Preview: • Fox-Dominion trial delay 'is not unusual,' judge says • Fox News' defamation battle isn't stopping Trump's election lies

Preview: The judge just announced in court that a settlement has been reached in the historic defamation case between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems.

Preview: A settlement has been reached in Dominion Voting Systems' defamation case against Fox News, the judge for the case announced. The network will pay more than $787 million to Dominion, a lawyer for the company said.

Preview: • DeSantis goes to Washington, a place he once despised, looking for support to take on Trump • Opinion: For the GOP to win, it must ditch Trump • Chris Christie mulling 2024 White House bid • Analysis: The fire next time has begun burning in Tennessee

Preview: • 'A major part of Ralph died': Aunt of teen shot after ringing wrong doorbell speaks • 20-year-old woman shot after friend turned into the wrong driveway in upstate New York, officials say

Preview: Newly released body camera footage shows firefighters and sheriff's deputies rushing to help actor Jeremy Renner after a near-fatal snowplow accident in January. The "Avengers" actor broke more than 30 bones and suffered other severe injuries. CNN's Chloe Melas has more.

Preview: It's sourdough bread and handstands for Jake Gyllenhaal and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Preview: A tiny intruder infiltrated White House grounds Tuesday, prompting a swift response from the US Secret Service.

Preview: Asian markets plunge as world reels from Trump tariff announcement – business live  The Guardian ‘It’s a Disaster’: Global Markets Slide After Trump Unveils Tariffs  The New York Times Trump’s ‘Reciprocal’ Tariff Formula Is All About Trade Deficits  Bloomberg Regulating Imports with a Reciprocal Tariff to Rectify Trade Practices that Contribute to Large and Persistent Annual United States Goods Trade Deficits  The White House (.gov) Trump tariff global reaction – country by country  The Guardian

Preview: Wisconsin loss a warning sign for GOP about Musk’s campaign role  CNN Democrats’ win in Wisconsin court race also is a big loss for Elon Musk  AP News ‘Loser’: Musk endures wave of gloating on X after liberal judge wins Wisconsin race  The Guardian Elon Musk’s last 24 hours: A Wisconsin Supreme Court loss, Tesla sales plunge and reports he may soon leave role in Trump White House  Yahoo Wisconsin Republicans Hit Their Vote Target, but Democrats Blew Past Theirs  The New York Times

Preview: Myanmar Military Declares Temporary Truce After Earthquake  The New York Times Inside Mandalay: BBC finds huge devastation and little help for Myanmar quake survivors  BBC Myanmar’s military declares a ceasefire to ease quake relief as deaths pass 3,000  AP News With U.S. absent, China steps in for earthquake-hit Myanmar  Reuters News Wrap: Myanmar earthquake death toll tops 3,000 as civil war hampers relief efforts  PBS

Preview: Sen. Cory Booker on his marathon, 25-hour speech on the Senate floor  NPR The Physiology of Cory Booker’s 25-Hour Senate Speech  The New York Times Booker says he hoped floor speech would be something that ‘would unify our caucus’  The Hill Yes I asked: @SenBooker comms director Jeff Giertz tells me "No, Booker is not" wearing a catheter or a diaper. He's now 5 minutes from the longest Senate speech ever at 24+ hours. (Texans remember Wendy Davis, who went 13 hours with a catheter and Mi  x.com Booker makes a stand against Trump – and doesn’t stop for 25 hours  The Guardian

Preview: 5 things to know about Republicans’ new blueprint to pass Trump’s agenda  The Hill Republicans Plan to Skirt Senate Rules to Push Through More Tax Cuts  The New York Times Senate Republicans move forward with their budget plan to promote Trump's agenda  NPR Senate Republicans set to bypass parliamentarian on Trump tax cuts  The Hill Senate GOP unveils new budget blueprint and braces for another vote-a-rama  CNN

Preview: Tornadoes Reported in South and Midwest Amid Powerful Storm System  The New York Times Monstrous tornado rips across Arkansas as heartland endures 'particularly dangerous situation'  FOX Weather Tornado emergency in Arkansas as storms batter the South, Midwest; 1 reported dead  USA Today Tornadoes damage homes and power lines as storms wallop Midwest and South  AP News Tornadoes, heavy rains rip across central, southern US  Reuters

Preview: Judge dismisses Eric Adams case, denying DOJ an opportunity to revive it later  Politico Judge dismisses Eric Adams case and says it cannot be brought again, defying Trump DOJ  CNN NYC Mayor Eric Adams' primary challengers react to dismissal of corruption charges  ABC7 New York Mayor Eric Adams' case dismissed with prejudice despite Trump admin's request to allow for later prosecution  ABC News US judge throws out corruption case against NYC Mayor Eric Adams  Al Jazeera

Preview: Musk still plans a major role in midterm elections despite loss in Wisconsin: Sources  ABC News Never Mind Wisconsin. The GOP Should be Worried About the Florida Results.  Politico For Trump, Elon Musk Is a Liability, but Still Useful for Now  The New York Times Musk to keep spending on politics despite Wisconsin loss, GOP doubts  The Washington Post Trump and GOP Confront Elon Musk Quandary After Wisconsin Defeat  WSJ

Preview: Shooter meticulously planned Nashville Covenant school attack for years. Here's how that happened  AP News Mass shooter who killed 6 people at The Covenant School had no grudge against victims but was fueled by a quest for notoriety  CNN Police close investigation into Covenant School shooting, saying assailant acted alone for notoriety  WPLN News Covenant School trans shooter plotted Nashville attack for years, kept notebooks with plans: final report  Fox News Full investigative report released in deadly Covenant School shooting  Https://Www.Wsmv.Com

Preview: Mike Waltz’s team set up at least 20 Signal chats for national security work – report  The Guardian Waltz’s team set up at least 20 Signal group chats for crises across the world  Politico Waltz and staff used Gmail for government communications, officials say  The Washington Post New allegations against the White House’s Waltz suggest Signal chat scandal isn’t over  MSNBC News Scoop: Hakeem Jeffries slams Mike Waltz as "totally unqualified" over Gmail report  Axios

Preview: North Carolina's Thom Tillis warned of "irreparable" damage.

Preview: Michael Kosta sums up the case against Trump 10 weeks into the new administration.

Preview: Rep. Jim McGovern said the GOP's "family values" claims are far off the fairway.

Preview: The actor was known for his roles in hit films including "Top Gun," "Batman Forever," "The Doors" and Michael Mann's "Heat."

Preview: The tech billionaire tried to intervene in Wisconsin's state Supreme Court race. It didn't go so well.

Preview: The billionaire seemingly dodged Jessica Tarlov's question when asked to provide an "explanation" to the American people.

Preview: The rapper addressed his infamous award show moment in a barbershop-like debate on a cut off his new album.

Preview: Kimberly Sullivan allegedly kept her stepson locked up in a house he later set ablaze in a bid for freedom.

Preview: "I may have misinterpreted that, and I apologize for that," the congresswoman said after being informed of her error.

Preview: Waltz and at least one senior aide used the commercial email service to discuss sensitive government matters, The Washington Post reported.

Preview: Mike Johnson's loss on proxy voting to Anna Paulina Luna — and decision to tell Congress to go home — shows his weakness when Trump isn't by his side.

Preview: When four constitutional amendments lost Saturday, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry blamed "far left liberals" and George Soros instead of accepting the voters' will.

Preview: “The DNC should think about hiring Elon Musk and sending him to every race that we're in. Because we will win,” jokes Gov. Tim Walz on Musk’s “absolute massacre” in the Wisconsin election.

