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Protesters gather in front of the U.S. Supreme Court as affirmative action cases involving Harvard and University of North Carolina admissions are heard by the court in Washington, D.C. on October 31, 2022. (Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
During the course of roughly five hours of oral argument on Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court's far-right supermajority seemed open to rolling back decades of precedent allowing public and private colleges and universities to make race-conscious admissions decisions.
Referring to Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina--cases he contends were "manufactured to abolish affirmative action in higher education"--Slate's Mark Joseph Stern argued that "all six conservative justices are poised to declare that colleges' consideration of race violates the Constitution's equal protection clause and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which applies equal protection standards to private institutions."
"Because that argument was cynically engineered by white conservatives aggrieved by 'reverse racism'--and is so clearly at odds with an original understanding of the 14th Amendment--progressives have lined up to defend Harvard and UNC," Stern noted, citing "the amicus briefs filed in support of the universities by seemingly every liberal group under the sun."
Late last week, ReNika Moore, director of ACLU's Racial Justice program, said in a statement: "Race-conscious admissions practices help create a diverse student body that benefits the educational experiences of all students.Time and again, lower courts and the Supreme Court have recognized universities' ability to consider race in the admissions process in order to help foster this."
Civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill, former president of the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund, also alluded to the high court's previous decisions upholding race-conscious college admissions, adding that new challenges keep cropping up because "opponents to affirmative action know they have an open door to continue to try and overturn it."
\u201cIt\u2019s cynical. W/o Justice Kennedy (and now Breyer) opponents to affirmative action feel they have a clear path. But even if Kennedy were still on the Court they would have brought this challenge. With their new strategy of using Asian Americans as a wedge, they couldn\u2019t resist.\u201d— Sherrilyn Ifill (@Sherrilyn Ifill) 1667221769
Although the court is not scheduled to hand down an opinion in the pair of cases until next summer, its right-wing justices on Monday questioned the legitimacy of race-conscious admissions, expressing doubt that schools would ever concede an "endpoint" in their consideration of race to build more diverse student bodies.
"The question," according toThe Washington Post, "is how broad such a decision by the court's conservative majority might be, and what it would mean for other institutions of higher education."
"Overturning the court's precedents that race can be one factor of many in making admission decisions would have 'profound consequences' for 'the nation that we are and the nation that we aspire to be,' Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar told the justices during arguments in the Harvard case," the Post reported.
"But the court's conservatives used the two cases to revisit decades of Supreme Court decisions that tolerated a limited use of racial classifications," noted the newspaper. "They seemed unsatisfied with assertions from lawyers representing the schools that the end was near for the use of race-conscious policies. Under repeated questioning, the lawyers conceded they could not provide a date-specific answer to the question: 'When will it end?'"
Notably, as The New York Timespointed out Sunday, both sides in the debate claim to be upholding the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, the unanimous 1954 ruling that found racial segregation in public education to be unconstitutional. While proponents of affirmative action argue that assembling diverse student bodies is consistent with the civil rights landmark, opponents insist that the decision requires "colorblind" policies.
For instance, Edward Blum, the founder of Students for Fair Admissions, the anti-affirmative action group behind both cases, toldNPR on Monday that "the Constitution and our civil rights laws forbid the consideration of race in higher education."
As Vanity Fair's Eric Lutz wrote Monday: "That is not what previous courts have ruled. Since Regents, Grutter, and the 2016 Fisher v. University of Texas decision, the high court has generally upheld universities' race-conscious admissions policies. But this court, with its 6-3 conservative supermajority, has shown little reverence for long-standing precedent--it did away with 50 years of settled law in overturning Roe over the summer--and seems poised to obliterate this one, too."
Justice Clarence Thomas--a beneficiary of affirmative action who has long opposed the policy on the grounds that it is discriminatory--on Monday questioned the meaning and "educational benefits of diversity."
