SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
Flaunting "the peculiar Trumpian stupidity," the mad king's giddy "liberation" of the global economy - by witlessly slapping tariffs on every country except Russia based on a simplistic, "insane" formula that instantly crashed U.S. and foreign markets - has been universally slammed. And that was before we learned several tariff targets are in fact remote outcroppings of ice and rock populated by no humans but many freeloading penguins and seals, who thank God won't be "looting and pillaging" us any more.
In his announcement we've finally been liberated from being able to buy things from other countries, the fragile, unloved man-child with a terror of being mocked or fleeced based his "batshit crazy" action on a sociopathic "you hurt us, we hurt you" world view, wielding random tariffs as a weapon to "fight back" against countries that have “taken advantage of us." "For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far," he said of the richest nation in the world. Holding a big chart of his shiny new tariff plan, he repeatedly trotted out a new word he just added to the 17 he already knows. "Reciprocal," he proclaimed, “That means they do it to us, and we do it to them. Very simple. Can’t get simpler than that." Or, it turns out, dumber. Evidently orchestrated by some "willing sycophants," the moronic method he used to calculate trade and economic figures for every country in the world - except Russia - has been compared to "a science project by a stoned high schooler."
In their "back-of-the-envelope calculations" - but with Greek letters! - the White House looked up our trade deficit with each country, divided it by that country's exports, and to be "kind" halved that figure. But obtusely using tariffs to target countries, not products - the only way they can sometimes work - is so random, over-simplified and counter-productive that Thom Hartmann compares it to Yosemite Sam chasing Bugs Bunny around with a shotgun, blasting holes in everything while completely missing his target. As a result of what one expert calls this "extraordinary nonsense," the tariffs bear almost no relation to the economic realities of many countries: There are "grotesque” tariffs of almost 50% on poor countries like Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, tiny Lesotho in southern Africa, and even the UK, with an almost $12 billion surplus, got a 10% tariff. And thanks to America's voters "handing the keys to the world’s largest economy to a low-wattage imbecile who went broke running casinos," US companies will be hardest hit.
Ironically, the worst will be the biggest - Microsoft, Amazon, Nike, Meta, Tesla, Target, Lululemon, Dollar Tree - whose supply chains depend on overseas manufacturing, mostly in China or Vietnam; Apple will reportedly see $275 billion in market value wiped out. Overall, the "uninformed tariff song-and-dance" meant an economy months ago deemed “the envy of the world” saw markets abruptly plunge into a free-fall that erased nearly $2 trillion from U.S. stocks, a nosedive of over 800 points, the biggest decline in years. Within minutes, over 80% of companies in the S&P 500 were trading lower, a market response traders called "worse than the worst case scenario." In one surreal moment, Trump appeared on air declaring, "Stocks will soar," even as a split screen showed stocks plummeting in real time. A flood of disastrous headlines quickly followed: Stocks "tank," "dive," "slide," "plunge," "dip," ""tumble" as investors "flee," along with the broad consensus, "There really is no positive outcome to this." So much winning.
Donny tried to avoid possible - albeit so unfair - criticism by waiting till 4 p.m. when the markets closed to announce his swell new idea. He failed (again): The backlash was swift. The Shovel: "In 'a massive fucking surprise,' a man who has run six companies into bankruptcy and wasn’t even able to make money out of A CASINO has absolutely no idea what he is doing while in charge of the world’s largest economy." Paul Krugman called the "crudity" of his tariff plan "malignant stupidity." Many cited its fatal flaws: The US isn't "spinning up new Nike factories overnight," employment will soar, so will China's economy in the vacuum, rage will greet ruined retirement funds, even coffee - no we don't make it - will be hit. "There is no reality in which the American consumer does not get majorly fucked," said one sage. "The trouble with tariffs," said a JP Morgan executive, "is they raise prices, slow economic growth, cut profits, increase unemployment, worsen inequality (and) increase global tensions. Other than that, they’re fine.”