Preview: The 51-48 vote supporting Sen. Tim Kaine's resolution represented the most striking bipartisan rebuke of White House policy since Trump's second term began.

Preview: Some of MAGA world’s most influential figures, like Joe Rogan and Ann Coulter, are turning on Trump over his immigration crackdown and mass deportations.

Preview: The Wisconsin Supreme Court election results show that Democrats can pick up ground in rural areas — and they don’t have to grovel to do it.

Preview: Vice President JD Vance's brief trip to Greenland showed that the Trump administration is quite serious about acquiring the island nation.

Preview: President Donald Trump has floated tariff relief for China in exchange for the country’s approval of a deal to sell TikTok to a U.S. buyer. That proposal has predictably been panned by Democrats and Republicans alike.

Preview: Republicans’ war on abortion and Planned Parenthood could wind up curbing Medicaid patients’ health care for things having nothing to do with abortion — such as cancer screenings, blood work and annual physicals.

Preview: MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell explains how four Senate Republicans said “loud and clear” with their vote to undo Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada that “tariffs are taxes” on the same day Trump levied the “biggest tax increase in history” with his “cowardly supporters in Congress” who vowed to never raise taxes on Americans.

Preview: President Trump says the tariffs will encourage investment in U.S. factories, but analysts say car buyers will have to pay thousands more.

Preview: A measure to cancel some Canadian tariffs is all but certain to stall in the House. But with a handful of Republicans in favor, the vote sent a signal of opposition to the levies.

Preview: None of the nation’s top-10 firms by revenue have signed a legal brief demonstrating support for the law firm that is resisting an executive order.

Preview: Milbank, based in Manhattan, agreed to provide $100 million in pro bono legal services to causes supported by the president and the firm.

Preview: Elon Musk has become a valuable heat shield for a president who avoids blame at any cost.

Preview: The liberal candidate in the state’s Supreme Court race benefited from outsize Democratic turnout as counties swung left across the state.

Preview: After a failed $20 million effort to tilt a State Supreme Court race, Elon Musk joins the ranks of billionaires frustrated by the laws of politics.

Preview: Before Wisconsin’s election, a right-wing group rallied for voters’ attention with unauthorized photos of Emily Ratajkowski and a shirtless man holding a dog.

Preview: The scene in the Chinese territory is concentrated at a few beaches with inconsistent swell. One intrepid surfer says it’s all about “turning nothing into something.”

Preview: The secretary of state’s trip comes amid an abrupt shift in relations between the United States and Europe after close cooperation during the Biden era.

Preview: House GOP leadership fought as hard against this as they have against anything.

Preview: He’s turning basic groceries into luxury items.

Preview: There has to be a different way.

Preview: My friend is a program scientist for the International Space Station. She told me all I needed to know.

Preview: I'm not sure keeping the peace is worth it anymore.

Preview: How can she be treating us like this?

Preview: Test your wits on the Slate Quiz for April 2, 2025.

Preview: Take a quick break with our daily 5x5 grid.

Preview: Ready for some wordplay? Sharpen your skills with Slate’s puzzle for April 2, 2025.

Preview: Most Republicans in Congress are free-traders at their core. So why are they letting the president run wild?

Preview: A billboards paid for by the Canadian government protesting US tariffs. | Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff: Today I’m focusing on Donald Trump saying he’s imposing tariffs on products from around the world. If real and permanent — two big ifs — the policies represent a shift in economic policy that will have major effects on all Americans. What’s the latest? Trump today promised a 10 percent tariff on all foreign goods, with goods from many countries — including some of our largest trading partners — being taxed at a far higher rate. Trump also said certain foreign-made cars would face import taxes of 25 percent. Trump said the tariffs would take effect right away, though the exact timing is unclear. Is it real this time? This was Trump’s most sweeping tariff announcement to date, and he announced it during a high-profile White House ceremony, suggesting these tariffs may be here to stay. That said, it was only a month ago that Trump announced tariffs on our largest trading partners, only to rescind or delay some of them days after they took effect.  Can Trump do this without Congress? There will likely be legal challenges, but existing law gives the president wide authority to unilaterally impose tariffs. What do tariffs mean for you? In the short term, higher prices. Tariffs are taxes paid by importers and passed on to consumers, so, if they remain in place, you can expect to pay more for a sweeping range of goods. Economists also fear that this tariff policy could kick off a recession, particularly as other countries promise to counter with taxes on US exports. What’s the big picture? There are valid critiques of past US free trade policies — particularly in how they’ve hurt certain communities and segments of the labor force. But economists are skeptical Trump can bring back US manufacturing at anywhere near the scale he’s promising, and they’re confident these new taxes will result in severe and widespread economic pain. And with that, it’s time to log off… If you want a high-brow reprieve from the chaos, Vox’s Unexplainable podcast has a great new episode about deep-sea microbes — ancient organisms so different from the rest of the planet’s creatures that they’re raising questions about what it means to even be alive. (As an added bonus, Vox members can now listen ad-free!) I loved this podcast, but if you’re having a “just get through it” kind of Wednesday, might I recommend 3 minutes and 23 seconds of tropical birds’ mating dances? Thanks so much for reading, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow.