In response to Thomas' inquiry about the original meaning of the 14th Amendment, "the lawyer who wants to abolish affirmative action said that the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which was the foundation for the amendment, was race-neutral," tweeted journalist Cristian Farias.
Farias shared a recent interview he conducted with Eric Foner, in which the esteemed historian of Reconstruction denounced originalism as "intellectually indefensible."
"Colorblindness is not the only original meaning of the 14th Amendment," said Foner. "It was the original meaning in the eyes of some people, but not a lot of others."
\u201cIn response to Clarence Thomas, who asked about the original meaning of the 14th Amendment, the lawyer who wants to abolish affirmative action said that the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which was the foundation for the amendment, was race-neutral.\n\nNope. https://t.co/QJ9PXC2Jzq\u201d— Cristian Farias (@Cristian Farias) 1667236353
In his Monday essay, Stern argued that "killing affirmative action will have a devastating impact on Black, Hispanic, and Native students and such a ruling would be totally unjustified by the text or history of the Constitution."
"But it doesn't follow that the schools in this case use race-conscious admissions for exclusively noble purposes," he wrote, adding:
Instead, elite institutions often use these programs as a Band-Aid to cover deeper structural barriers to genuine diversity among their student bodies--because addressing those problems would require sacrifices that administrators aren't willing to make. A Supreme Court decision outlawing affirmative action will become a scapegoat for universities that see a plunge in enrollment among underrepresented minorities. Progressives should not let them get away with it.
Although the latest legal assault on affirmative action is built on bad history and worse motivations, it did have the benefit of revealing unseemly details about the elite admissions process. The litigation gave the public an unprecedented glimpse into Harvard's standards, which reflect horribly on the school. As Aaron Mak explained in Slate after the trial, Harvard has a preference for four specific groups of applicants known as ALDC: athletes, legacies, those on the dean's list (frequently because of family donations), and the children of faculty. ALDCs constitute about 5% of applicants but 30% of the admitted class. Their admissions rate sits at about 45% compared to the normal rate of less than 5%.
In theory, ALDC preferences are colorblind. In practice, they operate as a massive affirmative action program for white applicants. Over a recent six-year period, 2,200 out of 4,993 admitted white students were ALDC--a figure significantly higher than the overall number of admitted students who are Black (1,392) and Hispanic (1,283). White ALDC students are not overrepresented because theyhappen to be more qualified; to the contrary, about three-fourths of them would have been rejected without the ALDC boost.
"Elite universities' first response" to the high court's expected elimination of race-conscious admissions in higher education, Stern tweeted, "should be abolishing their affirmative action programs for ultra-privileged white kids."
National Education Association president Becky Pringle said Monday in a statement that "recent events demonstrate that racism and discrimination are not artifacts of American history but persist in every aspect of our society, including our schools, colleges, and universities."
"Affirmative action and programs like it safeguard a stronger future by expanding higher education opportunities to those who have been historically denied a fair shot," said Pringle. "When we ensure the many talents and experiences of students of color aren't overlooked in admissions processes that tend to be biased against them, we create schools, a country, and a future that includes us all. We urge the court to uphold affirmative action in higher education admissions decisions."
Trump and Musk are on an unconstitutional rampage, aiming for virtually every corner of the federal government. These two right-wing billionaires are targeting nurses, scientists, teachers, daycare providers, judges, veterans, air traffic controllers, and nuclear safety inspectors. No one is safe. The food stamps program, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are next. It’s an unprecedented disaster and a five-alarm fire, but there will be a reckoning. The people did not vote for this. The American people do not want this dystopian hellscape that hides behind claims of “efficiency.” Still, in reality, it is all a giveaway to corporate interests and the libertarian dreams of far-right oligarchs like Musk. Common Dreams is playing a vital role by reporting day and night on this orgy of corruption and greed, as well as what everyday people can do to organize and fight back. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support. |
During the course of roughly five hours of oral argument on Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court's far-right supermajority seemed open to rolling back decades of precedent allowing public and private colleges and universities to make race-conscious admissions decisions.
