The Donald Trump Score Card

Why Trump Is So Desperate to Keep Mahmoud Khalil in Louisiana

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"Avoiding the Ragbir precedent is precisely why ICE moved Khalil so quickly, his attorneys argued in a motion demanding that ICE bring him back to New York. Indeed, two Department of Homeland Security officials recently told The Atlantic that Khalil was moved to Louisiana “to seek the most favorable venue” for the government’s arguments.

“The Court need not accept such brazen interference with its role in assessing the legality of government action,” Khalil’s attorneys wrote to the federal judge in New York currently overseeing his case. In filings, the government countered that Khalil’s challenge belongs in Louisiana, in what will be the first of many legal battles.

“ICE will want to drag this on as long as possible,” Ragbir said.

Ragbir’s ordeal shows the lengths that Khalil and his legal team will need to go to secure his freedom and his right to stay in the United States. It also underscores just how dramatic an escalation Khalil’s case represents, even judged against the first Trump administration’s weaponization of the immigration system against dissent."

 

Why Trump Is So Desperate to Keep Mahmoud Khalil in Louisiana

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"Most significant, however, is just how much more explicit the Trump administration has been in targeting Khalil for his activism.

“What’s new here is the blatant retaliation,” said National Immigration Law Center’s Altman.

“This really comes down to instilling panic, fear, and chaos,” said Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition.

 

It's what Trump does with everything.

 

Trump excludes Russia from his tariffs. That includes the general 10% tariffs he added and his latest reciprocal tariffs.


Why did Russia escape Trump’s tariffs?

 

Trump has just exempted phones, computers, and chips from his reciprocal tariffs, among other items.

Trump is trying to be the Wizard Of Oz with his giant projection screen to scare people.

 

Trump says he's willing to cave in to China after the pressure he put on himself by raising tariffs on China.


Trump says he is open to talks after hiking China tariffs to 125%

 

Trump's China tariff shocks US importers. One CEO calls it 'end of days'

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“When he announced a 20% tariff, I made a plan to survive 40%, and I thought I was being very clever,” said Woldenberg, CEO of Learning Resources, a third-generation family business that has been manufacturing in China for four decades. “I had worked out that for a very modest price increase, we could withstand 40% tariffs, which was an unthinkable increase in costs.”

His worst-case scenario wasn’t worst-case enough. Not even close.

The American president quickly upped the ante with China, raising the levy to 54% to offset what he said were China’s unfair trade practices. Then, enraged when China retaliated with tariffs of its own, he upped the levies to a staggering 145%.

 

Americans want to go back to the good old days of the 1980's and earlier but not pay the higher prices.


Trump's China tariff shocks US importers. One CEO calls it 'end of days'

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‘Addicted’ to low-price Chinese goods

It might at least be the end of an era of inexpensive consumer goods in America. For four decades, and especially since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, Americans have relied on Chinese factories for everything from smartphones to Christmas ornaments.

 

Trump's China tariff shocks US importers. One CEO calls it 'end of days'

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"His company gets 65% of its product from Chinese factories, a share he is trying to winnow down to 40% by the end of the year. MGA also manufactures in India, Vietnam and Cambodia, but Trump is threatening to levy heavy tariffs on those countries, too, after delaying them for 90 days.

Larian estimates that the price of Bratz dolls could go from $15 to $40 and that of L.O.L. dolls could double to $20 by this year’s holiday season.

Even his Little Tikes brand, which is made in Ohio, is not immune. Little Tikes depends on screws and other parts from China. Larian figures the price for its toy cars could rise to $90 from a suggested retail price of $65."

 

Trump's China tariff shocks US importers. One CEO calls it 'end of days'

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Learning Resources has about 10,000 molds, weighing collectively more than 5 million pounds, in China.

“It’s not like you just bring in a canvas bag, zip it up and walk out,” Woldenberg said. “There is no idle manufacturing hub standing fully equipped, full of engineers and qualified people waiting for me to show up with 10,000 molds to make 2,000 products.”

