any insinuation that we have not thoroughly pursued leads is false,” a NYT spokesperson said. And a newly released book by longtime D.C. reporters Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House,” investigates Biden’s mental decline in the lead-up to the general election, calling him a “shell of himself.” “All of them,” Parnes told Vanity Fair of who in Biden’s inner circle is most to blame for covering up his mental decline when he was in office. “It’s pretty remarkable how they kept him very closed off. He was a shell of himself. When he entered the White House, he was so, so different from the man who I covered as vice president, a guy who would hold court in the Naval Observatory with reporters until the wee
Kevin Hassett doubles down on Trump tariffs, says dozens of countries are asking to negotiate
White House Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett doubled down on the effectiveness of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Sunday, saying dozens of countries are now seeking to open negotiations and U.S. manufacturing is booming. Hassett made the claim during an appearance on ABC News’ “This Week” with host George Stephanopoulos. He said that over 50 countries have already said they want to negotiate new trade agreements with Trump’s administration since the tariffs hit last week, though he acknowledged there may be short-term pain for consumers. He pointed to the decrease in prices that has existed since China entered the World Trade Organization in 2000, arguing that the loss of jobs outweighs the low prices. “If cheap goods were the answer, if cheap goods were going to make Americans’ real wages better off, then real incomes would have gone up over that time. Instead, they went down because wages went down more than prices went down. So we got the cheap goods at the grocery store, but then we had fewer jobs,” he said. JUDGE ORDERS TRUMP ADMINISTRATION TO RETURN MAN MARYLAND MISTAKENLY DEPORTED TO EL SALVADOR PRISON Hassett added that he has received “anecdotal word” that some U.S. auto plants are adding second shifts to their work schedules in response to the tariffs. JD VANCE TORCHES MEDIA, DEMS’ ‘DISGRACEFUL SET OF PRIORITIES’ ON DEPORTATION OF ACCUSED MS-13 GANG MEMBER Stephanopoulos then pressed Hassett to explain why Russia wasn’t targeted with any additional tariffs. “There’s obviously an ongoing negotiation with Russia and Ukraine, and I think the president made the decision not to conflate the two issues. It doesn’t mean that Russia in the fullness of time, is going to be treated wildly different than every other country,” Hassett responded. “But Russia’s one of the only countries, one of few countries that is not subject to these new tariffs, aren’t they?” Stephanopoulos pressed. “They’re in the middle of a negotiation, George, aren’t they?” Hassett countered. “Would you literally advise that you go in and put a whole bunch of new things on the table in the middle of a negotiation that affects so many American and Ukrainian and Russian lives?” “Negotiators do that all the time,” Stephanopoulos argued. “Russia is in the midst of negotiations over peace that affects really thousands and thousands of lives of people and that’s what President Trump’s focused on right now,” Hassett said.
