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April 15, 2025
US Economy Is Set to Lose Billions as Foreign Tourists Stay Away
(Bloomberg) The US economy is set to lose billions of dollars in revenue in 2025 from a pullback in foreign tourism and boycotts of American products, adding to a growing list of headwinds keeping recession risk elevated. Arrivals of non-citizens to the US by plane dropped almost 10% in March from a year earlier, according to data published Monday by the International Trade Administration.
Go to discussionSignal War Plans Messages Disappear from CIA Director's Phone
(Newsweek) In a court document submitted Monday as part of a lawsuit between nonpartisan watchdog group American Oversight and White House officials, Hurley V. Blankenship said that when the CIA reviewed a sensitive Signal group chat on March 31, days after news broke that a journalist had been erroneously added to it, "substantive messages" were not present and instead the chat showed only its group name and administrative settings. Newsweek contacted Ratcliffe for comment via website form outside of normal office hours on Tuesday.
Go to discussion'This is very bad': Whistleblower reveals 'brazen' DOGE team looting sensitive labor data
(Raw Story) A whistleblower has revealed that engineers with the Department of Government Efficiency had smuggled out highly sensitive data they had accessed from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The DOGE employees arrived at the agency's headquarters in early March and immediately reviewed its data to ostensibly to maximize efficiency and identify costs to cut, but whistleblower Dan Berulis told Congress that technical staff members believed their actions within those sensitive systems looked like what criminal or state-sponsored hackers might do, reported NPR.
Go to discussionDespite a court order, White House bars AP from Oval Office event
(AP) Despite a court order, a reporter and photographer from The Associated Press were barred from an Oval Office news conference on Monday with President Donald Trump and his counterpart from El Salvador, Nayib Bukele. Last week’s federal court decision forbidding the Trump administration from punishing the AP for refusing to rename the Gulf of Mexico was to take effect Monday. The administration is appealing the decision and arguing with the news outlet over whether it needs to change anything until those appeals are exhausted.
Go to discussionCore Democratic groups are preparing to be targeted by the Trump administration
(AP) As President Donald Trump pushes the historical boundaries of executive power, some of the Democratic Party’s core political institutions are preparing for the possibility that the federal government may soon launch criminal investigations against them. The Democrats’ dominant national fundraising platform, ActBlue, and the party’s largest protest group, Indivisible, are working with their attorneys for just such a scenario, according to officials within both organizations.
Go to discussionDOGE is collecting federal data to remove immigrants from housing, jobs
(Washington Post) The Trump administration is using personal data normally protected from dissemination to find undocumented immigrants where they work, study and live, often with the goal of removing them from their housing and the workforce. At the Department of Housing and Urban Development, for example, officials are working on a rule that would ban mixed-status households — in which some family members have legal status and others don’t — from public housing, according to multiple staffers who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution.
Go to discussionBipartisan senators rebuke White House move to end legal aid for unaccompanied minors
(NPR) Two senators are mounting a rare bipartisan attack against the Trump administration's approach to due process for migrants. Sen. Lisa Murkowsi, R-Alaska, joined Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., in a letter criticizing the end of a federal contract that provides legal representation to 26,000 children who are in the U.S. without a parent or guardian. The decision to end the contract in late March "puts children directly at risk of trafficking and exploitation, and harms any hope of a fair legal process for thousands of vulnerable children," they wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Tuesday.
Go to discussionWhat the Josh Shapiro Attack Reveals
(The Atlantic) Josh Shapiro is very lucky to be alive. The Pennsylvania governor and his family escaped an arson attack in the early hours of this morning. Parts of the governor’s mansion were badly charred, including an opulent room with a piano and a chandelier where Shapiro had hosted a Passover Seder just hours earlier. Things could have been much worse. The suspect, Cody Balmer, who turned himself in, would have beaten Shapiro with a hammer if he had found him in his home, he reportedly said in an affidavit.
Go to discussionUS government slapping 21 percent tariff on most tomatoes from Mexico
(The Hill) The United States government announced that it plans to slap a nearly 21 percent tariff on most tomatoes coming from Mexico in the summer, arguing the current agreement has not “protected” U.S.-based tomato growers from “unfairly priced Mexican imports.” The Commerce Department said on Monday that it plans to withdraw from the 2019 trade agreement with Mexico and that an “antidumping duty order” will be instituted on July 14. “This action will allow U.S. tomato growers to compete fairly in the marketplace,” the Commerce Department said in a release on Monday.
Go to discussionChina Orders Boeing Jet Delivery Halt as Trade War Expands
(Bloomberg) China has ordered its airlines not to take any further deliveries of Boeing Co. jets as part of the tit-for-tat trade war that’s seen US President Donald Trump levy tariffs of as high as 145% on Chinese goods, according to people familiar with the matter. Beijing has also asked that Chinese carriers halt any purchases of aircraft-related equipment and parts from US companies, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing matters that are private.
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