What did Donald Trump do today?

He threatened to "punish" Russia with the same ultra-high taxes on American consumers that he's imposing on our closest allies. 

In recent weeks, Trump has made a show—at least for the cameras—of frustration with the Putin regime's unwillingness to seriously negotiate a peace treaty with Ukraine. Trump promised (fifty-three separate times) that he would resolve the conflict "on Day One," and may actually have believed it would be that simple. 

But neither side is especially interested in a cease-fire. For Ukraine's government to ratify any peace deal that rewards an unprovoked Russian invasion with 20% of its territory is all but unthinkable. And for Russia, as badly as the war has gone relative to its initial expectations, there is every good reason to think it can extend its territorial conquest. That's especially likely to happen if the Trump administration continues to dial back American support for Ukraine, whether or not Trump is aware that that is happening. 

Trump's latest attempt to force at least the appearance of progress has been to threaten to impose tariffs on Russian exports, driving up their cost for American consumers. Notably. the Putin regime has been one of only a handful of countries not subject to new tariffs during Trump's second term.  

There are a few problems with this strategy. First, the United States does very little trade with Russia, importing about $3.3 billion worth of goods in 2024. That's less than 1% of American imports from Canada, the United States' largest trade partner and a close ally, and which is also being threatened with punitive tariffs by Trump.

Second, what is true of the stock markets is increasingly true of world governments: almost nobody thinks he's willing to actually go through with inflation-spiking taxes on Americans, or at least not for more than a token period of time after which he can declare victory. As a result, nations are increasingly calling his bluff, meeting each new proclamation with silence, indifference, or reciprocal tariffs targeted at vulnerable American exporters.

The Putin regime, which has in the past demonstrated extraordinary and direct influence over Trump, has not bothered to respond. But the Moscow stock exchange was up 2.7% today.

Why does this matter?

• Tariffs raise the price of imported goods for American consumers. They don't do any of the other things that Donald Trump thinks they do, like ending wars, stopping drug smuggling, or getting his cronies out of jail. 

• At this point, Trump's belief that tariffs will solve every problem he might face is pathological. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He watched a soccer game and then acted like he'd won it.

Trump had a leisurely Sunday as usual, but swapped playing golf for watching soccer, attending the FIFA Club World Cup. The event was a dress rehearsal for the 2026 World Cup, which will be jointly hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

During the playing of the national anthem, the stadium video screen showed a live shot of Trump, provoking loud boos. In and of itself, that's not so unusual—presidents are polarizing figures even when they're popular, and after almost six months back in office, Trump is anything but popular. In fact, the only time a president had lower approval ratings than Trump does at this point in his term was when it was Trump himself in 2017.

Trump was booed again during the presentation of the trophy to the winning Chelsea team, not so much for his presence on the stage, but for his inexplicable refusal to yield it to the athletes. A FIFA official tried in vain to get Trump to step aside for the announcement of the winners, but he wouldn't budge. Eventually, the official succeeded in herding him to the back of the crowd of athletes he'd been standing in front of, holding the trophy himself.

 

His popularity aside, there are serious doubts about whether Trump will be willing or even able to allow the World Cup to proceed as usual. Normally the World Cup is one of the biggest international tourism events there is, but Trump has made the United States a pariah for foreign visitors, with legal visitors from close U.S. allies experiencing harassment, detention, and summary deportation due to Trump's hyper-paranoid approach to immigration enforcement. Revenues from the tourism sector—normally one of the biggest American industries—have fallen off a cliff as a result. 

In particular, the United States now requires foreign visitors to turn over sensitive social media information for screening, and visa applicants can be rejected for "political activism" or "any hostility towards the government of the United States"—meaning, in practice, criticism of Trump personally.

It's already affecting sports: the Senegalese women's basketball team was denied entry last month because of Trump's "national security" policies. At least one major league baseball team is advising its players—citizens and noncitizens alike—to carry their passports with them, for fear that ICE will detain anyone with a Hispanic surname or accent. When a worried FIFA board raised the question of how to square this with hosting an international tournament at a meeting with Trump last month, he reportedly responded that “tensions are a good thing,” and uncertainty would "make it more exciting."

Why does this matter?

• Past a certain point, the need to be the center of attention becomes pathological. 

• It's stupid and self-destructive for the president to kneecap a major American industry for no reason.  

What did Donald Trump do today?

He threatened to exile an American citizen for criticizing him.

Last Sunday, as she frequently does, the actor Rosie O'Donnell posted a video to TikTok. She mused about the weather in Ireland, where she currently lives, and about her upcoming projects, and TV shows she'd binged recently. She also said this: 

What a horror story in Texas. The flash floods in Texas, the Guadalupe River. Fifty-one dead, more missing. [The death toll currently stands at 129, with 160 more missing.] Children, at a camp. 

And you know, when the president guts all of the early warning systems and the weather forecasting abilities of the government, these are the results that we're going to start to see on a daily basis, because he's put this country in so much danger by his horrible, horrible decisions and this ridiculously immoral bill that he just signed into law, as Republicans cheered. People will die as a result and they've started already. Shame on him. Shame on every GOP sycophant who's listening and following the disastrous decisions of this mentally incapacitated POTUS. 

Hard to believe. Some people on this Tiktok and on Instagram, say "Well you moved, why do you care?" I moved so that I wouldn't have a nervous breakdown. I moved so that I could be away from it and have some type of shield from the intimacy of it, because I don't do well in world crises. I don't, starting with the Vietnam War, when I was a small child. I don't do well, I know myself enough to know, when he got re-elected, it was time to go. And all that you needed to propel your movement, was reading Project 2025, and sadly, not many Americans did that. And if they did, they didn't believe it. Why? Because the president was lying, saying he knew nothing about it, and he wasn't going to follow it. And he's followed every single thing that they said he was going to do. 