Palestinian protester Mahmoud Khalil excoriates Columbia in op-ed
Anti-Israel organizer Mahmoud Khalil ripped the administration of Columbia University in an op-ed published in the school’s newspaper on Friday. The op-ed, titled simply “A letter to Columbia,” accuses the institution of “laying the groundwork for my abduction.” He goes on to compare President Donald Trump’s crackdown on anti-Israel protesters to Columbia’s own apathy toward Palestinians, listing other students who have been “snatched by the state.” “The situation is oddly reminiscent of when I fled the brutality of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria and sought refuge in Lebanon,” Khalil wrote. “The logic used by the federal government to target myself and my peers is a direct extension of Columbia’s repression playbook concerning Palestine.” He went on to accuse Columbia administrators of manufacturing “public hysteria about antisemitism without once mentioning the tens of thousands of Palestinians murdered under bombs made of your dollars.” COLLEGES IN ICE’S DEPORTATION CROSSHAIRS SHELLED OUT DISCOUNTS, FINANCIAL AID TO ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS: GOP REP He also targeted some fellow students at Columbia who he says helped to create a false sense that antisemitism was spreading across the campus. He also pointed to efforts by certain students to unmask anti-Israel protesters, though he did not name any individuals. JUDGE ORDERS TRUMP ADMINISTRATION TO RETURN MAN MARYLAND MISTAKENLY DEPORTED TO EL SALVADOR PRISON “Especially in light of the dual degree program with Tel Aviv University, I can’t help but think that if I were in Palestine, some of these students would be the ones stopping me at checkpoints, raiding my university, piloting the drones surveilling my community, or killing my neighbors in their homes. While students were building solidarity at Columbia, some pro-Israel students were participating in the genocide as military personnel during their school breaks, only to return to campus and claim victimhood in the classroom,” he argued. “To members of Columbia’s faculty who pat themselves on the back for their progressive leanings but are content to limit their participation to performative statements: What will it take for you to resist the destruction of your University? Are your positions worth more than the lives of your students and the integrity of your work?” he added. The message comes weeks after ICE agents detained Khalil in New York City in early March. The Department of Homeland Security alleged that he “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.” Last week, several Columbia University students chained themselves to a gate outside the school’s St. Paul’s Chapel in protest against Khalil’s arrest. The students demanded that the institution release the names of the trustees “who gave Mahmoud Khalil’s name to ICE.” The Columbia Palestine Solidarity Committee wrote on X that “We will not leave until our demand is met.” The school denies that any of its administrators requested ICE’s presence on campus.
Russia bombs Kyiv after missile strikes in Ukraine’s south
Ukraine’s president slams US for ‘weak’ response after Russia’s previous deadly attack on his hometown, Kryvyi Rih. At least one person has been killed and several others wounded in Russian air raids on Kyiv as well as the south of Ukraine after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy criticised the United States for a “weak” reaction to the attack on his hometown that killed 18 people, including nine children. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the air attacks on the capital early on Sunday caused fires in nonresidential buildings in three districts and left at least one man killed and three other people injured. Separately, Vitaliy Kim, governor of the southern Mykolaiv region, said Russia launched a missile attack at about 10pm (19:00 GMT) on Saturday, damaging several houses and injuring four people. Reporting from Kyiv, Al Jazeera’s Zein Basravi said: “Russia is sending a very clear signal. Here is the war at your doorstep. And this is something that is meant to sow fear in the population.” Standing outside a multi-storey building with a smashed roof and blown out windows in a business park in the capital, Basravi said that Kyiv had not seen an attack on this scale for some time, with much of the damage to “civilian infrastructure” caused by blast waves from powerful munitions. Advertisement The entire country was under air alert from 02:00 GMT after the country’s air force warned of an attack, including on regions bordering Poland, forcing the NATO member to scramble aircraft to ensure air safety. Poland’s military said it and allied forces had taken to the skies “due to the intensive activity of long-range aviation of the Russian Federation” across the border in western Ukraine, with ground-based air defence systems on high alert. “The steps taken are aimed at ensuring security in the areas bordering the threatened areas.” Ukraine’s air defence units shot down 13 of 23 missiles and 40 of 109 drones launched by Russia in an overnight attack, the air force said on Sunday. It said 53 drones were lost, in reference to the Ukrainian military using electronic warfare to redirect them. The Russian Ministry of Defence said 11 Ukrainian drones were intercepted and destroyed overnight over the Kursk, Belgorod and Rostov regions. Attack on Kryvyi Rih On Friday, a Russian attack on Kryvyi Rih killed at least 18 people, including children as young as three. The Russian missile struck a residential area near a playground in the central Ukrainian city. In an emotional statement on social media, Zelenskyy named each of the nine children killed in the attack on his birthplace, slamming the US embassy for what he called a “weak” statement. US Ambassador Bridget Brink had posted a message on X on Friday, saying she was “horrified” by the attack, without naming Russia as the aggressor. Advertisement “Unfortunately, the reaction of the American embassy is unpleasantly surprising: such a strong country, such a strong people – and such a weak reaction,” Zelenskyy wrote. Al Jazeera’s Basravi said Zelenskyy was “ratcheting up the rhetoric”, criticising Russia for “continuing to violate ceasefire agreements, continuing to not want want to negotiate”. “He says that they want the war to carry on,” said Basravi. Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of Kryvyi Rih’s military administration, said three days of mourning had been declared starting April 7. The attacks came as US President Donald Trump has been pushing for a partial ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, more than three years into Moscow’s full-scale invasion. Zelenskyy said the assault on Kryvyi Rih showed Russia had no interest in peace. Adblock test (Why?)