Preview: President Donald Trump during a Cabinet meeting at the White House, on March 24, 2025. | Samuel Corum/Sipa/Bloomberg via Getty Images Donald Trump has said that “tariff” is the “most beautiful word in the dictionary.” And throughout his first months in office, he has given Americans plenty of cause for googling that word’s definition. The president announced Wednesday — a day he dubbed “Liberation Day” — that he will impose tariffs of at least 10 percent on all foreign-made goods. For products made in China, the tariff rate will be 34 percent; for those made in Vietnam, it will be 46 percent; for the European Union, it will be 20 percent. Trump framed these tariffs as “reciprocal,” meaning that that they match the level of trade restrictions that each foreign nation imposes on US products. But this is not true — Trump’s tariffs greatly exceed those of America’s targeted trade partners. Before Wednesday, Trump had already announced tariffs on steel and aluminum made outside the US, all products made in Canada or Mexico, all Chinese goods, and all foreign-made cars, among other things. The president’s prolific and haphazard tariff declarations have tanked stock markets, soured consumer sentiment, and thrilled some longtime critics of globalization.  Meanwhile, they’ve left some Americans concerned and confused; tariffs arguably haven’t been this relevant to the US economy in nearly a century. So many are understandably unsure about what tariffs are, how they affect consumers, why governments would implement them, and whether the president’s policy will work on its own terms. Here’s the short answer: Tariffs are a tax on imported goods. They generally make affected consumer products more expensive. In theory, well-designed tariffs will also encourage targeted industries to produce more in the United States. And manufacturing certain goods domestically — instead of importing them from abroad —may have national security or economic benefits. Trump’s own rationales for his tariffs are numerous and shifting: He sees them as a tool for raising revenue, enhancing national security, and revitalizing the US economy by increasing domestic manufacturing jobs. But the president’s tariffs are so broad, high, and ever-changing that they could actually backfire. What are tariffs? How will they affect consumers?  To understand what tariffs are — and how they work — it’s helpful to consider a concrete example. On April 3, Trump will impose a 25 percent tariff on all cars made outside the United States. This means businesses that import foreign-made automobiles — such as car dealerships — will need to pay a 25 percent tax on every foreign vehicle that they purchase. When a business’s costs rise, it typically tries to compensate by raising prices. And the president actually needs his auto tariffs to raise the prices of foreign cars: The official point of this tariff is to encourage Americans to buy more domestically produced cars, so that more auto manufacturers locate production in the US. If the tariff doesn’t make foreign-made cars more expensive for US consumers, it won’t give them any incentive to “buy American.” In practice, Trump’s auto tariffs are likely to increase the prices of all cars, including American-made ones. This is for two reasons: First, US car manufacturers will need to pay tariffs on foreign-made auto parts. And second, US auto companies will face weaker competition. Previously, American carmakers couldn’t raise prices without fearing that doing so would lead potential customers to purchase a German, Japanese, or South Korean car instead. Trump’s tariffs make that much less of a concern.  For these reasons, economists have estimated that Trump’s tariffs will raise US car prices by between $4,000 and $15,000 per vehicle.  These same basic dynamics apply to tariffs on other goods. Put a tariff on foreign-made washing machines, and US retailers that import such appliances will raise prices. American washing machine makers, meanwhile, will be able to charge more due to weaker competition.  And this actually happened: In 2018, Trump put a tariff on washing machines, which stayed in effect until 2023. During the four years that those tariffs were in place, the cost of laundry equipment in the US rose by 34 percent, much higher than the overall inflation rate over that period. Trump’s current tariffs are poised to have an even bigger impact on Americans’ finances. According to a recent estimate from the Yale Budget Lab, Trump’s tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China alone could reduce the average US household’s disposable income by as much as $2,000. If tariffs hurt consumers, why would governments impose them? What are the benefits of tariffs? There is little question that tariffs are bad for consumers. But in theory, they could still serve a nation’s interests in at least three ways: By generating revenue. Since tariffs are a tax, they provide the government with revenue that it can use to pay down debts or finance spending. The US government actually used tariffs as its primary revenue source from the republic’s founding until the Civil War. But since the federal income tax was introduced in 1913, tariffs have become an increasingly marginal source of funds for the government. Trump says he wants to change this. In fact, he has called for replacing income taxes with tariffs. And his administration claims that its auto tariffs will bring in $100 billion of revenue this year.  By nurturing highly valuable domestic industries. Many nations have successfully used tariffs to facilitate economic development.  For example, beginning in the 1960s, South Korea sought to build up its domestic car industry. But getting such an industry off the ground is difficult. In their first years of operation, South Korea carmakers had little hope of producing automobiles that were competitive with foreign ones in quality or price. By placing high tariffs on foreign-made cars, the South Korean government ensured that its domestic automakers would have a market for their less-than-stellar vehicles. Today, South Korean brands like Kia and Hyundai are globally competitive. America’s car industry is much more mature today than South Korea’s was in the 1960s. But American auto manufacturers cannot make electric vehicles as efficiently as China can. Economic analysts disagree about whether it is important for America to have a globally competitive EV sector. But if we do want to nurture our electric vehicle industry, it makes some sense to put high tariffs on Chinese EVs — as both Joe Biden and Trump have done. By improving national security. Some goods and commodities have military value. Relying on foreign nations for steel, ammunition, advanced semiconductors, or various other technologies could undermine a country’s national security — after all, foreign nations could theoretically choke off America’s access to militarily valuable technologies in the midst of a conflict. And many of Trump’s tariffs are officially intended to enhance America’s capacity to produce materials necessary for war. How have recent administrations used tariffs? The United States had used tariffs to nurture its infant industries during the 19th and early 20th centuries. But in the wake of World War II, America pursued the open exchange of goods across borders.  With much of Europe and Asia in ruins, US manufacturers did not need tariffs to dominate global industry. Meanwhile, America’s foreign policy establishment feared that communism would take root in Western Europe and Japan if they did not successfully rebuild their industrial economies. Therefore, to foster healthy capitalist growth abroad — while lowering prices for Americans — the US pursued tariff reduction. The United States did occasionally enact new tariffs between the Second World War and Trump’s first election. For example, in 1987, Ronald Reagan put a 100 percent tariff on Japanese computers, televisions, and power tools, after Japan blocked US-made semiconductors from its market. But the general direction of US trade policy between Harry Truman’s presidency and Trump’s first term was toward freer trade.  What will be the effect of Trump’s tariffs specifically?  Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that Trump’s tariffs will generate reliable revenue, strengthen American manufacturing, or improve US national security. (And their odds of advancing Trump’s more peculiar trade policy goals, such as coercing Canada into becoming the 51st state, are even slimmer.)  There is a simple problem with tariffs as a revenue source: The more a tariff encourages consumers to buy domestically produced goods, the less revenue it generates. For example, if a tariff on foreign cars leads everyone to buy American vehicles, then the car tariff will cease generating revenue. Thus, for Trump’s tariffs to provide a steady source of revenue, they would need to be so low that importers continue purchasing lots of foreign-made goods (and thus paying taxes on them). But Trump’s tariffs in many sectors are very high, precisely because he wants Americans to purchase fewer foreign-made goods. So the president’s tariffs can’t plausibly provide enough consistent revenue to offset his proposed tax cuts (let alone, to fully replace the federal income tax). Meanwhile, his tariffs could actually hurt US manufacturing for at least three reasons: First, Trump’s tariffs apply to a vast number of industrial inputs, such as metals, energy, and electronics. This will raise costs for US manufacturers, forcing them to raise prices, which will render their products less appealing to foreign consumers. Further, tariffs on inputs will also give companies an incentive to locate factories in other countries, where they will not have to pay, for example, a 25 percent tax on parts and materials made in Canada or Mexico.  Second, Trump’s tariffs will reduce the real wages of American workers. If the average US household’s disposable income drops by $2,000, that family will likely spend less money on goods. This could ultimately reduce demand for US-made products.  Indeed, the market research firm Cox Automotive believes that this is precisely what will happen with Trump’s car tariffs. In its analysis, US car plants will likely have to cut production by 30 percent, as consumers will respond to rising prices by postponing car purchases. Third, foreign countries are retaliating against Trump’s trade policies by placing tariffs on American-made goods. And that will limit the global sales of American manufacturers. This will be especially true of America’s most innovative and advanced industries, such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and medical equipment, which are more likely to sell their wares globally.  We’ve already seen Trump’s tariffs backfire for these reasons. According to a 2019 Federal Reserve analysis, the tariffs Trump imposed during his first term reduced manufacturing employment in affected industries. Finally, the tariffs’ hypothetical national security benefits are dubious. America’s security likely depends more on strong international alliances than the amount of steel we produce domestically. And Trump’s tariffs have antagonized America’s closest allies while undermining our nation’s credibility as a dealmaker: In 2018, Trump himself reached a trade agreement with the governments of Canada and Mexico. Yet he nevertheless applied 25 percent tariffs on both countries this year, in direct violation of his own trade deal.  If the United States is unwilling to abide by the terms of the agreements it orchestrates, other countries have less incentive to cooperate with us.  In sum, Trump’s tariffs are likely to raise prices, weaken US manufacturers, and undermine America’s alliances and global influence. How long will Trump’s tariffs be in effect? It’s unclear how lasting Trump’s tariffs will prove to be. He has framed some of the duties — such as his 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico — as a potentially temporary bargaining chip in negotiations over trade and border security. But he has suggested that others will be permanent.  As the costs of Trump’s trade policies to US consumers and manufacturers mount, it is possible that the administration will decide its agenda is politically unsustainable. Already, Trump’s tariffs are deeply unpopular, with 61 percent of voters disapproving of them in a recent CNN poll.  Update, April 2, 4:50 pm ET: This post was updated to include information from Trump’s speech about tariffs.