Still, being "a blithering idiot," "a fucking moron" and "a Barely Sentient Shitstain," Trump blithely praised himself for allegedly lowering prices on "groceries, an old-fashioned word but beautiful. It's a bag with different things in it." Responses to the "groceries" lecture from "a demented madman who's never set foot in a grocery store": "Good thing we've never heard of them because we can't afford them now," "Give me 2 groceries, my good man!" "President Poopypants is learning us bigly," "You're paying $20 or $30 for a banana? We're going to bring it back down to $10 dollars or whatever you grocery people pay," "And don't forget your ID!" "Stable genius doing stable genius shit here," "A man for the people, just not our people." "It’s like watching a bad episode of South Park," "We are living in the stupid timeline." He also took credit for the word "gasoline - usually we talk about fuel prices. Gas. I love that word." More responses from those paying up to $12 on eggs: "I'd throw eggs at him but they cost more than gasoline." And, "What planet is he living on? Because this one has had enough of him."
- YouTubewww.youtube.com
Still, the idiocy went on. Because the list of the world's countries "plundering" the U.S. was evidently assembled by some clueless MAGA intern who looked them up in Wikipedia, it turns out several targeted with tariffs are a. not countries, b. mostly inhabited by American military and c. have little to no economies and/or no people. They include Tokelau, a New Zealand territory of three atolls in the South Pacific, population 1,600, exports around $100,000; The Marshall Islands, 34 atolls in the North Pacific, home to 82,000 mostly American military at a U.S. base for missile testing; the British Indian Ocean Territory, ditto about 3,000 British and U.S. military and contractors; Saint Pierre and Miquelon, eight small French-owned islands near Newfoundland (few thousand residents, modest shellfish exports somehow hit with 50% tariff; also Australia’s Norfolk Island (big oops), Norway’s Svalbard (polar bears, one town) and remote, volcanic Jan Mayan in the Arctic Ocean, home to 18 researchers at a meteorological station.
The most outlandish, admittedly a tough call, are the Heard and McDonald Islands in the southern Indian Ocean, a collection of small remote islands (not countries) managed by Australia's Antarctic Division, listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and only accessible by sea. Heard, dominated by active volcano Big Ben, is ice, snow and glaciers; McDonald's 100 acres are rocky, and it's had no economic activity since 1877, when the elephant seal trade ended. Mostly used for scientific research, both are uninhabited by humans, but have large populations of penguins, seabirds and elephant seals who don't export anything except cuteness and an occasional waft of "eau de penguin." Still, slap a tariff on those wingless, waddling, fish-gulping, tuxedo-wearing moochers all dressed up with no place to go who've been taking advantage of us way too long: "Flippers up!" "Eat tariffs." "Goddamn woke penguins have to pay up - it's time we stood up to 'em." "Penguins will never menace America again." Etc.
Australia's so pissed they started a government petition topermanently ban Trump, his family, and his flunkies: "Australians have VALUES of mateship, hard work, righting wrongs, and fighting for the underdog" and Trump, opposite, is "an agent of hate and a danger to world peace." Online, almost all the hundreds of comments are from Americans, also Canadians, asking if they can sign, or start their own, or can the Aussies "change your mind, take him and keep him." At home, a Senate resolution just passed rejecting the tariffs, but it'll likely die in the House. FYI: As with deportations and other executive orders, they're treated as laws only because Congress, which ordinarily imposes them, has abandoned its co-equal role before Trump's claim of "national emergency." And servile MAGA bizarrely plays along. On his tariff malpractice, Agriculture Sec. Brooke Rollins praised Trump's "genius" even as a ticker showed stocks down 1,200 points, gushing, "We are really, really excited, and very grateful for (his) leadership (sic)."
The next morning, Trump was likewise delusional. "THE OPERATION IS OVER!” he wrote. “THE PATIENT LIVED, AND IS HEALING! (aka global markets are plummeting like we've never seen). THE PROGNOSIS IS THAT THE PATIENT WILL BE FAR STRONGER, BIGGER, BETTER, AND MORE RESILIENT THAN EVER BEFORE." To reporters, he babbled, "I think it’s going very well... I said this would exactly be the way it is. Now the rest of the world wants to see if there is any way they can make a deal. It’s going to be unbelievable. We’ve never seen anything like it.,,The stock is going to boom. The country is going to boom." (The tricky part: just what kind of boom.) Then he left for a golf dinner with Saudi reps, skipping the viewing of the coffins of four soldiers killed in Lithuania. But one patriot helpfully finished his narrative: "So this penguin came up to me, big penguin, strong penguin, tears running down his flippers, and he came up to me and said ‘Sir, thank you sir, my fellow penguins, they’ve been taking advantage of you sir, in ways that nobody has ever seen, sir...’"
