Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) told NBC News he disagreed with President Trump’s idea to deport U.S. citizens to foreign prisons, saying it should not be “considered appropriate or moral.”
Order Calls for Drastic Overhaul of State Department
“A draft White House executive order proposes a drastic restructuring of the State Department, including eliminating almost all of its Africa operations and shutting down embassies and consulates across the continent,” the New York Times reports.
“The draft also calls for cutting offices at State Department headquarters that address climate change and refugee issues, as well as democracy and human rights concerns.”
“The signing of the executive order would be accompanied by efforts to lay off both career diplomats, known as foreign service officers, and civil service employees, who usually work in the department’s headquarters in Washington.”
Businesses Scramble for a Tariff Chaos Playbook
New York Times: “Businesses that rely on imported products expected duties, which President Trump had promised. Just not this high, this universal or this sudden, with almost no time to adjust. A 145 percent tariff on all Chinese products, after all, is more like a trade wall than a mere barrier.”
“But shock is settling into reality, and corporate leaders are trying to manage. Here are the main tacks that businesses are taking — at least for now, given that whatever duties the White House declares today may change tomorrow.”
Mark Carney Unveils Plan to Trump-Proof Canada
“Liberal Leader Mark Carney released his election platform on Saturday, touting an emphasis on new military spending and bolstering Canada against Donald Trump’s expansionist vision,” Politico reports.
Said Carney: “In this crisis we have to prepare for America’s threats to our very sovereignty. They want our land, our resources, they want our water, they want our country.”
He added: “President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us, and that will never happen. Canada is not America, and it never will be, but we need to do more to just recognize that. We need a plan to deal with this new reality.”
50501 Protesters Denounce Trump
“A national day of action against President Donald Trump and his administration has united an outpouring of protesters across the country who are rallying in defiance of what they describe as a relentless assault on democratic institutions and civil liberties,” CNN reports.
“Over 80 protests were held at state capitols, courthouses and city halls in several states as part of the ‘50501’ demonstrations – short for 50 protests, 50 states, one movement – condemning what they describe as Trump’s executive overreach, including deportations without due process, the dismantling of federal agencies and threats to higher education.”
Pritzker Is Acting Like He Wants to Be President
“If JB Pritzker runs for the Democratic presidential nomination, he will be betting his party’s best prospect is a political punch-throwing heavyset billionaire who inherited massive wealth. While that sounds like President Trump, the two-term Illinois governor would be wagering on himself,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Pritzker, an heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune, has become one of the most-outspoken critics of Trump at a time Democrats are struggling to counter him. Wealth has long opened doors for Pritzker and there are signs he wants the next one to be into the Oval Office.”
Vance Briefly Meets with the Pope
“Vice President JD Vance met with Pope Francis on Easter Sunday, the Vatican confirmed, a remarkable encounter between the ailing head of the global Catholic church and a high-profile convert to the faith who has publicly criticized some of the church’s social teachings,” the Washington Post reports.
From the Vatican: “The meeting, which lasted a few minutes, gave them the opportunity to exchange Easter greetings.”
Trump Claims Unfettered Power on Immigration
Dan Balz: “From the day he came down the escalator to announce his candidacy for the White House, President Donald Trump has had one go-to issue in his political playbook: immigration. He rode it to the White House in 2016 and again in 2024. He has now ridden it into a major confrontation with the courts.”
“The battle has been building for weeks, a clash over the rule of law and due process vs. the Trump administration’s assertions of presidential power and its resistance to challenges by federal district court judges.”
Trump Doesn’t Seem to Miss His Rallies
“In his first eight months in the White House in 2017, Donald Trump held nine rallies — the kind of campaign-style events that had come to define his political brand, drawing thousands of supporters from across the country willing to wait for hours for the chance to hear directly from their president,” the Washington Post reports.
“This time, Trump has traded rallies in places like Nashville and Louisville for a flurry of official events on the White House grounds. When Trump does venture away from Washington or his golf clubs in Florida and New Jersey, where he also entertains prominent visitors on weekends, it has mostly been to drop in at major sporting events, such as his trek last week from Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach to a UFC match in Miami.”
Health Insurance for Millions on the Chopping Block
Jonathan Cohn: “The likelihood of Donald Trump and his allies in Congress taking Medicaid away from millions of low-income Americans—and, in the process, rolling back a huge piece of the Affordable Care Act—has increased significantly in the last two weeks.”
