In his first big speech since leaving the white House, former President “Joe Biden accuses Trump and Musk of taking ‘hatchet’ to social security.” So reports Lauren Gambino at The Guardian, and continues: “Joe Biden on Tuesday accused Donald Trump and his billionaire lieutenant, Elon Musk, of “taking a hatchet” to the social security administration as they moved at warp-speed to dismantle large swaths of the federal government…In his first public remarks since leaving office, the former president avoided any explicit mention of Trump – his predecessor and successor – but he was sharply critical of the new administration for threatening social security, which Biden called a “sacred promise” that more than 70 million Americans rely on each month…“In fewer than 100 days, this new administration has done so much damage and so much destruction,” Biden said, addressing the national conference of Advocates, Counselors and Representatives for the Disabled in Chicago. “It’s kind of breathtaking that it could happen that soon.”…On Tuesday, Democrats across the country held a day of action to “sound the alarm” over the Trump administration’s plans to downsize the social security administration, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said earlier on Tuesday. Biden referenced the sweeping cuts to the agency’s workforce and its services in his remarks…“In the 90 years since Franklin Roosevelt created the social security system, people have always gotten their social security checks,” Biden said. “They’ve gotten them during wartime, during recessions, during a pandemic. No matter what, they got them. But now for the first time ever, that might change. It’d be a calamity for millions of families.” Read on here.

Aging and somnolent Democratic members of congress alert: The younguns are coming for your seat. That’s the gist of “In unprecedented move, DNC official to spend big to take down fellow Democrats” by Elena Schneider at Politico, who writes: “David Hogg, a controversial Democratic National Committee vice chair, is pledging to upend Democratic primaries by funding candidates who will challenge “ineffective, asleep-at-the-wheel” Democrats…The move puts Hogg, the now 25-year-old who first gained national stature as an outspoken survivor of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, on a collision course with his own party and some Democratic House members…Leaders We Deserve, which Hogg co-founded in 2023, announced plans on Tuesday to spend $20 million in safe-blue Democratic primaries against sitting House members by supporting younger opponents. In an interview with POLITICO, Hogg said the group will not back primary challenges in battleground districts because “I want us to win the majority,” nor will it target members solely based on their age…“We have a culture of seniority politics that has created a litmus test of who deserves to be here,” Hogg said. “We need people, regardless of their age, that are here to fight.” Some may grumble about ‘ageism.’ But isn’t that what is going on right now, effectively locking out capable young people who want to become Democratic office-holders? In any case, few sentient Dems would doubt that their party could benefit by a makeover featuring a more youthful look, or at least a less ossified one. Hogg is doing something about it, and it looks like he has the smarts do it intelligently. We sure as hell could use more young voters.

“Working-class voters respond to arguments about protecting America from foreign “invaders” because being American is blue-collar people’s strongest boast; it’s the source of their status, so they like politicians who emphasize it,” Joan C. Williams, author of “White Working Class” and the forthcoming “Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back,” writes in “Democrats need to speak to cultural concerns as well as economics” at The Los Angeles Times. She notes further, “A 2020 poll found that being American was an important part of the identity of 79% of Americans with (at most) high school degrees, but only 43% of predominantly college-educated progressive activists. The college-educated, in contrast, prefer to stress their top-of-the-heap membership in a globalized elite. Working-class voters also define their communities geographically, where they have networks based on neighborhood and kinship. By contrast, the “Brahmin Left” (to use Thomas Piketty’s term) see themselves as part of an international community characterized by “feeling rules” that mandate empathy for immigrants and racial minorities but less often for class-disadvantaged citizens of their own countries…People’s values reflect their lives, and their lives reflect their privilege — or lack of it. This is a message progressives, with their acuity about racial and gender privilege, should be able to hear. It could help them come to terms with an uncomfortable fact: Non-college voters of every racial group are less liberal than college grads of the same group…But moderates need to expand their cultural awareness too. When moderates like commentator Ruy Teixeira and the advocacy group Third Way argue that Democrats should throw identity politics under the bus and abandon their strong views on trans rights and climate change, they too are overlooking the cultural dimension of contemporary politics. Just as members of the Brahmin Left need to acknowledge that the logic of their lives differs from the logic of working-class lives, moderates need to acknowledge that progressives won’t just give in on issues like climate change. Those issues are deeply etched into progressives’ identities: The Brahmin Left is truly worried about the end of the world, even as non-elites are more concerned about the end of the month.”

