Watch: Bill Maher Says ‘Mind Blown’ After Meeting With Trump
While Bill Maher may change opinions like a windsock depending on who he’s pandering to, the “Real Time” host told his mostly-Democrat audience that Donald Trump, aka Hitler-Stalin-Mussolini, was “gracious and measured” at their recent meeting last week.
We know, duh… but considering the influence Maher has on the left, his comments are interesting nonetheless.
“You can hate me for it, but I’m not a liar. Trump was gracious and measured,” Maher said. “And why isn’t that in other settings- I don’t know, and I can’t answer, and it’s not my place to answer. I’m just telling you what I saw, and I wasn’t high.”
Maher said the meeting, brokered by their mutual friend Kid Rock, wasn’t “some kind of summit.”
“I have no power. I’m a fucking comedian, and he’s the most powerful leader in the world!” he continued. “I’m not the leader of anything, except maybe a contingent of centrist-minded people who think there’s got to be a better way of running this country than hating each other every minute.”
Maher admitted that he went in ready for a fight – only to find Trump absolutely charming.
“Everything I’ve not liked about him was, I swear to God, absent. At least on this night, with this guy,” Maher, 69, said – seemingly shocked at his own admission.
“I never felt I had to walk on eggshells around him. And honestly, I voted for Clinton and Obama, but I would never feel comfortable talking to them the way I was able to talk with Donald Trump,” he continued, adding “Make of it what you will.”
“I’ve had so many conversations with prominent people who are much less connected. People that don’t look you in the eye. People that don’t really listen because they just want to get to their next thing. People whose response to things you say just doesn’t track. None of that with him,” Maher continued. “Mostly he steered the conversation to ‘what do you think about this?’ I know. Your mind is blown. So is mine.“
Maher added that Trump gave him a bunch of MAGA hats, which are stored in the same room where former President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky engaged in extracurricular activities.
At one point in the dinner, Maher says Trump asked him about his thoughts on the Iran nuclear situation. After he allegedly gave Trump shit for eliminating the Obama-era nuclear deal, Trump “didn’t get mad or call me a left-wing lunatic. He took it in.”
Trump admitted he ‘lost’ in 2020 (allegedly)
According to Maher, Trump used the word ‘lost’ in relation to the 2020 presidential election.
“And I distinctly remember saying, ‘Wow, I never thought I’d hear you say that.’ He didn’t get mad. He’s much more self-aware than he lets on in public,” Maher said, adding that in private, Trump is just normal.
“Just for starters, he laughs,” Maher stated in disbelief. “I’d never seen him laugh in public. But he does — including at himself — and it’s not fake. Believe me, as a comedian of forty years, I know a fake laugh when I hear it.”
Watch:
Twelve days ago, I had dinner with President Trump, a dinner that my friend @KidRock set up because we share the belief that there has to be something better than hurling insults from 3000 miles away. pic.twitter.com/KE2t2eyBkI
Meanwhile, journalist Laura Loomer is jumping all over conservative “Bill Maher Simps,” while she says she had “a productive week in Cali, which included my deposition of Bill Maher,” who she’s suing for defamation.
So sick of Bill Maher Simps.
Conservatives are so desperate to be friends with people who hate them.
All I know is I had a productive week in Cali, which included my deposition of Bill Maher @billmaher.
Trump Exempts Computers, Handsets, Chips From Reciprocal Tariff Blitz, Still Subject To Original 20%
Update (1255ET): As Trump adviser Stephen Miller points out, the products are still “subject to the tariff under the original IEEPA on China of 20 percent.”
Washington Post: maybe your reporters should try reading before posting. These products are subject to the tariff under the original IEEPA on China of 20 percent. https://t.co/MI4oDEb8S3
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued an updated guidance late Friday night on product exclusions from President Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, imposed under Executive Order 14257 and its amendments (EO 14259). The exclusions cover a wide range of electronic devices, including smartphones, laptops, and related components.