“It’s now clear that the Administration computed reciprocal tariffs without using tariff data. This is to economics what creationism is to biology, astrology is to astronomy, or RFK thought is to vaccine science." - Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers
A region in southern Louisiana that has already been deemed a "sacrifice zone" by human rights experts—due to the high levels of pollution caused by the petrochemical and fossil fuel industry facilities that operate throughout the area—is now likely to face even more public health threats following the Trump administration's conditional approval of a new liquefied natural gas export terminal.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on Wednesday granted conditional authorization for Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass 2 (CP2) LNG export terminal in Cameron Parish, allowing the company to export LNG to countries that don't have free trade agreements with the United States.
The project was halted in 2024 when former President Joe Biden paused the issuance of new LNG export permits for non-free trade agreement partners, and climate campaigners have called for CP2 and other LNG projects to be permanently blocked because of the greenhouse gas emissions and local pollution they would cause.
In December, the Biden administration released an analysis showing that more LNG exports would increase household energy costs.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) noted that emissions from CP2 are estimated to reach the equivalent of more than 47 million gas-powered cars or 53 coal-fired power plants—even as Venture Global claims the project would export enough fossil gas to replace 33 coal-fired plants.
"Greenlighting this terminal is simply selling out the American public to further boost the profits of fossil fuel companies," said Gillian Giannetti, senior attorney at NRDC. "LNG extraction and export floods frontline communities with dangerous pollution, raises U.S. energy costs, and further locks in our dependence on dirty fossil fuels."
NRDC sued the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission over its approval of CP2 in September 2024, arguing FERC violated the law by not considering "adverse environmental and socioeconomic impacts" when it approved the terminal despite its determination that "the ambient air quality around the project will exceed the national air quality standards for multiple air pollutants."
FERC rescinded its approval and planned to make additional assessments after the lawsuit, but DOE's announcement on Wednesday came before the commission had made its final determination.
By conditionally authorizing the project, said Giannetti, the DOE violated "the public interest" and announced "the latest in a long line of giveaways to the fossil fuel industry from the Trump administration."
"NRDC sued over FERC's approval of this project, and we will be closely examining the legality of this DOE approval, as well," said Giannetti.
The export terminal approval announced by Energy Secretary Chris Wright is the administration's fifth—and largest—LNG approval since President Donald Trump lifted Biden's freeze on new export permits. The finished facility would have the capacity to export 3.96 billion cubic feet of LNG per day and produce 20 million tons of LNG per year.
CP2 would also be adjacent to Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass LNG facility and less than two miles from the proposed Commonwealth LNG facility, in an area with more low-income residents than 88% of the country. Venture Global's existing LNG project in the area "has already exposed the surrounding community to dangerous air pollution well in excess of permit limits in over 130 incidents since it began operations in 2022," said Sierra Club.
"Fishermen have reported a dramatic impact on their livelihoods since the commencement of Calcasieu Pass operations, highlighting the severe negative impact of gas exports on the local economy and environment," added the group.
The conditional approval was announced a week after the Environmental Protection Agency revealed plans to shutter all 10 of its environmental justice offices, ending the agency's work to address systemic injustices in places like Cameron Parish and Louisiana's "Cancer Alley."
"As a mom living in Sulphur [Louisiana], I feel a profound responsibility to protect my children's future," said Roishetta Ozane, founder and CEO of the Vessel Project of Louisiana, an environmental justice and mutual aid group. "The decision to authorize the CP2 LNG facility is a direct threat to our health and safety. We cannot allow our community to become a sacrifice zone for corporate interests. The proposed facility, with its potential for devastating air pollution and harmful impacts on our local environment, jeopardizes everything we hold dear. Our children deserve clean air, safe water, and a thriving ecosystem. I completely oppose this project and all others like it for the sake of my children and everyone else."
Mahyar Sorour, director of Beyond Fossil Fuels policy for Sierra Club, said CP2 "will be a disaster for local communities devastated by pollution."
"American consumers who will face higher costs, and the global climate crisis that will be supercharged by the project's emissions," said Sorour. "The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission had to reconsider its approval of the project after it failed in 2024 to consider the cumulative impacts of air pollution. By conditionally approving exports from this massive project, Trump's Department of Energy is once again failing to protect the American people from an unnecessary LNG project set to generate billions for corporate executives and leave everyday people with higher energy costs."