Maeve Reston writes at msn.com that “Matt Bennett, executive vice president for public affairs at the centrist group Third Way, said the size of Sanders’s crowds has been impressive. But he argued they are driven largely by anger about the Trump administration’s policies rather than any sudden embrace of Sanders’s agenda of controversial policies like Medicare-for-all…“The problem with the far left is that they have scored their victories only against other Democrats. They have yet to flip a single House seat, not to mention the Senate,” Bennett said…Bennett said the only way to stop “the absolute catastrophe of Trumpism” is “to win majorities, and the only way to win majorities is with moderates in purple and red districts and states…But Faiz Shakir, a longtime Sanders adviser who ran for Democratic National Committee chair earlier this year, said Sanders is ascendant in this moment because he is channeling the wrath of regular people toward the billionaire class and “the hubris and lack of humanity” in people like Musk. Sanders remains popular at a time when the Democratic brand has hit historic lows because he’s known as “a class-based populist warrior against concentrations of wealth and power,” Shakir said…The Democratic brand, by contrast, Shakir said, is still “unsure of the class prism, far more focused on left versus right, social racial justice issues that are not on the main highway of the thing that millions and millions and millions of people are upset about.”

Here we have a lucid discussion between two Republican apostates about how to defeat Trump at their website, The Bulwark, which provides a full transcript, a stub of which is cross-posted below. You can also watch the discussion by clicking on this link. 

 Many will recognize the interviewer, Bill Kristol, as a venerable conservative commentator and analyst, who frequently appears news discussion shows. The interviewee, Sarah Longwell is a Republican strategist, who is strongly committed to defeating Trump. Her perceptive insights deserve serious consideration by Democrats.

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.”

Tiffany Wertheimer reports “What do Americans think of Trump’s foreign policies?” at bbc.com, and writes: “Trump has increased his rhetoric on “getting” Greenland, and Vice-President JD Vance recently took a controversial trip to the Arctic island…But Pew found that most survey respondents (54%) did not think the US should take over the Danish territory. When asked if they think Trump would actually pursue the plan, 23% thought it was extremely likely, but a greater number (34%) said they believed he would not carry through with it..Of those surveyed, 62% of Americans opposed such a move, compared to 15% who favoured it. Opinions were divided as to whether Trump was likely to actually pursue it. Again, the greater number (38%) thought it very or extremely unlikely…Trump signed executive orders to remove the US from the World Health Organization (WHO) and Paris Agreement on climate change, and said USAID largely would be shut down…45% disapprove of ending USAID programmes (compared with 35% who approve)…46% do not agree with leaving the Paris agreement (32% approve)…52% disapprove of leaving the WHO (32% approve)…The Pew research found 43% of respondents thought Trump favoured Russia too much – a higher number than the 31% who said he was striking the right balance between both sides…Answering a question about whether Trump was favouring Israelis or Palestinians, 31% of those surveyed thought he favoured Israelis too much. Close behind at 29% were those who thought Trump was striking the right balance…Larger than either of these, however, was the group of respondents who were not sure (37%). Just 3% felt he was favouring Palestinians too much…Generally, it is older adults who support Trump’s foreign policy actions, more than younger adults, the research suggested…Pew also asked about tariffs on China, although this research was carried out before the situation escalated sharply into the trade war that is now under way…Generally, more Americans said the tariffs would be bad for them personally, but those who were Republican, or leant more towards that party, believed the tariffs would benefit the US.”

In “Mad King Trump’s War on the Troops: The administration is vindictively hacking away at veterans’ benefits,” Ryan Cooper writes at The American Prospect: “In America, veterans are reliably conservative. In 2024, pre-election polls showed that about 61 percent of them supported Donald Trump, while just 37 percent supported Kamala Harris. In the past, this made some sense, as Republicans traditionally have showered money and benefits on the military, despite the fact that the Pentagon and the Veterans Affairs Department constitute the only fully socialized, cradle-to-grave welfare system in this country. The bargain has gone like this: Give the government several years of your life, potentially putting life and limb at risk, and you will get access to a European-style welfare state…But this time is different. Trump, together with Elon Musk and his DOGE goons, are carrying out sweeping attacks on veterans and soldiers alike, from active-duty troops, to veterans who receive a wide range of benefits, to the hundreds of thousands of veterans in the federal workforce…Probably the most directly impactful cuts are the ones to the VA, particularly research and treatment. As Suzanne Gordon and Steve Early have covered here at the Prospect, the VA has a scientific arm that has developed dozens of medical innovations useful not just to veterans, but all people. Agency scientists were central to the development of advanced prosthetic limbs, the cardiac pacemaker, the liver transplant, the CAT scan, and dozens of important medications…Finally, we have Trump and Musk’s all-out assault on federal government workers and their unions. About 30 percent of federal workers are veterans, thanks to numerous initiatives to give them priority access to federal jobs.”

“Trump’s approval rating is sliding, seemingly down into the low 40s,” Michael Tomasky writes in “The Right-Wing Media Machine Is What’s Saving Donald Trump—for Now,” and notes further:  This is all before we price in the mayhem and disruption that his outlandish tariff scheme brings; it may be months from now before the effects of his decision to blow up the economy are fully felt…Most of his policies are unpopular—it’s basically only on immigration that the public gives him reasonably high marks (which is depressing, yes, but that’s a reality we need to come to grips with if we want to turn it around). On the economy, inflation, the DOGE cuts, Russia-Ukraine, and more, he’s in the red. The American people are beginning to catch the distinct scent that they were conned…What’s keeping him even at 43 percent? At this point, it’s the right-wing media that’s doing the heavy lifting. The disinformation bubble that surrounds and encases and protects him and spins everything he does positively and spins everything his opponents do as corrupt or treasonous—that dread machine is still running at peak capacity. And let’s be honest about how corrupt this corrupt Tilt-a-Whirl really is: If this was a Democratic president pulling these kind of schemes, this same media infrastructure would be apoplectic.”