 

Trump will fix it. He will set up the whole plant for that person, the Trump who can't set up a textile machine to make the ties he imports from China and sells at Macy's at an extravagant price.

 

With tariff turnaround, Trump shows he's the most brilliant president in history | Opinion

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It was 'the greatest economic master strategy' by a president ever

Billionaire Bill Ackman praised Trump on social media for pausing the tariffs: “This was brilliantly executed by @realDonaldTrump. Textbook, Art of the Deal.”

Presidential adviser Stephen Miller wrote on X: “You have been watching the greatest economic master strategy from an American President in history.”

Republican Rep. Burgess Owens of Utah told Fox Business: “I think America needs to recognize we're in a remarkable moment. We have an actual genius of an entrepreneur ... and one that loves our country.”

So true. It’s difficult to find another moment in American presidential history that measures up to the intellectual marvel that was Trump’s near destruction of our economy and then his swift and gainless tariff reversal.

 

With tariff turnaround, Trump shows he's the most brilliant president in history | Opinion

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"Clearly the best president ever, folks. No U.S. leader has ever lost so much for no reason while regaining some of it and accomplishing nothing with such efficiency."

 

You have been watching the greatest ass kissing , shameless suck ups in history to an undeserving, crooked, pussy grabbing, lying , no good SON OF A BITCH!! Lap that shit up culties!

 

yeah--they'll probably be coming for me one of these days.

 

Wishful-thinking remarks about Trump during his first term:


"Trump might be a narcissist but let's not jump to conclusions."

'Trump will grow into the presidency and start acting responsibly.'

'Give him a break about his mistakes. He's new here.'

'Trump has learned his lesson.'

 

‘Completely out of touch’: golf and dinners for ‘king’ Trump as economy melts down

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Trump had spent the time in between golfing, dining with donors and making insouciant declarations such as “this is a great time to get rich”, even as the US economy melted down.

 

Trump has issued exemptions before.

Many U.S. companies applied for exemptions during his tariff wars during his first term.

A metals company applied for 10,000 exemptions. That was just one company. Consider the amount of paperwork for all the companies applying for exemptions and in the midst of Musk firing federal workers.

 

DOGE Goons Physically Drag Social Security Worker from Desk

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A senior executive at the Social Security Administration was physically dragged from his office this week after clashing with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), according to The Washington Post.

Greg Pearre, a career civil servant who led an IT team working on the agency’s data systems, was removed over his opposition to a DOGE plan to cut off immigrants from key financial services, three people told the Post.

The scheme cooked up by Elon Musk’s DOGE squad falsely lists thousands of migrants as dead in a Social Security database known as the “death master file.”

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/04/12/trump-immigrants-dead-social-security/

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"Two days after the Social Security Administration purposely and falsely labeled 6,100 living immigrants as dead, security guards arrived at the office of a well-regarded senior executive in the agency’s Woodlawn, Maryland, headquarters.

Greg Pearre, who oversaw a staff of hundreds of technology experts, had pushed back on the Trump administration’s plan to move the migrants’ names into a Social Security death database, eliminating their ability to legally earn wages and, officials hoped, spurring them to leave the country. In particular, Pearre had clashed with Scott Coulter, the new chief information officer installed by Elon Musk. Pearre told Coulter that the plan was illegal, cruel and risked declaring the wrong people dead, according to three people familiar with the events.

But his objections did not go over well with Trump political appointees. And so on Thursday, the security guards in Pearre’s office told him it was time to leave.

They walked Pearre out of the building, capping a momentous internal battle over the novel strategy — pushed by Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service and the Department of Homeland Security — to add thousands of immigrants ranging in age from teenagers to octogenarians to the agency’s Death Master File. The dataset is used by government agencies, employers, banks and landlords to check the status of employees, residents, clients and others."