Preview: Planned Parenthood supporters demonstrate in front of the Supreme Court as the justices hear the case Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic. | Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic should be one of the easiest cases the Supreme Court will decide this year. A federal law requires every state’s Medicaid program to ensure that “any individual eligible for medical assistance” may obtain that care from a competent provider of their choice. The question in Medina is whether that statute means anything, or whether it is a paper tiger that cannot be meaningfully enforced. In fairness, the Supreme Court’s rules laying out when a federal Medicaid statute can be enforced through private lawsuits are somewhat complicated, but the 2023 decision in Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County v. Talevski clarified those rules. There is now no serious argument that that law enabling Medicaid patients to choose their providers cannot be enforced. But, while the law in Medina is clear, the politics are terrible. The specific issue in Medina is whether South Carolina can cut health providers that also provide abortions out of its Medicaid program (Medicaid funds generally cannot be spent on abortions, but they can be spent on non-abortion care provided by Planned Parenthood). And the Supreme Court has a 6-3 Republican majority.  So many of the Court’s Republicans seemed to spend Wednesday’s argument looking for a way to get around cases like Talevski. It’s far from clear whether three key justices — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — were persuaded by the anti-Medicaid arguments in this case. But, at times, it sure seemed like they wanted to be persuaded. That leaves the outcome in Medina uncertain. If I absolutely had to bet on the outcome, I’d predict that Roberts and Barrett, at the very least, will ultimately reaffirm what the Court said less than two years ago in Talevski — which means that Planned Parenthood will win. But none of the Court’s Republicans appeared to see this case as easy. What’s the legal issue in Medina? As a general rule, if someone wants to file a federal lawsuit enforcing a provision of Medicaid law, they cannot sue under the law itself. Instead, they have to file their suit under a law known as “Section 1983,” which permits suits against state officials who deprive someone of “any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws.” In Blessing v. Freestone (1997), however, the Court said that this statute does not permit anyone to file any lawsuit to enforce any provision of federal law. Instead, because Section 1983 refers to “rights,” “a plaintiff must assert the violation of a federal right, not merely a violation of federal law.” The test the Court uses to determine whether a particular federal law creates an enforceable right was recently reiterated in Talevski, which held that the key question is whether “the provision in question is ‘phrased in terms of the persons benefited’ and contains ‘rights-creating,’ individual-centric language with an ‘unmistakable focus on the benefited class.’” Thus, for example, a statute which says that “no state shall deny a person who is wearing pants the ability to take a walk” would be enforceable through private lawsuits, because this statute focuses on the people who benefit from it (people wearing pants). A similar law that says “states shall not interfere with walking” may not be enforceable, because it does not have the same individual-centric language demanded by Talevski. With that in mind, here is the statute at issue in Medina: A State plan for medical assistance must … provide that … any individual eligible for medical assistance (including drugs) may obtain such assistance from any institution, agency, community pharmacy, or person, qualified to perform the service or services required (including an organization which provides such services, or arranges for their availability, on a prepayment basis), who undertakes to provide him such services. This law does everything Talevski demands. It provides a right to a specific individuals (“any individual eligible for medical assistance” under Medicaid), and it lays out the content of that right — the right to obtain assistance from a provider of their choice. As Justice Elena Kagan pointed out early in Wednesday’s oral argument, it is nearly “impossible” to even describe what this statute does “without using the word ‘right.’” A Court that intends to follow the rule laid out two years ago in Talevski, in other words, would hand down a very brief, unanimous opinion in holding that South Carolina Medicaid patients have a right to choose Planned Parenthood as their health provider. Many of the justices appeared determined to make this case more complicated than it is Though some members of the Court’s right flank appeared to be probing for a way to rule against abortion providers, none of the justices proposed a coherent legal rule that would allow them to dodge Talevski. Justice Samuel Alito, for example, was unusually quiet on Wednesday, though he did speak up at one point to complain that Medicaid laws, which permit private lawsuits, are supposed to be “something that’s quite extraordinary.” Similarly, Justice Clarence Thomas asked a few questions emphasizing his belief that it should be harder to enforce federal laws that are tied to federal spending programs such as Medicaid, as opposed to laws enacted under Congress’s power to regulate private actors. A few of the justices, meanwhile, fixated on a concurring opinion by Judge Julius Richardson, a Trump appointee to a federal appeals court who complained that there is uncertainty about whether lower court judges should follow Talevski or a slightly different legal framework laid out in Blessing and Wilder v. Virginia Hospital Association (1990). According to Richardson, lower courts “continue to lack the guidance inferior judges need.” In fairness, Roberts and Barrett sometimes seemed incredulous that there’s any real confusion about whether Talevski lays out the proper rule. Barrent asked Planned Parenthood’s lawyer Nicole Saharsky if the Court could just say in its opinion that lower courts should follow Talevski, and Saharsky did not object. Roberts said that the Court could simply say that “we meant it” when it handed down Talevski and a related case. Kavanaugh, however, was all over the map. South Carolina’s primary argument is that the Medicaid statute must use specific magic words, such as the word “right,” in order to authorize private lawsuits. As Kagan pointed out, the Court has never imposed such a requirement in its past cases, and she warned against “changing the rules midstream” because Congress could not have known that it had to use certain magic words when it wrote the Medicaid statute — or any other existing law. But Kavanaugh seemed to disagree, stating at one point that he isn’t “averse to magic words.” Kavanaugh’s questions indicated that he is so concerned with coming up with a clear, easy-to-apply test that he is willing to sacrifice the rights of Medicaid patients to achieve this broader goal. Still, it’s far from clear whether Kavanaugh can find five votes for a magic words requirement, or even whether Kavanaugh will himself vote to overrule cases like Talevski. In the end, it does appear more likely than not that Planned Parenthood will prevail. South Carolina, like any other litigant opposed to abortion, made its case before a very friendly bench of mostly Republican justices. But the state will probably still lose because its arguments are just so weak under existing law.

Preview: Future Perfect seeks to tell stories about the world’s problems — problems that are big and neglected, and that most people in the US don’t hear about nearly often enough. These are problems where tremendous progress is possible with just a bit more resources and attention.  It’s a project by Vox’s writers and editors to carve out a space, away from the regular news cycle, to cover and think about crucially important issues that are currently undercovered. Since its founding in 2018, Future Perfect has been able to pursue its mission thanks in part to philanthropic and foundation support, as well as financial contributions from readers. We continue to seek new and innovative ways to fund the work we’re doing and ensure the health of Future Perfect for years to come. If you are interested in supporting Future Perfect with a grant or large gift, please contact us. We are grateful for all contributions to Future Perfect (though we should note that contributions are not considered charitable donations). Future Perfect prizes its editorial independence, and all editorial decisions are made separately from fundraising and commercial considerations. Future Perfect thanks the following donors for their support since our launch in 2018: Rockefeller Foundation (2018-2019) James McClave (2020) Animal Charity Evaluators (2020-2021) BEMC Foundation (2021-Present) Builders Vision Initiative Building a Stronger Future (2022-2023) [Update, April 2025]: In 2022, Future Perfect was awarded a one-time $200,000 grant from Building a Stronger Future, a family foundation run by Sam and Gabe Bankman-Fried, to support a reporting project on technological and innovation bottlenecks that hamper human progress. $14,000 of the grant funds were spent prior to the news of FTX’s bankruptcy and suspected fraud. Future Perfect has returned the balance of the grant and is no longer pursuing this project. Thanks to support from the BEMC Foundation — a grant-making organization committed to outstanding charities and causes promoting high-impact opportunities for saving and improving lives throughout the world — Future Perfect brought in our first class of fellows in 2021 and added more staff. We’ve also engaged in greater collaboration with Vox Video and Vox’s podcasts, and are gearing up for an expansion of the Future Perfect podcast and the continuation of the fellows program in the coming months. Vox also accepts general financial contributions of any amount. If you’d like to help support Future Perfect and Vox in that way, please go here to make a contribution.