In response, Trump threatened to revoke her citizenship. This isn't something he has any legal power to do, but given the tactics that he has encouraged ICE to use against citizens and immigrants alike here in the United States, it still carries weight. 

He made a similar threat against Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for Mayor of New York, and against native-born Americans whose parents were not citizens but whose own citizenship is guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment. (Four of Trump's five known children were born to mothers whose citizenship could be revoked under Trump's policies.) He's also enthusiastically mused about sending Americans to foreign prisons, something he also has no legal authority to do.

Why does this matter?

• The Constitution and the laws of the United States say who is a citizen, not Donald Trump. 

• It's only a crime to criticize the leader's failures in a dictatorship.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He said the families of flood victims were "evil" if they questioned whether anything could have been done to prevent their deaths.

The death toll from the flooding of the Guadalupe River last week in Texas has risen to 121, and that number is likely to reach almost 300 with at least 173 people still listed as missing. 

Today, Trump toured some of the damage, and had this exchange with a local reporter:

REPORTER: Several of the families we've heard from are obviously upset because they say that those warnings, those alerts didn't go out in time, and they also say that people could have been saved. What do you say to those families?

TRUMP: Well, I think everyone did an incredible job, under the circumstances, this was, I guess [Secretary of Homeland Security] Kristi [Noem] said a one-in-500, one-in-a-thousand-years, and, uh, I just have admiration for the job that everybody did. Uh, there's this admiration, uh, the, uh—only a—bad person would ask a question like that, to be honest with you, I don't know who you are, but only a very, uh, evil person would ask a question like that, I think this has been—heroism, I think this has been incredible, really, the job you've all done, it's easy to sit back and say "Oh, what could have happened here, there, you know." Maybe we could have done something differently. This was a, a thing that says, uh, [unintelligible] says never happened before.

 Among the question that many "evil" residents and survivors of the flood have been asking are:

• Why was an emergency alert not issued immediately after local first responders specifically asked for one?  

• Why did local officials not act on an urgent flood warning for over three hours?
  
  
• How much did Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's insistence on personally approving all expenses over $100,000—virtually nothing in the case of an emergency like this—delay relief and rescue efforts?
  
  
• Why has the director of FEMA been completely absent, before and during the crisis?
  
  
• Why did Texas state officials deny requests and funds to build a siren warning system for the area known as "Flash Flood Alley," even though everyone was aware of the dangers due to deadly floods in the recent past?
  
  
• Why did Trump wait until two days after the floods to declare a disaster, which would have made more rescue and relief resources available if it had come sooner?
  
  
• Why does Trump say FEMA is unnecessary and should be phased out if he thinks it was so helpful here, and is that still his plan?
  
  
• How much did the massive staff cuts at regional National Weather Service offices impact the accuracy and timeliness of the forecast, and how well it was communicated to local officials?
  
  
• Why were there not enough resources at FEMA to pay for more than one day of the call centers that are normally contracted to deal with disaster relief inquiries?
  
  
• Why does Trump always describe each new flood, hurricane, tornado, wildfire, or other climate-related disaster as some completely unpredictable thing that "nobody's ever seen before," instead of working to prevent or prepare for them?

Trump immediately switched to questions from friendly partisan media, but did not address any of the questions above. He did, however, use some of his time at the disaster relief press conference to complain that people were still upset with him about the price of eggs.

Why does this matter?

• There are more important things here than Donald Trump's political exposure.  

• Americans have a right to ask critical questions of their government. 

• Only cults and dictatorships call people who question the leader "evil."

What did Donald Trump do today?

A bunch more random stuff regarding his trade war with the rest of the world.

Today, Trump did, or doubled down on, or recommitted to, or backed away from, or threatened to do many things related to his quixotic attempts to start a trade war with the entire world. They include:

• Sending one of his "letters" to Canada announcing a 35% tax on its exports to the United States—which, as with all tariffs, will be paid first by American importers and then by American consumers.

• It's hard to keep track exactly, but this appears to be the seventh distinct tariff regime Trump has said he would impose on the United States' largest trading partner, in his attempt to find a number that is big enough to claim a victory (even though Americans will pay any tariff) but small enough not to severely damage the United States economy.

• Trump explicitly tied this round of tariffs to the nonexistent "emergency" of fentanyl smuggling across the Canadian border. (Virtually no fentanyl is smuggled that way.) This is likely to create legal issues for him: the only actual legal authority Trump has cited to impose tariffs at a whim—which the Constitution gives to Congress, not the executive branch—is a law related to economic emergencies, and even that is facing a court challenge.  

• Having his bluff called on his threat to impose a 50% tax on Brazilian imports because its justice system was prosecuting a friend of his for corruption. 

• Yesterday, Trump threatened a 50% tariff on Brazil, explicitly because its government is pursuing corruption charges against its former president, Jair Bolsonaro. Like Trump, Bolsonaro is under criminal investigation for serious abuses against the nation he formerly led during and after his term in office—something Trump has taken deeply to heart.  

• Brazil's government absolutely refused to budge, and promised to retaliate. 

• Trump's claims to an economic emergency are even thinner in this case than others, as Brazil imports more from the United States than in exports.

• Straight-up lying to the American people about his "deal" with Vietnam.  

• Last week, as his self-imposed "90 deals in 90 days" deadline expired, Trump announced just his second "deal": an agreement in principle with Vietnam that would set the tax on American consumers of Vietnamese goods at 20%. The only problem, as it was revealed today, is that the rate Trump announced was not what American negotiators had agreed on with their Vietnamese counterparts. 

