“President Donald Trump is struggling to message a scattered economic agenda, but his Commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, is taking the blame,” Politico reports.

“White House and administration officials, as well as Trump’s outside allies, are growing increasingly frustrated with Lutnick, privately complaining about the close proximity he has to the president and the counsel he is giving him on economic issues.”

“It’s an exasperation compounded by recent television appearances, they say, that suggest a lack of understanding of even the basics about how tariffs and the economy work. He has also at multiple points over the last week gotten out in front of the president on announcements and contradicted his messaging.”

“President Trump said that he had settled on a plan for his latest batch of tariffs expected this week but didn’t reveal what he had decided, after his economic team struggled to coalesce around a remade U.S. trade strategy,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The debate behind closed doors highlighted the conflicting priorities of the president. The biggest one: He wants to both raise revenue with tariffs and use them as leverage to get other nations to lower their own duties, or make other policy changes. But if tariffs are subject to negotiation, and could be lowered over time, that would raise doubts about how much revenue could ultimately be expected from their imposition.”

Jonathan Martin: “There’s little that congressional Republicans and their counterparts in state capitals can do about Trump and his insistence on pushing inflation-spiking tariffs. He grips his party like no modern president, and they must accommodate every impulse.”

“However, Musk has turbocharged the backlash to Trump and accelerated the revival of demoralized Democrats and independents appalled by the billionaire’s cavalier attempt to slash the federal government. If they don’t push the White House to cut Musk loose, Republicans are tempting a replay of 2017 and 2018, when Democrats scored gains in Trump’s first term, but with twin targets for the left this time.”

Playbook: “The world’s richest man polls appallingly, and his comments about benefits like Social Security have given Dems an easy message to sell.”

Wired: “Over the weekend, thousands of people joined the ‘Tesla Takedown’ protest movement at the company’s showrooms across the country. At the same time, a much smaller number of Elon Musk supporters turned out at Tesla locations for a counterprotest movement that some participants dubbed ‘Tesla Shield.'”

“While the protest movement comprises people angered at Elon Musk’s role in the dismantling of federal government agencies, the counterprotest movement that showed up this weekend was peopled mostly by MAGA supporters. Among them were an array of far-right extremists, including members of the Proud Boys, armed militias, and at one event in Idaho, a guy dressed as Hitler.”