Trump, Musk, face blame for setbacks, but are Wisconsin, Florida elections crystal ball for 2026 midterms?
Democrats are celebrating a larger-than-expected victory in a high-profile and historically expensive election in battleground Wisconsin, in the first statewide ballot box contest since President Donald Trump’s return to power in January. And while the GOP came out on top in Tuesday’s other marquee contests, comfortably holding control of two vacant congressional seats in twin special elections in red state Florida, Democrats are spotlighting that their candidates overperformed in overwhelmingly Republican districts. Democrats are portraying last week’s contests as early referendums on Trump’s sweeping and controversial moves during the opening months of his second tour of duty in the White House, including the massive federal government downsizing being steered by billionaire White House special adviser Elon Musk. And Democrats argue that the results in Wisconsin and Florida are a sign of things to come in next year’s midterm elections. POLITICAL BAGGAGE? – POLLS INDICATE AMERICANS SOURING ON MUSK “These races proved what we’ve seen over and over again this year: people are already fed up with Trump’s chaos agenda and they’re voting for a change,” Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin emphasized in an email to supporters. But Republican National Committee chair Mike Whatley, pointing to the Florida victories, countered that “the American people sent a clear message…they want elected officials who will advance President Trump’s America First agenda, and their votes can’t be bought by national Democrats.” LIBERAL-LEANING CANDIDATE WINS FIRST MAJOR STATEWIDE ELECTION OF THE YEAR In Wisconsin, liberal-leaning Judge Susan Crawford topped conservative-leaning Judge Brad Schimel by roughly 10 percentage points, to preserve the liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which is likely to rule going forward on crucial issues like congressional redistricting, voting rights, labor rights and abortion. With a massive infusion of money from Democratic-aligned and Republican-aligned groups from outside Wisconsin, which turned the technically nonpartisan race into the most expensive judicial election in the nation’s history, the contest partially transformed into a proxy battle over Trump as well as Musk, who personally inserted himself into the election. Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, who has taken a buzz saw to the federal government workforce as he steers Trump’s recently created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), dished out roughly $20 million in the Wisconsin race through aligned groups in support of Schimel. And Musk, in a controversial move, handed out $1 million checks at a rally in Green Bay last Sunday to two Wisconsin voters who had already cast ballots in the contest and had signed a petition to stop “activist judges.” DEMOCRAT CONGRESSMAN LASHES MUSK IN OPENING SALVO OF SENATE BID “I never could have imagined that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world, for justice in Wisconsin. And we won,” Crawford said in her election night victory speech. The results in Wisconsin will likely give the Democrats a jolt, and validate their efforts to target Musk. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the chamber, argued that Wisconsin voters “sent a decisive message to Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and DOGE by rejecting an extreme Republican for their Supreme Court: our democracy is not for sale.” And the DNC, looking ahead to next year’s bigger contests in the 2026 midterm elections, called the showdown in Wisconsin a “bellwether race.” WHERE TRUMP STANDS WITH AMERICANS 10 WEEKS INTO HIS SECOND TOUR OF DUTY IN THE WHITE HOUSE But veteran Republican strategist Matt Gorman noted that two years ago, when the conservatives lost their majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the liberal-leaning candidate won by 11 points. Pointing to this week’s 10-point margin, with Trump in the White House, Gorman asked”this is what Democrats are jumping up and down over?” In Florida, the double-digit victories by the Republican candidates will give the GOP a little bit of breathing room in the House of Representatives, where the party is holding onto a very fragile majority as it aims to pass Trump’s agenda. But the Democratic candidates in the two special congressional elections vastly outraised their Republican counterparts – a sign