President Donald Trump
announced Wednesday afternoon that his promised tariffs will “kind reciprocal.”
At what he called a “Liberation Day”
event in the Rose Garden of the White House, Trump said the tariffs that he announced will be “not full reciprocal,” but “approximately half” of what foreign countries levy on American imports.
“This is kind reciprocal
, but what we do is we cut it in half. We charge them,” he said. “My answer is very simple. If they complain, if you want your tariff rate to be zero, then you build your product right here in America, because there is no tariff.”
The president displayed a chart showing “kind reciprocal” tariff rates.
Starting Thursday, the United States will implement reciprocal tariffs on other nations, Trump said.
“It’s been a long time since we even thought of that,” he said. “We used to think about it a lot. We didn’t think about it for many decades. And you see what’s happened for nations that treat us badly. We will calculate the combined rate of all their tariffs, nonmonetary barriers, and other forms of cheating.”
“We will charge them approximately half of what they are, and have been, charging us, so the tariffs will be not a full reciprocal,” Trump continued. “I could have done that, yes, but it would have been tough for a lot of countries who didn’t want to do that.”
Trump boasted of the large number of companies who have moved production to, or back to, the United States, such as Stellantis, General Motors, GE Aerospace, Honda, Nissan, Hyundai, and more, in only his first two-and-a-half months back in office.
“We’ve seen companies coming in like never seen before, likewise to all of the foreign presidents, prime ministers, kings, queens, ambassadors and everyone else who will soon be calling to ask for exemptions from these tariffs,” Trump said. “I say, ‘Terminate your own tariffs, drop your barriers. Don’t manipulate your currencies.’”
Trump’s tariffs will transform the U.S. into an “entirely different country,” he said, adding that that will be “fantastic for the workers” and “fantastic for everyone.”
“There will never have been a transformation of a country like the transformation that’s already happening in the United States of America. It’s an incredible thing to watch,” the president said, “and it’s incredible to meet with the top people, people that you read about, very wealthy people, or people that are great managers and executives and presidents of big public companies, and to watch the enthusiasm they have now that they didn’t have.”
Threats of tariffs have already caused some foreign leaders to lift their tariffs on the U.S.
Israel canceled all tariffs
on American products on Tuesday night, just a day after Canadian trade representatives indicated no retaliatory tariffs would be issued.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum
similarly said no “tit for tat” retaliatory tariffs would be imposed, and Ontario Premier Doug Ford offered to negotiate dropping trade barriers on both sides.
Trump predicted complaints from “globalists and the outsourcers and special interests and the fake news” about his “Liberation Day” announcement.
“But never forget, every prediction our opponents made about trade for the last 30 years has been proven totally wrong,” Trump said.
Conservative members of the House of Representatives are contemplating attempting to ban marijuana in the District of Columbia
by amending a funding bill in Congress.
The District relies on some federal funding
to pay for part of its budget. Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus are discussing connecting the funding to conservative priorities in a modified version of a Senate budget bill
to fund the District.
Caucus members have also proposed restricting D.C. government funding for abortions and requiring that the District allow concealed-carry licenses for guns.
Rep. Andy Harris
, R-Md., who chairs the House Freedom Caucus
, has reportedly asked
House Republican leadership to provide time for members of Congress to consider how to modify the D.C. budget resolution to potentially include conservative policies on drugs, abortion, and guns
Harris has a history of opposing lax drug enforcement when it comes to cannabis. In 2014, the D.C. Council approved a bill
that decriminalized marijuana and made possession of up to one ounce of the Schedule I substance in public punishable by a mere $25 fine.
Harris opposed the measure
at the time. According to the Maryland congressman
, one ounce translates to about 100 joints. Harris proposed an amendment
to prevent the District from using tax revenues to enforce decriminalization and decried the new policy as failing to protect minors.
D.C. voters subsequently approved a referendum
that legalized marijuana by a margin of seven to three. That vote allowed residents of the District who are 21 years old or older to possess up to two ounces of marijuana. It also allowed them to grow three marijuana plants at home.
Harris, a former Navy Medical Corps officer
who practiced anesthesiology for nearly three decades, noted the harmful effects of marijuana.
“The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have held long-standing opinions that marijuana is a psychoactive drug that is both addictive and harmful,” Harris, a physician and anesthesiologist, told The Daily Signal.
The DEA explained
that marijuana leads to difficulties with memory, thinking, and problem-solving, and loss of coordination. It also notes that long-term and regular usage of the drug can lead to physical dependence and withdrawal symptoms after one discontinues using it.