Thomas B. Edsall shares some revealing revelations in his NYT opinion essay, “Another Group the Democrats Should Stop Taking for Granted,” including: “The cross-pressures within the Latino electorate are evident in an analysis of survey data, “2024 Latino Voters Survey,” by Roberto Suro, a professor of public policy and journalism at the University of Southern California, and José E. Múzquiz, a Ph.D. candidate there…“Latinos who voted for Harris and Trump,” they wrote, “differ markedly in how they see their own identity as Latinos and how that identity relates to their political convictions.”…Latinos who voted for Kamala Harris, Suro and Múzquiz found, “overwhelmingly (71 percent) said that the fate of Latinos in general had ‘a lot’ or ‘some’ impact in their lives. In nearly equal measure, 63 percent of Trump voters said the impact was ‘not much’ or ‘not at all.’ …Asked, “Do immigrants bring economic benefits or competition?” Harris voters chose benefits over competition, 61 to 39 percent; Trump voters chose competition over benefits, 70 to 30 percent. Latino voters for Harris and Trump split along the same lines when asked to choose between “Immigrants are taking jobs that Americans don’t want and helping to keep down labor costs so everyone benefits” and “Immigrants are competing with Americans for good jobs and will often accept lower pay…The shifting patterns of Hispanic voting — not just in South Texas but nationwide — raise the basic question: How secure are Republican gains?…Bernard L. Fraga, a political scientist at Emory University, argued that the movement toward the Republican Party shows signs of staying power…In a May 2024 paper, “Reversion to the Mean, or Their Version of the Dream? Latino Voting in an Age of Populism,” Fraga and Yamil R. Valez of Columbia University and Emily A. West of the University of Pittsburgh made the case that their analyses of election results and poll data “point to a more durable Republican shift than currently assumed.”

From “It’s Not the Economy, Stupid: The Ideological Foundations of White Working Class Republicanism” subsection “The incredible shrinking white working class and the future of the Democratic Party” by Alan I. Abramowitz at cenerforpolitics.org: “In 2024, as in other recent elections, the large majority of whte voters without a college degree supported Republican candidates from the top of the ballot down to the local level. I have argued, contrary to many other political observers, that the main explanation for the rise of white working class Republicanism is not economic discontent based on the loss of well-paying manufacturing jobs due to outsourcing and automation. Rather, the main driver of white working class Republicanism is ideology. The large majority of white working class voters supported Donald Trump and other Republican candidates in 2024 because they agree with the conservative ideological position of Republicans on a wide range of issues…The declining fortunes of Democratic candidates among white working class voters, a group that for many decades made up the largest part of the Democratic voter base, has led to a good deal of soul-searching among Democratic leaders and activists and to potential strategies for trying to increase the party’s fortunes among this group. These proposals often focus on policies to address the economic concerns of white working class voters by providing good-paying jobs for those without college degrees. Unfortunately for Democrats, however, the findings presented in this article suggest that such policies are unlikely to significantly increase the Democratic share of the vote among this group…Despite the fact that white working class voters are unlikely to respond to Democratic efforts to appeal to their economic interests, there are a couple of reasons why Democrats need not despair about the party’s outlook for the future. One is that Democratic decline among white working class voters has been partially offset in recent years by improving Democratic performance among white college graduates, as the data in Figure 1 show. According to national exit polls, between 2016 and 2024, the Democratic share of the vote among white college graduates increased from 45% to 51% to 53% while the Republican share fell from 49% to 48% to 45%.”

At The Guardian, Steven Greenhouse sketches a disturbing future for the U.S. economy under Trump’s ‘leadership.’: “It would be generous to say it’s the one-eyed leading the blind. Rather, it’s an economically blind, impetuous president leading a mum, intimidated Republican-controlled Congress. One of the tragedies here is that many congressional Republicans see the grievous damage Trump is doing, but they’re too craven to speak out and risk Trump’s and Elon Musk’s social media wrath…Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, is predicting disaster. He says that as a result of Trump’s tariffs a recession “will hit imminently  and extend until next year”. Zandi says that economic growth could fall by 2 percentage points, while the jobless rate could leap to a very painful 7.5%. On Friday, the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, also sounded the alarm, saying that Trump’s tariffs could cause even slower economic growth and higher inflation than originally expected…Unfortunately, Trump’s so-called “liberation day” tariffs are not a scalpel designed to help specific industries, but rather a blunderbuss mess, hitting everyone and everything, including US consumers and industries…The tariffs that Trump is imposing are even greater than the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariffs, which are widely seen as having worsened the Great Depression. Krugman noted that Trump’s tariffs could also do serious damage because “imports as a share of the [US] economy are three times what they were in the 1920s”