First, President Trump paused reciprocal tariffs for non-retaliating countries (e.g., China) for 90 days last week. Now, updated guidance from CBP reveals that some of the highest-value trade—particularly a wide range of electronics—is excluded from the reciprocal tariffs.
Among the 20 tariff codes listed for exemption, three stand out in particular:
8471 – Automatic data processing machines and units thereof (e.g., laptops, desktops, servers).
8517.13.00 – Smartphones and other telecommunication apparatus for cellular networks.
To close out the week, the U.S.–China trade war escalated in a highly predictable tit-for-tat fashion. The U.S. now imposes a 145% effective tariff rate on Chinese goods, while Beijing has retaliated with a 125% rate on American products.
Meanwhile, Wall Street analysts have already trimmed sales estimates for U.S. companies with Chinese exposure, including Apple and Tesla, as economic storm clouds gather over global trade.
Notably, most of the products now exempt from reciprocal tariffs are those the U.S. lacks the capacity to produce at scale—highlighting the need for significant reshoring, investment, and supply chain restructuring.
Many of these products are also consumer essentials—items Americans couldn’t live without, such as smartphones and computers—making them politically sensitive. The Trump administration likely chose not to risk upsetting consumers ahead of the Midterms.
In markets, this news will be fuel to stage a further recovery…
Nasdaq Breadth…
As Wedbush’s Dan Ives notes, Big Tech and investors ‘got the dream news’. . .
This is for all reciprocal tariffs including China….Big Tech and investors got the dream news🐂🔥🏆 https://t.co/tWEv0WwNxU
It costs more to be an American now than it did five years ago—more than 50 percent more. The U.S. government spent more than half again as much in 2024 as it did in 2019, and interest payments on the national debt more than doubled during that time, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Since 2019, federal spending, the national debt, and the size of the federal bureaucracy have all grown rapidly. Federal regulations also increased over the half-decade, with some 290 additional rules and nearly 10 million words added to administrative law books.
President Donald Trump’s effort to reduce the size and scope of the federal government, mainly through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has met with some early success. There have also been roadblocks in the form of legal challenges and public protests.
Here’s an overview of recent trends in federal spending, borrowing, and staffing that lend perspective to the scope of current and planned reductions to the federal bureaucracy.
Federal spending grew by about 55 percent from 2019 to 2024. The initial increase appears to have been driven by COVID-19-related spending, which trended down beginning in 2021. Yet even before the public health emergency was declared over in May 2023, spending began to increase again.
Meanwhile, the median household income in the United States declined slightly over that period. At the end of 2023, the last date for which data is available, the typical American family was earning $600 less per year than in 2019.
Spending grew faster than the nation’s economy, measured as the gross domestic product; the total value of all goods and services sold.
The fastest-growing category of federal spending is interest on the national debt, which more than doubled during that period. Interest payments on the national debt (not including repaying the debt itself) now cost more than any single government program except Social Security. America pays more to its lenders than it pays for national defense, Medicaid, or Medicare.
Spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, other entitlement programs, and interest on the debt is mandatory because it is dictated by longstanding federal laws. Other defense spending and other non-defense spending are considered discretionary because Congress sets those amounts each year.
The national debt grew by 56 percent from 2019 to 2024, topping $35 trillion. Since 2012, it has exceeded the value of all goods and services sold in the United States, known as the gross domestic product. As of 2024, the federal debt was about 120 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product.
From 2019 to 2024, federal revenue increased by 40 percent from $3.5 trillion to $4.9 trillion.
To compare the changes in income and debt over that period in everyday terms, a family earning a household income of $60,000 in 2019 could have increased its salary to $72,000 by 2024. Over the same five years the family had credit card debt and student loans that increased from $390,000 to $520,000.
The federal workforce grew significantly from 2019 to 2024. Discounting the approximately 500,000 temporary employees hired to conduct the 2020 census, the federal government grew by about 150,000 during those five years. That increase is more than the total number of people employed by either Boeing or Verizon.
The federal government employs about 3.1 million people, not including the military or federal contractors. Contractors are people employed by private companies to perform work for the federal government, such as processing Medicare claims.