"Despite his hollow promises on the campaign trail," Sorour added, "Trump continues to fail to prioritize the livelihoods and future of our country over the profits of the dirty fossil fuel industry."
The Washington Postreported Thursday that a White House document shows U.S. officials are preparing to cut 8-50% of agency staff in "the first phase" of President Donald Trump and billionaire adviser Elon Musk's effort to gut the federal bureaucracy—eliciting a fresh wave of outrage directed at them and their Department of Government Efficiency.
The document only covers 22 agencies and, according to the Post, "several people familiar with the document stressed that planning remains fluid," a sentiment echoed by Harrison Fields, White House principal deputy press secretary, in an email.
"It's no secret the Trump administration is dedicated to downsizing the federal bureaucracy and cutting waste, fraud, and abuse. This document is a pre-deliberative draft and does not accurately reflect final reduction in force plans," Fields told the newspaper. "When President Trump's Cabinet secretaries are ready to announce reduction in force plans, they will make those announcements to their respective workforces at the appropriate time."
When Trump took office, there were around 2.3 million federal workers. The leaked document—last updated Tuesday—includes the following potential personnel cuts:
"Cuts have already been announced at some agencies, including the Education Department, which said this month that it would be reducing its staff by half. The document did not list those reductions among its totals," according to the paper. "It also did not specify staff reduction goals for certain agencies, such as the Department of Veterans Affairs."
Trump and Musk's "DOGE-Manufactured chaos" is already impacting both federal employees and Americans who rely on them. At the Social Security Administration—which aims to oust roughly 7,000 staffers, bringing the agency down to 50,000—beneficiaries are dealing with website problems and hourslong wait times for phone services.
Responding to the Post's reporting on social media, writer and podcaster Wajahat Ali asked: "How does this help the economy become great again, MAGA? I'll wait..."
Brian Donlon, the retired head of programming at Scripps News, tied the looming job cuts to Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-led agenda for a far-right takeover of the federal government, from which Trump unsuccessfully tried to distance himself while on the campaign trail.
"I have been rewatching Trump campaign rallies (I watched most live while running programming at Scripps News)," he said. "I can't find any references to an austerity budget or a downsized federal government. Project 2025 however does. Will keep looking."
Bluesky user J. Offir, who has a Ph.D. in social psychology, said that "my main concerns are health, education, and the environment (all of which relate to public health) but the casualties of this war are everywhere."
Offir also noted "the hell" at agencies under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—which is now led by conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who earlier Thursday announced a major restructuring and 20,000 job cuts, including employees who took the administration's infamous "Fork in the Road" offer.
"This announcement is shocking. There is no way that HHS will be able to continue providing the lifesaving services and research it is mandated to provide after losing a quarter of its workforce between the layoffs and early separation packages," said Jennifer Jones, the director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, in a statement.
Jones explained that "these are people who ensure our medications and food supplies are safe, help protect us against infectious diseases, and conduct research to treat disease and help people live longer, healthier lives. HHS staff also oversee Medicaid and Medicare, the health insurance programs critical for low-income and elderly Americans as well as those with disabilities."
"Keep in mind, these cuts are brought to you by a man who has made a career out of peddling fringe conspiracy theories and misinformation. He is part of an administration that is incompetent and corrupt. He's known for his debunked anti-vaccine rhetoric, and his response to the deadly measles outbreak in Texas, which has spread to other states, has been nothing short of inept," she added. "Secretary Kennedy minimizes this action as 'a painful period' for the agencies, ignoring the pain that will be inflicted on everyone in this country."
In what could be a U.S. first, President Donald Trump last week pardoned a criminal corporation, a move that largely flew under the proverbial radar amid his pardon spree for white-collar criminals including at least one of his supporters.
On March 28, Trump pardoned HDR Global Trading, the owner and operator of the cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX; company co-founders Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, and Samuel Reed; and former business development chief Gregory Dwyer.
The company and the four men hads each pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Bank Secrecy Act "by willfully failing to establish, implement, and maintain an adequate" anti-money laundering program, as required by law. In January, the U.S. Department of Justice sentenced BitMEX to a fine of $100 million, while the executives were sentenced to criminal probation and ordered to pay civil fines.
While experts noted that Trump acted within his rights to pardon the corporation, there is no known precedent for a president taking such action.