In “Republicans can end Trump’s tariffs. Democrats can exploit that,” James Downie reports at msnbcnews.com, via Yahoo! News: “After President Donald Trump “liberated” Americans from a strong economy Wednesday, the Senate held an extraordinary vote. By 51-48, the chamber passed a privileged resolution authored by Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia that would revoke the tariffs Trump imposed on Canada earlier this year. Four Republicans — Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine — voted with every Democrat to rebuke the president’s trade policy…But the Senate vote, one of the first significant legislative losses of Trump’s second term, highlights an opening for Democrats with ramifications beyond even the global economy…Trump’s new tariffs create more chances for Democrats in Congress to jam up their GOP counterparts. The president’s handling of the economy already polls poorly, and most Americans are skeptical of his tariff policies in particular. They have good reason to be: The Yale Budget Lab estimates that the price increases from all of Trump’s tariffs are equivalent to “average per household consumer loss of $3,800,” with lower-income households hurt most…But Republican lawmakers can’t just blame Trump. Though the executive branch typically controls tariff policy nowadays, the Constitution grants Congress the tariff power..Most significantly, on Thursday Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa joined with Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington to introduce a bill to require the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of imposing new tariffs. Congress would have to ratify the new tariffs within 60 days, or they would expire. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he would vote for the bill, becoming the sixth Republican to break with Trump’s tariff policy. Even Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said he was against imposing “high tariffs in perpetuity.”…For Democrats, these votes are win-win situations. The more Republicans block these bills, the easier it is for Democratic challengers to hang those votes around GOP necks next fall. On the other hand, if these votes can make GOP defections from Trump even a little regular, that will complicate Republican policymaking enormously…If his grip weakens even slightly, Johnson and Thune can’t rely as easily on Trump’s bully pulpit to smooth over intraparty disputes. Longer negotiations mean fewer bills and less damage the GOP majority can cause the country.”

In the concluding paragraphs of “Liberals’ ‘Abundance Discourse Is Good for Trump and Musk – and Bad for Dems,” David Sirota and Aaron Regunberg write at Rolling Stone that “the Abundance Agenda presents an electoral danger to the Democratic Party… In 2024, Kamala Harris rejected a populist message and was lauded by Washington media for specifically running on an Abundance Agenda. Voters who’ve seen this kind of Democratic bait and switch before ended up trusting Trump more on economic issues — and handed him the presidency. Only months later, Abundance now aims to suppress Democrats’ renewed populist zeitgeist, despite how necessary it is for the fight against Trump and Musk…Right now, the Democratic Party is facing off against the most corrupt administration in history — a government of, by, and for billionaires that is using the rhetoric of “government efficiency” to dismantle popular social programs, fire veterans, let corporations run roughshod over working people, and slash taxes for oligarchs… Ask yourself: Does it make more sense for Democrats to rebrand as the “fighting the oligarchs” party against corporate-created scarcity, highlighting a clear contrast with the Trump administration’s top political vulnerabilities?… Or should they focus instead on the need to streamline bureaucracies and pare down red tape — a message that reifies Trump and Musk’s own rhetoric around waste, fraud, and abuse?……The answer should be abundantly clear.”

At The New Republic’s Daily Blast Greg Sargent reports “Trump Hit by Brutal New Polls on Econ as GOP Tariff Panic Goes Nuclear,” and writes: “President Donald Trump is set to announce that he’ll impose sweeping new global tariffs on imports, and congressional Republicans are already scrambling wildly to try to shield their states and districts from the fallout. Meanwhile, a Fox News poll finds that Trump is sliding on the economy, with the public turning against tariffs in particular. And an Associated Press survey also has terrible news for Trump on this front. Notably, all these negative consequences kicked in well before the tariffs have even started. We talked to Jared Bernstein, former chair of President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers and now a visiting scholar at Stanford, who has a new piece on his Substack predicting the consequences could be dire. He explains why the tariffs are so wrongheaded—and why they’re likely to cause major backlash against Trump and his party. Listen to this episode here. As Bernstein writes at substack.com, “Everyone knows that tariffs are a tax (on imports). I’ve seen scores between $1-2 trillion over ten, so they can potentially raise real revs, but, as I point out to Ms. Claman, they’re taxes on the wrong people. Low-cost imports are a larger part of the market basket of middle- and low-income households. Tariffs are a regressive tax…The serious research that caught my attention this weekend was a new forecast from the Goldman Sachs (GS) macro team, which I follow closely as they’ve been ahead of the crowd in accurately forecasting stronger growth and downplaying recession worries in ‘22-‘23. In advance of “Liberation Day,”—this Wednesday when the next tranche of tariffs will be announced—they’ve taken the real GDP growth forecast for Q1 down to 0.2%. They raised their forecast for core PCE inflation for this year by 0.5% to 3.5% and their unemployment rate forecast by 0.3% to 4.5% “at end-2025 to reflect weaker GDP growth and the effects of federal spending cuts and layoffs. We raised our 12-month recession probability from 20% to 35%, reflecting our lower growth forecast, falling confidence, and statements from White House officials indicating willingness to tolerate economic pain.”…Along with the rest of us, I’m a lot less sure the president is going to make the right choice. I fully expect him to make the wrong one and, like I said, those GS folks have a good track record. If they’re right, the only liberation we’ll get from Liberation Day will be the U.S. economy’s liberation from the ongoing economic expansion the Trump administration inherited, along with consumers’ liberation from paying lower prices on imports.”