Uncle Sam employs more people than Walmart and nearly double that of Amazon. The federal government is the largest employer in 37 states.
Trump Orders Military To Seal Southern Border As US Accelerates Hemispheric Defense
Days after NBC reported that the Trump administration had considered launching drone strikes on drug cartels in Mexico, President Trump issued a memorandum Friday night to the heads of four federal departments, expanding the U.S. military’s role in securing the southern border in accordance with Executive Order 14167 (Clarifying the Military’s Role in Protecting the Territorial Integrity of the United States) and Proclamation 10886 (Declaring a National Emergency at the Southern Border of the United States). The move aligns with a broader strategic theme known as hemispheric defense.
It states, “Our southern border is under attack from a variety of threats. The complexity of the current situation requires that our military take a more direct role in securing our southern border than in the recent past.”
Here’s a breakdown of the memo:
Key Objectives:
Repel border invasion and seal the U.S.–Mexico border from unlawful entry.
Empower the Department of Defense (DoD) to use federal lands (excluding Indian Reservations) for:
Military operations,
Border barrier construction,
Surveillance infrastructure,
Designation of National Defense Areas.
Agency Coordination:
Secretaries of Defense, Interior, Agriculture, and Homeland Security must coordinate to:
Transfer jurisdiction of necessary lands to DoD.
Allow military installations and operations on designated federal land (e.g., Roosevelt Reservation).
Expedite land withdrawals under 43 U.S.C. 155 to bypass Engle Act restrictions.
Rules of Engagement:
Armed Forces to operate under DoD-prescribed rules of force.
Installation commanders maintain authority to exclude individuals under 10 U.S.C. § 2672 and 50 U.S.C. § 797.
Implementation Timeline:
Initial Phase: Conducted on a limited sector of federal land.
Within 45 Days: DoD to assess and potentially expand operations to more sectors.
Trump mandated that the U.S. military beef up its presence along the southern border days after NBC reported that Trump administration officials mulled over kinetically dismantling the command and control structures of Mexican drug cartels now designated as terrorists. As previously noted, two months of signals intelligence have been conducted across the region via U.S. military spy planes.
The broader theme readers should understand is that securing the border plays into a much larger theme of national and hemispheric defense across the Americas. Hence, a push for stronger economic integration between the United States and Canada, coupled with a hardened defense perimeter stretching from the Arctic to the Panama Canal.
Boosting hemispheric defense doesn’t stop with the southern border, Panama, Canada, or Greenland, but also the American financial system. The number one mission has been ridding the system of Chinese Triads and cartel terrorists, hence the TD Bank AML penalty. All of this is preparing the Americas for 2030 to challenge China.
In 1974, Congress created the Legal Services Corporation to connect lower-income Americans involved in civil disputes with free legal help. The law that established the agency stipulated that authorization for its funding would expire in 1980, when lawmakers were required to vote on whether to keep it alive.
They never did. Still, Congress has funded LSC every year since. In fiscal 2025, its 51st year, LSC’s 135 employees will spend 95 percent of its now $560 million annual budget paying legal groups to represent Americans in cases such as eviction, domestic violence, and disputes over government benefits, according to Ron Flagg, the agency’s president since 2020.
“LSC would welcome reauthorization,” Flagg said. “We haven’t hidden from it. Every budget cycle, we go through an exhaustive process before Congress appropriates funds — dozens of meetings with leaders of both parties. We demonstrate our return on investment, how we help 2 million Americans get life-saving legal help.”
The Legal Services Corp. now stands as America’s oldest “Zombie” program, but it’s far from unique. At a time when the Trump administration is moving aggressively to scale back government, including eliminating the entire Education Department, it’s sobering to note that 1,503 agencies or programs live on despite expired authorizations, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Another 155 will expire on Sept. 30. The Zombies, nearly half of which have been officially dead for more than a decade, persist in a budgetary netherworld. In a deep dive last year, CBO analysts were able to find dollar amounts for 491 of the programs, with total expenditures of $516 billion. They don’t know how much funding the other programs received.
