Raw Story

The Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial board trashed President Donald Trump's new idea to give Americans pricing relief as his "worst idea since tariffs," and potentially disastrous for prescription drug markets.

The conservative board has posted several times about the dangers of Trump's economic policy in recent months.

"President Trump and Republicans appear to be shrinking from reforming Medicaid, but that’s not the worst of it," wrote the board. "To replace the spending slowdown they won’t get in Medicaid, they may expand drug price controls. For that trade we could have elected Democrats."

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Specifically, the board wrote, Trump's idea would be to cap prices for prescription drugs covered under Medicaid at the cheapest rate they go for in other developed countries. This, they warned, would have severe unintended consequences — and wouldn't even make a dent in replacing the spending cuts the GOP is struggling to get the votes for in their budget reconciliation bill.

"Medicaid already receives hefty discounts for drugs under statutory formulas that require manufacturers to kick back a share of a medicine’s price to states in a rebate. Medicaid rebates in 2023 amounted to 52% of the program’s drug spending. Because Democrats in 2021 removed a cap on these rebates, state Medicaid programs may pay nothing for some drugs," said the report. "Drugs accounted for less than 4% of Medicaid spending ($21.2 billion) in 2023. The feds spent 10 times more on hospital payments. Even if Republicans required drug makers to give away medicines to Medicaid, savings wouldn’t come close to $880 billion."

Meanwhile, they wrote, this would actually cost more money in the long run.

"Drugs actually reduce Medicaid spending by preventing complications that require expensive hospital care. Take hepatitis C antiviral drugs, which have a 95% cure rate. A treatment course can cost upward of $24,000. But the Congressional Budget Office estimates that expanding Medicaid patient access to these drugs would save $7 billion over a decade."

The real risk, the board wrote, is that drug manufacturers would withdraw from Medicaid altogether rather than pay these rates, leaving more people to get sick and putting Medicaid on the hook for more expensive, drug-preventable illnesses.

"Drug price controls are a Democratic perennial," the board concluded. "If Republicans go along with Mr. Trump’s most-favored-nation plan, Democrats will invariably extend it to Medicare and the commercial market next time they control Congress. If Republicans lack the courage to reform Medicaid, they should at least do no harm."

The U.S. farming sector is on the brink of crisis as President Donald Trump's trade war implodes America's ability to ship crops abroad, reported CNBC on Tuesday morning.

This follows warnings from lawmakers in Trump's own party who represent agricultural areas, fearing the negative impact on the mounting taxes and retaliatory taxes from other countries.

"What began as a rapid drop in U.S. imports as shippers cut orders from manufacturing partners around the world has now extended into a nationwide export slump, with the U.S. agricultural sector and top farm products including soybeans, corn and beef taking the hardest hit," said the report. "The latest trade data shows that a slide in U.S. exports to the world, and China in particular, that began in January now extends to most U.S. ports, according to trade tracker Vizion, which analyzed U.S. export container bookings for the five-week period before President Donald Trump’s tariffs began and the five weeks after the tariffs took effect."

The numbers, per the report, are some of the worst that have been seen since the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted supply chains in 2020.

“We haven’t seen anything like this since the disruptions of summer 2020,” Vizion's CEO Kyle Henderson told CNBC. “That means goods expected to arrive in the next six to eight weeks simply won’t. With tariffs driving costs higher, small businesses are pausing orders. Products that once moved reliably are now twice as expensive, forcing importers into tough decisions.”

Even before these numbers, the report noted, the agricultural industry "has been warning of a 'crisis' and ports data is showing more evidence of lack of ability to move product out to global markets." Some of the worst hit areas are Pacific Northwest ports like Portland and Tacoma, which specialize in shipping U.S. crops to Asia; the Port of Portland has already seen a 51 percent drop in exports.

One of the core rationales for Trump enacting the tariffs in the first place was his paranoia over trade deficits, or countries sending more imports to the U.S. than they take in exports.

Economists have long agreed trade deficits aren't an inherently bad thing, but Trump and his advisers are convinced they are an indicator of unfair foreign trade practices, and explicitly set their tariffs based on the size of each country's trade deficit.

President Donald Trump is quickly running into a problem in court, Politico reported on Tuesday — federal judges have lost patience and trust with the Justice Department attorneys defending his policies.

The long string of cases in which DOJ attorneys under Pam Bondi have either been caught lying to judges, or the Trump administration has simply misrepresented judges' own rulings or tried to ignore them outright, are starting to work against them, wrote Ankush Khardori.

And it's eliminating a key advantage most administrations get in federal court.

"Judges and juries alike tend to trust DOJ lawyers out of the gate — even ones they have never met before — by virtue of their positions and their obligation to uphold the Constitution and advance the public interest," said the report.

"Many federal judges were once Justice Department lawyers themselves. All day every day, in federal courthouses across the country, the Justice Department benefits from a general presumption of good faith when a DOJ lawyer walks into a courtroom because people assume that they are both honest and well-intentioned. That may be changing."

A number of judges in recent months have grown visibly frustrated and distrusting, the report continued, as they "have been unusually sharp — at times directly questioning the honesty of the government’s lawyers and the accuracy of their factual claims — and taken together, they suggest that the administration’s officials are squandering the department’s credibility just when they need it most."

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The case of Maryland father Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who remains in an El Salvadoran prison despite multiple courts' demands the administration work for his return, is a clear example.