Noting the U.S. Supreme Court's highly controversial 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling—which affirmed corporate personhood and the dubious notion that unlimited outside spending on political campaigns is free speech—Stanford Law School professor Bernadette Meyler toldThe Intercept that "while we have seen the rise of a trend of treating corporations as persons in other areas of law, we haven't seen that so far in the area of pardoning."
Kimberly Wehle, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law and preeminent pardons expert, wrote for The Hill on Tuesday that the BitMEX pardons send the message that "companies involved in financial crimes don't have to worry about accountability under this president, as least when it comes to crypto, for reasons that he has no incentive to ever make known."
"BitMEX can continue its prior criminal practices with federal impunity, and maybe even rely on the pardon to thwart future investigations into related conduct by federal lawmakers or state prosecutors," Wehle added. "The biggest losers in this deal are, once again, the American people, including the more than 77 million who might finally be realizing that they voted for lawlessness last November."
"The biggest losers in this deal are, once again, the American people."
Brandon Garrett, a Duke University law professor specializing in corporate crime and punishment, told The Intercept that the BitMEX pardons are part of a wider pattern of impunity under Trump, who "now seems to be systematically pardoning corporate malefactors left and right without respect, really, to any real serious consideration about the merits of the cases [or] the larger policy implications of issuing these pardons."
As the consumer advocacy watchdog Public Citizen recently noted, "The Trump administration has dropped, withdrawn, or halted investigations and enforcement actions against over 100 corporations in its first two months in office."
Beneficiaries include companies owned or led by Trump donors or allies, including private prison giant GEO Group; Zelle network banks JPMorgan and Bank of America; crypto firms Coinbase, Gemini, Kraken, OpenSea, Ripple, and Robinhood; and Elon Musk's SpaceX.
"Trump's corporate pardons show the president's true base is the billionaire executives and corporate elites lining up to indulge their greed at the trough of Trump's corruption," Public Citizen research director Rick Claypool said last week. "Trump's soft-on-corporate crime approach invites a corporate crime spree and potentially catastrophic abuses for America's consumers, workers, and communities."
Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman added that the Trump administration's "effective no-enforcement policy against corporations virtually guarantees more financial scams, more workplace discrimination, more poisoning of the air and water, more food contamination, more fraud, more disease, and more preventable death."
A union that represents employees across 37 federal agencies and offices on Monday sued U.S. President Donald Trump and various leaders in his administration over an executive order that aims to strip collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of government workers under the guise of protecting national security.
The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) filed the federal lawsuit in Washington, D.C., arguing that the order issued by Trump last week is not only illegal but also motivated by "a policy objective of making federal employees easier to fire and political animus against federal sector unions," many of which have vocally resisted Trump's legally dubious attacks on agencies and key programs.
"The law plainly gives federal employees the right to bargain collectively and the shocking executive order abolishing that right for most of them, under the guise of national security, is an attempt to silence the voices of our nation's public servants," said NTEU national president Doreen Greenwald in a statement.
"It is also a continuation of the administration's efforts to deny the American people the vital services that these talented civil servants provide by making it easier to fire them without any pushback from their union advocates," she declared.
Greenwald vowed that "NTEU intends to protect the ability of frontline federal employees to stand together to improve the conditions under which they serve the American people. Federal workers around the country, through their unions, advocate for the tools and resources they need to do their jobs and help their agencies accomplish important public service missions, and we will not allow the administration to distort the truth."
The complaint filed Monday argues that the new order "plainly punishes NTEU for its legal challenges to this administration's actions, canceling, as relevant here, 12 of NTEU's collective bargaining relationships, including NTEU's largest and longest one" at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The agency's acting commissioner and chief counsel are listed as plaintiffs.
The NTEU is also suing the the U.S. attorney general, the Federal Communications Commission chair, the Bureau of the Fiscal Service commissioner, the acting comptroller of the currency, the acting directors of the Bureau of Land Management and the Office of Personnel Management, the administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, and the energy secretary, treasury, and health and human services secretaries.
As The Hillreported Monday:
The suit, filed in Washington, D.C., comes as the Trump administration took the unusual move of filing its own legal action in Texas last week, making the first move in litigation by asking a judge to declare as legal its plans to terminate the contracts.
That suit was filed in a single-judge district in Texas, possibly setting the stage for a square-off in the Supreme Court.
The Trump administration's filing in Texas targets another key union, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE).
