The Everything Everywhere All At Once White House Vindicated By SCOTUS
But first, Elon Musk vs. "Peter Retarrdo"
Markets are bouncing back, a major win at SCOTUS for the White House last night — more on that in a minute, because first it’s really important that you know Elon Musk called Peter Navarro “Peter Retarrdo”.
Elon Musk, one of President Trump’s top advisers, continued his spat with Peter Navarro, Trump’s top adviser on trade policy, saying in a social media post that Navarro “is truly a moron.”
Musk’s retort came after Navarro said in a television interview on Monday that Musk–the chief executive of Tesla, one of the world’s largest makers of electric vehicles–is a “car assembler.” Navarro also said that the component parts of Musk’s vehicles are made overseas. “Tesla has the most American-made cars. Navarro is dumber than a sack of bricks,” Musk responded on Tuesday. In a separate social-media post, he called Navarro “Peter Retarrdo.”
This comes after Musk has been more openly pushing back against the idea that tariffs should be anything but sparks for negotiation — including posting the famed “I, Pencil” from Leonard E. Reed.
Samuel Gregg writes in The Spectator:
The new Trumpian tariff regime isn’t designed to completely shut down the US economy’s links with every other nation. While J.D. Vance claims that Trump believes in “economic self-sufficiency,” full-blown autarky is (so far) not on the Trump administration’s agenda.
Nonetheless, Liberation Day’s 10 percent universal tariff on all goods entering the United States and the stunning array of other tariffs applied to specific countries will significantly raise the costs of sourcing parts and undertaking the assembly process for any American company that uses imports in some fashion. That, incidentally, means the vast majority of businesses in America.
Some companies may feel the pinch more than others, but the pinch will be there. It comes in the form of higher costs, less competitiveness, and diminished efficiencies. These are some of the things that global markets around the world are presently trying to price into their estimation of future earnings and economic growth more generally.
Moreover, even if many countries approach the Trump administration to say that they are ready to negotiate, another major and ongoing effect of the Liberation Day tariffs will be massive uncertainty. Will China continue upping the stakes, or won’t it? What happens if, as part of the negotiating process, there are wild swings in tariff levels as numerous countries swap tariff blows with DC? How precisely does a US manufacturer plan ahead when they don’t know how much it will be paying every time one of their car- (or rocket-) parts crosses the Canadian or Mexican border, or docks at an American port?
In other words, massive uncertainty is part of the Trumpian tariff puzzle. And in conditions of widespread uncertainty, businesses invest less, employ fewer people and take far fewer risks. The end result is less profit and less growth.
Elon Musk is one of Donald Trump’s biggest supporters in the tech and business worlds. But he is also an entrepreneur who understands how domestic and international markets work. There may be people in the Trump administration (e.g., National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent) trying to counter the protectionist instincts of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and trade advisor Peter Navarro. They don’t, however, seem to be having the necessary impact – at least not yet.
By contrast, Musk’s voice is harder for Trump to ignore, however subtle the means by which Musk delivers his message. For America’s sake, I hope that he keeps pressing the point. In the long run, the American people – and maybe even their president – will thank Musk for doing so.
One has to think Musk has the advantage in this fight. More here:
Semafor: Markets Rebound After Sharp Losses, But Analysts Eye Further Falls
Semafor: White House, GOP Leaders Chill Momentum for Tariff Rebellion
Unherd: Luttwak on Why Tariffs Will Awaken the American Dream
Everything Everywhere All At Once
I write at The Spectator this morning:
The Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling lifting the order blocking the deportation of accused members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a significant legal victory for the Trump administration. More importantly, it’s also a policy vindication for those within this White House whose approach to government upon their return to Washington was to do everything, everywhere, all at once.
The legal victory itself was hailed by every prominent member of the President’s deportation team, with Attorney General Pam Bondi announcing she’d redouble her efforts, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem declaring that all those here illegally must “LEAVE NOW” and Stephen Miller practically ebullient in his interview last night with Sean Hannity.
“This was a huge, I mean a monumental victory for President Trump, the biggest legal win of this administration so far. A total embarrassment for crazy Judge Boasberg, who’s been trying to force this president to bring foreign alien terrorists back on American soil,” he said on Fox News’s Hannity, referring to the judge who blocked Trump’s use of the law. “This is a monumental, colossal victory – for the rule of law, for the Constitution, for our founding generation.”
The actual text of the decision, however, is also certain to be the basis for future challenges in these deportation efforts, as Josh Blackman notes. Justices agreed that while the Alien Enemies Act does allow for the Trump administration’s action, those deported must “receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal” and “the notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.” The debate about how much notice and what constitutes a reasonable time will be adjudicated next.
