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How Trump’s ‘Least Bad Outcome’ Trade Agreements Could Hurt Everyone
A prevailing narrative has emerged about recent U.S. trade agreements: other countries are bending under the heavy hand of an all-powerful Trump.
Axios framed an agreement reached with Japan as evidence of U.S. omnipotence in global trade. Reuters reported a 660% bump month to month in Chinese exports of rare earth minerals to the U.S. (The bump came only because the Chinese all but stopped exports in retaliation against Trump’s initial tariff announcement.) And a Wall Street Journal article described the trade deal the U.S. struck with the European Union on Sunday as “the Least Bad Outcome” for business leaders.
But economists TPM spoke to suggest these agreements will end up harming everyone involved: foreign governments, the U.S. government, and American businesses and consumers.
“What I’m seeing so far, which is really interesting, is the fact that a lot of folks are talking about these trade deals as the other countries are losing and the U.S. is winning. I think that narrative is actually incorrect,” Ina Manak, a trade policy fellow at the Council on Foreign Relation, told TPM. “The U.S. is putting up all these barriers.”
“If anyone is losing, it’s us. It’s us, here in the U.S., that are gonna pay for it long-term.”
The Trump administration has tossed out generations of trade policy practices dating back to WWII — protocols which involved Congress, small businesses, corporations, academics and other stakeholders. Instead of fighting for favorable trade agreements, countries are negotiating directly with President Donald Trump and his handful of trade officials for hazy promises — seeking, merely, anything that is not worse than what has been offered to other countries.
Given this chaotic state of affairs, it’s understandable that governments seem relieved just to put an end to the volatility and accept lower — though still significant — tariff rates. But the lack of details released around the individual deals makes it difficult to judge their merits.
Trump’s deal with the 27 of countries that comprise the EU includes a 15% baseline tariff for most European goods. The EU also agreed not to tax a yet unknown category of U.S. imports, to purchase $750 billion of energy products from the U.S., and invest another $600 billion in the country, Trump said. Notably, the White House and the European Commission have since put out several contradictory claims about the agreement, with the EU saying it cannot guarantee the sizes of either aforementioned investments, according to Euronews.
Still, Eurochambers, a European association of chambers of commerce and industry, told the Journal the deal was “the least painful solution” for the EU. In another article, the newspaper called the EU deal “the most consequential agreement Trump has so far announced.” The president, in his typical hyperbolic fashion, suggested it was “the biggest deal ever made.”
But economists have said those kinds of assertions are hard to make because so little is known about the actual parameters of the deal.
The trade deals in question aren’t actually deals at all. Instead, Manak said, they’re proposals or announcements — “sort of a framework for future discussions.”
“Until we see a full text of things it’s going to be hard to know what exactly was agreed to,” she said of the EU deal.
The trade negotiation process typically takes years, Joshua Mask, an economist and professor at Temple University, points out. “Things could be changed along the way” as the details of the agreements are hammered out, Mask said. And Trump is facing a lawsuit challenging his authority to issue sweeping tariffs in the first place.
Trump and his small team, which includes Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, have been making a flurry of agreements with the biggest U.S. trading partners ahead of Trump’s arbitrarily-set, looming tariff deadline of August 1. Trump had initially issued an executive order instituting sweeping global tariffs on April 2, a date he called “Liberation Day,” before pausing them amid market panic. The deadline for them to go into effect was then pushed back twice.
Bessent is now downplaying the August deadline, too, instead saying negotiations with the country’s most prolific trading partners could go until Labor Day.
An agreement with the United Kingdom agreed to in May set a 10% tariff rate on most goods and and on a maximum of 100,000 imported cars, but maintained a 25% tariff on steel, which Trump has said will be reduced “pretty soon.” Japan negotiated a 15% tariff on imported goods. The administration has come to nebulous agreements with Indonesia and the Philippines as well, and claimed to make a deal with Vietnam. In that case, according to Politico, the announced details apparently differed so greatly from what Vietnamese officials understood, some questioned whether a deal was made at all.
“The administration has sort of bitten off more than it can chew,” said Manak. “They’re trying to negotiate deals with everybody.”
From Scotland on Monday, Trump claimed he’ll probably apply a 15% to 20% blanket import tariff on countries that have not made dedicated agreements with the U.S., because, he said, “you can’t sit down and make 200 deals.”
With so much still up in the air, the experts TPM spoke to were wary of making predictions about the impact of future tariffs. They cautioned that any hikes will be felt by American consumers and potentially by U.S. businesses that import foreign goods.
“Trump Administration officials insist that foreign producers will pay the entire tab,” said Stephen Stanley, chief U.S. economist at Santander Bank, in an emailed analysis on the EU agreement. “While this is possible, and may be accurate in a few specific cases, it is doubtful that U.S. consumers will escape unscathed.”
Tariffed countries will also be less inclined to continue to trade with the U.S. at the same volume, Mask said.
“That’s not something that’s just going to unwind overnight,” he continued. “But the longer this goes, countries will start looking for other options.”
Don’t Be Surprised When Trump Pardons Ghislaine Maxwell, and Other Epstein News
I mentioned yesterday the importance of keeping up with stories that are absurd in their substance but real in their consequence. Along those lines I wanted to give you a brief update on the Jeffrey Epstein story. If you’ve been following it closely this may not be news. But I know not everyone is doing so. And while I said that it’s important for political journalists to keep track of these stories, that doesn’t mean that you (a non-journalist) have to.
So a few points.