“A lot of programs don’t get reauthorized because Congress is okay with how they’re operating,” said Josh Huder, former congressional staffer now at the Georgetown University Government Affairs Institute. “They continue to get annual appropriations because most members think they’re worthwhile.”
Many Zombie programs now soak up far more funding than lawmakers originally envisioned. The Federal Election Commission, for example, was expected to spend $9.4 million per year before its authorization expired in 1981. Yet the agency continued to receive funding and spent $95 million in 2024, auditors at government watchdog Open The Books found. The Federal Communications Commission was originally allocated $339.6 million per year. Its funding authorization expired in 2020, yet it spent $28.4 billion last year.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency hasn’t addressed the Zombies that are prowling the federal spreadsheets. Given DOGE’s headlong push to first root out alleged waste, fraud, and abuse and ask questions later, experts say, Zombies may offer a ripe target.
“One could imagine that if DOGE is clued into the notion of expired authorizations, they’ll think a program is defunct,” said Sarah Binder, senior fellow at Brookings and professor of political science at George Washington University. She said this would be a mistake. “If Congress is still appropriating money to the programs, they’re not Zombies. They’re living, breathing agencies.”
Binder says the fault lies not with the agencies, some of which have become important enough to be household names, but Congress. Lawmakers have made it so difficult to accomplish their most fundamental tasks, such as funding the government for another year, that they hardly ever get around to doing other important things, such as reauthorizing existing programs.
The Foreign Relations Authorization Act, for example, expired in 2003. Yet in 2024, Congress spent $38.4 billion on 24 of the law’s programs, allowing legislators to influence the White House’s foreign policy and security assistance to other nations.
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce, now led by Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY), supported the funding of 346 expired programs, more than any other committee, the CBO found. The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, now chaired by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), spent more identifiable money than any other group: $153.5 billion.
“Congress’ job doesn’t stop when they allocate the money,” said Casey Burgat, professor at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management. “They have to oversee it. And when they fail to do that they open themselves up to somebody else doing that. In this case, an aggressive executive branch in the form of DOGE.”
Of the 1,503 agencies or programs, 22 remain alive that required a reauthorization vote as long ago as the 1980s, according to the CBO. In addition to the Legal Services Corp., whose authorization expired in 1980, and the FEC (a 1981 reauthorization deadline), the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, which oversees the country’s power grids (1984) and the Energy Information Administration, or EIA, whose data informs U.S. policymaking (1984), are among the Zombies pushing middle age.
Congress has appropriated annual funding for EIA since its inception in 1977, the agency said in an emailed statement. “Subsequent legislation has continued to direct EIA to conduct data collection, analysis and dissemination activities consistent with our mission as the nation’s premier source of energy information.” Spokespeople for the FEC, FERC, and the CBO declined to comment.
Another Zombie, the U.S. African Development Foundation—whose authorization expired in 1987—made headlines earlier this month when its officials blocked DOGE staff from entering their offices in Washington.
Congress has a history of denying or skipping reauthorizations. In the 1980s and 90s, former North Carolina Republican Sen. Jesse Helms became famous for holding up authorizations of the State Department, which he often found insufficiently vigilant against communism. The frequent flare-ups between Helms and the diplomats of State earned him the nickname “Senator No.” And NASA, the widely respected space program, recently went through periods of time when Congress funded it but didn’t reauthorize it.
The CBO’s list of 1,000-plus agencies and programs with expired reauthorization deadlines offers a window into the variety and volume of federal government activity, from grants to remove lead from drinking water and protect against radon to collecting statistics on prison rape. Lawmakers seem to be nursing a mild obsession with fish. Over the years, they’ve funded without reauthorization a herring study, for instance, and programs to help Atlantic striped bass and tuna thrive. It seems part of a larger interest in wildlife, which includes conservation programs for elephants, rhinos, and tigers and the control and eradication of the venomous brown tree snake, an invasive pest infamous for devouring a scary chunk of Guam’s bird population.