Preview: Demonstrators hold signs as they protest the deportation of Assistant Professor of Medicine Dr. Rasha Alawieh of Brown University at the statehouse in Providence, Rhode Island, on March 17, 2025. | Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images Donald Trump’s popularity is slipping. His honeymoon is over, views of the economy and his stewardship of it are souring, and while inflation and prices remain the public’s top priority, they see his administration as focusing on other things. Yet the area where they think Trump is most focusing his attention is also the one where he’s most popular: immigration. It’s what the public thinks he’s handling best, and it’s the issue buoying his overall approval rating right now. A couple recent national polls show how resilient this dynamic is. Take the latest March CBS News/YouGov poll. It finds that an outright majority — 53 percent — of the American public approves of Trump’s handling of immigration. They approve of his mass deportation pledge, and the numbers remain largely unchanged since last month. That majority support on immigration stands in contrast to his other ratings in that poll. Some 48 percent of Americans approve of his handling of the economy, with 52 percent disapproving in late March. That’s down from 51 percent approval a month ago. And when it comes to inflation, specifically, just 44 percent approve, down from 46 percent last month. Those sharper marks on immigration come not only despite questions about the legality of the administration’s methods, but also as news organizations reveal embarrassing and concerning revelations about who has been targeted for deportations and detentions. While this news coverage grows, and Trump’s overall favorability continues to slip, it’s worth asking why his immigration agenda remains popular — and just what might turn it negative. As the administration veers into a more authoritarian direction in its treatment of immigrants, these shifts will be crucial to track, particularly for those hoping to organize political pressure and public support. What recent polls tell us The late March CBS News/YouGov poll of American adults conducted late last week shows basically no change from the last CBS/YouGov poll from late February. Some 53 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s immigration handling in March, while 54 percent approved in February. The same when asking about the Trump administration’s “program to deport immigrants illegally.” Among all adults, 58 percent approve — essentially mirroring findings in February, when 59 percent of respondents approved. The second national survey that shows Trump’s resilient immigration support is a AP-NORC poll from March. The public, this poll suggests, is split evenly: 49 percent approve of Trump’s immigration approach, while 50 percent disapprove. Again, views of his handling of other issues are much more negative, but even one in five Democrats approve Trump’s immigration approach, per the survey’s results. The findings are revelatory, given the poll generally finds more negative views of Trump compared to other March polls conducted by other firms. It’s an outlier, for example, in showing a double-digit net-negative rating for Trump’s overall favorability: 56 percent disapproving and 42 percent approving. For now, there’s not a clear reason for this sustained support. It might be a sign of Trump’s effective messaging about the issue. From the start, this administration has embarked on a polished and digital-savvy media and advertising tour to frame their deportation efforts as a way to target immigrants who have committed crimes — which happens to be the specific condition that is most popular when surveys offer respondents a variety of options for deportation policy. The administration has recorded and released social media videos, traditional TV advertising, and clips of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem tagging along with ICE agents, meeting with border agents at the southern border, and even speaking from the prison in El Salvador many deportees are being sent. In turn, this (essentially) campaigning on immigration may be amplifying the effects of polarization, since it’s hardcore conservatives and Republicans who care the most about immigration (both in the lead-up to the 2024 election and since Trump’s inauguration).  And these numbers might also just represent a deeper, wider reality for America. The American polity has generally polarized against immigration, and would prefer to see rates of immigration decline. That’s been true since the post-pandemic era spike in southern border crossings and asylum claims, and was a major 2024 campaign issue that Trump largely sees as responsible for his own election. Of course, there may also be survey-design limitations: These polls capture the vaguer idea of restrictive immigration policy that Trump came to represent, as opposed to the public’s views on specific policies or scenarios. Public opinion tends to vary tremendously once you ask more specific questions about who might be targeted for deportation, how widespread those enforcement actions should be, and whether there should be conditions or more leniency given to some kinds of undocumented immigrants. And for now, it’s not clear yet what impact news coverage and the government’s response to the most recent specific high-profile deportations will have. As news coverage, political debate, and outcry grow, (like over the role of foreign prisons and Guantánamo Bay in holding immigrants, and stories of specific, controversial cases), the public may end up polarizing against Trump. That’s what happened during late 2017 and 2018 — the peak of Trump 1.0’s anti-immigrant, kids-in-cages policies. It was around that time that public support for immigration of all kinds began to spike, and openness to more migration grew. Still, 2017 this is not. The public has not been this negative on immigration since the post-9/11 years, per Gallup tracking data. And Trump, again, remains more popular now than he was at this point in his first term, meaning he has room to spend political capital and advance his agenda while taking a hit in public opinion. In other words, eight years ago Trump saw how much he could get done with immigration while most of the public opposed him. This year, he’s pushing to do even more, with a higher ceiling for what the public will tolerate.

Preview: President Donald Trump unveiled his tariff plans on Wednesday, April 2, during a ceremony at the White House, imposing tariffs of at least 10 percent on all foreign-made goods. For products made in China, the tariff rate will be 34 percent; for those made in Vietnam, it will be 46 percent; for the European Union, it will be 20 percent. Trump framed these tariffs as “reciprocal,” meaning that that they match the level of trade restrictions that each foreign nation imposes on US products. But this is not true — Trump’s tariffs greatly exceed those of America’s targeted trade partners. Trump has already imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum made outside the US, all products made in Canada or Mexico, all Chinese goods, and all foreign-made cars, among other things, claiming these moves will strengthen the economy long-term while downplaying concern they’ll lead to a recession.  The threat of tariffs have led to massive economic uncertainty, with Trump’s on-again, off-again declarations tanking stock markets and souring consumer sentiment, though some longtime critics of globalization appear optimistic. Meanwhile, many Americans are worried and confused — tariffs haven’t been as significant to the US economy in nearly a century — and they’re understandably unsure about what tariffs are, how they’ll affect their wallets, why governments would implement them, and whether the president’s policy will work on its own terms. We’ll help you make sense of this moment. Follow here for the latest news, analysis, and explainers.  5 big questions about Trump’s tariffs and how they might work The cruel irony of the coming tariff war Are tariffs a bad idea? Yes and no. Two numbers that explain why Trump can’t make up his mind about tariffs How scared should you be about tariffs? The madman theory of Trump and tariffs

