Trump Cabinet secretary could be ‘forced to take the fall’ for tariff chaos: report
Financial markets are still reeling from this week's back-and-forth with the United States' key trade partners, as President Donald Trump announced and then almost immediately withdrew crippling new tariffs.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed Tuesday down another 478 points, down 1.1%. Trading on the S&P 500 closed after a decline of 0.7%, and the Nasdaq Composite was down 0.2%, for the worst day of trading since September according to Yahoo Finance. The stock market has been sliding amid fears that consumer spending would contract in response to tariffs Trump announced would be going into effect on Canada and Mexico in particular. While those tariffs have been reversed for now, Trump has indicated that 50% tariffs on imported steel and aluminum from Canada will still go into effect early Wednesday morning at midnight.
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Trump has attempted to boost investor confidence by walking back his previous comments to Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo in which he didn't rule out a recession happening as soon as this year. But Politico reported Tuesday that one of his top Cabinet secretaries may be "forced to take the fall," with "few friends in the administration" left to defend him.
According to the outlet, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — who co-chaired Trump's presidential transition team along with former World Wrestling Entertainment executive Linda McMahon (now Trump's secretary of education) — could be out of a job if the fallout over Trump's tariffs continues to roil markets. One unnamed source "close to the administration" told Politico that Lutnick was lately "trying to be a mini-Trump."
“I don’t think he got the memo that only Trump gets to be Trump,” the source said. “It just reinforces that he doesn’t really know how to do the job.”
Politico additionally reported that administration officials are "growing increasingly frustrated" with the commerce secretary, complaining that he often gets "out in front" of Trump and has "contradicted his messaging." They add that he has "a lack of understanding of even the basics about how tariffs and the economy work."
Last week, Lutnick made headlines after telling CNBC that "prices are going to rise" as a result of tariffs, but that companies can avoid tariffs by making their products in the United States. When hosts reminded him that companies offshore production because labor costs are lower, Lutnick proclaimed that manufacturing jobs would be done by "robots."
Click here to read Politico's report in its entirety.
Israel kills senior Hezbollah militant, frees four Lebanese prisoners
Israel said Tuesday it killed a senior Hezbollah militant responsible for drones and missiles, even as it freed Lebanese prisoners as a "goodwill" gesture to the country's new president.
Despite a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, Israel has continued to carry out air strikes in Lebanon, claiming they are necessary to prevent the Iran-backed militant group from rearming or re-establishing a presence along its northern border.
"Earlier today, the IAF (air force) conducted a precise intelligence-based strike in the area of Nabatieh in southern Lebanon, eliminating Hassan Abbas Ezzedine, the head of Hezbollah's aerial array in the Bader regional unit," the military said in a statement.
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It said it carried out a second strike on Tuesday in the Froun area, targeting several militants.
"Several terrorists were identified in a site used by Hezbollah in the area of Froun in southern Lebanon," the military said. "An IAF aircraft struck the suspects."
Lebanon's official National News Agency reported that two people were killed in the Israeli strikes.
"An enemy Israeli drone strike targeting a car on the Deir El-Zahrani road resulted in one fatality," the news agency said, citing the health ministry.
It later reported that a second person was killed in an Israeli air strike on a vehicle in the Froun area.
Although a truce reached on November 27 largely ended more than a year of hostilities — including two months of full-scale war in which Israeli ground troops crossed the border — Israel has continued to launch periodic strikes in Lebanese territory.
Israel was initially expected to withdraw from Lebanon by February 18, after missing a January deadline, but it has maintained a presence in five strategic locations.
The ceasefire also required Hezbollah to pull back north of the Litani River, about 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the border, and to dismantle any remaining military infrastructure in southern Lebanon.
- Border disputes -
In a separate development on Tuesday, Israel announced it had agreed to release five Lebanese citizens detained during its war with Hezbollah.
"In coordination with the United States and as a gesture to Lebanon's new president, Israel has agreed to release five Lebanese detainees," a statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun's office said four of the prisoners had been freed on Tuesday and the fifth would follow on Wednesday.
Their release followed a meeting earlier Tuesday in the Lebanese border town of Naqoura, attended by representatives of Israel, Lebanon and mediators France and the United States.
"During the meeting, it was agreed to establish three joint working groups aimed at stabilising the region," the prime minister's statement said.
"These groups will focus on the five points controlled by Israel in southern Lebanon, discussions on the Blue Line and remaining disputed areas, and the issue of Lebanese detainees held by Israel."