Environmental and health programs populate the list, from monitoring water quality at beaches and the Energy Star appliance program to medical care for children with asthma and funding for the National Center for Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities. There are also provisions for improving airport security, protection for railroad first responders, and working capital for the Department of Homeland Security. Like a cherry on top, there’s also funding for the Office of Government Ethics.
Congress, whose 29 percent job-approval rating in February was the highest in four years, would probably “have a hard time assembling a list of programs that they’ve authorized,” said Burgat of George Washington University. “It’s a power void.”
‘Congress Doesn’t Have the Time’
‘DOGE steps into that vacuum with constitutional limitations. In 1974, Congress enacted the Impoundment Control Act, which prohibits presidents from refusing to spend the money that Congress allocates.
The Trump administration has challenged the constitutionality of the impoundment law, and DOGE is an ongoing test of the separation of powers between the legislative branch and the executive.
“Authorizations and appropriations are both law,” said Brookings’ Binder. “As long as Congress is voting to spend money on these programs, it would be an impoundment to close them. It would be unconstitutional.”
To remedy the situation, Congress would have to go through the list of Zombies and decide whether to reauthorize each one, a tedious process that evidently has hovered nowhere near the top of its priority list. “Congress doesn’t have the time to do good institutional housecleaning,” Binder said. “There are a lot of little programs, but also a good deal of big ones. They don’t have the capacity to keep tabs on the authorizations.”
For now, Ron Flagg of Legal Services Corp. waits with a cautious optimism, wary about how DOGE will perceive his agency but confident that after a half century, LSC has the ability to stand up for itself.
“During the first Trump administration we got a raise in money because Congress members don’t view our work as a partisan issue,” Flagg said. “LSC has an ability to go to Congress with the facts. We publish grants, we tell you how many people were served and how many cases were closed and how technology has been advanced and how funding has been leveraged by volunteers. We’re able to make those points to Congress as part as the annual funding process.
“I’m not sure other agencies have the same ability to advocate for the quality of their work.”
NYPD Seeks Suspect Accused Of Having Sex With A Homeless Man’s Corpse On Subway
Just another day in New York City, another man wanted by New York City police for allegedly committing a disturbing act in a subway car.
How much more disturbing can things get in New York?
Try this one on for size: authorities say the suspect engaged in sexual misconduct with the corpse of a homeless man on a southbound R train near the Whitehall Street station around 12:30 a.m. Wednesday, according to ABC 7.
Investigators believe the victim died of natural causes prior to the incident and that the suspect did not know him. The suspect was last seen wearing a blue baseball cap, black hooded jacket, yellow hoodie, jeans, red and white sneakers, and carrying a backpack.
The suspect reportedly left the Whitehall Street station shortly after midnight, the Post added.
He is a heroin addict who had been living with his brother in the Bronx after getting out of prison, the brother toldThe Post.
“He has never done anything like this in his life — not what they said he did. I don’t think that he did that. He’s not that type of person,” he said. “They said he took his thing out and put it in the guy’s … yeah I don’t think he did that he’s not a pervert.”
The family is “in shock” and “mad,” and believes police need to investigate further.
“No matter how bad the heroin addiction is, he’s not like that,” his brother added. Police are also looking for a woman who gave the victim a cigarette before he died and was later seen going through his pockets.
It seems we’re supposed to mourn the last gasp of The Landfill Economy. Perhaps we should celebrate its demise.
Globalization’s great gift wasn’t low prices–it was the collapse of durability, transforming the global economy into a Landfill Economy of shoddy products made of low-cost components guaranteed to fail, poor quality control, planned obsolescence and accelerated product cycles–all hyper-profitable, all to the detriment of consumers and the planet.
Globalization also accelerated another hyper-profitable gambit: . Since all the products are now made with the same low-quality components, they all fail regardless of brand or price. The $2,000 refrigerator lasts no longer than the $700 fridge. Since the manufacturers and retailers all know the products are destined for the landfill by either design or default, warranties are uniformly one-year–and it’s semi-miraculous if the consumer can find anyone to act on replacing or repairing the failed product even with the warranty.