In “Of Course Trump Will Tank the Economy. It’s What Republicans Do,” Michael Tomsk writes, also at The New Republic: “Where are we headed? A recent survey of corporate chief financial officers finds 60 percent of them agreeing that we’re headed for a recession this year. Is anyone surprised? This is what Republicans do. They screw up the economy. Later down the line, Democrats get elected and have to fix everything. Then the media characterizes the economic first responders as the tax-and-spend liberal wastrels—lather, rinse, repeat. This has been happening since 1990, and it’s happened three straight times. You’d think the American people might have noticed by now.” Tomasky shares a detailed history of economic meltdowns under Republican presidents, and adds, “The last three Republican presidents wrecked the economy. The last three Democratic presidents had to fix things. One statistic for you. Net jobs created under Clinton and Obama: 33.8 million. Net jobs created under Bush, Bush, and Trump: 1.9 million. That is not a typo…And with Elon Musk’s help, the next time we tot up job gains under recent GOP presidencies, we may look back on that paltry 1.9 million with nostalgia: “Remember when Republicans were merely steaming mediocrities, and not economic arsonists?”…Then there’s the Republican ideology, as being played out in the House and Senate budgets. It has been driving the country to the brink of financial ruin for 35 years. Why should that change?…the next Democratic president will be charged with cleaning up the fourth consecutive Republic economic calamity.”

Erkki Foster’s “CNN Data Guru Gives Damning Verdict on Musk’s Election Fail” provides these observations at The Daily Beast: “CNN data analyst Harry Enten has a warning for Republican candidates: Stay far, far away from First Buddy Elon Musk…“Elon Musk, simply put, is an unpopular guy. He is political poison,” Enten said on Wednesday’s edition of CNN News Central, arguing that the billionaire’s high-profile involvement in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race has backfired on the GOP….Enten highlighted polling that shows Musk’s favorability ratings are deep in the red, sitting at negative 12 points in Wisconsin and negative 17 points nationwide, according to Enten’s aggregate and a Marquette Law survey…Trump, apparently rattled by his senior adviser’s humiliating fail in Wisconsin, told his Cabinet that Musk will be stepping down from DOGE in the next few weeks, Politico reported Wednesday.” Of course, Republican candidates will continue to kiss up to Musk, if only to get some of the billionaire’s money. But don’t expect to see many photo-ops of GOP candidates with Musk.

“Two favorite Republican tactics failed, The Working Families Party explains at working families.org.”unrestricted money and fearmongering. Brad Schimel and his enablers couldn’t buy this election and they couldn’t scare Wisconsinites into voting against the things we care about – public safety, reproductive freedom, and affordable healthcare and housing,” said Corinne Rosen, State Director of the Wisconsin Working Families Party. “Wisconsin voters denied Musk’s money in what will be the first in many defeats as voters realize and exercise our people power.”…To meet this challenge, the Wisconsin Working Families Party executed one of its largest field programs ever leading up to the Spring 2025 general election. The Party had more than 25,605 1-on-1 conversations with voters via canvassing and phones on behalf of Judge Susan Crawford. And 703 volunteers sent 36,868 personal postcards to voters about the Supreme Court race. All told, the Party made 661,330 attempts, 44,841 contacts, and 15,408 voters identified for Judge Susan Crawford…“With millions of dollars spent attacking Susan Crawford as ‘soft on crime,’ the GOP turned Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race into a referendum on public safety,” said Insha Rahman, Director of Vera Action. “At the ballot box, Wisconsinites faced a clear choice between Brad Schimel’s tough-on-crime rhetoric or Susan Crawford’s solutions for safety, accountability, and justice. The results speak for themselves. Leading with real solutions, not scare tactics, on what works to prevent crime and break its cycle is both good policy and good politics—and a lesson for Democrats across the country to not stay silent or mimic the GOP’s stale tough-on-crime rhetoric.”…“The Working Families Party’s canvassing events for Susan Crawford were powerful and effective,” said John Drew, Chairperson, UAW Wisconsin State CAP Council. “WFP focused on working class neighborhoods in Milwaukee where its messaging led to meaningful conversations with voters and moved them to take action.”

An excerpt from, “Democrats trounced Trump with their Musk-focused playbook in Wisconsin” by Liz Crampton, Elena Schneider, Alice Miranda Ollstein and Brampton Booker at Politico:

Democrats just won their biggest electoral victory of the second Trump era. And Elon Musk lost big.