• Making copper cheaper for the rest of the world and more expensive for Americans. 

• Yesterday, Trump abruptly decreed that there would be a 50% tax paid by American consumers of foreign copper. As he put it in a post to his private microblogging website, "Copper is necessary for Semiconductors, Aircraft, Ships, Ammunition, Data Centers, Lithium-ion Batteries, Radar Systems, Missile Defense Systems, and even, Hypersonic Weapons, of which we are building many."
  
  
• Trump is correct that copper is an important strategic resource for the United States. That's why making imported copper more expensive here, apparently in an effort to jump-start mining operations in the United States that long ago stopped being economically viable, is a bad idea. But taking the U.S. off the market for foreign copper creates a supply glut for the rest of the world, and prices on foreign copper exchanges plummeted today. 

Unlike with his administration's other priorities, in which individual staff members and other people with a hold on Trump have effectively seized power from Trump without reprisal from him, his erratic pronouncements on trade appear to be entirely of his own doing. That may explain why, for all of his dozens of threats and recantations, relatively little is actually happening yet because there is a difference between a social media post and actual implementation of taxes on goods, which can be an incredibly complicated process.

Why does this matter?

• Creating mistrust with our trading partners and chaos in financial markets is what you'd do if you were trying to blow up the American economy. 

• Past a certain point, desperately trying to project strength has the opposite effect.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He complimented a lifelong native speaker of English, from an English-speaking country in Africa, for speaking good English.

Liberian President Joseph Boakai visited the White House today along with four other African leaders. At one point, with cameras rolling, Trump singled out Boakai for a cringeworthy compliment: "Such good English, it’s beautiful. Where did you learn to speak so beautifully?"

Boakai should be fluent in English: he's been speaking it his whole life, like most Liberians. In fact, at 81 years old, he's been speaking it longer than Trump. The west African nation was organized by formerly enslaved Black Americans, and American influence can be seen in everything from its star-and-stripes flag to the name of its capital (Monrovia, after U.S. President James Monroe) to its official language—English.

Boakai responded diplomatically, saying only that he'd learned it in Liberia, without elaborating. Trump, perhaps sensing that he had put his foot in it, tried to turn the compliment into a joke about the language skills of his own cabinet. (For the record, they are all fluent speakers of English too.)

Trump's disdain for Africa and Africans is well known. He famously called them "shithole countries." He's singled them out disproportionately for travel bans. He assumes nobody else has heard of the ones he hasn't heard of, and says so in the State of the Union Address. He attacks political rivals with African roots as though it were something to be ashamed of. His idea of an olive branch is to offer Africa's militantly post-colonial governments a second chance at being economically colonized by the United States. He closed the borders to legal refugee and asylum claims from Africa, only to pointedly offer a kind of luxury version of it to "refugees" from South Africa who promote a white supremacist hoax of persecution by that country's post-Apartheid government.  

Praising Black people's ability to "speak well," as though it were a surprise, is an old racist trope. (Chris Rock did a bit on it in a 1996 comedy show, and it was old then.)

Trump's staff did damage control by bringing out the closest thing his White House has to an African envoy: Massad Boulos, his daughter Tiffany's father-in-law. Boulos is Lebanese but lived for a time in Nigeria, where he essentially built a business reputation by posing as a member of a different Boulos family that ran successful businesses there.

Why does this matter? 

• To put it in terms Trump would understand, this is the diplomatic equivalent of missing a one-inch putt.  

• The problem with well-intentioned racism is that it's racism.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He kept the media focused on the important things: whether there is a paint that could look as gold leaf would on the crown mouldings of the Cabinet room.

Trump held a Cabinet meeting today, and—as is his unique custom—spent it collecting praise from each of his department heads and airing his grievances. A great deal of what Trump said was a rehashing of old lies, with the usual caveat that it is not always clear that Trump doesn't genuinely believe some of his falsehoods. 

He did make some news, as for example when he admitted that he was unaware that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had unilaterally halted arms shipments to Ukraine.

REPORTER: So who ordered the pause last week?

TRUMP: I don't know. You tell me.

(Astonishingly, this is the second time Hegseth has done this without notifying Trump—or the second time Trump has been told and forgot.) 

He also had some criticism for the media. One reporter asked about rumors that the notorious sex trafficker and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein had had some connection with American intelligence agencies. This was actually a friendly question, as it could help explain why Epstein initially received an extremely lenient sentence from a Florida district attorney, Alexander Acosta, who then became Trump's Secretary of Labor during his first term. 

But Epstein is a sensitive subject for Trump, who was a close friend and who made comments in public about how well he knew about Epstein's taste for "younger" sexual partners. Trump responded by attacking the media in general for not focusing on more important matters:

TRUMP: Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy's been talked about for years. We have Texas, this, all of the things, and, and are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable. You want to waste the time — I can't believe you're asking a question on Epstein at a time like this when we're having some of the greatest success and, and also tragedy with what happened in Texas. It just seems, uh, like a desecration but you go ahead.

Later, Trump was asked another question that wasn't about Texas floods or a similarly consequential story: his efforts to redecorate the White House. This was his answer, which took eleven minutes:

TRUMP: Thank you very much. Maybe just in closing, we spent a lot of time, effort, very little money on this room. This is called the Cabinet Room. It's been here for a long time. It had some pictures that were, not many of them, and not very good ones and I actually spent time in the vaults. The vaults are where we have a lot of great pictures, artwork and I picked it all myself. That's Andrew Jackson. That's a gentleman named and we call him "President Hope." He was sort of a real estate guy. People don't realize, he was a one-termer but he was a very good president and I'm not sure I should be doing this, he gave us the state of California. I'm not sure. Maybe he won't be there for long. The frame is almost the exact same size so that was one of the reasons, I have to be honest but Polk is a very good president about had the same frame that I needed. Up here you have the original George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower who was a very underrated president, built the Interstate system. He was the toughest president I guess until we came along but I don't mind giving up that crown. I don't want to be too tough on it. We want to be humane. He was the toughest president on immigration. He was very strong at the borders, very, very strong. Sometimes you can be too strong. He was strong at the borders and during a certain period of time they were so strong that almost every farmer in California went bankrupt. We have to remember that. We have to work together. We have to remember that but he was a very good president and very good general and a very good president and I thought he deserved a position somewhere on this floor and then you have, this is very exciting to me, he was not a Republican to put it mildly. He was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. We have a lot of ramps. He was wheelchair bound but he was an amazing man. It's an amazing portrait and we used to have him in the room, a different portrait and it was a terrible portrait. It was almost like it was done by a child and I used to say you know I can't believe that he would have approved of that portrait of himself. And I was in the vault looking at things. I said what's that? And we have some great curators here. We have six great cure raters here at the White House. Of course there's no object. May have one but that's all right. They are very talented. He said that's a picture of FDR. I said really? Let me see it. Very well preserved. That's the picture they've been looking for for years. That was the picture of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. See frame, frame wise, it doesn't work. I want to be nice but it doesn't work if you have a big frame, a little frame but it's perfection. The mirror was down in the vaults also. I said where is this from? Beautiful, we put that up. Then over there is honest Abe Lincoln and that picture was in his bedroom and we thought that this would be a very important place because this is where wars are ended. I'm going to not say wars are declared. I'll say wars will be ended. I'm going to be positive. Sat in the bedroom for many years. That was his favorite picture of his self and the Lincoln Bedroom was very famous. You remember when Bill Clinton had it and he rented it out to people. We don't do that. It was an incredible room and we took that picture from his bedroom. That's abe lincoln. Over here you have John Adams, and they were the first occupants of the White House, 1800 . And John Quincy Adams, Mrs. Adams, we have them looking at each other and in between their stare is Abraham Lincoln trying to make peace and that picture was in a room that I have that was not important like the cabinet. I gave it up, I said I have to give it up because that's one of the greatest pictures in the White House. The White House has tremendous art and the oval office, when we're there, we'll go over that. That's something. We have the drapes, the whole thing. New drapes. It wasn't a big expense, very small. We took some of the china ware and silverware from the vaults and we had it cleaned up. Some of this has sat in the vaults for over 100 years. Many of the pictures that were put up in the oval office as an example, those two as an example, so he was president. He moved in in 1800 and he won the election I believe in November of 1800. John Quincy Adams. And we thought that would be—he was considered to be a good president and he was the first occupant of the White House so it made sense. I love the frame of those pictures. I'm a frame person. Sometimes I like the frames more than the pictures and we have the flags of the marines and space force now has its own flag. I'm very proud of the Space Force. The Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Space Force, whole thing. Coast Guard is right there. Never forget the Coast Guard. They do a great job. We have the flag -- it's really become quite a beautiful place. I don't want to tell—Marco pointed it out. I said leave the clock. As president you have the power, if I go into the state department or the department of Commerce or treasury, if I see anything that I like, I'm allowed to take it. So I'm in Marco's office and I see this gorgeous clock, grandfather clock. I said there it is, I said Marco. Rules and regulations, I said Marco, I love this clock, look at it. He said what clock? The clock that's in the other room is incredible. Nobody gets to see it there. Marco—I tried to talk him into it at first and it sort of worked and then I had to use a little more. I'd love to take that clock out and put it in that cabinet room. I said are you serious? I said Marco, I have the right to do it, Marco. That's his contribution to the cabinet room. By the way, it's an incredible clock. It's an important room. So if I see it again, maybe we'll move it back. Here we put these lamps have been very important actually if you see pictures like Pearl Harbor and Tora! Tora! Tora! And often times I show the lamps. This is a very important room. You never know what they do but they were missing medallions. They had a chain going into the ceiling and I said you can't do that. You have to have a medallion. They said what's that? I said I'll show you. And you see them, they were put up there. We did these changes and when you think of it, the cost was almost nothing. We also painted the room a nice color, beige color and it's been really something. The only question is, my—my cabinet can take a vote. You see the top line moldings, because you can't paint it. If you paint it, it won't look good because they never found a paint that looks like gold. You see that the in the Oval Office. They tried for years and years, they never found a paint that looks like gold. Painting is easy but it won't look right. Linda, do you have an opinion?

EDUCATION SECRETARY LINDA McMAHON: I'd gold leaf it.

TRUMP: Would you gold leaf it? 

 Trump is correct about this much: it is difficult to find a paint that looks exactly like gold leaf.

Why does this matter?

• Redecorating the Cabinet Room should actually not be this high on the list of presidential priorities. 

• Knowing (or remembering) what your Defense Secretary is doing with respect to a major world conflict should be.

• One way to avoid reporters asking questions about your relationship with sex criminals is not to have relationships with sex criminals during which you talk openly about your knowledge of their sexual habits. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He fudged some numbers to make his ongoing tariff debacle look scientific.

The latest chapter in the Trump Trade War saga saw him sending out letters to fourteen countries, informing their leaders that he will impose taxes on American importers of their goods in August. The letters were riddled with typographical and grammatical errors in the style of one of his social media rants, to an extent that appears to have been a deliberate choice. (It's not clear what he—or whoever published them without editing them—hoped to gain from that.)

In April, Trump announced staggering taxes for consumers on goods imported from effectively every country in the world—and also a few rocks uninhabited except by penguins, for some reason. Trump called these "reciprocal" tariffs, but almost immediately, analysts noticed that the seemingly random tariff numbers assigned to each country were the result of a formula that, to put it generously, had nothing to do with any existing barriers to trading American-made goods.  

The letters today threaten to impose effectively the same numbers, but this time plus or minus a few percentage points at random—apparently to make it seem as though the "formula" has been revised to yield more nuanced numbers.

Trump almost immediately backed down from those tariffs when markets plummeted at the prospect of the United States isolating itself from the rest of the world market. To save face, he gave himself 90 days to reach individual trade deals with every affected country—which is, again, effectively the entire world. Since then, he has made one partial agreement in principle with the UK and another with Vietnam. (Neither is binding and neither has gone into effect.) 

Even today's resetting of the July 9th deadline to August 1 isn't something he's willing to commit to, for fear of spooking the markets again: Trump admitted he wasn't "100% firm" on that, either. Markets were broadly down today, although it's unclear whether that's for fear of Trump actually following through at some point, or simply because sustained uncertainty is bad for business in and of itself.
 

Why does this matter?

• The United States economy literally cannot afford this level of incompetence. 

• The laws of economics do not suspend themselves no matter how badly Donald Trump wants to believe he's a business genius and a master negotiator.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He criticized whoever it was that used his authority as President of the United States to appoint a friend of Elon Musk to head NASA.

Trump is feuding with his chief political patron Elon Musk—or at least making a good show of it. Yesterday, Musk announced he was forming a new political party, something Trump today called "ridiculous" and evidence that Musk was going "off the rails. (Trump's first serious flirtation with running for public office was as a presidential candidate for the Reform Party in 2000.)

He punctuated his anger at Musk by, in effect, accusing himself of cronyist corruption for nominating Musk's space-industry ally Jared Isaacman to be the administrator of NASA. Trump posted to his private microblogging site that it was "inappropriate" for someone with close business and personal ties to Musk to be heading the agency that Trump intended to hollow out, thus creating more lucrative contracts for Musk's company SpaceX. 

Notwithstanding heroic efforts on Isaacman's part during his confirmation to conceal the extent that Musk had been involved in his appointment, Trump withdrew his nomination on May 31—just as his spat with Musk was heating up. In today's social media rant, Trump patted himself on the back for choosing to "protect the American Public" rather than make the "inappropriate" appointment that he did, in fact, make.

Trump did not elaborate, nor has he commented on why he gave Musk—whose fortune is almost entirely built on electric vehicle tax credits and government space contracts—enormous and sweeping powers to benefit himself directly as the head of the so-called "Department of Government Efficiency."

Why does this matter?

• This is a pretty good example of why presidents don't usually hand over the powers of their office to drug-addled billionaires who bankrolled their election. 

• Putting ultrawealthy cronies in charge of the parts of government that enrich them is called oligarchy, and it's not a great system.  

What did Donald Trump do today?

He whistled past the graveyard of his budget cuts to weather and emergency services.

At least 50 people, many of them children attending summer camps, have died in flash floods in Texas. A massive search-and-rescue effort is underway, but the death toll is expected to rise. 

In response, Trump released a civil, if slightly showy statement of support for the victims, promising to work with state and local officials. This is, in and of itself, newsworthy: it's not uncommon for him to lash out at victims, as he did when he called the survivors of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico "politically motivated ingrates." He also routinely uses the disasters themselves as a political cudgel against politicians he doesn't like, even when the events themselves were unavoidable and his own explanation for how he could have done better ridiculous.

Nor is it a given that Trump will approve states' request for emergency funding or support to help manage disasters. These appeals are normally granted automatically, because the federal government has much greater capacity than individual states. Trump has rejected them in at least four cases since returning to office where the states had met all of the official criteria for aid, without offering any explanation or new guidelines.

On returning to office, Trump slashed the staff and frozen the legally allocated budgets of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and federal agencies dealing with weather and climate change. It has already begun to affect hurricane preparedness, with forecasters expected to make do with drastically reduced satellite imagery to track storms.

State and local officials in Texas were vocally furious with what they saw as a late and underwhelming warning from the National Weather Service, one of the agencies that was already showing clear signs of inability to perform its mission due to the Trump cuts. Less than a month ago, its offices in Texas warned that they were working with only 56% of their normal staffing. 

With the crisis in Texas not yet over, it's not clear whether or how much the weakened NWS presence played a factor, given how urgently state officials rely on its forecasts and alerts. Given the literally unprecedented intensity of the flooding—the Guadalupe River rose 26 feet in 45 minutes—it may not have been possible to entirely avoid loss of life even with federal weather and emergency services operating at full capacity. But this kind of extreme weather event is becoming more common as the climate changes, particularly in Texas, where so-called "500-year floods" are now almost an annual event.

Trump's official position is that he believes climate change is a "Chinese hoax," and his policies reflect that: he recently claimed the authority to "discipline" and rewrite the findings of federal climate scientists whose results he doesn't like. As a private citizen, Trump applies for government funds to help mitigate the effects of climate change on his golf courses.

Why does this matter?

• Slashing the budgets for weather forecasting and emergency preparedness isn't such a great idea when there are weather emergencies that forecasting could have helped you avoid. 

• Disaster victims deserve federal support whether or not Trump likes their governor. 

• The lives of Americans impacted by climate change are more important than Donald Trump's inability to gracefully back away from a false talking point.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He lied about his budget bill.

Trump signed his budget bill into law today as part of a White House Independence Day ceremony. According to nonpartisan experts including the Congressional Budget Office, the bill is expected to add $3 or $4 trillion to the national debt, cause 17 million Americans to lose their health coverage, and make permanent Trump's 2017 tax cuts that exclusively benefit the very wealthiest Americans while cutting services for everyone else. It will also massively expand the size of ICE, ballooning its budget overnight into something bigger than the entire military spending of some of the world's largest nations.

None of these things are popular. In fact, Trump's budget bill is the second most unpopular piece of legislation in the last 35 years, topped only by his failed attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017.

Republicans in both chambers—including some who voted for the bill—warned their colleagues that the clear public opposition to the bill was political suicide for the midterm elections. That may explain why Trump said this today:

It's the most popular bill ever signed in the history of our country. Whether you're military or anybody else, this is the most—single most popular bill ever signed.

As is often the case with these kinds of bizarre denials of reality from Trump, it's not clear whether he's deliberately lying or has no idea what he's talking about. He appeared genuinely confused earlier this week about whether the bill had anything to do with Medicaid. (It cuts Medicaid by one trillion dollars, almost precisely the amount needed to offset the tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy.)

Trump also repeated a lie about Social Security, claiming that his bill ended taxation of its benefits. In fact, it has no effect at all. Most seniors don't pay income tax as it is, but those who do will still see that income taxed. The Trump Administration sent an e-mail overnight repeating this lie directly from the Trump-appointed head of the Social Security Administration, praising Trump by name for fulfilling his "promise."

Trump did campaign on that still-unfulfilled promise to end taxation of Social Security benefits, something that would have been far more popular than most of the actual provisions in the bill and faced little opposition in Congress—if he had bothered to put it in.

Why does this matter?

• Reality doesn't change just because Donald Trump tells it to. 

• Presidents who pass genuinely popular legislation don't have to demand that people pretend it was popular. 

• If Trump wasn't lying, then he's incapable of understanding that he's being systematically lied to, and is unfit for office on those grounds.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He punished Environmental Protection Agency employees for advocating for environmental protection.

Yesterday, 278 career employees with the Environmental Protection Agency signed a "declaration of dissent" to Lee Zeldin, the agency's administrator. In it, they warned that the partisan polarization of the agency under Zeldin and Trump was not only hurting the environment and the Americans whose health and work relies on it, but undermining public trust in government. They pointed out that poor and minority communities bear the brunt of environmental degradation, and that the Trump administration's attacks on science and the creation of a culture of fear within the department were making the country's environmental problems worse, not better. 

173 of the employees signed their names, with the rest joining anonymously for fear of retaliation. Today, that retaliation came, with 144 of the signers suspended. 

Many executive branch departments have formalized and protected channels for this kind of complaint, specifically to provide an opportunity for civil service employees with expert and on-the-ground information to alert political appointees to problems before they metastasize. For example, the State Department has had a "dissent channel" since the Vietnam War, when information critical to the war effort was lost to decision-makers because political appointees covered it up. It has been used on a regular basis ever since, including during the Biden administration, when it carried memos accusing President Biden of being complicit in genocide against Palestinians for his support of Israel's campaign against Hamas. (As politically damaging as such charges can be, no one was fired or disciplined.)

The response from the Trump administration is not surprising: Trump himself has frankly bizarre ideas about environmental technology, and he is easily infuriated by even the slightest hint of "disloyalty," meaning to him personally. It also comes as Trump has granted himself and his loyalists the power to "discipline" federally-funded climate scientists who reach conclusions he doesn't like.

Trump's staff responded to inquiries about the suspensions by accusing the signers of "unlawfully undermining, sabotaging and undercutting" him.

It is not "unlawful" to criticize the President of the United States or express doubt about government policy. 

Why does this matter?

• Letting experts do their legally mandated work to protect the health and well-being of Americans is more important than Donald Trump's hurt feelings. 

• Officers and employees of the federal government owe their allegiance to the Constitution and the laws of the United States, not Donald Trump personally. 

 

To: Administrator Zeldin

CC: U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce, U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Members of Congress

Declaration of Dissent
EPA employees join in solidarity with employees across the federal government in opposing this administration's policies, including those that undermine the EPA mission of protecting human health and the environment. Since the Agency's founding in 1970, EPA has accomplished this mission by leveraging science, funding, and expert staff in service to the American people. Today, we stand together in dissent against the current administration's focus on harmful deregulation, mischaracterization of previous EPA actions, and disregard for scientific expertise.

Since January 2025, federal workers across the country have been denigrated and dismissed based on false claims of waste, fraud, and abuse. Meanwhile, Americans have witnessed the unraveling of public health and environmental protections in the pursuit of political advantage. Today, we come directly to you, Administrator Zeldin and our elected officials, with the five concerns outlined below. We expect your deliberate consideration of these concerns and look forward to working with you to restore EPA's credibility as a premier scientific institution. Communities across America are counting on you to lead EPA in carrying out its mission.

Our Shared Commitment to Protecting Human Health and the Environment
Administrator Zeldin, at your Senate confirmation hearing, you committed to leading EPA in its "simple but essential" mission. You expressed gratitude that President-elect Trump had given you the opportunity to "do everything in our power to harness the greatness of American innovation with the greatness of American conservation and environmental stewardship." You acknowledged the realities of climate change, the benefits of clean energy, the economic need for environmental justice, and the importance of protecting human health through smart regulation. Like you, EPA employees are committed to these principles. We call on you to reaffirm your testimony, honor your oath to the Constitution, and renew your commitment to become the environmental steward the public entrusted you to be.

Our Five Primary Concerns
Under your leadership, Administrator Zeldin, this administration is recklessly undermining the EPA mission including in these five critical areas:

1. Undermining public trust. EPA's non-partisan nature ensures that all Americans—regardless of political affiliation—are served by an agency guided by scientific expertise, professional integrity, and an unwavering commitment to the public good. For over five decades, EPA's strength has come from its commitment to science-based decision-making. However, under this administration, the Agency's communication platforms have been used to promote misinformation and overtly partisan rhetoric. For example, EPA press releases and the "Call it a Comeback" newsletter have referred to EPA grants as “green slush funds” and praised “clean coal” as “beautiful.” The Office of the Administrator has used official EPA channels to liken climate science to a religion, issue attacks against individual members of Congress, and criticize former presidents. These communications are partisan and scientifically unsound. The Office of the Administrator may have violated the Hatch Act by using EPA’s official website and social media to promote political initiatives such as President Trump’s tariffs and the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill.” This politicized messaging distracts from EPA’s core responsibility: to protect human health and the environment through objective, science-based policy.

2. Ignoring scientific consensus to benefit polluters. This administration's actions directly contradict EPA's own scientific assessments on human health risks, most notably regarding asbestos, mercury, and greenhouse gases. Health-based regulatory standards are being repealed or reconsidered, including drinking water limits for four PFAS "forever chemicals" that cause cancer. Under your leadership, Administrator Zeldin, EPA is promoting the fossil fuel-powered auto industry while simultaneously stripping away support for cleaner electric vehicles. You are supporting new technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), without addressing AI's intense consumption of environmental resources. The decisions of the current administration frequently contradict the peer-reviewed research and recommendations of Agency experts. Such contradiction undermines EPA's reputation as a trusted scientific authority. Make no mistake: your actions endanger public health and erode scientific progress--not only in America--but around the world.

3. Reversing EPA's progress in America's most vulnerable communities. Research overwhelmingly shows that the country's most vulnerable communities, including Black communities and other communities of color, poor communities, disabled communities, LGBTQIA+ communities, and historically overburdened and underserved rural and urban communities are consistently exposed to disproportionate environmental and climate burdens. EPA's environmental justice program—one that you have effectively dismantled—was addressing this disparity by funding states, cities, and communities all around the country through extensive grant programs and technical assistance. Now these same communities are the ones most at risk for losing federal funding. Since January 2025, EPA has placed the vast majority of environmental justice staff on administrative leave, canceled billions of grant dollars to communities, and removed a valuable mapping analysis tool that enabled EPA and others to work towards environmental equity. Canceling environmental justice programs is not cutting waste; it is failing to serve the American people.

4. Dismantling the Office of Research and Development. EPA's research provides the scientific basis for its rulemaking, stakeholder needs, and other key decisions. U.S. Law (42 U.S.C. § 4363) states that the EPA Administrator shall "establish a separately identified program of continuing, long-term environmental research and development," which is currently led by the Office of Research and Development, or ORD. Your administration has proposed a reorganization that moves EPA's foundational research to the Administrator's Office and reassigns ORD's research staff to the program offices. A move that places ORD scientists in regulatory program offices will make EPA science more vulnerable to political interference. In addition, the gutting of staff and science and your proposed budget cuts for the coming year will leave ORD unable to meet the science needs of the EPA and its partners and will threaten the health of all Americans.

5. Promoting a culture of fear, forcing staff to choose between their livelihood and well-being. OMB Director Russell Vought has stated that he wants EPA employees to be in a constant state of trauma and  unable to do their jobs: "When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry [...] We want to put them in trauma.” Administrator Zeldin, you have done your best to ensure that employees have no recourse against these assaults by nullifying bargaining agreements and refusing to negotiate. In addition, your administration has fired or forced onto administrative leave several categories of employees, including those responsible for environmental justice and those managing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) initiatives. Your administration has also targeted probationary employees, including a range of students and recent graduates, whom U.S. District Judge William Alsup has called "the lifeblood of [the] government." Since January 2025, your administration has offered multiple rounds of resignation and retirement options. Of the employees who accepted your contractual agreements, few accepted without extenuating circumstances, such as immediate financial concern, fear of their position being eliminated, or concerns about changes to their retirement, among others. 

Delivering on your duty to EPA and the public
Your decisions and actions will reverberate for generations to come. EPA under your leadership will not protect communities from hazardous chemicals and unsafe drinking water, but instead will increase risks to public health and safety.

Administrator Zeldin, we urge you to honor your oath and serve the American people. Going forward, you have the opportunity to correct course. Should you choose to do so, we stand ready to support your efforts to fulfill EPA's mission.

Who We Are
This declaration was written and signed by EPA employees across Offices, Regions, and Labs in our personal capacity, on our own time, and without Agency resources. We are devoted to EPA's mission: to protect human health and the environment. 

Administrator Zeldin, we share your stated goal of wanting every child in this nation, including your own, to "inherit a world with clean air, clean water, and a thriving economy." We are civil servants who are dedicated to responsibly managing public resources to drive innovative, high-impact research to create and implement the country's environmental regulations and solve environmental challenges. We want to work together, not to power the "Great American Comeback," but to launch America into a safer, healthier, and thriving future.

We sign this declaration both as concerned citizens and dedicated civil servants. In addition to the named signers, we include anonymous signers and speak for countless others at EPA who share our concerns, but who chose not to sign their names for fear of retaliation.

 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He missed a trillion-dollar cut in his own budget bill and had to be told what was in it.

Trump's budget bill is up for debate in the House, where its immediate future is uncertain. Mostly a vehicle for making Trump's 2017 tax cuts permanent at any cost, it contains any number of provisions that are likely to be disastrous both for Republicans seeking re-election and Americans as a whole. Among the most potentially devastating is a trillion-dollar cut to Medicaid, which more than 71 million Americans use quite literally from cradle to grave: it pays for 41.5% of hospital births, and it covers hospice care for the terminally ill. 

Many Americans who rely on Medicaid don't even know that they do, because it is rebranded in the states: BadgerCare in Wisconsin, STAR+PLUS in Texas, Medical Assistance in Pennsylvania, and so forth. Today, it seemed that Trump wasn't exactly clear on what Medicaid was either, as he had to be told by Congressional Republicans that his bill does indeed severely impact it. As a report in NOTUS on Trump's meeting with wavering House members today put it:

But Trump still doesn’t seem to have a firm grasp about what his signature legislative achievement does. According to three sources with direct knowledge of the comments, the president told Republicans at this meeting that there are three things Congress shouldn’t touch if they want to win elections: Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.

“But we’re touching Medicaid in this bill,” one member responded to Trump, according to the three sources.

In other words: Trump went to reassure House members that they could vote for his bill because it wouldn't touch the politically dangerous subject of Medicaid, and had to be informed by his own party's Congressional delegation that his bill grabs it with both hands.

This is not the first time that Trump has made this claim; it's a standard talking point for him and one his staff obediently repeated when asked for comment today. For the most part, the media has treated it as a standard Trump obfuscation, noting its falsehood without directly calling Trump a liar.

Today's report was the first strong indication that Trump may have genuinely believed what was on his cue cards, or at least thought there was some truth to it, and that he somehow missed the trillion-dollar cut to Americans' health care budget with his name on it.

Why does this matter?

• A president who can't keep track of a TRILLION dollars in urgently-needed health care spending isn't fit for office. 

• Neither is one who can't be bothered about it. 

• Neither is one who knew but forgot. 

• Neither is one who just lies about it.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He once again called for his political enemies to be jailed or deported for being his political enemies. 

Trump visited a hastily built internment camp in the Florida Everglades today, and used the opportunity to threaten to jail or deport at least three of his imagined political enemies by name—all of whom are American citizens.

Zohran Mamdani. The Democratic nominee for Mayor of New York City was born in Uganda and became an American citizen in 2018, though he has lived in the United States since he was seven. His shocking come-from-behind victory in the primary over Andrew Cuomo has rattled Trump and other Republicans, who were hoping for a contest between the scandal-plagued Cuomo and Eric Adams, the incumbent. Adams is running as an independent after Trump tried to use Biden-era corruption charges against him as blackmail, and succeeded in getting Adams to align with his immigration policies.

Asked about Mamdani, Trump called him a "communist" and then blurted out, "We'll have to arrest him," adding that "many people" were saying he was not really a citizen. (That accusation may sound slightly familiar coming from Trump, who routinely got confused on the campaign trail in 2024 as to whether it was Joe Biden or Barack Obama who was president at the time.)

Mamdani released a statement later in the day:

 

Alejandro Mayorkas. During his appearances today, Trump took questions exclusively from media outlets within his political comfort zone. Even so, he appeared unsure and unready when a reporter from the right-wing website Blaze asked about Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security under President Biden. The Blaze staffer, Julio Rosas, had to guide Trump to an understanding of who he was talking about. Even then, Trump interrupted himself for hints from his own staff sitting nearby, and could only speak in general terms about how Mayorkas was "bad." Reminded that Mayorkas had been impeached, he called it "fake."

Mayorkas' 2024 impeachment was not "fake" in the sense that it happened, but even the Republican-controlled House that eventually mustered up the votes for it seemed embarrassed by it. The Senate dismissed the impeachment without a trial. Notably, the "charge" was dereliction of duty over a supposed crisis in immigration, but the Biden administration oversaw more removals in 2024 than Trump is on pace to in 2025. (Trump has not called for his own Homeland Security's impeachment, yet.)

Elon Musk. Friendly media also goaded Trump to attack his political patron, Elon Musk, who has come out strongly against Trump's budget bill. A grinning Trump did recognize Musk's name and said he'd "have to take a look" at whether Musk could keep his citizenship. He proceeded to muse out loud that Musk might somehow fall victim to the same government apparatus he'd helped to create to root out Trump's other enemies.

Unlike Mayorkas and Mamdani, there actually would—technically—be a basis in existing American law to denaturalize and deport Musk. As his own brother Kimbal has publicly acknowledged, both Musk siblings worked illegally in the United States after overstaying their student visas, then presumably lied about it during the naturalization process.

This denaturalization process is virtually never used. Musk is one of a number of people in Trump's inner circle who would technically be at risk. Others include both of Trump's foreign-born wives. Melania Trump worked illegally as a model before being naturalized, and then used her own citizenship to sponsor her parents, who—as elderly and unemployed dependents—Trump had to use his authority as President to cheat the rules for anyway. (In other circumstances, Trump and other nativists refer to this as "chain migration.") The late Ivana Trump broke Czechoslovakian law by entering into a sham marriage with her first husband in order to gain entry into the United States, which would also have made her citizenship theoretically revocable.

Trump, a convicted felon 34 times over himself, is himself the descendant of people who dodged and cheated immigration laws, but his own citizenship is secure by virtue of being born on American soil, unless he gets his way and changes that.

Why does this matter?

• Making your political enemies "unpersons" is what happens in dictatorships, not democracies. 

• No matter how much he wants it to be, it's not a crime to be someone Donald Trump doesn't like.  

• Presidents who don't want to be too closely associated with Nazis shouldn't talk about stripping citizens of their rights while touring a brand new concentration camp.