Preview: An anti-tariff demonstration in Montpelier, Vermont. | John Lazenby/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images The day this article goes up, April 2, has been pegged by President Donald Trump as “Liberation Day”: the day his suite of tariffs will go into effect and thus, in some unspecified sense, liberate the United States. The pre-history of this disastrous set of policies, which will only make America poorer and alienate it from its closest allies, is as long and weird as you’d expect from Trump. Part of the story seems to involve him losing an auction in 1988 for a piano used in Casablanca to a Japanese collector, thus confirming that Japan was an economic threat. Sure, fine, that seems par for the course with this guy. But if you want to understand why not only Trump but now large parts of both parties have reoriented themselves to support tariffs, I think the key text is not Casablanca but a 2013 paper by David Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson that’s almost as famous (among economists, at least). If you follow economic research at all, you know this as the “China shock” paper. This story was first featured in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here to explore the big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them. Sent twice a week. The authors found that the surge of US manufacturing imports from China between 1991 and 2007 led to large job losses in the US manufacturing sector, losses that were concentrated in a few particular geographic locations. Areas affected saw wages fall for a surprisingly long time, and uptake of government benefit programs like unemployment and disability insurance. The DC think tank world’s understanding of this finding was sweeping: Free trade didn’t work. Bipartisan advocates like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush had promised that deals like permanent normal trade relations or NAFTA would be win-win propositions, when in reality they hollowed out American manufacturing.  After Trump won in 2016 on a fiercely anti-trade platform, aided by support in China shock-affected states like Wisconsin and Michigan, many Democrats saw the implication as obvious: It was time to turn their backs on trade, as a matter of political survival if nothing else. If you actually read the China shock literature you will notice that the authors do not come to any conclusions remotely this broad. The conclusions they do reach, though, can help us understand why Trump’s particular policy response will be so damaging. It’s the “shock” — not the “China” Reading the original China shock paper and its follow-ups, something that sticks out is how little the literature is about trade policy per se. Autor, Dorn, and Hanson are clear that the shock came not just from changing US policy toward China, but from China’s massive increase in manufacturing productivity during this period.  That means the employment losses in certain areas weren’t solely due to the US loosening barriers, but also to changes within China that US policy couldn’t alter. The authors are equally clear that trade wasn’t the sole driver of declining manufacturing employment. They estimate that the China shock was responsible for about a quarter of the decline in manufacturing jobs over the period they study.  That’s significant, for sure, but also underlines how much other factors — like labor-saving technologies in the sector, or consumers shifting demand toward services — were behind the hollowing-out of old factory towns. Even if China had stayed poor and not become a major exporter, the US still would have rapidly lost manufacturing jobs, just not quite as many. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that many researchers have found that Chinese imports have, overall, made Americans better off. That includes Autor, Dorn, and Hanson, who concluded that the gains to consumers from cheaper goods were somewhat larger than the employment losses.  That doesn’t mean the concentrated hurt from the China shock was okay. Clearly the US should have done a better job of helping affected regions transition to a more competitive economy.  But simply not doing the China shock, even if that had been possible, would not have made the US better off as a whole. Nor would adding tariffs now, some 15 years after the China shock ended, do any good. Follow-up work by the team on the Trump tariffs during his first term found that they reduced US employment overall by inviting foreign retaliation. Rather than a jeremiad against free trade, it’s better to understand the China shock literature as explaining what happens when a specific region takes a big economic hit — whether due to imports or something else.  Autor has compared it to the losses West Virginia suffered as the US transitioned away from coal. “The forward-looking lesson is not about how we contend with manufacturing competition,” Autor told an interviewer in 2021. “It is not even [only] about trade per se, but about adjustment for unemployed workers and hard-hit areas. How costly it is, how slow it is, and how we can make it work better.” It’s not the “China” part that’s crucial: It’s the “shock.” Maybe don’t do another shock for no reason? Trump’s suite of tariffs are, obviously, not going to bring manufacturing back to the US in any meaningful way. But they’re certainly shocking.  They’ve introduced massive uncertainty to international trade and to supply chains that cross borders, like the deeply integrated Michigan-Ontario auto sector. They’ve forced manufacturers and retailers that depend on imports as inputs or sales items to scramble to adjust. This exact dynamic, this kind of massive economic shift imposed with little time to prepare or adjust, is what made the China shock so painful for certain regions. The tariff shock, far from undoing the effects of the China shock, could simply replicate its worst aspects, just without the corresponding benefit in terms of economic growth and cheaper goods. The Trump team, as Paul Krugman observed during the first trade war, is acting like “a motorist who runs over a pedestrian, then tries to fix the damage by backing up — and runs over the victim a second time.” It’s not yet clear if the damage will be as economically concentrated as the China shock was. Large-scale government layoffs and contract cancellations are threatening a localized DC recession, and tariffs on Canada and Mexico would disproportionately hurt border states, but the damage of higher prices and job losses from tariffs will be felt broadly across the whole country.  Since part of the reason the China shock garnered so much attention was its concentration in presidential swing states, this might make the tariff shock less politically motivating. But in just about every aspect, the tariff shock is worse than the China shock. The China shock made prices cheaper for most Americans — all those cheap appliances and toys — but the tariff shock will raise prices. The China shock was concentrated in the manufacturing sector, and manufacturing-heavy regions; the tariff shock will affect many sectors. Perhaps worst of all, where the China shock was largely unavoidable, the tariff shock is entirely self-inflicted. It’s being chosen by US policymakers, against the interests of their constituents and allied nations. They could just as easily not do it at all. It’s an act of economic national suicide the likes of which the US hasn’t seen in decades.

Preview: A mother pushes a pram with her son as she leaves her accommodation at a development of shipping containers converted to social housing for homeless families, in 2019 in Hanwell, England. | Chris J. Ratcliffe/Getty Images One of the buzziest books in America right now is Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s bestseller on why our failure to build enough homes has contributed to soaring costs and needless political strife. And one of the most provocative movements in politics these days is pronatalism — a coalition sounding the alarm on people not having enough babies. Pronatalists are gaining power in the White House (Donald Trump recently dubbed himself the “fertilization president”) and the movement just wrapped up its second annual US convention in Austin, Texas.  As housing supply and birth rates have become twin focal points in America’s policy conversation, a growing number of wonks are drawing connections between these two, arguing that expanding housing supply wouldn’t just ease affordability — it could also help boost fertility.  The Institute for Family Studies — a think tank that launched its own pronatalism division last summer — recently published a report making this case, revealing how housing costs have become crushing for young adults. The median home now costs nine years of a young person’s income, up from five years in 1969. Homeownership rates for Americans under 35 have collapsed from 50 percent to around 30 percent since 1980. Many of these young adults aren’t even living in their own rentals. The National Association of Home Builders found that in 2023, 19.2 percent of young adults (or 8.5 million people) lived with their parents, compared to less than 12 percent of young adults in 2000. As Robert Dietz, chief economist of the National Association of Home Builders, noted last month at a conference in Washington, DC, the surge of young adults living with parents represents “a failure to launch” that directly impacts marriage and fertility rates. Dietz’s conclusions are supported by IFS. Living with one’s parents “has a huge negative effect” on fertility according to the think tank, meaning that as more young adults delay moving into their own homes, they also delay or forgo having children. In fact, IFS researchers find that no other factor — not “undesired singleness,” preference for leisure, schooling, child care costs, or student debt — limited one’s childbearing goals more than housing costs.  As a 32-year-old woman getting married in two months — and still renting — this all strikes a chord. Much of my reporting focuses on ways to expand the desperately needed housing supply, and I am compelled by the argument that making it easier for people to live independently would, in turn, make it easier for them to form and sustain romantic relationships. But banking too much on housing misses deeper shifts in our social fabric. Housing affordability matters enormously, but exists within a cultural landscape where attitudes toward family formation and parenthood are fundamentally changing. Fewer young adults are prioritizing committed partnerships as a life goal, with many explicitly choosing to remain single. Perhaps most significant are the widening economic, political, and cultural divides between young men and women. Between 2012 and 2023, young women became dramatically more liberal while young men drifted rightward. By 2023, over 50 percent of young women identified as liberal, up from 32 percent 11 years earlier. As women have pursued more education and focused more seriously on careers, men’s earning power has declined. Meanwhile, the rising cost of living continues to reshape everyone’s economic future. The 2024 election revealed that among voters under 30, the gender gap between women and men who supported Kamala Harris was twice as large as in other age groups. This isn’t just about voting habits; 68 percent of Harris voters believed society should dedicate more resources to helping girls, while only 35 percent of Trump voters shared that view. Disagreements over issues like whether women should have access to abortion and birth control are just far more fundamental than quibbles around zoning and sluggish permitting processes. A majority of young Democrats now say they wouldn’t date someone with opposing political views — with women far more likely than men to draw this line.  Moreover, in the backdrop of all this is a society that has grown increasingly hostile to parents and kids. I’ve written about “millennial mom dread” and the increasingly grim ways motherhood is depicted in America, and last week pop star Chappell Roan lit up the internet after declaring that all her “friends with kids are in hell.” The latest cover of the New Yorker depicts a mother hauling a baby and stroller alone down into a subway station, symbolizing the lack of accessibility and support for parents in much of society. These portrayals often overshadow the profound fulfillment many parents still find in raising children, creating a distorted picture of family life that discourages young adults from seeing parenthood as viable. Can housing policy help address these deeper problems? The IFS report makes a number of sensible recommendations: loosening zoning codes, allowing accessory dwelling units, reducing minimum lot sizes. More affordable family-friendly housing would certainly help. But we should be clear-eyed about the limits of policy interventions. A bigger home for raising children looks a lot less attractive if the surrounding community still remains hostile, and our public spaces and cultural institutions increasingly treat children as unwelcome intrusions. A recent Pew survey found 69 percent of adults say it’s “rarely or never acceptable” to bring a child into a place that’s typically for adults like a bar or upscale restaurant, and complaints about kids on planes abound. Journalist Stephanie Murray has written thoughtfully about the ways in which people feel comfortable making proclamations about “disliking kids.”  The uncomfortable truth is that we don’t yet know if voluntary policy measures — like more affordable housing, safer streets for pedestrians, better stroller accessibility, paid leave, and subsidized child care — will be enough to reverse declining birth rates. I feel comfortable taking the bet that they would definitely help — and are intrinsically worth pursuing even if not — but they can’t address the deeper question of whether young men and women want to build lives together in the first place.