According toFederal News Network, during a Friday press conference, AFGE national president Everett Kelley called the executive order "plainly retaliatory" and pledged to keep challenging the administration.
"The executive order says plainly that they are taking this action because AFGE is standing up for our members," Kelley said. "But I want to assure everybody that AFGE will always stand up for its members."
U.S. Vice President JD Vance, Second Lady Usha Vance, and two top Trump administration officials traveled to Greenland on Friday on an itinerary that was markedly curtailed from its original plans due to Greenlanders' frosty reception amid President Donald Trump's ongoing threats to take the Arctic island from NATO ally Denmark—even by armed force if deemed necessary.
Vance visited Pituffik Space Base—a U.S. Space Force installation on the northwestern coast of Greenland about 930 miles (1,500 km) north of the capital, Nuuk—with his wife, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
The vice president's wife originally planned on a more interactive and cultural itinerary, including attending a dogsled race. However, Greenland's leftist government said earlier this week that is had "not extended any invitations for any visits, neither private nor official."
Compounding the Trump administration's embarrassment, U.S. representatives reportedly came up empty handed after canvassing door to door in Nuuk in an effort to drum up support for the visit. The administration denies this ever happened.
And so the Trump officials' audience was limited to U.S. troops stationed at Pituffik. After arriving at the base, the vice president told troops in the mess hall he was surprised to find the snow- and ice-covered Arctic island is "cold as shit."
"Nobody told me!" he added.
Vice President JD Vance and Second Lady Usha Vance visited a U.S. Space Force base in Greenland Friday. Vance is expected to receive briefings on Arctic security and address US service members.
Read more: https://t.co/1OIkkT3VnD pic.twitter.com/lbXeObJTgq
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) March 28, 2025
Getting down to more serious business, Vance said: "Our message to Denmark is very simple—you have not done a good job by the people of Greenland. You have under-invested in the people of Greenland and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this incredible, beautiful land mass."
Addressing Arctic geopolitics, Vance argued that "we can't just bury our head in the sand—or in Greenland, bury our head in the snow—and pretend that the Chinese are not interested in this very large land mass. We know that they are."
"The president said we have to have Greenland, and I think that we do have to be more serious about the security of Greenland," Vance continued. "We respect the self-determination of the people of Greenland, but my argument to them is: I think that you'd be a lot better coming under the United States' security umbrella than you have been under Denmark's security umbrella. Because what Denmark's security umbrella has meant is effectively they've passed it all off to brave Americans and hoped that we would pick up the tab."
This follows remarks earlier this week from Vance, who said during a Fox News interview that Denmark, which faithfully sent troops to fight in both Afghanistan and Iraq—43 of whom died, the highest per capita casualty rate of the alliance—is "not being a good ally" to the United States.
Asked by reporters on Friday if the U.S. would ever conquer Greenland by military force, Vance said he didn't think that would be necessary.
However, just a day earlier, Trump—who on Friday posted a video highlighting defense cooperation between the U.S. and Greenland—said his administration will "go as far as we have to go" to acquire the island, which he claimed the United States needs "for national security and international security."
It was far from the first time that Trump—who has also threatened to take over parts or all of countries including Panama and even Canada—vowed to annex Greenland, and other administration officials have repeated the president's threats.
"It's oil and gas. It's our national security. It's critical minerals," Waltz said in January, explaining why Trump wants Greenland.
The U.S. has long been interested in Greenland, and while the close relationship between the United States and Denmark has been mostly mutually beneficial, it has sometimes come at the expense of Greenland's people, environment, and wildlife.
Such was the case when a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber laden with four thermonuclear warheads crashed into the sea ice of Wolstenholme Fjord in 1968. The accident caused widespread radioactive contamination, and the nuclear fuel components of one of the bombs remain unrecovered to this day.
Elected officials from across Greenland and Denmark's political spectrum expressed alarm over the Trump administration's actions.
Outgoing Greenland Prime Minister Múte Bourup Egede earlier this week
called Vance's trip "highly aggressive" and said that it "can in no way be characterized as a harmless visit."
"Because what is the security advisor doing in Greenland?" Egede asked. "The only purpose is to show a demonstration of power to us, and the signal is not to be misunderstood."
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke called Vance's remarks on Friday "a bit inappropriate," adding that maybe the Trump administration "should look at yourself in the mirror too."