that the party’s base is angry and energized – which forced GOP-aligned outside groups to pour money and resources into the races during the final stretch. And the Democratic candidates ended up losing by 15 and 14 points in districts that Trump carried by 37 and 30 points in last November’s presidential election. REPUBLICANS HOLD CONTROL OF TWO VACANT CONGRESSIONAL SEATS IN THIS RED STATE Democrats quickly spotlighted how the party “overperformed” in Florida. And the House Majority PAC, the top super PAC supporting House Democrats, touted that the results showed “that the political headwinds are firmly at our backs heading into 2026.” But Mike Marinella, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, argued that “Democrats just lit over $20,000,000 on fire in a doomed-to-fail effort to make two deep-red Florida districts competitive – and got blown out of the water in the most embarrassing way.” WHERE TRUMP STANDS WITH AMERICANS 10 WEEKS INTO HIS SECOND TOUR OF DUTY IN THE WHITE HOUSE The elections in Wisconsin and Florida were held on the eve of Trump’s blockbuster tariff announcement, sparking a trade war with the nation’s top trading partners and triggering a massive sell-off in the financial markets. The latest move by the president could also set the stage for an even bigger ballot box backlash next year. But Democrats have a serious brand issue right now. The party’s favorable rating sank to all-time lows in separate national polls conducted last month by CNN and NBC News. Those numbers followed a record low for Democrats in a Quinnipiac University survey in the field in February. Additionally, the latest Fox News National poll indicated that congressional Democrats’ approval rating is at 30%, near an all-time low. And Democratic activists are irate over their party’s inability to blunt Trump’s agenda. And when it comes to normally low-turnout off-year elections and special elections, the party in power – which in the nation’s capital is clearly the Republicans – often faces political
UK prime minister to admit ‘globalization is over’ in response to Trump tariffs: report
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer will announce Sunday that he understands the rationale behind President Donald Trump’s tariffs and that the West is entering a new economic era. “The world has changed, globalization is over and we are now in a new era,” the prime minister’s office said in a statement to the Sunday Times. “We’ve got to demonstrate that our approach, a more active Labour government, a more reformist government, can provide the answers for people in every part of this country.” The statement comes after Trump announced new tariffs on dozens of countries around the world on Wednesday, including a 10% levy on goods from the U.K. TARIFF STOCK SHOCK: NASDAQ HITS BEAR MARKET; S&P, DOW SINK While Starmer will still argue that tariffs are wrong, according to the Sunday Times report, the prime minister will also admit that he understands the rationale behind Trump’s move and why such policies have become increasingly popular with voters. “Trump has done something that we don’t agree with, but there’s a reason why people are behind him on this,” the prime minister’s office said in the statement. Starmer is expected to emphasize the failures of free trade and mass migration specifically during the address on Sunday, the report said, arguing that it has failed millions of voters. MUSK SAYS HE HOPES FOR ‘ZERO TARIFFS,’ FREEDOM OF TRADE ZONE BETWEEN US AND EUROPE Meanwhile, the report noted that Trump ally Elon Musk seemingly publicly broke with the president during a video interview for an event in Italy Saturday, saying he hopes, eventually, for a “zero-tariff” solution between the U.S. and Europe one day. “At the end of the day, I hope it’s agreed that both Europe and the United States should move, ideally, in my view, to a zero-tariff situation, effectively creating a free-trade zone between Europe and North America,” he said. Musk also called for there to eventually be more “freedom” of movement between the two continents, an apparent break from Trump’s hard line on immigration. “That’s what I hope occurs, and also more freedom of people to move between Europe and North America if they wish,” Musk said. “If they wish to work in Europe or wish to work in America, they should be allowed to do so, in my view. So that has certainly been my advice to the president.” The White House did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment.