This image was generated by Jimmy Kimmel but as we know, many a true word spoken in jest. The far right of the graph shows the stock market tumbling and indeed that’s what it did today. Last week featured the much ballyhooed Liberation Day on Wednesday. The markets plunged Thursday, Friday and Monday. They rallied a small amount on Tuesday and then when Trump declared his 90-day pause on all tariffs but China, then they bounced back significantly on Wednesday.
The White House was ecstatic, proclaiming “Let Him Cook” in a social media post, and hailing this as a victory of a 4D chess game Trump was playing with the world. Karoline Leavitt rebuked the press corps for not understanding The Art Of The Deal. Everybody was portrayed as an idiot except for genius Donald. But their jubilation was a tad bit premature and did not mention the bond markets, which is what made Trump back down. Then the markets (seemingly inexplicably) dropped again on Thursday and closed down. This level of Trump-generated financial crisis is not going to be tolerated. There may not be any adults in the room in the Trump administration but there are adults in the financial world. And they have had enough.
Among those opposed to President Trump’s tariffs on imports from China: a legal group funded by some of the biggest names in conservative politics.
Last week, a Florida business owner challenged the Trump administration’s moves in court, arguing that her company, Simplified, which makes notebooks and planners, was harmed by the dramatic trade war with China that has only deteriorated further since the lawsuit was filed.
Her lawyers are from the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a libertarian-leaning nonprofit that counts among its financial backers Donors Trust, a group with ties to the billionaire Leonard A. Leo, who is a co-chairman of the Federalist Society.
The Federalist Society is an influential legal group that advised Mr. Trump through the confirmation of justices he appointed to form the current conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, though some in Mr. Trump’s circle came to believe that its leaders were out of step with the president’s political movement.
Another donor to New Civil Liberties Alliance is Charles Koch, the billionaire industrialist and Republican megadonor.
In what appeared to be the first tariff-related lawsuit against the Trump administration, the founder of Simplified, Emily Ley, argued that President Trump overstepped his authority in February when he first imposed new import taxes on Chinese goods. Since then, China has retaliated with its own tariffs, and Mr. Trump has escalated the fight with more levies. All Chinese imports face a minimum tariff rate of 145 percent as of Thursday, a dramatic increase.
Tax filings since 2017, when the New Civil Liberties Alliance was founded, show that it has received millions in financial support from a network of powerful conservative groups including both the Charles Koch Foundation and Donors Trust, which has financial ties to Mr. Leo.
On Wednesday, after days of turmoil on the stock and markets, Mr. Trump announced a three-month reprieve on the punishing tariffs he had imposed on most of America’s major trading partners in an effort to redress trade deficits, leaving in place only a base line 10 percent tariff for all imports.
Still, president has remained committed to ratcheting up the pressure on China, whose leaders have vowed to fight back. […]
Both Mr. Koch and Mr. Leo have enjoyed considerable success in advancing conservative ideas and policy by paying for strategic lawsuits and doling out financial support through a network of right-leaning legal groups.
This is no small thing. Trump may have had the ear of people like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, both of whom were reportedly telling him what a “consequential” president he could be, by remaking the entire economic landscape in his own image. So far all he’s made is a hash and a hellscape of the economy and this in less than 90 days.
Musk and Thiel would love to see an oligarchic America, where a few people are insanely rich and everybody else are merely serfs — just like back in the 30’s, an era which Trump touts all the time as the last Golden Age of America, one he would like to bring back. Howard Lutnick certainly signs off on a vision of robots running factories, which would benefit the oligarchs who own the factories but it would be a pretty grim existence for the rest of us. For that matter, Leo and Koch probably wouldn’t be adverse to such a vision, either, but they see the sheer stupidity in how that result is being gone after.
The complaint filed on behalf of Ms. Ley, in Federal District Court for the Northern District of Florida, asked a judge to declare Mr. Trump’s China-related executive orders unconstitutional and to bar Customs and Border Protection from enforcing the tariffs.
It argued that Mr. Trump was circumventing Congress by unlawfully using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to impose the tariffs. The law gives the president the broad authority to regulate a variety of economic transactions following a declaration of national emergency.
Just the fact that this complaint exists and that Leo and Koch are taking Trump and Congress on tells you everything you need to know. Never forget that these same mega donors are the ones who contribute to election campaigns. As we speak, there are House members and senators who are feeling the hair on the back of their necks stand up.
And one last note: Have you noticed how Elon Musk has simply dropped off radar since last Tuesday’s Wisconsin judgeship loss? It’s like the man doesn’t exist anymore. Bear that in mind as you stay current on what Leo and Koch are doing to stop Trump.
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Friends, any help you can give us in trekking through cyberspace covering all this madness would be appreciated. A lot of the electorate is depressed and checked out. We intend to keep on fighting. Thank you. Ursula
I’m wondering how much plastic boy’s chainsaw is going for on ebay? With him and trump, you knew the bag was going to rip. After all, it’s hard to stuff those two giant turds into one office.
I knew something like this was bound to happen. I referred to them as “Wall Street heavies,” not, of course, knowing their actual identities. I made a similar comment on another site, and somebody replied with the YouTube clip below, the famous Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty) lecture to Howard Beale (Peter Finch). I’m not suggesting that Howard Beale bears any resemblance to Donald Trump, other than that he broke the laws of the universe although for an entirely different, you might even say the opposite purpose — Beale wanted to be a champion for truth, Trump is the father of lies. But Arthur Jensen does bear some resemblance to the kinds of people that can give even Trump a reality check.
But I do get a creepy feeling that the people rescuing us from Donald Trump’s madness are the likes of Leonard Leo and Charles Koch, even though they are about the only ones who could do it. At least they understand something real, Trump doesn’t understand anything.
And it also makes it seem less likely that on this issue at least, the Roberts Court will do their usual screwing around with the Constitution, since Leo pretty much controls SCOTUS, and up till recently Trump and MAGA largely served their interests, as shown by the behavior of the court lo these many years. A lot of what Musk was doing was probably fine with them too. It is absolutely necessary that Trump should be put under control, but if these guys the new regency we cannot be complacent.
So funny watching the big guys like Leo and Koch having their faces eaten by the leopards.
I know that they know they can’t really use their donations to campaigns to exert unlimited control over the candidates they bought but you just have to sit in amazement at their utter stupidity in thinking that ANYONE could actually “control” Drumpf from doing whatever Drumpf wanted to do. All the right-wingers (including Leo and Koch and the rest of the donor classes*) kept telling people, “No, no, no. He’s only being outrageous for the campaign–he’s not going to be as radical when he’s elected” only for Drumpf to show his campaign talk was almost milder than what he’s actually done.
*When Democrats get back into office, overturn Citizens United and start taxing these absurdly rich folks dollar-for-dollar on their campaign “contributions.” If they can afford to spend half a billion dollars in getting people elected to the White House and Congress and local judicial races, then they can certainly afford to put half a billion dollars in the federal coffers just as easily. (Or, at the very least, anyone who spends more than $2000 per campaign per election cycle has to pay taxes on the excess “donations”; if they want to spread their half a billion on 250,000 different races, they’re more than welcome to do so–otherwise, if they spend the half a billion on just 5000 races, then they have to cough up $98,000 times 5000 to Uncle Sam. Call it the “Electoral Luxury Tax.”)
The big question is, will we allow this ignorant blowhard to drive our country totally into ruin? Is nobody big enough to quell this plague? Is there not one patriot who can stop our fall into fiscal hell?
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Perhaps money talks and bullsh*t walks when the money is big enough. I hope they crush the lying ignorant POS.