"When the vice president.. creates an image that the only way Greenland can be protected is by coming under the American umbrella, so you can say that Greenland is already there," Løkke elaborated. "They are part of the common security umbrella that we created together with the Americans after the end of World War II called NATO."
"We have always looked at America like the nice big brother to help you out and now it's like the big brother is bullying you."
Ordinary Greenlanders and Danish residents of the island were not happy about the Trump delegation's visit.
Anders Laursen, who owns a local water taxi company, toldNBC News that "we have always looked at America like the nice big brother to help you out and now it's like the big brother is bullying you."
Nuuk resident Marie Olsen said of Vance, "I think he's a big child who wants it all."
In the Danish capital Copenhagen, hundreds of people rallied Friday against the U.S. delegation's visit to Greenland. One protester decried what she called the U.S. administration's "mafia methods."
"Corporations get let off the hook, Musk gets insider information, and the American people get hosed."
The latest U.S. agency in the crosshairs of billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency is reportedly the Federal Trade Commission, an already-understaffed department tasked with preventing monopolistic practices and shielding consumers from corporate abuses.
Axiosreported Friday that at least two DOGE staffers "now have offices at" the FTC. According toThe Verge, two DOGE members "were spotted" at the agency's building this week and "are now listed in the FTC's internal directory."
The Verge noted that the FTC is "a fairly lean agency with fewer than 1,200 employees," a number that the Trump administration has already cut into with the firing of some of the department's consumer protection and antitrust staff.
At least two of Musk's companies, Tesla and X, have faced scrutiny in recent years from the FTC, which is now under the leadership of Trump appointee Andrew Ferguson, who previously pledged to roll back former chair Lina Khan's anti-monopoly legacy.
Emily Peterson-Cassin, corporate power director at the Demand Progress Education Fund, which referred to the operatives as Musk's "minions," said Friday that "DOGE is yet again raiding a federal watchdog tasked with protecting working Americans from Wall Street and Big Tech."
"The FTC has worked to stop monopolistic mergers that would have led to higher grocery prices and is now gearing up to go to court against Meta's social media monopoly," said Peterson-Cassin. "It's no surprise that at this moment, while the economy is in freefall and fraud is on the rise, DOGE is choosing to raid the federal watchdog that protects everyday Americans and threatens corporate monopolies and grifters."
News of DOGE staffers' infiltration of the FTC came as Trump's sweeping new tariffs continued to cause global economic turmoil and heightened concerns that companies in the U.S. will use the tariffs as a new excuse to jack up prices and pad their bottom lines.
Ferguson pledged in a social media post Thursday that under his leadership, the FTC "will be watching closely" to ensure companies don't view Trump's tariffs "as a green light for price fixing or any other unlawful behavior."
But Trump has hobbled the agency—and prompted yet another legal fight—by firing its two Democratic commissioners, a move that sparked fury and has already impacted the FTC's ability to pursue cases against large corporations.
Peterson-Cassin said Friday that "the only winners" of DOGE's targeting of the FTC "are Trump's billionaire besties like [Meta CEO] Mark Zuckerberg and especially Musk, who now stands to gain access to confidential financial information about every company ever investigated by the FTC, including the auto manufacturers, aerospace firms, internet providers, tech companies, and banks that directly compete with his own companies."
"Corporations get let off the hook, Musk gets insider information, and the American people get hosed," Peterson-Cassin added.
One union leader called President Donald Trump's executive order "the most significant assault on collective bargaining rights we have ever seen in the United States."
A coalition of labor unions representing federal workers across the United States sued the Trump administration on Friday over its recent order aimed at stripping union rights from more than a million government employees, a move that the lawsuit characterizes as a blatant violation of the First Amendment.
The suit, brought by unions that collectively represent more than 950,000 federal workers, stems from a March 27 order titled "Exclusions From Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs," in which President Donald Trump cites a provision of a 1978 law to deny collective bargaining rights to certain government workers on national security grounds.
But the unions behind the new lawsuit say the national security justification is a smokescreen to hide the true intent of the order: further eroding workers' organizing rights.
"Federal employees have had the right to join a union and bargain collectively for decades—through multiple wars, international conflicts, and a global health emergency during President Trump's first term," said Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees. "During all that time, they served the American people with honor and distinction. No one, including President Trump, ever suggested unions were a national security concern."
"Trump's newest order to revoke union rights is a clear case of retaliation," he added. "But I've got news for him: We are not going anywhere."
