Wednesday, April 23, 2025

April 23, 2025

Good morning,

Welcome to the news for independent thinkers

Leading the News . . .

Trump Says He Has 'No Intention' of Firing Fed Chair Powell . . . President Trump said he is not planning to fire Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and he signaled that tariffs on China could be lowered, prompting relief from investors who had been spooked by the White House's aggressive moves in recent weeks. "I would like to see him be a little more active in terms of his idea to lower interest rates…but, no, I have no intention to fire him," he told reporters in the Oval Office. U.S. stock futures and the dollar rallied following Trump's remarks. Wall Street Journal

Please note that "no intention" in Washington is not the same as "won't." The Oksford-Canebridge dictionary of Washingtonspeak defines "no intention" as, "I want you to think I'm not gonna do it, but I might." This was a move to calm markets, not the end of the story with Powell and Trump.

Trump says tariff on China will 'come down substantially' from 145 percent

Politics

Al Gore's Trump derangement syndrome worsens as he compares administration to the Nazis . . . Former Vice President Al Gore compared the Trump administration to the Third Reich in Germany on Monday while giving remarks at a kickoff event for San Francisco's Climate Week. "I understand very well why it is wrong to compare Adolf Hitler's Third Reich to any other movement. It was uniquely evil, full stop. I get it. But there are important lessons from the history of that emergent evil," Gore, a Nobel Peace Prize awardee, told attendees. The Hill

Doctors were rushed to his residence to take his temperature.

The left's hatred of Trump boils over: Death threats spread to just about anyone working for him

The vicious rivalries tearing apart Hegseth's Pentagon . . . At the center was Joe Kasper, Hegseth's departing chief of staff, who people familiar with the matter said created a toxic workplace culture and played an instrumental role last week in pushing out three top Pentagon officials. Those firings, they said, were an attempt to consolidate power. Kasper denied inappropriate behavior or having anything to do with the dismissals. On the other side were the fired employees, trusted Hegseth allies. Those staffers — including senior adviser Dan Caldwell, were considered Hegseth's closest advisers and maintain their innocence. Politico

Why MAGA World is so protective of Hegseth . . . Influential MAGA voices have used their platforms to back Hegseth, who they see as a product of the movement. He is considered a dyed-in-the-wool Trump backer who is attuned to the president on culture war issues. Where critics see a lack of experience, supporters see a government outsider capable of enacting change. "Much like Trump himself, Hegseth is viewed by the base as a genuine outsider and disrupter," one longtime Trump adviser told The Hill. "And because of the years he spent on Fox, they feel a real connection with him. The Hill

Trump gets rid of John Kerry's old office . . . The State Department is formally removing the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, the office former president Joe Biden created and appointed John Kerry to lead as part of his aggressive agenda to combat global warming. A senior State Department official noted that its mission did not align with the Trump administration's agenda. Washington Free Beacon

Judge orders Trump administration to restore Voice of America

Dem Senator Visits Detained Columbia Activist Who 'Can Empathize' With Hamas Decision To Massacre Jews . . . Sen. Peter Welch (D., Vt.) visited detained Columbia University activist Mohsen Mahdawi on Monday, calling him a "friend" and praising his work with "Jewish brothers and sisters" on Columbia's campus. In the wake of Oct. 7, Mahdawi said he could "empathize" with Hamas's decision to launch the attack and used a siren to drown out pro-Israel students protesting for the release of Israeli child hostages. Washington Free Beacon

RFK Jr. may reverse CDC Covid vaccine recommendation for children . . . HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is weighing pulling the Covid-19 vaccine from the government's list of recommended immunizations for children, two people familiar with the discussions told POLITICO. The directive under consideration would remove the Covid shot from the childhood vaccine schedule maintained by the CDC and widely used by physicians to guide vaccine distribution, marking Kennedy's most significant move yet to shake up the nation's vaccination practices. Politico

Culture

Supreme Court Clash Over Parents' Religious Freedom and Schools' Gender Curriculum . . . The Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday on an important case involving the intersection of the rights to exercise religion and to direct the upbringing of children. The court's decision, expected by the end of June, may advance or curtail an expanding recognition of the fundamental right to exercise religion. In October 2022, the Montgomery County, Maryland, Board of Education announced a policy requiring the use of LGBTQ-inclusive storybooks as part of the English Language Arts curriculum for elementary school students. Daily Signal