Referring to Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina--cases he contends were "manufactured to abolish affirmative action in higher education"--Slate's Mark Joseph Stern argued that "all six conservative justices are poised to declare that colleges' consideration of race violates the Constitution's equal protection clause and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which applies equal protection standards to private institutions."
"Because that argument was cynically engineered by white conservatives aggrieved by 'reverse racism'--and is so clearly at odds with an original understanding of the 14th Amendment--progressives have lined up to defend Harvard and UNC," Stern noted, citing "the amicus briefs filed in support of the universities by seemingly every liberal group under the sun."
Late last week, ReNika Moore, director of ACLU's Racial Justice program, said in a statement: "Race-conscious admissions practices help create a diverse student body that benefits the educational experiences of all students.Time and again, lower courts and the Supreme Court have recognized universities' ability to consider race in the admissions process in order to help foster this."
Civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill, former president of the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund, also alluded to the high court's previous decisions upholding race-conscious college admissions, adding that new challenges keep cropping up because "opponents to affirmative action know they have an open door to continue to try and overturn it."
\u201cIt\u2019s cynical. W/o Justice Kennedy (and now Breyer) opponents to affirmative action feel they have a clear path. But even if Kennedy were still on the Court they would have brought this challenge. With their new strategy of using Asian Americans as a wedge, they couldn\u2019t resist.\u201d— Sherrilyn Ifill (@Sherrilyn Ifill) 1667221769
Although the court is not scheduled to hand down an opinion in the pair of cases until next summer, its right-wing justices on Monday questioned the legitimacy of race-conscious admissions, expressing doubt that schools would ever concede an "endpoint" in their consideration of race to build more diverse student bodies.
"The question," according toThe Washington Post, "is how broad such a decision by the court's conservative majority might be, and what it would mean for other institutions of higher education."
"Overturning the court's precedents that race can be one factor of many in making admission decisions would have 'profound consequences' for 'the nation that we are and the nation that we aspire to be,' Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar told the justices during arguments in the Harvard case," the Post reported.
"But the court's conservatives used the two cases to revisit decades of Supreme Court decisions that tolerated a limited use of racial classifications," noted the newspaper. "They seemed unsatisfied with assertions from lawyers representing the schools that the end was near for the use of race-conscious policies. Under repeated questioning, the lawyers conceded they could not provide a date-specific answer to the question: 'When will it end?'"
Notably, as The New York Timespointed out Sunday, both sides in the debate claim to be upholding the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, the unanimous 1954 ruling that found racial segregation in public education to be unconstitutional. While proponents of affirmative action argue that assembling diverse student bodies is consistent with the civil rights landmark, opponents insist that the decision requires "colorblind" policies.
For instance, Edward Blum, the founder of Students for Fair Admissions, the anti-affirmative action group behind both cases, toldNPR on Monday that "the Constitution and our civil rights laws forbid the consideration of race in higher education."
As Vanity Fair's Eric Lutz wrote Monday: "That is not what previous courts have ruled. Since Regents, Grutter, and the 2016 Fisher v. University of Texas decision, the high court has generally upheld universities' race-conscious admissions policies. But this court, with its 6-3 conservative supermajority, has shown little reverence for long-standing precedent--it did away with 50 years of settled law in overturning Roe over the summer--and seems poised to obliterate this one, too."
Justice Clarence Thomas--a beneficiary of affirmative action who has long opposed the policy on the grounds that it is discriminatory--on Monday questioned the meaning and "educational benefits of diversity."
In response to Thomas' inquiry about the original meaning of the 14th Amendment, "the lawyer who wants to abolish affirmative action said that the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which was the foundation for the amendment, was race-neutral," tweeted journalist Cristian Farias.
Farias shared a recent interview he conducted with Eric Foner, in which the esteemed historian of Reconstruction denounced originalism as "intellectually indefensible."