“Despite a lack of much scientific research showing safety, over three dozen states have already legalized the recreational use of marijuana. The American public deserves to know the potential harm of modern marijuana on the human body. While I support additional research for the use of medical marijuana, my position on recreational marijuana remains the same: I categorically oppose it,” Harris said.
Nine Planned Parenthood regional affiliates received notice Monday that the federal funding they were receiving through the law known as Title X is being temporarily withheld, according to a report from Politico.
The administration is looking into possible violations of President Donald Trump’s executive order banning diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the federal government and by federal contractors and his order preventing illegal aliens from obtaining taxpayer-funded benefits.
Title X, enacted as a bipartisan measure in the 1970s, provides public funding for family planning services. More than 300 Planned Parenthood facilities
are in the Title X network, according to the abortion provider.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will withhold payments pending its evaluation of possible violations.
“HHS is conducting this evaluation to ensure these entities are in full compliance with federal law and applicable grant terms and to ensure responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars,” HHS Deputy Press Secretary Emily Hilliard told The Daily Signal.
The department gave the Planned Parenthood affiliates
10 days to provide evidence that they will comply with Trump’s executive orders, according to Politico, and will inform them after that time if their grants are suspended or terminated.
Trump issued an executive order on his first day in office mandating all federal agencies prohibit grant recipients from promoting or participating in DEI efforts. And his order, “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders,” aims to prevent illegal aliens from receiving taxpayer-funded benefits.
“President Trump and Elon Musk are pushing their dangerous political agenda, stripping health care access from people nationwide, and not giving a second thought to the devastation they will cause,” Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund
, said in a statement.
“We know what happens when health care providers cannot use Title X funding: People across the country suffer, cancers go undetected, access to birth control is severely reduced, and the nation’s STI [sexually transmitted infections] crisis worsens,” she said. “Planned Parenthood Action Fund will fight to get this funding restored and to keep politicians out of health care.”
Planned Parenthood
performed approximately 400,000 abortions in 2023, The Daily Signal previously reported.
The funding pause comes after The Wall Street Journal reported the Trump administration will put on hold about $120 million in grant funding for “family planning” as it reviews whether recipients are in violation of Trump’s executive orders. According to the report, the proposed cuts could withhold about $20 million specifically from Planned Parenthood facilities in about 12 states.
Praise-and-worship music clashed with shouts of “Abortion is health care” as pro-life protesters and abortion supporters rallied outside the United States Supreme Court Wednesday during oral arguments in a case that could decide whether states can disqualify Planned Parenthood
from receiving Medicaid reimbursements.
When South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster disqualified Planned Parenthood
from receiving taxpayer funding under Medicaid in 2018, the abortion provider filed a federal lawsuit, and a district court forced the state to restore its funding. Medicaid is a health insurance program for the poor that is jointly funded with state and federal taxpayer dollars.
In this case, Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, South Carolina, represented by the Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom, is asking the court to affirm its ability to direct taxpayer funding away from abortion providers
like Planned Parenthood.
“Americans should not be forced to fund activist organizations like Planned Parenthood that perform abortions and provide dangerous gender-transition drugs to minors,” legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom Gabriella McIntyre told The Daily Signal outside the court.
“States should be able to direct their limited taxpayer funds to real health care, comprehensive health care, high-quality health care in their states, and exclude organizations like Planned Parenthood—whose primary business is abortion—from that public funding,” she said. “Americans simply don’t want to use their taxpayer dollars to prop up the abortion industry.”
The narrow legal question addresses whether the Medicaid Act’s “any qualified provider” provision unambiguously allows a Medicaid beneficiary to choose a specific medical provider and whether the individual beneficiary can sue to vindicate that right. In this case, Medicaid beneficiary Julie Edwards was denied coverage after obtaining services at Planned Parenthood South Atlantic.
During oral arguments that lasted more than an hour, Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel John Bursch argued the Medicaid Act does not create a right for an individual beneficiary to sue in federal court because its “any qualified provider” provision does not use unambiguous rights-creating language.
Bursch said state officials should be able to determine which health care providers can accept taxpayer funding through Medicaid without being dragged into court by a beneficiary.
“What the court has to decide is if in these spending clause statues, where the federal government sends money to states to administer care … if Congress has used such clear, explicit rights-creating language that it gives the beneficiary the ability to go to federal court,” Bursch told The Daily Signal. “Our contention is that this provider provision does not have any language like that.”
During the arguments, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan challenged Bursch as to what clear language in the Medicaid Act conferring such a right would look like.