'Growing heat': Sotomayor spars with Alito during LGBTQ classroom books case

Children 'Do Not Belong to Government,' Education Dept. Warns Colorado on Transgender Bill . . . "They belong to parents," Education Department spokeswoman Julie Hartman told The Daily Signal. The Colorado House of Representatives passed a bill April 6 that would remove kids from parents' custody for behaviors such as "misgendering" and "deadnaming" a transgender-identifying child. The bill has yet to progress in the Colorado Senate. HB 1312 defines "coercive control" as including "deadnaming, misgendering, or threatening to publish material related to an individual's gender-affirming health care services." Daily Signal

The Left's Mount Rushmore

International

World Economic Forum Opens New Probe Into Founder Klaus Schwab . . . World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab is under investigation by the organization he created after a new whistleblower letter alleged financial and ethical misconduct by the longtime leader and his wife. It included allegations that Klaus Schwab asked junior employees to withdraw thousands of dollars from ATMs on his behalf and used Forum funds to pay for private, in-room massages at hotels. It also alleged that his wife Hilde, a former Forum employee, scheduled "token" Forum-funded meetings in order to justify luxury holiday travel at the organization's expense. Wall Street Journal

Rubio unveils a massive overhaul of the State Department that would cut staff and bureaus . . . Secretary of State Marco Rubio unveiled a massive overhaul of the State Department on Tuesday, with plans to reduce staff in the U.S. by 15% while closing and consolidating more than 100 bureaus worldwide as part of the Trump administration's "America First" mandate. The reorganization plan, announced by Rubio on social media and detailed in documents obtained by The Associated Press, is the latest effort by the White House to reimagine U.S. foreign policy and scale back the size of the federal government. Associated Press

More diplomacy, less wine and cheese.

Money

Credit-Card Companies Brace for a Downturn . . . An economic downturn could mean more customers can't pay their bills, and banks and credit card companies are trying to get ahead of it, according to their latest earnings reports. Already, delinquencies are rising and are now in line with levels from before the pandemic. JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup added money to their rainy day funds to cover expected future losses. Retail-card issuer Synchrony is tightening its lending standards. U.S. Bancorp is chasing a more affluent customer base. Wall Street Journal

Hard to shed a tear here. If they raised their rates any more, they'd be peddling payday loans.

Tesla Has a Deep Hole to Pull Out Of . . . Elon Musk said on Tesla's first-quarter earnings call on Tuesday that he would be allocating more time to Tesla starting next month "now that the major work of establishing the Department of Government Efficiency is done." The comments came after the company reported one of its worst quarters in recent memory, with revenue seeing its biggest year-over-year slide in 13 years and operating income coming in about 65% below Wall Street's estimates. Wall Street Journal

You should also know

Jury rules New York Times did not libel Sarah Palin in defamation case . . . Palin, who became a national figure as the 2008 Republican vice presidential pick of the late Sen. John McCain, first sued the paper in 2017 for defamation after claiming an editorial falsely linked her to the deadly 2011 mass shooting that wounded then-Rep. Gabby Giffords, D-Ariz., and killed six people. The editorial was published in response to the 2017 mass shooting at a Republican congressional baseball practice that severely wounded Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La. The editorial was corrected the next day. Fox News

NJ wildfire prompts evacuation orders for thousands as it explodes in size . . . A raging wildfire broke out across 8,500 acres in New Jersey on Tuesday, forcing thousands of residents to evacuate their homes and shuttering a large stretch of the state's busiest highway. Firefighters were battling the Jones Road Wildfire, which was burning over about 13 square miles, through the night after it broke out at 11 a.m. in Lacey and Ocean townships in Ocean County — utilizing fire engines, bulldozers, air support and ground crews, according to the New Jersey Forest Fire Service. New York Post

Thief's subtle technique for stealing Kristi Noem's purse revealed . . . While dining with her family at The Capital Burger in Washington, D.C., on Sunday evening, a thief made off with Noem's bag full of personal items as well as thousands of dollars in cash. The criminal sat down at an empty table next to Noem and her family at The Capital Burger, wearing only dark clothing. He then uses his left foot to drag and slide the bag into his possession and away from Noem. The suspect then takes a look around the restaurant and then picks up the big and puts hit under his jacket as he bolts. Daily Mail

Guilty Pleasures

Fox News' Brian Kilmeade serves up epic, untimely Hegseth flubs . . . Pete Hegseth may be wondering what former Fox News colleague Brian Kilmeade knows after wrongly referring to him as the 'former' Secretary of Defense. Speaking on Fox & Friends - a show Hegseth used to co-host - he introduced their chat with clips of Donald Trump defending Hegseth. 'Here to set the record straight himself, uh, the former secretary ― current secretary of state, Pete Hegseth,' Kilmeade said. Daily Mail

They both pretended it didn't happen.

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