In The Landfill Economy, Consumer choice is pure illusion. I’d like to buy once, cry once, so where is the option with a 10-year all parts and labor warranty? There isn’t one, because nothing is durable–by design or default.
As a result, The Landfill Economy is fundamentally extortionist. We know this product will fail, you know this product will fail, and so here’s our offer: buy a 3-year extended warranty for a hefty sum, because we’ve engineered the product to fail in four years.
If the product is digital, then even if it still functions, we’ll force you to replace it via a new product cycle: we no longer support the old operating system, and since your device is out of date (heh) it can’t load the new OS, and since all the apps now only function with the new OS, your device is useless.
The low price is also illusory, as we now have to buy four, five or ten products instead of one durable product. Appliances that once lasted 40 years now fail in 6 or 7 years if not sooner, so over the course of 40 years we have to buy five, six or seven appliances instead of one.
Note that these durable products weren’t super-expensive commercial appliances; they were ordinary consumer appliances produced domestically in vast quantities.
Digitization is a key driver of The Landfill Economy, as cheap electronics all fail, and the product / vehicle / tool becomes a brick. Since inventory is an expense, it’s been eliminated, so parts for older products are soon out of stock and unavailable.
In a few years, the firmware is no longer supported, and in a few decades, nobody will even know what coding was embedded in the chipset, but it won’t matter anyway, because the chipsets are long gone.
Readers tell me vehicles are now wondrously reliable. Um, yeah, until they need to be repaired. Then the cost is higher than what I’ve paid for entire used cars.
A friend was showing us his 1957 Chevrolet Bel-Air. Unlike the stainless steal and low-quality chrome of today, the original parts are still untarnished. Since the entire vehicle is analog, parts can be scrounged or fabricated or swapped out with a similar set-up.
Does anyone seriously believe that a chipset-software-dependent vehicle today will still be running 68 years from now? Analog parts can be cast or welded; customized chipsets and firmware coding cannot. The original components will all be history.
Our friend recounted a very typical story about repairing his recent-model pickup truck. Since the engine was no longer responding to the accelerator, he borrowed a diagnostic computer (horribly expensive to maintain due to the extortionist monthly fee to keep the software upgraded) and came up with zip, zero, nada.
After swapping out the fuel pump at great expense and finding the problem persisted, he went online to YouTube University and found one video that explained the relay box from the accelerator to the engine didn’t show up in the diagnostic codes, so the problem could not be identified.
The relay box cost $400, and likely consisted of components worth no more than a few dollars each. So after $1,000 in parts and his own labor, the problem was finally fixed. If this qualifies as “super-reliable and maintenance-free,” then the diagnosis is obvious: mass delusion.
So now the status quo is desperate to maintain the global assembly lines feeding the hyper-profitable Landfill Economy. This may well be the last gasp of The Landfill Economy, as the supply chains of shoddy products designed to fail will break and consumers may well awaken to the high cost over time of an economy based on planned obsolescence, accelerated product cycles and extortionist illusions of choice.
Last week I bought an expensive portable solar panel manufactured in China from a local distributor. The U.S. brand distributing the product has a good reputation for quality. Of course the warranty is for one year.
The panel failed in less than a week: I smelled the unmistakable odor of an electrical short (insulation melting) and noticed the plastic rectangle that the output cord extended from was dimpled by high heat. The plastic part had no visible way to open it, and no visible way to replace it. So the entire panel is unrepairable.
(The local distributor had one in stock, so I was able to get a replacement. Here’s hoping it has a non-defective set of components.)
It’s doubtful anyone has the parts in stock, and it’s also doubtful that it could be repaired even if one pried open the plastic casing to examine the melted bits. The parts are in one place–the factory that assembled the panel.
So this panel, manufactured at great expense of costly materials, will end up in the landfill after five days of service. And no, it won’t be recycled, as there’s no system to do so, and it doesn’t make financial sense to even try.