Democratic voters came out in force on Tuesday in a Wisconsin Supreme Court race, a sign that the once-latent resistance is raring to go. Musk put in a ton of money — but so did Democrats, amping turnout to midterm-level performance and showing the party’s strength outside of low turnout specials elections. And Democrats now have a legal bulwark to defend their positions on abortion rights and congressional maps in the closely divided state.

By defeating Republican-aligned candidate Brad Schimel, Susan Crawford secured a seat on the state’s highest court — and rejuvenated Democrats nationwide as they cast Musk as the No.1 villain of the second Trump era. Democrats framed the result as an explicit rejection of President Donald Trump, who endorsed Schimel.

The following graph is cross-posted from ‘Data for Progress:

At Politico, Elena Schneider writes, “Rep. Greg Casar wants Democrats to “pick villains” in the GOP and drop purity tests in primaries…The Congressional Progressive Caucus chair, a 35-year-old Texas millennial who took over its leadership in December, thinks his party lost its working-class identity, while becoming too cautious and too boring in its fight against Republicans. He’s meeting privately with other members to discuss ways to steer the party toward a more populist economic message — being “known as the party of working people, first and foremost,” Casar said — and he’s mounting an aggressive public relations campaign to push it…Casar, along with Reps. Chris Deluzio (D-Penn.) and Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.), have been meeting informally with about a dozen Democratic members to talk about how best to shift the party into emphasizing economic populism..“Republican officials have figured out how to elevate social issues that impact only a small number of people and make them the dominant issues in elections,” Casar said. But after “knocking on thousands of doors” in Texas, even the most conservative voters “never opened the door and said, ‘Thank God you’re here. I want to talk to you about the appropriate level of testosterone for somebody to compete in the NCAA [sports].”…”If we’re willing to say…the richest people on the planet want to steal your Social Security check in order to enrich themselves and their friends, well, now you’re cooking with gas,” Casar said. “Be willing to explain that — to win a voter’s trust by telling people we are willing to actually go up against the villains that are screwing them over.”…“There’s a lot of different approaches to the economy that can appeal to working class voters, that involve honoring hard work, ensuring that everybody has an opportunity to earn a good life and that doesn’t involve ‘fighting the oligarchs,” [Third Way Founder Matt] Bennett said. “If that becomes their litmus test, then we’re right back in the same boat.”

 In her “Letters from an American” Substack post for March 30, Heather Cox Richardson notes that “the top seven donors to the 2024 political, cycle together gave almost a billion dollars to Republicans, with Elon Musk alone contributing more than $291 million. The list, compiled by Open Secrets, shows that Democratic donors don’t kick in until number eight on the list, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, who gave slightly more than $64 million to Democrats. George Soros, the Republicans’ supervillain, didn’t make the top 25. As those wealthy donors wish, the Trump administration is shredding the post–World War II government and has prioritized tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations…Trump is digging into the position that some people are better than others and have the right to rule. Today he told NBC News that he is considering a third presidential term, although that is explicitly unconstitutional. “I’m not joking,” he said, “There are methods which you could do it.”

At The Bulwark, Lauren Egan shares some observations about demographic change that will have a big impact on Democratic strategy in the near future: “Thanks to a decades-long flood of cross-country migration from states like California and New York to states like Texas and Florida, the South has emerged as an economic, political, and cultural powerhouse. Tech companies are relocating to Austin; movies are increasingly being produced in Atlanta; and more students from the Northeast are attending SEC schools—and then staying in the South after graduating—than ever before. The region accounted for more than two-thirds of all job growth across the United States since early 2020, and it now contributes more to the national GDP than the Northeast does…All of that means that the South is on track to make historic gains in the 2030 census. Florida and Texas are projected to gain four or more congressional seats, while North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee could each gain a seat. Meanwhile, reliably blue states like California could lose as many as five; New York might lose three. Illinois, Minnesota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin could also see declines…All told, nearly four in ten Americans could hail from the South by the next census, according to a recent Brennan Center analysis. That not only means the path to a House majority runs through the South—it also means the party’s reliance on the “Blue Wall” will no longer be viable in future presidential elections. (The number of Electoral College votes a state gets is determined by how many congressional districts it has.)”