Taken in full, though, this is a very big ruling for the team around Trump – including Miller – who had faith in a theory about the 1798 AEA that no president has attempted: that by classifying these criminal organizations as essentially the military extension of another nation, it could aggressively target members for deportation just by order of the President. Not even done with the 100 days of his second presidency, Trump and his administration have believed in the power of moving faster than their opposition can keep up. They want to tee up novel legal theories about the power of the presidency to test this Supreme Court immediately, not to wait for cases to wind their way through the legal blockades thrown up by the left.
It’s enough to make heads spin not just in America, but all around the world. And it gives no signs of stopping. If in Trump’s first term he was oftentimes the lumbering T-Rex, lone lord of the jungle, this time around he has a bunch of velociraptors running around causing havoc at his behest. The question is whether it gets to be too much for the American appetite for change to bear – especially in the economic space, where moving fast can break things people depend on in their daily lives.
Tim Walz and Democrats’ Border Problem
One eye-opening part of the interview was when Walz was asked about the Harris-Walz ticket’s position on immigration and the disaster at the U.S.-Mexico border. His answer suggested that if Democrats had won the election last November, the problem at the border created by Biden would have continued under President Kamala Harris.
“On immigration,” Walz said, “what we were asking for is a bipartisan policy that strengthens immigration control, that recognizes that we need a workforce here, that they should be allowed here legally, and that, when they get here, they’re part of the American fabric.”
From that, it appears that Walz’s border policy was to legalize the migrants who were crossing illegally during the Biden years, get them jobs, and then make sure that they are “part of the American fabric.” At another point in the interview, Walz said, “None of us are saying we should be soft on the border.” But that sounds pretty soft on the border.
Walz continued: “I’m not going to say what we need to do is, we need to just arrest people and ship them to El Salvador. No, what we need to do, invest the money on the border. We need to make sure that we have the judges necessary to adjudicate things faster. We need to make sure, if you’re going to be in this country here legally, when you are, you’re going to be uplifted, celebrated, and part of this great American tapestry. And that is the bipartisan bill we had.”
That last part was a reference to legislation that Harris often claimed would fix the problems of thousands and thousands of migrants crossing the border every day and being allowed to stay in the United States. The bill, Harris said in many campaign appearances, would be the heart of her border and immigration policy. It never passed House or Senate votes, nor would it today if Walz and Harris were in the White House.
But what Walz’s interview really brings to mind is the fact that if he and Harris had been elected, the border problem would still be with us. One of the remarkable things about the second Trump administration is how quickly Trump stopped the massive and destructive flow of illegal crossers over the border. The border crisis, once named in opinion polls as one of the nation’s most pressing issues, virtually disappeared overnight…
Trump has, of course, since moved on to other issues and controversies. But with his discussion of the border, Walz gave us a deeply troubling glimpse of what might have been.
Feature
Items of Interest
Foreign
The National Interest: The Houthis’ Road to Nowhere
The Spectator: Why Trump & Bibi Get Each Other
The Spectator: Trump is Reordering the World Order as Promised
Wall Street Journal: Trump Says U.S. Will Hold Direct Talks with Iran
Politico: Trump Says EU Must Buy $350B of U.S. Energy to Get Tariff Relief
Mediaite: Trump Touts Plan For Trillion Dollar Military Budget
Domestic
Politico: Budget Hawks Rise Up Against Budget Resolution
Punchbowl News: How Johnson Plans to Quell the Rebellion
Axios: Border Czar Says ICE Determines Gang Membership, Deport Decisions
Punchbowl News: Who the DCCC is Targeting in 2026.
Washington City Paper: Trump Will Get Massive DC Military Parade
New York Post: MTA, Trump Admin Reach Congestion Pricing Agreement
Newsweek: Amy Coney Barrett Sparks Fury For Going Against Trump
Media
Mediaite: Kudlow Grills Scott Bessent on Tariffs
2028
Politico: ESPN Host Stephen A. Smith Sounds a Lot More Like a Candidate
Ephemera
Houston Chronicle: Houston Collapses in Last Seconds, Florida Wins
The Ringer: The Winners and Losers of March Madness
Hollywood Reporter: Did Minecraft Save Mike de Luca and Pam Abdy?
Hollywood Reporter: The White Lotus 3 Finale a Low Point for Series?
Hollywood Reporter: Yellowstone Character Guide to the Dutton Family Tree
The Cut: Meghan Markle Can’t Catch a Break With New Company
The New Yorker: The Dire Wolf is Back
Quote
“It is even more astounding that the pencil was ever produced. No one sitting in a central office gave orders to these thousands of people. No military police enforced the orders that were not given. These people live in many lands, speak different languages, practice different religions, may even hate one another—yet none of these differences prevented them from cooperating to produce a pencil. How did it happen? Adam Smith gave us the answer two hundred years ago.”
— Milton Friedman