Two thoughts on today’s tariffs. I could get into the substance of the decision. But I think that goes without saying.

Point one is that we should remember that Presidents have no inherent power over tariffs whatsoever. This isn’t like war powers or pardons where these are questions the Constitution assigns to the will of one person. They are entirely delegated by Congress and could be taken back at any moment. They are also explicitly reserved for emergencies. They aren’t meant to be used as to create entirely novel trade regimes. But Congress lets the President decide what constitutes an emergency. The logic of that delegation is based on the flexibility and convenience the delegation creates and the assumption that the president wouldn’t be nuts. The Republican Congress could bring this absurd gambit to a halt tonight. So it’s all on them, every one of them individually.

Chicago is … where Josh and Kate are headed for the next live show! Chicago was the leading vote-getter in our poll asking you where we should head next, with 23.5% of the vote.

The live show will be Wednesday, May 14th. Tickets will go on sale this Friday, April 4th at 10 a.m. Eastern. If you are a Prime member, you’ll receive an email with discounted tickets.

We hope you’ll came hang out with us for a few hours. In addition to the the live edition of the Josh Marshall Podcast featuring Kate Riga, there will be a Q&A session and a cocktail hour after the show where you can chat with our podcasters and other TPMers as well.

So is Elon really out, as the White House is claiming to beltway news outlets? Don’t bet on it.

First of all, he’s almost certainly not leaving DOGE.

Second of all, it would hardly matter if he did. He’ll keep running DOGE even if he nominally steps aside. Remember that at least in terms of what his minions are telling federal judges he doesn’t even run it now. The entire entity is run by his deputies and powered by the fear of his money and his power. He couldn’t stop running it without dismantling it. And of course neither is going to happen.

I want to circle back to the series of posts I did in the last few days about people with disabilities on SSI whose Social Security portals were showing that they were no longer Social Security recipients. As I noted, the people whose payments seemed like they might be a little late all ended up receiving their payments overnight Monday into Tuesday. That still left the fact that people’s portals showed they were not in fact recipients on top of their payment histories disappearing. Well, around mid-afternoon eastern yesterday those messages disappeared from the portals. In other words, everything went back to how it had always been. There was no language saying recipients were not recipients and people’s payment history reappeared.

In the first weeks of the administration, I wrote a number of pieces on the shuttering of PRAMS (the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System), a decades-old data collection and analysis program at CDC tracking infant and maternal health from pregnancy through childbirth and postpartum. It’s a critical source of data across time, affluence, demographic groups, etc. It was shuttered, as I eventually learned, because of the President’s “DEI” executive order. Various of the questions didn’t pass muster under the White House’s standards of what counted as DEI. It wasn’t clear if the shuttering was in effect permanent or whether the program might come back after undergoing some kind of DEI cleanse. Then a couple weeks ago I learned that it was in the process of being resurrected. Some questions were stripped out, but not as many as feared. It also seemed like some data from the disruption period might not be recoverable. There was a lot of work in terms of new IRB reviews and things like that. But it seemed on the way to coming back. Today all CDC employees who worked at PRAMS were terminated (RIF’d). So while there hasn’t been any official announcement that the program is permanently shuttered, all the people who ran it are out as of today.

This is a small data point I’ve been following but one with potentially vast implications. Since mid-February I’ve noticed a consistent pattern based on speaking to many sources across the federal government. In contrast to almost every other part of government, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has emerged relatively unscathed. Obviously, this is not at all a bad thing. CMS oversees Medicare, Medicaid and other federal health care provision services.

This is in great contrast to the situation at the Social Security Administration which has been submitted to a full DOGE onslaught. SSA has been the focus of a propaganda wave from Elon Musk himself, major cuts and a host of disruptions. Wired reported on Friday that DOGE plans to rewrite SSA’s computer system from scratch over a period of a few months. It’s difficult to describe how crazy a plan this is. Such an effort is one that under any realistic timeline would take years not months.

I reported last night that a significant number of SSI recipients had Social Security portals which showed they were no longer beneficiaries. Their payments were also at least slightly late. As of this morning it appears that most or all of those beneficiaries have now received their payments. (I haven’t heard from everyone yet but everyone I’ve heard from has received them.) So as of now this appears to be a records error in the SSA portals rather than a disruption of payments.

As noted last night, in the instances in question, the beneficiaries’ SSA portal now includes the text:  “This beneficiary is currently not receiving payments” under “Benefits & Payments.” Those portals now also include no records of historical payments. It’s as though the person had never been an SSI recipient. I will provide more updates when I have more information.

Editor’s note: As of the morning of April 1st, most and likely all recipients discussed in this post have received their payments. So the issue appears to be an SSA portal reporting issue — as described below — rather than a disruption in payments.

I want to tread carefully here. But this seems potentially serious. I am in contact with two families in which the parents have an adult child with severe disabilities who receives SSI payments for their support. In each case, at some time today, their online Social Security portal switched to showing that the adult child was “not receiving benefits.” The full language is “This beneficiary is currently not receiving payments” under “Benefits & Payments.” In one case, the recipient’s payment is later than usual but might still come tomorrow. In the other case, the recipient lives at a facility which receives the payments directly. So that family doesn’t know yet whether there’s been a disruption in payments.

From TPM Reader JF …

Good post on the indefensible media coverage of the Third Term shiny object being offered up by the President (see also, invading Greenland, etc.)

There is an additional point worth emphasizing.  The reason Donald Trump is talking about this third term ridiculousness is very plain.  Second-term American presidents are lame ducks.  That’s just how it is.  And if they are unpopular lame ducks, after awhile their allies may start to look past them toward the future.  Trump is undoubtedly terrified of this—of becoming irrelevant before his term even ends, particularly once the race to succeed him heats up.  The way for him to keep the specter of lame-duckishness at bay is to tease the idea that just maybe, who knows, he just sorta might run for a third term. That’s the play, and the media is being played.

A quick update on the story about computer science Professor Xiaofeng Wang and Indiana University. A local NPR affiliate published what purports to be the letter IU Provost Rahul Shrivastav wrote to Wang firing him last Friday.

The relevant portion of the letter goes as follows …

I am writing to advise you that Indiana University has decided to terminate your employment effective immediately. Its my understanding you have informed the chair of your department that you have accepted a faculty appointment with a university in Singapore and will start your role there this summer. Please note that you will not be eligible for rehire with Indiana University.