The lawsuit points specifically to language included in a fact sheet the White House released in conjunction with Trump's March 27 order. The document claims that "certain federal unions have declared war on President Trump's agenda," citing AFGE lawsuits against the administration and legal actions by Veterans Affairs unions.
Shortly after Trump signed the order last week, the administration sued AFGE and many of its local affiliates in federal court in an attempt to cancel dozens of collective bargaining agreements between unions and federal agencies. Reutersnoted that the administration claimed the union contracts are impeding "Trump's abilities to purge the federal workforce and protect national security."
"The labor movement stands in solidarity, and we will not let this administration's union-busting tactics silence us."
The unions' new lawsuit states that the "avowedly retaliatory nature" of Trump's executive order and its "attempt to punish federal unions who engage in politically disfavored speech and petitioning activities and decline to 'work with' the president renders it unconstitutional under the First Amendment."
The lawsuit also notes that billionaire Elon Musk, the richest person in the world and a top Trump lieutenant, has used his social media platform to promote a recent post that attacked several federal workers' unions by name.
"The president's unlawful executive order attacking federal unions is not only an attack on a million federal workers but is a direct attack on all workers who seek a collective voice to bargain for a better future," April Verrett, president of the Service Employees International Union, said in a statement Friday. "This is blatant retaliation against brave workers who dared to exercise their First Amendment rights to criticize this administration's authoritarian overreach. The labor movement stands in solidarity, and we will not let this administration’s union-busting tactics silence us."
Randy Erwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), called Trump's order "the most significant assault on collective bargaining rights we have ever seen in the United States" and said it is "clear that this executive order is retaliation for federal unions fighting back against the Trump administration's attempts to dismantle the civil service."
"This is yet another direct attack by the President not only on federal employees, but also veterans, working families, and the very fabric of our democracy," said Erwin. "However, federal workers' collective bargaining rights are protected by law and President Trump does not have the right to unilaterally eliminate them. NFFE and our allies are confident the rule of law will be upheld, and the critical rights of working people will be protected."
"Trade and tariff wars have no winners," said China's foreign ministry. "We urge the U.S. to stop doing the wrong thing."
The Chinese government on Friday responded to U.S. President Donald Trump's sweeping new tariffs with 34% import duties on all American goods beginning next week, intensifying global blowback against the White House and accelerating a worldwide financial market tailspin.
China's tariffs on U.S. imports, which match the tariffs the Trump administration moved this week to impose on Chinese goods, are set to take effect on April 10. Trump's 34% tariffs on Chinese imports come on top of the 20% tariffs the U.S. president imposed earlier this year.
"The U.S. approach does not conform to international trade rules, seriously damages China's legitimate rights and interests, and is a typical unilateral bullying practice," China's Ministry of Finance said in a Friday statement.
Additionally, China's Commerce Ministry announced immediate export restrictions on rare earth materials and "added 16 entities from the U.S., including High Point Aerotechnologies and Universal Logistics Holdings Inc., to its export control list," according to the state-run China Daily.
"Under the new rule," the outlet reported, "Chinese companies are prohibited from exporting dual-use items to these 16 U.S. entities. Any ongoing related export activities should be immediately halted, said the Ministry of Commerce."
Retaliatory tariffs from the world's second-largest economy mark the latest step in a global trade war launched by the Trump White House, which—despite warnings of disastrous impacts for working-class U.S. households and the broader economy—plowed ahead this week with a 10% universal tariff on imports and larger tariffs on a number of trading partners, including China.
Following Trump's official tariff announcement, Beijing condemned the duties as "unacceptable" and vowed to "take measures as necessary to firmly defend [China's] legitimate interests."
"Trade and tariff wars have no winners. Protectionism leads nowhere," said the spokesperson for China's foreign ministry on Thursday. "We urge the U.S. to stop doing the wrong thing, and resolve trade differences with China and other countries through consultation with equality, respect, and mutual benefit."
Other nations hit by Trump's tariffs are expected to respond in the coming days.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told reporters Thursday that the E.U. was "already finalizing the first package of countermeasures in response to tariffs on steel, and we are now preparing for further countermeasures to protect our interests and our businesses if negotiations fail."
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney vowed that "we are going to fight these tariffs with countermeasures."
"In a crisis, it's important to come together and it's essential to act with purpose and with force," Carney added. "And that's what we will do."