“Bernie Sanders is not running for president. But he is drawing larger crowds now than he did when he was campaigning for the White House,” Lauren Gambino writes at The Guardian. “The message has hardly changed. Nor has the messenger, with his shock of white hair and booming delivery. What’s different now, the senator says, is that his fears – a government captured by billionaires who exploit working people – have become an undeniable reality and people are angry…The Vermont senator recalled Donald Trump’s inauguration, when the three wealthiest people on the planet – Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg – were seated in front of his cabinet nominees in what many viewed as a shocking display of power and influence”…For weeks, voters have been showing up at town halls to vent their alarm and rage over the president’s aggressive power grabs and the Musk-led mass firings of federal workers. But they are also furious at the Democratic leadership, charging that their party spent an entire election season warning of the threat Trump posed to US democracy, and yet now appeared either unable or unwilling to stand up to him…“This isn’t just about Republicans, either. We need a Democratic party that fights harder for us, too,” Ocasio-Cortez said in Arizona, drawing some of the loudest, most sustained applause of the evening. She urged the crowd to help elect candidates “with the courage to brawl for the working class”…According to a memo by Sanders’ longtime adviser, Faiz Shakir, the senator has raised more than $7m from more than 200,000 donors since February, and is drawing crowds 25% to 100% larger than at the height of his presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020. On Friday, more than 30,000 people attended a rally in Denver – the largest audience Sanders has ever drawn, his team said…Ocasio-Cortez offered a more personal touch, weaving elements of her biography into her speech – something Sanders is typically loath to do. She spoke of her mother, who cleaned homes, and her father, whose death from a rare form of cancer plunged the family into economic uncertainty…“I don’t believe in healthcare, labor and human dignity because I’m an extremist,” she said, pushing back on the rightwing caricature of her. “I believe in these things because I was a waitress.”

In “How the American Left Became Conservative,” Michael Kazin writes at The Nation: “We have to think anew about how to win the trust of Americans who have good reasons to be cynical and angry about the current state of the nation. Just repeating the same rhetoric from the past, while simply defending agencies they know little about, won’t respond to that mood or respond effectively to the current crisis…One approach would be to highlight programs like pre-kindergarten for all kids and tax credits for childcare that Republicans killed in the cradle when Biden was president. Another would be to champion ideas that would have wide appeal—but have never been attempted: class-based affirmative action and subsidies for rent in urban areas. And how many people not named Musk or Bezos would oppose Elizabeth Warren’s “wealth tax” on the 75,000 richest Americans which the Massachusetts senator predicts would raise close to $4 trillion in a decade?…Any chosen policy ought to offer a fresh approach to narrowing the gap between classes and be available, like Social Security, to everyone regardless of need…One can wish that nationalism would fade away, sometime in the future. But as long as most Americans identify with and want to be proud of their country, a nationalism of caring is the best alternative to the nativist scare-mongering of the MAGA mogul. Anyone whose embrace of Trumpism derives primarily from a hatred of immigrants or transgender people will be beyond the reach of this strategy. But surveys and exit polls from last fall’s election show that anxiety about the economy was far more common than fears about cultural displacement.”

Mike Konczal ruminates on “The Abundance Doctrine: How modern liberalism became too obsessed with saying no—and can learn to say yes again” at Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, and writes: “Bending the cost curve, getting health care to more people, and saving hundreds of billions of dollars is the definition of abundance. The efficiency of social insurance sits uneasy in the authors’ framework. In this light, the call for the expansion of Medicare and public options to save larger costs—with similar or better outcomes—might be the most important abundance intervention…Moreover, criticisms of administrative inefficiency and capture were top of mind when the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was created in 2010 as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform. Consumer protection had previously been split among at least five financial regulators, leaving no single agency with the incentive, staffing, or expertise to do it well. The CFPB’s structure and funding were purposely designed to protect it from capture, and it has successfully returned more than $21 billion to consumers and produced rules addressing issues such as abuses in mortgage markets and student debt. Precisely because of these successes, ones that reformers can learn from, dismantling the CFPB has been a central goal of President Trump and Elon Musk…These examples complicate the narrative that Democrats just can’t get anything done. But that doesn’t mean we should duck from a more serious conversation about government action. It remains unclear what comes next for liberals and progressives, and there is a desperate urgency to figure out what ideological frameworks might fill the void. The Trump Administration’s plans for retrenchment, isolationism, tariffs, and deportations risk putting us on a path to severe stagnation, akin to the one the UK has suffered since Brexit. Liberals must offer an alternative, and one path is to put forth a vision built around future-oriented growth. While it isn’t clear either way whether abundance is a good electoral strategy, the priorities it flags have gone missing in recent decades. And if we can’t offer a more prosperous future while also delivering on the things we promise, why should voters trust us?”

“Toward a Foreign Policy for the Working Class” by Mohammed Soliman and Andrew Hanna at The National Interest, argues “Despite the brightest minds serving at the highest levels of government, Washington offers little tangible to the American working class struggling with rising costs and increasing threats to their security…Meanwhile, the American working class—which is rapidly diversifying—has reshaped the country’s politics. Working-class voters have played a decisive role in the past three major presidential elections, realigning both major parties away from the post-Cold War consensus on free trade and military intervention overseas… The political center of gravity in America has shifted toward the working class on both sides of the aisle. This is a good thing. There is an opportunity now to make the bipartisan populist shift actually serve the American working class. To revive the American Dream, national security elites should reorient their efforts away from defending broken global institutions and toward relentlessly advancing the interests of the American working class…Our leaders must confidently express their faith in America as a force for good in the world. This new American faith is not blind patriotism or nativist jingoism but a deep, unwavering trust in the American experiment. It is a belief in the enduring promise of America as a beacon of hope, a place where individual liberty remains sacred and inviolable. It is the conviction that this nation, flawed yet striving, can still light the way for the world.”