“The fact that there was such a large disagreement among the justices and the lawyers as to what the language meant—that’s the very ambiguity that is the opposite of clear, unambiguous rights-creating language,” Bursch said.
Legal counsel for Planned Parenthood South Atlantic Nicole Saharsky argued Edwards may bring her federal suit against South Carolina because federal law uses rights-creating language—if not the word “right”—to allow an individual Medicaid beneficiary to obtain care from any qualified and willing provider.
“We have many life-affirming other places where women can go with their whole family to be taken care of,” Rodriguez said. “That’s what I want for low-income people. I want them to go in a place where they will be taken care of completely, where if she came out with her Pap smear abnormal, she will not be referred and thrown back out there not knowing where to go.”
Rodriguez worked for Planned Parenthood for 17 years as a center director before being fired for accusing the abortion provider of misusing funds and harming women during abortions.
One Planned Parenthood supporter outside the court said the decision in this case would hurt those who cannot afford to travel to other states for abortions.
“If they’re not given the resources to have safe abortions in all states, you’re just going to have these pockets of vulnerable groups of women who have been systematically just constantly beaten down,” Anamika Goswami said. “They are the ones who are going to be most impacted by this.”
Katie Daniel, director of legal affairs for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said states and the voters in them should decide how their taxpayer money is spent.
“This is an administration that has set as a priority good stewardship of our tax dollars,” Daniel told The Daily Signal outside the court. “The whole effort of DOGE [the Department of Government Efficiency] is revisiting the assumption that every dollar is going to a good, useful place. We think that abortion is a great place to start.”
Pro-life protester and Christopher Newport University student Pinnie Francis said the case is an important step toward defunding and abolishing abortion.
“I believe that it is not right for us to pay our taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood,” Francis said. “It is not something that I support, so my taxpayer money should not go towards it.”
Planned Parenthood did not follow up on The Daily Signal’s request for comment, but President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund Alexis McGill Johnson issued a statement saying Planned Parenthood will not back down from a fight.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis
called out state Rep. Randy Fine for “an underperformance by more than 50%” despite Florida Republicans winning two key special elections for the U.S. House Tuesday.
During a Wednesday interview on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom,” DeSantis said he thinks Fine “was in dire straits a few weeks ago” due to his record of being “a squish Republican.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis didn’t hold back when asked about Rep.-elect Randy Fine’s win in FL-06.
“You played a clip from Randy Fine, where he was just lying.”
“It was a underperformance for Randy Fine, and I think that he was in really dire straits a few weeks ago, partially because… pic.twitter.com/UFAfktRhBO
The governor pointed to Fine’s vote to make Florida a “de facto sanctuary state” for illegal aliens
, his opposition to DeSantis’s immigration efforts, and the “late” financial support he received from the Republican base as reasons for the “underperformance.”
DeSantis credited President Donald Trump
for Republican turnout at the polls, saying, “I think that this was trending to probably [be] a single-digit race, and then I think the president did a couple tele-town halls and election day turnout in that district was really, really strong for Republicans.”
He added, “[Republican voters
] didn’t really like the candidate, but when the president phoned it in, they said, all right, we’re gonna go do it.”
In Florida’s First Congressional District, former chief financial officer Jimmy Patronis defeated Democrat Gay Valimont by a margin of about 15 percentage points. In the Sixth District, former state senator Fine beat Democrat Josh Weil by about 14 points. Fine succeeds Republican Michael Waltz, who left the House to become Trump’s national security advisor
.
Weil’s campaign raised about 10 times more money
than Fine’s, leading to pre-election concerns among Republicans about maintaining the hotly contested House seat.
The Republican margin in the House now sits at 220-213
, a razor-thin majority. A party must hold a minimum of 218 seats to pass legislation in the House.
“BOTH FLORIDA HOUSE SEATS HAVE BEEN WON, BIG, BY THE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE. THE TRUMP ENDORSEMENT, AS ALWAYS, PROVED FAR GREATER THAN THE DEMOCRATS FORCES OF EVIL. CONGRATULATIONS TO AMERICA!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social following the win.
This is not the first time DeSantis has spoken against Fine. DeSantis released a statement
in February about why he opposed Fine’s immigration bill CS/SB 2-B
.
“I have vetoed CS/SB 2-B because stronger, more aggressive bills have been produced that will further establish Florida as the nation’s leader in immigration policy,” DeSantis wrote. He backed two other bills which “address the deficiencies” of Fine’s bill.
