Comments from the president and Howard Lutnick indicate moves to exclude some tech products will be shortlived
Good morning and welcome to our US politics blog.
In an announcement made late on Friday evening, Donald Trump’s presidential administration exempted smartphones and computers from the 125% levies imposed on imports from China as well as other “reciprocal” tariffs .
Attorneys arguing for the return of a Maryland resident whom the Trump administration erroneously deported to El Salvador highlighted in a Saturday court filing President
Chinese customs official says trade has diversified away from US in recent years and plays up its ‘vast domestic market’
China has played down the risk of damage to its exports from Donald Trump’s tariffs, with an official saying the “the sky won’t fall”, as stock markets rose on Monday amid signs of a retreat on electronics restrictions.
The world’s second-largest economy has diversified its trade away from the US in recent years, according to Lyu Daliang, a customs administration spokesperson, in comments reported by state-owned agency Xinhua .
One person in Zamzam described things as “extremely catastrophic” after three days of assaults.
Major stock markets in Asia and Europe rose in Monday trading following the U.S. announcement that key consumer electronics would be temporarily exempted from tariffs.
For Jay Hopler
The philosophers I love believed in things
they didn’t want to convert to; the isolation
of the thought, of the shattering idea,
lonelied them into a truth that would tremble too much
were it carried from desk to window,
its outermost manifestations too loosened,
too far specified to seem much other than frailty now.
And what I think they feared,
or what I fear when tempted to tell you
of something I saw, how it moved in me this way or that,
what relief, what chiding need
for a little sturdy peace this sight allowed, or that touch,
and of what, or with whom, is that such confiding
could draw down the paradox
that although it has no mass, light does strike.
What we don’t say
is bright as metal bells. And were
my friend still alive, I’d want to make
a meal for him, something not all that skilled, but not all
that terrible, lit with forefire and the lateness of the hour.
The giant peony erupting its skull from the center
of the table would gather in us an enormity
of conviction so thorough, we’d want to carry it elsewhere,
the risk of its complete disheveling, its dropping open,
requiring us to resist the second thought that wants so badly
to follow the first, that conviction
itself pulls behind it a mender’s cart—, mustn’t it?
Better just to look at what the ludicrous
spring had done, not saying much of it,
speaking instead of anything else, certainly least of all
trying to outlive it
by saying there will be more—not now, but come next spring.
This poem appears in the May 2025 print edition.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday paused an order by a judge in San Francisco that would require the federal government to reinstate more than 16,000 workers who were fired by six agencies earlier this year. A group of nonprofits challenging the layoffs argued that the terminations by the Office of Personnel Management violated several different parts of the federal law governing administrative agencies. But by an apparent vote of 7-2, the justices nonetheless put the order by Senior U.S. District Judge William Alsup on hold while the challenge to the firings continues, explaining that the nonprofits do not have a legal right, known as standing, to challenge the terminations.
In a brief unsigned order, the court explained that it was not weighing in on the claims by other plaintiffs in the lawsuit – specifically, unions representing government employees, whose claims Alsup did not address because he concluded that he likely did not have the power to hear them. The court also did not weigh in on the propriety of the firings more generally.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor indicated that she would have denied the Trump administration’s request to pause Alsup’s order.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson also would have turned down the Trump administration’s plea, because she would not have reached the question of the nonprofits’ standing to sue at this stage of the case.
The layoffs of tens of thousands of probationary employees – that is, employees who have been newly hired for a position, usually within the past year – in February came as part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to reduce the size of the federal workforce.
A group of nonprofits, arguing that layoffs could lead to fewer government services, which could in turn harm their members, went to federal court in San Francisco, seeking to have the probationary employees returned to their jobs.
Alsup concluded that although federal agencies can fire their own employees, the “Office of Personnel Management has no authority to hire and fire employees in another agency.” On March 13, he issued a preliminary injunction that directed OPM and six federal agencies – the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, and the Treasury – to immediately bring back the probationary employees who had been fired.
A federal appeals court rejected the government’s request to put Alsup’s order on hold while its appeal – which the court agreed to fast-track – moved forward.
The Trump administration came to the Supreme Court on March 25, asking the justices to temporarily pause Alsup’s order. Sarah Harris, then the acting U.S. solicitor general, contended (among other things) that the nonprofits do not have a legal right to sue, known as standing, to challenge the layoffs. Alsup’s ruling, she argued, also lets “third parties hijack the employment relationship between the federal government and its workforce.”
The nonprofits countered that they have standing to sue because the layoffs will affect their members – for example, the firings of workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs “has already had and will imminently continue to have serious negative consequences” for the members of a veterans’ nonprofit who rely on federal services. And Alsup’s order, they wrote, simply “restored the status quo that existed prior to OPM’s illegal conduct.”
The two-paragraph order on Tuesday explained that Alsup’s order “was based solely on the allegations of the nine” nonprofits challenging the layoffs. But those allegations, the majority continued, “are presently insufficient” to give the nonprofits a legal right to sue. “This order does not address the claims of the other plaintiffs,” the majority noted, “which did not form the basis of” Alsup’s order.
Sotomayor noted only that she would have denied the Trump administration’s request, without explanation.
Jackson explained that, in an emergency appeal like this one, “where the issue is pending in the lower courts and the applicants have not demonstrated urgency in the form of interim irreparable harm,” she would not have ruled on the standing question at all.
Although the court put Alsup’s order on hold, a different federal judge in Maryland also has issued an order, which remains in effect for now, that requires the reinstatement of probationary employees at 20 federal agencies who live and work in the 19 states (along with the District of Columbia) that brought the case.
Tuesday’s order was the second in less than 24 hours putting a federal district judge’s order on hold and allowing – at least for now – the Trump administration to move forward with implementing its policies. On Monday evening, a closely divided court lifted a pair of orders by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg that had prohibited the government from removing noncitizens designated as members of a Venezuelan gang under a March 15 executive order issued by President Donald Trump. The majority in that case agreed with their dissenting colleagues – Sotomayor and Jackson, along with Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett – that noncitizens are entitled to notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal.
This article was originally published at Howe on the Court .
The post Justices pause order to reinstate fired federal employees appeared first on SCOTUSblog .
one of the Republicans who must sweat his reelection chances in 2026, North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, was not exactly subtle in his questioning of U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.
“Whose throat do I get to choke if this turns out to be wrong?” Tillis asked. He added, “I’m not condemning it because I’m not a trade expert. . . . I’m just trying to figure out whose throat I get to choke if it’s wrong and who I put up on a platform and thank them for the novel approach that was successful, if they’re right.”
Well, since he is a part of the party implementing this stuff, I guess some auto-asphyxiation may be in order. Especially since he could have voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment to help forestall where we are. Mitch McConnell is a prime candidate for not using his power to accomplish that feat as well.
And here’s a thought: maybe go talk to some talk experts if you don’t understand what is going on? You are not a helpless bystander. You are a US Senator!
From the linked piece:
A prolonged trade war would have serious repercussions for the Tar Heel State’s economy. According to the office of the U.S. Trade Representative, last year North Carolina exported a record $42.8 billion of goods to the world, making it the 15th largest state exporter of goods. In 2022, according to the latest data available, exports from North Carolina supported an estimated 145,000 jobs.
Bryson DeChambeau, the big-hitting LIV Golf star, teed it up alongside McIlroy with two set to battle it out for the Green Jacket over the
The Northern Irishman, 35, held his nerve in a tense play-off with England’s Justin Rose to end a barren 11-year major run and finally complete