"Colorblindness is not the only original meaning of the 14th Amendment," said Foner. "It was the original meaning in the eyes of some people, but not a lot of others."
\u201cIn response to Clarence Thomas, who asked about the original meaning of the 14th Amendment, the lawyer who wants to abolish affirmative action said that the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which was the foundation for the amendment, was race-neutral.\n\nNope. https://t.co/QJ9PXC2Jzq\u201d— Cristian Farias (@Cristian Farias) 1667236353
In his Monday essay, Stern argued that "killing affirmative action will have a devastating impact on Black, Hispanic, and Native students and such a ruling would be totally unjustified by the text or history of the Constitution."
"But it doesn't follow that the schools in this case use race-conscious admissions for exclusively noble purposes," he wrote, adding:
Instead, elite institutions often use these programs as a Band-Aid to cover deeper structural barriers to genuine diversity among their student bodies--because addressing those problems would require sacrifices that administrators aren't willing to make. A Supreme Court decision outlawing affirmative action will become a scapegoat for universities that see a plunge in enrollment among underrepresented minorities. Progressives should not let them get away with it.
Although the latest legal assault on affirmative action is built on bad history and worse motivations, it did have the benefit of revealing unseemly details about the elite admissions process. The litigation gave the public an unprecedented glimpse into Harvard's standards, which reflect horribly on the school. As Aaron Mak explained in Slate after the trial, Harvard has a preference for four specific groups of applicants known as ALDC: athletes, legacies, those on the dean's list (frequently because of family donations), and the children of faculty. ALDCs constitute about 5% of applicants but 30% of the admitted class. Their admissions rate sits at about 45% compared to the normal rate of less than 5%.
In theory, ALDC preferences are colorblind. In practice, they operate as a massive affirmative action program for white applicants. Over a recent six-year period, 2,200 out of 4,993 admitted white students were ALDC--a figure significantly higher than the overall number of admitted students who are Black (1,392) and Hispanic (1,283). White ALDC students are not overrepresented because theyhappen to be more qualified; to the contrary, about three-fourths of them would have been rejected without the ALDC boost.
"Elite universities' first response" to the high court's expected elimination of race-conscious admissions in higher education, Stern tweeted, "should be abolishing their affirmative action programs for ultra-privileged white kids."
National Education Association president Becky Pringle said Monday in a statement that "recent events demonstrate that racism and discrimination are not artifacts of American history but persist in every aspect of our society, including our schools, colleges, and universities."
"Affirmative action and programs like it safeguard a stronger future by expanding higher education opportunities to those who have been historically denied a fair shot," said Pringle. "When we ensure the many talents and experiences of students of color aren't overlooked in admissions processes that tend to be biased against them, we create schools, a country, and a future that includes us all. We urge the court to uphold affirmative action in higher education admissions decisions."
During the course of roughly five hours of oral argument on Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court's far-right supermajority seemed open to rolling back decades of precedent allowing public and private colleges and universities to make race-conscious admissions decisions.
Referring to Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina--cases he contends were "manufactured to abolish affirmative action in higher education"--Slate's Mark Joseph Stern argued that "all six conservative justices are poised to declare that colleges' consideration of race violates the Constitution's equal protection clause and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which applies equal protection standards to private institutions."
"Because that argument was cynically engineered by white conservatives aggrieved by 'reverse racism'--and is so clearly at odds with an original understanding of the 14th Amendment--progressives have lined up to defend Harvard and UNC," Stern noted, citing "the amicus briefs filed in support of the universities by seemingly every liberal group under the sun."
Late last week, ReNika Moore, director of ACLU's Racial Justice program, said in a statement: "Race-conscious admissions practices help create a diverse student body that benefits the educational experiences of all students.Time and again, lower courts and the Supreme Court have recognized universities' ability to consider race in the admissions process in order to help foster this."
Civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill, former president of the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund, also alluded to the high court's previous decisions upholding race-conscious college admissions, adding that new challenges keep cropping up because "opponents to affirmative action know they have an open door to continue to try and overturn it."
\u201cIt\u2019s cynical. W/o Justice Kennedy (and now Breyer) opponents to affirmative action feel they have a clear path. But even if Kennedy were still on the Court they would have brought this challenge. With their new strategy of using Asian Americans as a wedge, they couldn\u2019t resist.\u201d— Sherrilyn Ifill (@Sherrilyn Ifill) 1667221769
Although the court is not scheduled to hand down an opinion in the pair of cases until next summer, its right-wing justices on Monday questioned the legitimacy of race-conscious admissions, expressing doubt that schools would ever concede an "endpoint" in their consideration of race to build more diverse student bodies.
"The question," according toThe Washington Post, "is how broad such a decision by the court's conservative majority might be, and what it would mean for other institutions of higher education."
"Overturning the court's precedents that race can be one factor of many in making admission decisions would have 'profound consequences' for 'the nation that we are and the nation that we aspire to be,' Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar told the justices during arguments in the Harvard case," the Post reported.
"But the court's conservatives used the two cases to revisit decades of Supreme Court decisions that tolerated a limited use of racial classifications," noted the newspaper. "They seemed unsatisfied with assertions from lawyers representing the schools that the end was near for the use of race-conscious policies. Under repeated questioning, the lawyers conceded they could not provide a date-specific answer to the question: 'When will it end?'"
Notably, as The New York Timespointed out Sunday, both sides in the debate claim to be upholding the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, the unanimous 1954 ruling that found racial segregation in public education to be unconstitutional. While proponents of affirmative action argue that assembling diverse student bodies is consistent with the civil rights landmark, opponents insist that the decision requires "colorblind" policies.
For instance, Edward Blum, the founder of Students for Fair Admissions, the anti-affirmative action group behind both cases, toldNPR on Monday that "the Constitution and our civil rights laws forbid the consideration of race in higher education."
As Vanity Fair's Eric Lutz wrote Monday: "That is not what previous courts have ruled. Since Regents, Grutter, and the 2016 Fisher v. University of Texas decision, the high court has generally upheld universities' race-conscious admissions policies. But this court, with its 6-3 conservative supermajority, has shown little reverence for long-standing precedent--it did away with 50 years of settled law in overturning Roe over the summer--and seems poised to obliterate this one, too."
Justice Clarence Thomas--a beneficiary of affirmative action who has long opposed the policy on the grounds that it is discriminatory--on Monday questioned the meaning and "educational benefits of diversity."
In response to Thomas' inquiry about the original meaning of the 14th Amendment, "the lawyer who wants to abolish affirmative action said that the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which was the foundation for the amendment, was race-neutral," tweeted journalist Cristian Farias.
Farias shared a recent interview he conducted with Eric Foner, in which the esteemed historian of Reconstruction denounced originalism as "intellectually indefensible."
"Colorblindness is not the only original meaning of the 14th Amendment," said Foner. "It was the original meaning in the eyes of some people, but not a lot of others."
\u201cIn response to Clarence Thomas, who asked about the original meaning of the 14th Amendment, the lawyer who wants to abolish affirmative action said that the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which was the foundation for the amendment, was race-neutral.\n\nNope. https://t.co/QJ9PXC2Jzq\u201d— Cristian Farias (@Cristian Farias) 1667236353
In his Monday essay, Stern argued that "killing affirmative action will have a devastating impact on Black, Hispanic, and Native students and such a ruling would be totally unjustified by the text or history of the Constitution."
"But it doesn't follow that the schools in this case use race-conscious admissions for exclusively noble purposes," he wrote, adding:
Instead, elite institutions often use these programs as a Band-Aid to cover deeper structural barriers to genuine diversity among their student bodies--because addressing those problems would require sacrifices that administrators aren't willing to make. A Supreme Court decision outlawing affirmative action will become a scapegoat for universities that see a plunge in enrollment among underrepresented minorities. Progressives should not let them get away with it.