Preview: Protesters hold signs reading “Free Rumeysa Ozturk” and “come for one face us all! solidarity forever” during a demonstration at Powder House Park in Somerville, Massachussetts. | Erin Clark/Boston Globe via Getty Images In God and Man at Yale, the 1951 book that made William F. Buckley famous, American conservatism’s founding father argues that academic freedom is premised on a fiction. While professors claim that they are merely attempting to equip their students with the tools necessary to comprehend the world and succeed in it, they are in fact engaged in conveying a particular set of truths and values to their students — meaning, at the time, liberal and socialist values. In response, Buckley argues, university trustees and administrators should “banish” favorable discussion of such ideas from the classroom, replacing them with a curriculum that emphasizes the eternal truths of Christianity and capitalism. In some ways, the Trump administration’s aggressive approach to college campuses directly echoes Buckley’s ideas. They are making transparently ideological demands of universities like Harvard and Columbia, and threatening to withhold funding if they don’t comply. They have also adopted what looks a lot like a systematic policy of deporting foreign students who participate in pro-Palestinian activism. The Trump administration goes even further than Buckley in two critical respects. First, Buckley explicitly rejected government interference in the affairs of private universities — the sort of thing that Trump has been doing throughout his second term. “I should bitterly contest a preemption by the state of the duties and privileges of the alumni of the private institutions themselves to guide the destinies of the schools they support,” Buckley wrote.  Second, Trump has added a layer of ideological hypocrisy. Buckley explicitly rejected the idea of campuses as free speech zones, but the president has long claimed to be defending exactly this principle — saying in 2019 that “taxpayer dollars should not subsidize anti-First Amendment institutions.” Indeed, the notion that there is a free speech crisis on campus that must be addressed has become a mainstream conservative position in the era of “wokeness” and “cancel culture.” Yet, Trump’s current approach to universities is a dire threat to the First Amendment. The breadth of the threat became painfully clear last week, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio openly bragged that he was revoking visas of hundreds of pro-Palestinian students in retaliation for their political beliefs and activism. The conservative position on higher education and free speech is thus profoundly muddled. While nearly everyone on the right believes that left-liberal domination of the campus is a problem — in fact, has been a problem since the 1950s — there is no obvious consistent position on why this is a problem or what role the government should have in solving it. The case of Rumeysa Ozturk, the Tufts graduate student who was snatched off the street by unidentified DHS agents, has brought these tensions into full view. Ozturk was in the United States on a valid student visa; her only apparent “crime,” so far as we know, was writing an op-ed critical of Israel’s war in Gaza in the Tufts student newspaper. Ozturk’s case is important not only because it’s an especially egregious abuse of power, but also because it provides a clear test for the various factions of the modern right. Do they truly care about free speech, or was that a convenient talking point right up until they obtained the power to create a new campus orthodoxy? Do they agree with Buckley, that the state should stay out of private university affairs, or get on board with Trump’s increasingly aggressive approach? Do they really think that targeting hundreds of students like Ozturk, as Rubio suggested he was doing, could be squared with any kind of commitment to limited government and individual rights? The reactions from right-of-center publications divide into roughly four camps, aligning on a spectrum ranging from vocal approval to outright abhorrence. Yet the former was far closer to the center of gravity than the latter. The four kinds of reactions to Ozturk’s arrest 1) The illiberal nationalists. This group endorses Ozturk’s arrest on the grounds that noncitizens do not have the same free speech rights as Americans and, thus, should be deported when they engage in speech the administration finds harmful. As a matter of First Amendment jurisprudence, this is largely false: The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that noncitizen residents have constitutional protections, including First Amendment rights (with only very limited exceptions). The illiberal nationalists do acknowledge this, but they argue that the court was simply wrong — in conflict with the morally correct interpretation of the law. “The Supreme Court’s twentieth-century rulings are incorrect,” Ben Crenshaw writes in American Reformer, a Christian nationalist publication. “Non-citizen foreigners are under the goodwill and censure of US law, but cannot claim the full range of its benefits until they become citizens.” The illiberal nationalists reject both the campus free speech argument and the Buckelyite vision of limited government. They believe the state has the right and responsibility to shape the American polity along their preferred lines, including by interfering in the management of private universities and curtailing allegedly dangerous speech. 2. The whataboutists. These articles focused less on the actual question of whether it was right to deport Ozturk than the alleged sins or inconsistencies of Trump’s liberal critics, on campus or otherwise. Writing at The Federalist, a staunchly pro-Trump outlet, John Daniel Davidson spends most of his word count attacking Never Trumper David French for the alleged hypocrisy of criticizing Ozturk’s deportations while also having worked at a publication that helped Facebook fact-check arguments about abortion during the 2020 election. “French worked as a senior editor at an outlet that was paid to justify Big Tech censorship of pro-life views. It’s reasonable to conclude that he doesn’t care about free speech, no matter what he says about it now,” Davidson writes. The weakness of Davidson’s guilt-by-association move aside, his evasion of the substantive question is striking. Davidson does not weigh in on whether Ozturk specifically deserves deportation; he just speaks in generic terms about “the president’s new policy of revoking the visas of foreign nationals who agitate for terrorist groups like Hamas.” Ozturk didn’t actually do this: Her op-ed doesn’t even mention Hamas. But that doesn’t matter. For the whataboutists, the key issue is always the sins of their enemies. Ozturk, academic freedom, basic civil liberties — these are all merely collateral damage in the war on the left. 3. The see-no-evil crowd. Evasion is also the key feature here. These people and publications simply chose not to say anything about Ozturk, despite a longstanding and preexisting interest in issues relating to campus politics, immigration, or Israel-Palestine. This was, in my research, the most common response from major right-wing outlets.  Take the Daily Wire, the Ben Shapiro-founded media empire that has made the campus culture war and Israel-Palestine two of its primary foci. While the site publishes at a truly astonishing clip, the only mention of Ozturk’s case is a passing reference in a March 31st news roundup — in which the author describes her as “a Turkish national [whose] visa was revoked after the State Department found she ‘engaged in activities in support of Hamas.’”  That one line is the entirety of the Daily Wire’s coverage — which, of course, amounts to no real coverage at all. Whatever the reason for this silence, it speaks volumes about their commitment to alleged free-speech principles. 4. The principled objectors. I couldn’t find many of these from conservatives other than people who were already Never Trumpers, but they do exist. The clearest example is a column from Jeffrey Blehar at National Review. Blehar, whose official position on the 2024 election was that Trump and Harris were equally bad, appears to be genuinely appalled by Ozturk’s arrest. “To capriciously eject people from the country without warning merely for publishing an unpopular political opinion in a student newspaper is, no matter what Trump’s defenders or special pleaders may beg, utterly abhorrent,” Blehar writes. “The idea that foreigners who are here on valid visas should live under fear that their every political opinion might become grounds for sudden incarceration in Louisiana or El Salvador is inhumane and close to un-American in spirit.” This is, I think, the right reaction — and it deserves to be commended unreservedly. That it was published in the magazine Buckley founded, the closest thing to a house organ for the pre-Trump GOP establishment, is also notable.

