From “Democrats dislike the ‘chaos’ of Trump’s trade war but are OK with some tariffs” by Josh Boak and Matt Brown at the Associated Press: “Democrats are quick to say that President Donald Trump’s tariffs are horrible, awful, terrible. But Democrats are also stressing that they are not inherently anti-tariff…What Trump’s political opponents say they really dislike is the “chaos” he has unleashed…“Tariffs are an important tool in our economic toolbox,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. “Trump is creating chaos, and that chaos undercuts our economy and our families, both in the short term and the long term. … He’s just created a worldwide hurricane, and that’s not good for anyone.”…Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said Democrats have a consensus around “a unified concept, which is targeted tariffs can work, across the board tariffs are bad.”…“The right targeting is in the eye of the beholder, but nobody on our side thinks zero tariffs ever,” Kaine said…The Democrats’ message is meant to convey that they are reasonable, focused on capable governance and attuned to financial market distress. It’s a pitch toward swing voters who would like to see more manufacturing yet are uncomfortable with the consequences of Trump’s approach to tariffs. The risk is that it also is a nuanced argument at a time when pithy critiques travel faster and spread wider on social media than do measured policy analyses…“Farmers, in particular, who were hit very hard by Trump’s last trade wars, are terrified that this may be existential to their businesses,” said Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis. “These are mostly small and medium-sized family farms. Their input costs are going to go up and their export markets are going to close down.”…“I’m a little uninterested in what the Democratic response should be like,” said Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii. “Trump is intentionally destroying the American economy, and I think we should just say that and not make it very complicated.”

“A growing majority of America’s top executives now expects the U.S. economy to enter a recession in the near future, according to a survey released Monday,” Alex Harring writes in “More than 60% of CEOs expect a recession in the next 6 months as tariff turmoil grows, survey says” at nbcnews.com. “Of the more than 300 CEOs polled in April, 62% said they forecasted a recession or other economic downturn in the next six months, according to Chief Executive, an industry group that runs the survey. That’s up from 48% who said the same in March…Chief Executive’s data underscores the growing concern within corporate America around the future of the U.S. economy. Fears about a forthcoming recession hit a boiling point in the last two weeks, as President Donald Trump’s on-again-off-again tariff policy ratcheted up volatility in financial markets and stirred panic among some consumers…Indeed, around three-fourths of CEOs surveyed said tariffs would hurt their businesses in 2025. About two-thirds said they did not support Trump’s proposed levies, many of which are currently on pause…just 37% said they believe their companies’ profits will increase. That’s a steep drop from the 76% who gave this response in January.”

In “The House: Democrats Favored on What Starts as a Small Battlefield” Kyle Kondix explains at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “Electorally, Democrats have been punching above their weight in special elections much like they did in 2017, and they just decisively won the first big statewide election of Trump’s second term, maintaining liberal control of the Wisconsin state Supreme Court last week. Democrats are grappling with some internal strife, as their own voters are starting to express wider dissatisfaction with the party. But fortunately for Democrats, a party’s voters don’t have to love their own party in a midterm context in order to deliver wins—they just have to be motivated enough to turn out against the other guys. For instance, Republicans’ internal issues didn’t prevent them from strong showings in the 2010 and 2014 midterms, although fractious primaries did produce some candidates who kicked away key races, most notably in 2010 Senate contests (the quality of nominees coming out of primaries will be something to monitor during the primary season). Back then, the conventional wisdom was that the smaller midterm electorate had a generic Republican lean. Now that conventional wisdom has been turned on its head, given the migration of higher-turnout voters into the Democratic camp. In a recent episode of the Ezra Klein Show, Democratic consultant David Shor found that Kamala Harris would have beaten Trump in an electorate made up of only 2022 midterm voters, while Trump would have won the popular vote by close to 5 points if all registered voters had cast a ballot. Democrats clearly have some longer-term problems to work through, but that to us is more of a 2028 issue than a 2026 one, at least when it comes to the House…To sum up this preamble, we would just say the following: Democrats became favorites to flip the House as soon as Trump won, and what has happened since then has not really changed that assessment…Our bottom line assessment of the battle for Congress is that Democrats should win the House, and Republicans should win the Senate (as we explained in our initial ratings back in February). One way to track 2025 and 2026 is whether either of these assessments look like they are in danger of being upended—does the race for the House seem like more of a true Toss-up in fall 2026, or does the Senate majority seem to be in doubt?”

From “Trump Opens the Door to More Medicare Advantage Fraud” by Ryan Cooper at The American Prospect: “One of the most preposterous narratives about Donald Trump’s second term in office is that his administration is engaged in “cost-cutting.” Elon Musk and his DOGE goons are hacking away randomly at the federal bureaucracy, it’s true, but all the salaries of all federal employees combined come to only about 5 percent of government spending. And many of those layoffs are going to lead to increased spending—for instance, massive cuts to the IRS workforce have already reduced tax revenue by an estimated $500 billion this year, which will require the money to be borrowed instead, thereby automatically increasing spending on interest payments (the fifth-largest category in the federal budget)…Sure enough, as John Green points out, total federal spending has steadily increased this year each month—indeed, faster than it did in 2024. Now it is likely to increase yet more, as Trump has proposed a trillion-dollar military budget, and more importantly, released a new reimbursement schedule for Medicare Advantage (the privatized version of the program). Where the Biden administration had proposed a 2.23 percent increase to that program, Trump officials have proposed more than twice that: 5.06 percent, according to The Wall Street Journal…Under Medicare Advantage—which now covers more than half of the seniors in the program—the government pays private companies to insure Medicare enrollees. As we have covered at the Prospect for years now, the program is, at best, a pointless waste of money, and at worst an outright scam. It was set up back in the 1990s at the height of bipartisan neoliberal hegemony, when virtually everyone in power assumed as a matter of faith that business could always operate more efficiently than government, amen…The problem, of course, is that markets have a lot of perverse incentives when it comes to health insurance. There is every reason to deny coverage to sick people, or cancel their coverage when they are injured, or deny claims out of hand, so as to boost profits. (Before Obamacare, by the way, all three of those tactics were more or less standard practice in the private insurance market.)…So if Medicare Advantage were to pay out a flat fee for every enrollee, for instance, private insurers would scoop up all the youngest and healthiest seniors, stick the government with the sicker and older ones, and cream off fat profits. That’s why CMS operates a gigantic database with individual risk codes for all 67 million Medicare enrollees, indicating how sick they are, and pays Medicare Advantage insurers based on the illness level of their insured population.”