Although the latest legal assault on affirmative action is built on bad history and worse motivations, it did have the benefit of revealing unseemly details about the elite admissions process. The litigation gave the public an unprecedented glimpse into Harvard's standards, which reflect horribly on the school. As Aaron Mak explained in Slate after the trial, Harvard has a preference for four specific groups of applicants known as ALDC: athletes, legacies, those on the dean's list (frequently because of family donations), and the children of faculty. ALDCs constitute about 5% of applicants but 30% of the admitted class. Their admissions rate sits at about 45% compared to the normal rate of less than 5%.
In theory, ALDC preferences are colorblind. In practice, they operate as a massive affirmative action program for white applicants. Over a recent six-year period, 2,200 out of 4,993 admitted white students were ALDC--a figure significantly higher than the overall number of admitted students who are Black (1,392) and Hispanic (1,283). White ALDC students are not overrepresented because theyhappen to be more qualified; to the contrary, about three-fourths of them would have been rejected without the ALDC boost.
"Elite universities' first response" to the high court's expected elimination of race-conscious admissions in higher education, Stern tweeted, "should be abolishing their affirmative action programs for ultra-privileged white kids."
National Education Association president Becky Pringle said Monday in a statement that "recent events demonstrate that racism and discrimination are not artifacts of American history but persist in every aspect of our society, including our schools, colleges, and universities."
"Affirmative action and programs like it safeguard a stronger future by expanding higher education opportunities to those who have been historically denied a fair shot," said Pringle. "When we ensure the many talents and experiences of students of color aren't overlooked in admissions processes that tend to be biased against them, we create schools, a country, and a future that includes us all. We urge the court to uphold affirmative action in higher education admissions decisions."
"How the government reacts will tell us so much about how far down the road to autocracy we are," said one lawyer.
A U.S. judge on Friday ordered the return of a Maryland resident who the Trump administration mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador last month, according to The Associated Press.
Prior to issuing the ruling, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis called the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia "an illegal act."
The judge, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, gave the Trump administration end of the day of the day on Monday to bring him back to the United States.
Supporters outside the courtroom cheered as the judge handed down her order, according to The Washington Post.
Responding to the ruling on social media, U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said: "This is a big win. Now Trump must comply with the judge's order."
Immigration lawyer Ava Benach wrote: "The right decision. How the government reacts will tell us so much about how far down the road to autocracy we are."
The right decision. How the government reacts will tell us so much about how far down the road to autocracy we are.
[image or embed]
— avabenach.bsky.social (@avabenach.bsky.social) April 4, 2025 at 3:27 PM
Abrego Garcia was among hundreds of people the administration expelled in mid-March to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador after targeting them for alleged gang ties.
In a court papers filed earlier this week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) acting field office director admitted that the removal of Abrego Garcia on March 15 "was an error."
Abrego Garcia was deported despite the fact that in 2019, a U.S. immigration judge ruled that he could not be deported to his native El Salvador because he would likely face gang persecution there.
"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.
Axios reported Friday that at least two DOGE staffers "now have offices at" the FTC. According to The 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.
"The president single-handedly wiped out Americans' retirement savings overnight and subjected businesses to intense whiplash with his increasingly erratic and chaotic policies that continue to drive consumer and business uncertainty."
Alarm over U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs continues to grow, with stocks plummeting and JPMorgan warning that "the risk of recession in the global economy this year is raised to 60%, up from 40%."
After China announced new 34% tariffs on all American goods beginning next week, The Associated Press reported Friday that "the S&P 500 was down 4.8% in afternoon trading, after earlier dropping more than 5%, following its worst day since Covid wrecked the global economy in 2020. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1,719 points, or 4.3%, as of 1:08 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 4.9% lower."