Wow, isn’t The Landfill Economy fantastic? Look how profitable it is, as consumers must constantly replace or repair at great expense everything that comes off the wonderful global supply chains. And since we worship “growth” and profits, The Landfill Economy is the ideal arrangement–for those making and selling all the stuff.
For the consumers–not so much, but who cares, since they have no choice but to keep buying shoddy products designed to fail.
Add the defective solar panel to the long list of other failed products in our household: the iPhone screen that failed, the washer that failed, the dryer that failed (which I was able to fix by replacing the motherboard, which only cost half the price of a new dryer with my “free” labor), the failed fridge, defective toaster from Walmart, shoes from Costco that fell apart in a few months, and the failed AC system in our 2016 Honda Civic. (Mention this to any mechanic and they quickly nod, “oh yeah, those all fail.”)
All of this failure generates “growth” and profits, the two Grails every economist worships. Here’s another load of “growth” going straight into the landfill.
It seems we’re supposed to mourn the last gasp of The Landfill Economy. Perhaps we should celebrate its demise.
Trump Exempts Computers, Handsets, Chips From Reciprocal Tariff Blitz
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued an updated guidance late Friday night on product exclusions from President Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, imposed under Executive Order 14257 and its amendments (EO 14259). The exclusions cover a wide range of electronic devices, including smartphones, laptops, and related components.
First, President Trump paused reciprocal tariffs for non-retaliating countries (e.g., China) for 90 days last week. Now, updated guidance from CBP reveals that some of the highest-value trade—particularly a wide range of electronics—is excluded from the reciprocal tariffs.
Among the 20 tariff codes listed for exemption, three stand out in particular:
8471 – Automatic data processing machines and units thereof (e.g., laptops, desktops, servers).
8517.13.00 – Smartphones and other telecommunication apparatus for cellular networks.
To close out the week, the U.S.–China trade war escalated in a highly predictable tit-for-tat fashion. The U.S. now imposes a 145% effective tariff rate on Chinese goods, while Beijing has retaliated with a 125% rate on American products.
Meanwhile, Wall Street analysts have already trimmed sales estimates for U.S. companies with Chinese exposure, including Apple and Tesla, as economic storm clouds gather over global trade.
Notably, most of the products now exempt from reciprocal tariffs are those the U.S. lacks the capacity to produce at scale—highlighting the need for significant reshoring, investment, and supply chain restructuring.
Many of these products are also consumer essentials—items Americans couldn’t live without, such as smartphones and computers—making them politically sensitive. The Trump administration likely chose not to risk upsetting consumers ahead of the Midterms.
In markets, this news will be fuel to stage a further recovery…
Nasdaq Breadth…
As Wedbush’s Dan Ives notes, Big Tech and investors ‘got the dream news’. . .
This is for all reciprocal tariffs including China….Big Tech and investors got the dream news🐂🔥🏆 https://t.co/tWEv0WwNxU
The UK government is in the process of developing a system to predict whether people will commit homicide in the future.
What could possibly go wrong with that?
The idea is the literal plot line of Philip K. Dick’s dystopian story ‘Minority Report,’ where individuals are arrested before they are able to commit crimes thanks to a ‘precrime’ predictive policing system.
It’s the exact same thing, minus the mutant human precogs. In reality the program will be much more boring, using ‘algorithms’ to churn through data and spit out results.
Given that the data will presumably include spicy social media posts, which are now being punished with prison sentences in the UK, you can see where this is going.
UK: The UK is now testing software designed to predict whether someone might become a future killer. Drawing on vast troves of government data, this “homicide prediction” project builds individual risk profiles, turning bureaucratic files into digital crystal balls. It’s Minority… pic.twitter.com/bVF1n74GD1
The UK government is developing a ‘murder prediction’ programme which it hopes can use personal data of those known to the authorities to identify the people most likely to become killers.
Researchers are alleged to be using algorithms to analyse the information of thousands of people, including victims of crime, as they try to identify those at greatest risk of committing serious violent offences.