The Blue Line is the UN-patrolled demarcation line that has served as de facto border since 2000.
In an interview with Lebanese news channel Al Jadeed, US Deputy Special Envoy for the Middle East Morgan Ortagus emphasised Washington's efforts to resolve the border issue.
"We want to get a political resolution, finally, to the border disputes," Ortagus said.
"When it comes to the border agreement, the land border agreement, there are 13 points -- I think that six are still problematic," she said.
Ortagus said Israel had "withdrawn from over 99 percent of the territory".
"I feel fairly confident that... we can have final resolution on the five points and ultimately on the remaining issues related to the Blue Line".
‘I am not kidding!’ MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow stunned as GOP exploits loophole to cede power
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow went after congressional Republicans for quietly barreling forward with a tactic that effectively hands President Donald Trump their power to rescind his tariff policies on a silver platter.
The host devoted her opening monologue on Tuesday to a Republican plan to cede their ability under the National Emergencies Act to end Trump’s tariffs, which Maddow said are causing the American public and businesses across the nation “very real pain and loss of money.”
“So Republicans in Congress have the power to stop Trump from doing what he's doing on tariffs,” Maddow said. “What will they do with that power? The Democrats are going to force them to take a vote on this."
“They’re literally ceding their power. Giving it up. 'We don't want that power,'” Maddow said as she told viewers that Republican leaders "slipped language into a procedural measure that would prevent any such resolution to end the tariffs from receiving any vote this year.”
She added: “They literally had the power to stop Trump from doing something that is hurting the country materially every single day. They have the power to stop him from what he's doing, and so what did they decide to do with that power? They decided to give that power away, so they no longer have that power, so they don't have to decide what to do with it.”
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And, Maddow said, “it gets better” as Republicans found a way to “save themselves from the terrible dilemma of whether or not to cast a recorded vote.”
“Republicans had to figure out some way out of this trap,” she said. “The national emergency law says Congress can end the emergency – he declared a national emergency in order to give himself the ability to proclaim these tariffs.”
“The national emergency law says if a resolution to end the emergency is introduced in Congress, Congress must consider that. They have to start the process of voting on it within 15 days. So now we know Democrats are introducing that resolution that starts the clock ticking. That means Congress is going to have to vote on this in 15 days – tick tock – in order to get around that binding requirement in the law.”
So, she pointed out, Republicans “proclaimed that between now and the end of this Congress, that is just one long day. That’s just one day. The whole rest of the Congress. I am not kidding.”
Watch the clip below or at this link:
Trump’s ‘fix is in’ rhetoric is about to boomerang back and hit MAGA: ex-adviser
President Donald Trump's "fix is in" rhetoric could compel his biggest fans to skip voting, a new analysis contends.
Miles Taylor, chief of staff in the Department of Homeland Security during the president's first term, argued Thursday that Trump's constant pushing on the SAVE America Act is fundamentally flawed.
That's terrible news for GOP candidates on the November ballot who are already looking at an uphill battle, Taylor said.
Trump's approval ratings have collapsed to disastrous levels, recent reports show.
A recent poll shows just 30 percent of Americans approve of his performance—catastrophic territory achievable only when millions of your own supporters have abandoned you. Most damaging: his economic approval ratings hit their worst marks of either his term.
With that in mind, Taylor argued Trump was making a big mistake.
"The real headline is that the president is sabotaging his own side’s turnout in the very act of seeking to meddle in the election," he wrote. "It’s like a burglary that’s backfiring in real time. Trump is trying mightily to break into democracy’s back door but making such a racket with his crowbar that he’s woken up the whole neighborhood."
Pointing to Trump's infamous 2024 claim he would fix elections "so good, you're not gonna have to vote," Taylor argued the president's boast will boost complacency when he should be pushing for his MAGA fans to get off the couch.
Meanwhile, Trump has motivated Democrats.
"Every lever he pulls to 'tilt' the playing field risks convincing his own voters they don’t need to show up at all," he wrote before predicting, "Again, each of these election-rigging maneuvers tells the MAGA base: relax, the fix is in! Unfortunately for the Republican Party, the data shows its voters are getting the message. They’re becoming more indifferent."
He then quipped, "The president wanted to mount the biggest midterm election operation in modern history. Well, congratulations, Mr. President. You did it. Your 'get out the vote' operation is massive. The only catch is that it’s inspiring the opposition, not your own team."