Noting the state of Wall Street this week, Groundwork Collaborative executive director Lindsay Owens declared in a Friday statement that "Trump has officially brought the economy to its knees."
"The president single-handedly wiped out Americans' retirement savings overnight and subjected businesses to intense whiplash with his increasingly erratic and chaotic policies that continue to drive consumer and business uncertainty," she said. "To call this an economic downturn is an understatement; Trump is marching us straight into a depression."
Political and economic observers have been publicly wondering for weeks if Trump is intentionally crashing the economy. Further fueling those fears, he ramped up his trade war on Wednesday by announcing a minimum 10% tariff for imports, with higher levies for dozens of countries. Although he claimed those steeper duties are "reciprocal," his math "horrified" economists and has been called "crazy."
Responding in a Thursday note titled, There Will Be Blood, head of global economic research Bruce Kasman and other experts at JPMorgan wrote that "if sustained, this year's ~22%-point tariff increase would be the largest U.S. tax hike since 1968."
"The effect of this tax hike is likely to be magnified—through retaliation, a slide in U.S. business sentiment, and supply chain disruptions," states the note, which came before China's announcement.
As Bloomberg reported:
Several Wall Street firms on Thursday warned of a U.S. recession, with some making it their base case, after... Trump announced major levies on goods imported from countries around the world. Other economists, including those at JPMorgan, said the hit could be big, though they are taking a wait-and-see approach before revising their projections.
The announcement rocked global financial markets, and the S&P 500 suffered its worst day since 2020. Trump, speaking on Air Force One on Thursday afternoon, said he was open to reducing tariffs if trading partners were able to offer something "phenomenal."
"We are not making immediate changes to our forecasts and want to see the initial implementation and negotiation process that takes hold," the JPMorgan note says. "However, we view the full implementation of announced policies as a substantial macroeconomic shock not currently incorporated in our forecasts. We thus emphasize that these policies, if sustained, would likely push the U.S. and possibly global economy into recession this year."
The team also pointed out that the United States is in potential danger no matter how other countries are ultimately impacted, calling a "scenario where rest of world muddles through a U.S. recession possible but less likely than global downturn."
As Common Dreams reported last week, in anticipation of Trump's tariff announcement, Goldman Sachs published a research note projecting that the odds of a recession in the next year are 35%, up from 20%.
Other financial industry research firms that have recently warned of a possible recession include Barclays, BofA Global Research, Deutsche Bank, RBC Capital Markets, and UBS Global Wealth Management, according to Reuters.
"This is a game-changer, not only for the U.S. economy, but for the global economy. Many countries will likely end up in a recession," Olu Sonola, head of U.S. economic research at Fitch Ratings, said in a late Wednesday note about the levies. "You can throw most forecasts out the door, if this tariff rate stays on for an extended period of time."
Experts have made similar comments to the press in the wake of the president's Rose Garden remarks on Wednesday. Time on Friday shared some from Brian Bethune, a Boston College economics professor:
"[Consumers] are not even going to the grocery store and paying more for vegetables because there's none available from Mexico, or going to Whole Foods, for example, and finding the big sections of fresh fruit are being shut down. They haven't really felt the full impact [yet], and they're already saying something isn't right," Bethune says.
However, while some economists... are more cautious in their discussion about a possible recession, Bethune says it's "inevitable." The question, he says, is just how long until it happens and for how long will it occur? He sees Trump's admission of there being " some pain" on the horizon as only proof of the inevitability.
"At least they [the Trump administration] are not pretending that it's not disruptive, but they're basically soft-selling it, reflecting their ignorance about the way business operates," Bethune claims.
Also on Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the latest U.S. jobs data. Although the unemployment rate rose from 4.1% to 4.2% in March, the economy added 228,000 jobs, which was better than expected.
However, economists warn of what lies ahead. As University of Michican economics professor Betsey Stevenson put it, "Today's jobs report is like looking at your vacation photos after you had a horrible car crash on the way home."