“In just a few weeks, special elections will take place in Florida for two previously Republican-held House seats,” an email blast from actable says. “Let us explain why these campaigns are so important:…Republicans’ House majority is razor thin. Any Democrat we elect right now is another Democrat fighting against Trump and his allies’ extreme, harmful agenda…Like DNC Chair Ken Martin has said, part of his vision is to compete everywhere — and especially as Democrats continue to overperform in special elections throughout the country — we need to do our part to compete in Florida this April…Now, to tell you a little bit more about these races:…Gay Valimont for FL-1: Gay Valimont is running to fill a house seat that was vacated by Matt Gaetz. While navigating the terminal illnesses of both her husband and son at the same time, Gay saw firsthand how broken our health care system is for too many people. In Congress, Gay will fight to expand access to affordable health care and to bring down prescription drug prices…Josh Weil for FL-6: Josh Weil is a proud single father and public school educator who wants to help the people of Florida, protect schools, and make a brighter future for all of us. He wants to protect our environment, fix health care, lower prescription drug prices, keep up with inflation for seniors living on a fixed income, and make our economy work for working people — not just the rich.” Donate here.

“Could Low-Wage White Workers Spark Trump’s Undoing?,” Rob Okun asks at Ms. magazine, and writes: “If an unelected technocrat can delete the financial commitments of a government established for the people and by the people—and we don’t say anything—we betray our moral commitments to liberty,” [Bishop William] Barber underscored…Indeed, the Republican tax plan would attack those who are most economically vulnerable. The plan calls for cutting around $880 billion from Medicaid over 10 years, callously ignoring the 72 million people enrolled in the program and the seven million in the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Barber points to a new study, “The High Moral Stakes: Our Budget, Our Future,” to illustrate these consequences, detailing that, “about 39 [percent] of the enrollees in Medicaid are white, 18 [percent] are Black, 29 [percent] are Latino, 4.7 [percent] are Asian…”…Based on these statistics, 40 percent of everyone on Medicaid is white. So while Trump won with a significant portion of white, working-class voters, his policy in office may sway them to join a burgeoning resistance movement once they’ve absorbed the reality of his eviscerating cuts to Medicaid…Ultimately, having these white, working-class voters in the fight against Trump would be critical to further building up the movement. The next step, according to Barber, is to call this community and others to action. “We abdicate our own moral capacity if we walk away from this moment. And we’re not going to walk away from this moment,” Barber said. “The only way a king becomes a king is if you bow. And we cannot bow. Bowing is not in our DNA. We have to stand in this moment.”

Commentators blithely bandy about the term “middle class,” and what it means context of national politics. But there are significant differences between regions and states. Nicole Spector explains “How Much Money Is Needed To Be Considered Middle Class in Every State?” at gobankingrates.com. Of course these figures reflect  the cost of living in each state to some extent. “How much money do you need to be considered middle class?,” Spector asks. “It might take more money than you think to reach this income tier. The Pew Research Center defines the middle class, or middle-income households, as those with incomes that are two-thirds to double the U.S. median household income…However, because the cost of living and average income vary so widely from state to state, the income needed to be “middle class” in one state could be much more or less than what it takes to be middle class in another.” Here’s the middle-class income for every state (Here’s our sample from the “A” states to provide a sense of the range):

Factor in mobility, and you have a helluva mess that makes you wonder about the value of “national” income data.

An excerpt from “2026 reset: How Democrats are plotting to regain power: Expect to hear a lot about Medicaid, Elon Musk, and the working class over the next two years” by Cami Mondeaux at Deseret News: “House Democrats are gathering in Leesburg, Virginia, this week for their annual policy retreat where party members discuss messaging and strategy for the upcoming year…Democrats are scrambling to regroup and pinpoint their messaging tactics before the 2026 cycle begins in earnest….Much of that message will focus on the Trump administration’s efforts to slash government spending, particularly multibillionaire Elon Musk’s role in purging the federal workforce. Democrats have already started their attacks by accusing Republicans of seeking to dismantle Medicaid and other welfare programs — and party leaders are hoping to make those concerns a top issue…“Our job over the next 21 months is to make sure that voters are hearing this message loud and clear, and we’re going to keep repeating it over,” Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., chairwoman of the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, said on Wednesday…House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., reiterated those plans, telling reporters the party would focus their message on supporting the working class while accusing Republicans of working for the wealthy, with Musk as a prime example…Meanwhile, a few Democrats I spoke with said they want to hear more from party leaders about outreach tactics, noting that’s become a major discussion point in the aftermath of the 2024 election.“…I think a big reason we lost (in 2024) was around communications, and they’ve already really been talking a lot about that (and) what we did wrong,” Rep. Glenn Ivey, D-Md., told me ahead of the retreat. “Republicans really outflanked us on the podcasts and those networks. They had all these top podcasters I’d never even heard of until the day after the election.”