The scheme was originally called the ‘homicide prediction project,’ but its name has been changed to ‘sharing data to improve risk assessment.’ The Ministry of Justice hopes the project will help boost public safety but campaigners have called it ‘chilling and dystopian.’
The UK government is developing a “murder prediction” programme which it hopes can use personal data of those known to the authorities to identify the people most likely to become killers, called “chilling and dystopian” by campaigners https://t.co/pE0VDBHmrM
@amuse Plenty could go wrong with the UK’s homicide prediction project. Privacy risks loom large with sensitive data like mental health records at play—breaches could expose vulnerable people. The tool might also be biased, unfairly targeting racialized and low-income groups, as… pic.twitter.com/b2qqdTAoBI
“Sir, the results have come in, it seems like every non British person is on the list”
— Lord Miles Official (@real_lord_miles) April 9, 2025
Awesome! I was always hoping we could arrest criminals BEFORE they commit crimes. I’m sure this will be implemented even-handedly….in a country where you get imprisoned for mean words. Totally nothing to worry about here….
Another backdrop to all this is the fact that the government just enacted racially biased criminal codes to punish white men more harshly than women or minorities.
“White men are going to be treated a lot tougher by judges from Tuesday, compared to other groups.” Starmer
JD Vance was right, the UK now operates within a full on dystopian apparatus:
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Finland Bans Russians From Buying Property As Zelensky Says ‘Hatred’ For Them Is Justified
On Friday Finland’s parliament unanimously approved a government proposal for a complete ban on real estate acquisitions from Russian nationals. The country’s leaders are hailing that the resolution was passed.
The Finnish Defense Ministry announced Friday that the measure aims to strengthen national security and that “This decision sends a clear message: we will not allow Finland to be undermined,” according to the statement.
It applies to those from countries which “wage a war of aggression and pose a potential threat to Finland’s national security” – who are now barred from carrying out real estate transactions.
Finland will of course deny that its policies which target Russians are racist or xenophobic based on the following caveat:
The ban would not apply to Russians or other foreigners with a Finnish permanent residence permit or an EU residence permit granted by Helsinki, allowing them to seek approval from Finland’s Defense Ministry for transactions.
The legislation also seeks to prevent Russians from buying property through a third party, in any arrangement which tries to conceal the real buyer’s identify.
During the first year of the Russia-Ukraine war, Western countries and institutions waged a cultural ‘war’ against all things seen as ‘Russian’ – from cancelling Russian classical music and ballet performances, to boycotting things as simple as Russian tea rooms or restaurants. Even books by the famous author Fyodor Dostoevsky were subject of hysterical denunciations in some corners.
Since then, it’s apparently been OK for people to hate an entire nationality or ethnicity based on mere association with the Russian nation or identity. Western ‘enlightened liberals’ have advanced such an agenda, but also the Ukrainians themselves.
For example, Russian media has highlighted some of President Zelensky’s latest comments on all of this as follows:
Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has admitted that his “hatred” of Russians is one of the driving forces propelling him to “keep going” in the conflict against Moscow.
In an interview with the French daily Le Figaro published on Wednesday, Zelensky identified the emotion as one of his three key psychological drivers since the escalation of the conflict in February 2022.
Zelensky said he hated “Russians who killed so many Ukrainian citizens,” adding that he considered such an attitude appropriate in wartime. His other motivations included a sense of national dignity and the desire for his descendants to live “in the free world.”
Of course, the Ukrainian government has also welcomed Finland’s move to ban all property purchases by Russians, something which is likely to be mimicked by some other EU and NATO member states.
Trump on Zelensky:
You see the hatred he’s got for Putin. It’s very tough for me to make a deal with that kind of hate. He’s got tremendous hatred. pic.twitter.com/DSaRtZJiaf
Regardless, Washington is pursuing a different track, with ongoing bilateral meetings with Moscow with a goal of restoring diplomatic normalization. A Thursday meeting of delegations in Istanbul was toward this end, as is Special Envoy Steve Witkoff’s third visit to Moscow to meet with Putin on Friday.