Preview: Trump’s tariffs are far too broad, haphazard, and have confusing rationales. But tariffs aren’t always a bad idea. | Alex Edelman/Bloomberg via Getty Images Today is “Liberation Day,” according to President Donald Trump — the day he announces a slate of new tariffs. This is just the latest update to tariff policies that have already caused a good deal of whiplash since Trump took office in January. He threatened to impose tariffs on Colombia and canceled his plan to do so all in a single day. He rolled out a tariff plan for Canada and Mexico, only to postpone implementing it shortly after some tariffs went into effect. And he’s been threatening both allies and adversaries with broad and aggressive tariffs for reasons ranging from cracking down on fentanyl to closing a TikTok deal. The chaotic nature of Trump’s tariff policies has unnerved investors, and the stock market has plummeted since the president made it clear that he’s not afraid of a trade war. It has also made tariffs look like an inherently bad idea.  To be fair, Trump’s tariff proposals are bad policy: They are far too broad, haphazard, and have confusing rationales. But tariffs are not fundamentally unwise. “​​The reality is that tariffs can be, and have been, effective policy tools for promoting industrial development when they’re done in a targeted strategic way and when they are matched with other complementary policies,” said Adam Hersh, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.  So what would good tariff policies actually look like? When tariffs can be good A tariff is a tax that’s imposed on goods imported from other countries. Oftentimes, the cost is passed on to consumers because companies will raise their prices to offset the tax.  One of the biggest reasons countries would be interested in levying a tariff is to protect domestic industries from unfair competition. Take the example of Chinese steel. China, which heavily subsidizes its steel industry, produces more than half of the world’s steel. Because demand for steel within China has not kept pace with supply, Chinese steel has become much cheaper, potentially selling at a loss in international markets.  That makes it extremely difficult for steel manufacturers elsewhere to compete, which has prompted governments to respond. Last year, the Biden administration implemented tariffs aimed at curbing imports of Chinese steel in order to protect US manufacturers. Another example of unfair competition comes from countries with bad labor standards and very low wages. If, for example, Chinese products are cheaper than American products in part because of extremely low labor costs, the US shouldn’t respond by lowering wages to keep local companies competitive. Instead of a race to the bottom, the US can respond by imposing tariffs on certain Chinese products. That allows American companies to pay their workers well without having to sacrifice their competitiveness in the market.  Tariffs work best when they are tailored to a specific problem. “We have to start by making strategic choices about, ‘What are the industries that are important to support with public policy?’” Hersh said. “That could be for a national security reason, it could be for an economic reason, it could be because of broader social goals like fighting the climate crisis.” Other times, a country might be interested in propping up a certain sector to make the supply chain more stable. If the United States is too reliant on other countries to provide certain goods, it can be caught in a crisis when supply chains are disrupted.  This was “a lesson learned painfully during the COVID-19 pandemic when everyone was scrambling to source personal protective equipment (PPE), respirators, and critical medicines unavailable domestically at the necessary scale,” Hersh wrote in an article with Josh Bivens, the chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute. Tariffs, in other words, can help ensure that there isn’t a monopoly over crucial imports so that supply chains aren’t completely disrupted in the event of war or, as we learned in 2020, a pandemic. @vox What are tariffs and why is Trump using them? Let us explain. #tariffs #economy #donaldtrump #trump #inflation #recession #money ♬ original sound – Vox – Vox Why Trump’s tariff policy is misguided On his first day back in the White House, Trump announced that he would try to build a whole new agency called the “External Revenue Service” to collect taxes on imports. “His goal is very simple: to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and let all the outsiders pay,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Fox News in February. But while tariffs were a main source of revenue for the US government before it introduced federal income taxes in 1913, Trump’s supposed plan to replace the IRS with an External Revenue Service is a terrible idea. For starters, tariffs essentially act as a flat tax on spending, which ultimately puts a higher burden on lower-income consumers. It’s also impossible for tariffs to raise nearly as much money as income tax. This strategy also highlights why Trump’s tariff proposals are so poorly planned: He simultaneously wants to raise a significant amount of money from tariffs while also pledging to get rid of tariffs if other countries agree to his terms.  Trump’s tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada, for example, were placed in part, he says, to stop fentanyl from flowing into the United States. So what would happen if those countries end up meeting Trump’s demands? If Trump’s plan is just to raise revenue, then clearly he wouldn’t want to come to an agreement with those countries. If his plan is to curb fentanyl, then he clearly doesn’t want tariffs to be a permanent source of revenue. “The Trump administration has not been targeted or strategic. They have so many different rationales for why they’re pursuing tariffs, not all of them have to do with industrial revitalization,” Hersh said.  The broad-based approach is also expected to be seriously disruptive, spiking prices on all kinds of products all at once. Even Trump seemed to suggest that would be the case. “WILL THERE BE SOME PAIN? YES, MAYBE (AND MAYBE NOT!),” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social, his social media platform. “BUT WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, AND IT WILL ALL BE WORTH THE PRICE THAT MUST BE PAID.” Another problem is that Trump seemingly believes that tariffs can stand on their own. But tariffs in and of themselves are not a solution. To be effective at protecting American companies and jobs, tariffs should be coupled with other policies that help spur investments. Trump has proposed repealing the CHIPS and Science Act, which former President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022. The law invested tens of billions of dollars in America’s semiconductor industry by subsidizing companies that want to build new manufacturing facilities in the United States and by funding research and development. If Trump is actually interested in using tariffs productively, he should start by first figuring out what his policy objectives actually are. He could also turn to his predecessor for answers. The Biden administration’s approach to propping up the semiconductor industry, for example, was to impose some tariffs in addition to the CHIPS Act, using tariffs as just one tool of many to support industry growth. Trump, by contrast, wants to just rely on tariffs without committing to long-term investments. That won’t deliver the same goal. Ultimately, it’s important to remember that just because Trump’s approach to tariffs is bombastic and unpredictable, that shouldn’t necessarily be a reflection on tariffs more broadly. At the end of the day, tariffs exist for a reason, and, if implemented well, they can be a beneficial tool to shore up jobs, promote better wages, and advance national interests. “We can’t judge the tool,” Hersh said, “by the craftsman that is mishandling it.”

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