“The change has been easy to miss, because so many other stories are dominating the news—and because the main evidence is a subtle shift in Republican rhetoric.”
“But that shift has been crystal clear if you follow the ins and outs of health care policy—and if you were listening closely to House Speaker Mike Johnson a week ago, when he appeared on Fox News.”
Arizona Democrats Devolve Into Infighting
“Arizona’s Democratic Party is in a meltdown,” Politico reports.
“Bitter infighting among the state’s top Democrats, apparently building for weeks, spilled into public view on Saturday when the state party chair, Robert E. Branscomb II, sent a letter to members of Arizona’s state Democratic committee attacking Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego and airing private disagreements among them…”
“The back-and-forth between the leader of a state Democratic Party and the state’s top Democratic statewide elected officials marks an extraordinarily display of bickering in a critical swing state. It is potentially perilous for a Democratic operation in a place that Donald Trump flipped last year, and where Democrats in 2026 will be defending statewide offices including the governor’s.”
Pope Snubs J.D. Vance
“Pope Francis skipped the Vatican’s official meeting with Vice President J.D. Vance Saturday, instead having his No. 2 give the vice president a lecture on compassion,” the Daily Beast reports.
A statement from the Vatican said there was “an exchange of opinions on the international situation, especially regarding countries affected by war, political tensions and difficult humanitarian situations, with particular attention to migrants, refugees, and prisoners.”
Trump Seeks to Shift the Focus Away from Rule of Law
Peter Baker: “In the unlikely yet profound showdown between the president and the migrant that has captured international attention, the courts have uniformly determined that one of them recently violated the law. And it wasn’t the migrant.”
“According to liberal and conservative judges all the way up to the Supreme Court, President Trump’s administration broke the rules by deporting Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia and must try to fix the mistake. But Mr. Trump and his team are trying to rewrite the narrative so that it is a dispute about illegal immigration rather than the rule of law.”
“It is a fight that Mr. Trump seems to welcome. His administration could easily have avoided it by simply bringing Mr. Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador and following a process that might have resulted in him being deported anyway. Instead, Mr. Trump opted to double down, defying the courts and reverse-engineering a justification for a deportation that his administration initially acknowledged was wrong.”
Trump Earns His Worst Ratings Yet on the Economy
“President Donald Trump is registering the worst economic approval numbers of his presidential career amid broad discontent over his handling of tariffs, inflation and government spending,” according to the latest CNBC All-America Economic Survey.
For members: Trump Squanders His Economic Inheritance
Bonus Quote of the Day
“There is a complete meltdown in the building, and this is really reflecting on the secretary’s leadership. Pete Hegseth has surrounded himself with some people who don’t have his interests at heart.”
A senior defense official, quoted by Politico.
An Important Intervention by the Supreme Court
Steve Vladeck: “First, the full Court didn’t wait for the Fifth Circuit—or act through the individual Circuit Justice (Justice Alito). Even in other fast-moving emergency applications, the Court has often made a show out of at least appearing to wait for the lower courts to rule before intervening—even if that ruling might not have influenced the outcome. Here, though, the Court didn’t wait at all; indeed, the order specifically invites the government to respond once the Fifth Circuit weighed in—acknowledging that the Fifth Circuit hadn’t ruled (and, indeed, that the government hadn’t responded to the application in the Supreme Court) yet. This may seem like a technical point, but it underscores how seriously the Court, or at least a majority of it, took the urgency of the matter…”
“Second, the Court didn’t hide behind any procedural technicalities…. Here, though, the Court jumped right to the substantive relief the applicants sought—again, reinforcing not just the urgency of the issue, but its gravity.”
“Third, and perhaps most significantly, the Court seemed to not be content with relying upon representations by the government’s lawyers.”
Former Trump Staffers Liken Him to a ‘Royal Despot’
“A number of prominent Republicans, including several former members of the first Trump administration, have signed an open letter decrying the president for using his power to punish two former administration officials who criticized him, likening his actions to those of a ‘royal despot,’” the New York Times reports.
From the letter: “For a president to personally and publicly direct the levers of the federal government against publicly named citizens for political reasons sets a new and perilous precedent in our republic. No matter one’s party or politics, every American should reject the notion that the awesome power of the presidency can be used to pursue individual vendettas.”
Quote of the Day
“If you knew they were struggling in October, why do you dismiss their struggling in April?”
— GOP pollster Frank Luntz, quoted by the New York Times, on Republicans not seemingly caring about the high cost of living anymore.
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