This even makes its way up to the Supreme Court itself, a body with a majority of six Republican appointees — and the problem stretches even further back to 2019, when the court struck down Trump's plan to use the Census to interrogate people about citizenship and claimed it was just an attempt to enforce anti-discrimination law.

“We are presented ... with an explanation for agency action that is incongruent with what the record reveals about the agency’s priorities and decisionmaking process,” wrote Roberts, effectively calling out the DOJ's dishonesty.

"We may get our first real sign next week of whether these credibility concerns have reached any of the Supreme Court’s Republican appointees — who are now entering a period in which they will have to directly and substantively engage with the Trump administration’s unprecedented effort to expand the powers of the presidency, and who now hold the fate of much of Trump’s second-term agenda in their hands," the report concluded.

CNN face-checker Daniel Dale made clear Tuesday morning that President Donald Trump is “wildly overstating” when he bashes Canada.

The comments came ahead of Trump’s meeting Tuesday with the new Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney.

Dale took aim at the president's claim that Canada imposes high tariffs on its neighbor.

“The facts are that Canada is a low-tariff country,” Dale said. “The last international data we have from 2022, the World Bank published that Canada was 102nd on a list of 137 countries for average tariffs. It had lower average tariffs than the United States.”

He noted Trump’s claims about Canada's agricultural tariffs are also false. “[Trump] does not mention that those high dairy tariffs only kick in after a certain quantity of tariff-free U.S. exports to Canada, a certain quantity negotiated in his own USMCA are hit, and that the U.S. is not even close to hitting those maximum quantities,” Dale said.

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“[Trump] also does not mention that the U.S. Department of Agriculture itself says on its website that almost all U.S. agricultural exports to Canada are tariff-free and barrier-free. So the milk stuff, the dairy stuff that exists, but again, there are exemptions. And number two, those are the exception, not the rule.”

He later went on to criticize Trump’s claim that the United States has a massive trade deficit with its neighbor to the north. “[Trump] says the number 200 billion, almost every time he talks about Canada, it is wildly overstated,” Dale said. “So the United States' goods and services trade deficit with Canada in 2024 was under 40 billion.”

Dale shortly after corrected himself, “It's almost about 36 billion, I'm sorry. So he's multiplying it several times. Now, if you only talk about trade in goods and ignore the services trade at which the United States excels, he's still grossly exaggerating it.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

- YouTube youtu.be

President Donald Trump spoke for an hour with NBC News White House correspondent Kristen Welker and claimed that things going wrong in America are the fault of former President Joe Biden — and things that go well are because of him.

The comment prompted an MSNBC economics panel to laugh Monday.

“When does it become the Trump economy?” Welker asked Trump in the extensive interview that aired Sunday.

“It partially is right now,” Trump replied. “I think the good parts are the Trump economy, and the bad parts are the Biden economy.”

Trump alleged the interview was "dishonest."

Speaking Monday, MSNBC host Ana Cabrera asked for a reaction from Jared Bernstein, former chairman of the Board of Economic Advisers.

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Well, my reaction is that if this interview goes well, it's because of me. And if it goes badly, it's because of the other panelists," Bernstein said, as the other panelists and the host cracked up laughing. "It's as simple as that."

Cabrera quipped, "That's what I tell my producers. It's your fault if I mess up."

"I can't imagine anyone hearing that thinking it's anything other than ridiculous," agreed Bernstein.

NBC News senior business correspondent Christine Romans warned that the big banks anticipate a coming recession due to Trump's trade war.

"Well, I mean, there's a big concern about his tariffs and whether they slow growth, and maybe lead to higher inflation, and the major banks are really struggling with whether this could be something that, instead of just being slower growth and higher inflation, actually is something really terrible: A recession," she said.

"JP Morgan puts it at a 60% chance [of] a recession. Goldman Sachs and Citi about a 40% to 45% chance. But Bank of America says you could avoid one. What does that mean? It means no one knows for sure."

However, the bad news is the U.S. isn't "debating how blockbuster the economy is. We're debating how bad the pain will be," she added.

See the full clip below or at the link here.

- YouTube youtu.be

A new report from The Guardian delves into the "new media" personalities given prime seats in the White House press room that many say are perpetuating propaganda through "fawning, softball, or otherwise baffling questions.”

One example is Podcast host Tim Pool, who joined the press room last week.

A known far-right conspiracy theorist, Pool was paid almost $10 million by Russian state media operatives to publish videos promoting Moscow’s interests and agenda, according to the Guardian.

In his question to Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, Pool attacked media outlets by asking, “I’m wondering if you can comment on their unprofessional behavior as well as elaborate if there’s any plans to expand access to new companies?”

“We want to welcome all viewpoints into this room,” Leavitt replied.

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Another pro-Trump ‘influencer’ allowed into the press room is Dominick McGee. Known as Dom Lucre, the Guardian described him as a “self-styled Black Maga influencer.”

He is known to disseminate conspiracy theories on social media, including amplifying Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election he lost was fraudulent, and promoting the QAnon fiction that the so-called deep state was conspiring to usurp the president.

He asked Leavitt, “Is there any possibility for names such as Barack Hussein Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, to ever possibly get investigated for … any of the wrongdoings they might have done?”

The press secretary called the question “refreshing.”

One softball question Leavitt received came from TikTok creator Link Lauren.

Known as “Maga Malfoy” because of his resemblance to the Harry Potter character Draco Malfoy, he asked, “You’re a very high-profile young mother who seems to juggle and balance it all beautifully. What advice do you have to young parents out there who are starting their careers, having kids, building families, and trying to find that balance so desperately?”

Leavitt had no advice to offer.