The first is that Donald Trump really does appear to be seriously considering issuing a pardon to Epstein confederate, procurer and one-time girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell. I’m not saying he will. But I think it’s a real possibility. All the standard signs are there. He’s going into full “finding the real killers” mode, and getting “the truth” from Maxwell is central to that. The question has all the standard will he or won’t he drama. But this isn’t our first rodeo. We’ve been at this long enough to know the signs when Trump is warming to an idea and when he’s laying the public groundwork for it. We have the standard lines like, I haven’t decided to but I totally have the power to pardon her if I want. We’ll see. Everybody agrees I’m “allowed.” We’re seeing all the standard lines in the progression.
Continue reading “Don’t Be Surprised When Trump Pardons Ghislaine Maxwell, and Other Epstein News”The Campaign Against Mamdani Has Echoes of the Panic Around Another Socialist Democrat
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
It has happened before: an upset victory by a Democratic Socialist in an important primary election after an extraordinary grassroots campaign.
In the summer of 1934, Upton Sinclair earned the kind of headlines that greeted Zohran Mamdani’s primary victory on June 24, 2025, in the New York City mayoral election.
Mamdani’s win surprised nearly everyone. Not just because he beat the heavily favored former governor Andrew Cuomo, but because he did so by a large margin. Because he did so with a unique coalition, and because his Muslim identity and membership in the Democratic Socialists of America should have, in conventional political thinking, made victory impossible.
This sounds familiar, at least to historians like me. Upton Sinclair, the famous author and a socialist for most of his life, ran for governor in California in 1934 and won the Democratic primary election with a radical plan that he called End Poverty in California, or EPIC.
The news traveled the globe and set off intense speculation about the future of California, where Sinclair was then expected to win the general election. His primary victory also generated theories about the future of the Democratic Party, where this turn toward radicalism might complicate the policies of the Democratic administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
What happened next may concern Mamdani supporters. Business and media elites mounted a campaign of fear that put Sinclair on the defensive. Meanwhile, conservative Democrats defected, and a third candidate split progressive votes.
In the November election, Sinclair lost decisively to incumbent Gov. Frank Merriam, who would have stood less chance against a conventional Democrat.
As a historian of American radicalism, I have written extensively about Sinclair’s EPIC movement, and I direct an online project that includes detailed accounts of the campaign and copies of campaign materials.
Upton’s 1934 campaign initiated the on-again, off-again influence of radicals in the Democratic Party and illustrates some of the potential dynamics of that relationship, which, almost 100 years later, may be relevant to Mamdani in the coming months.
California, 1934
Sinclair launched his gubernatorial campaign in late 1933, hoping to make a difference but not expecting to win. California remained mired in the Great Depression. The unemployment rate had been estimated at 29% when Roosevelt took office in March and had improved only slightly since then.
Sinclair’s Socialist Party had failed badly in the 1932 presidential election as Democrat Roosevelt swept to victory. Those poor results included California, where the Democratic Party had been an afterthought for more than three decades.
Sinclair decided that it was time to see what could be accomplished by radicals working within that party.
Reregistering as a Democrat, he dashed off a 64-page pamphlet with the futuristic title I, Governor of California and How I Ended Poverty. It detailed his plan to solve California’s massive unemployment crisis by having the state take over idle farms and factories and turn them into cooperatives dedicated to “production for use” instead of “production for profit.”
Sinclair soon found himself presiding over an explosively popular campaign, as thousands of volunteers across the state set up EPIC clubs — numbering more than 800 by election time — and sold the weekly EPIC News to raise campaign funds.
Mainstream Democrats waited too long to worry about Sinclair and then failed to unite behind an alternative candidate. But it would not have mattered. Sinclair celebrated a massive primary victory, gaining more votes than all of his opponents combined.
Newspapers around the world told the story.
“What is the matter with California?” The Boston Globe asked, according to author Greg Mitchell. “That is the farthest shift to the left ever made by voters of a major party in this country.”
Building fear
Primaries are one thing. But in 1934, the November general election turned in a different direction.
Terrified by Sinclair’s plan, business leaders mobilized to defeat EPIC, forming the kind of cross-party coalition that is rare in America except when radicals pose an electoral threat. Sinclair described the effort in a book he wrote shortly after the November election: “I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked.”
Nearly every major newspaper in the state, including the five Democratic-leaning Hearst papers, joined the effort to stop Sinclair. Meanwhile, a high-priced advertising agency set up bipartisan groups with names like California League Against Sinclairism and Democrats for Merriam, trumpeting the names of prominent Democrats who refused to support Sinclair.
Few people of any party were enthusiastic about Merriam, who had recently angered many Californians by sending the National Guard to break a Longshore strike in San Francisco, only to trigger a general strike that shut down the city.
The campaign against Sinclair attacked him with billboards, radio and newsreel programming, and relentless newspaper stories about his radical past and supposedly dangerous plans for California.
EPIC faced another challenge, candidate Raymond Haight, running on the Progressive Party label. Haight threatened to divide left-leaning voters.
Sinclair tried to defend himself, energetically denouncing what he called the “Lie Factory” and offering revised, more moderate versions of some elements of the EPIC plan. But the Red Scare campaign worked. Merriam easily outdistanced Sinclair, winning by a plurality in the three-way race.
New York, 2025
Will a Democratic Socialist running for mayor in New York face anything similar in the months ahead?
A movement to stop Mamdani is coming together, and some of what they are saying resonates with the 1934 campaign to stop Sinclair.
The Guardian newspaper has quoted “loquacious billionaire hedge funder Bill Ackman, who said he and others in the finance industry are ready to commit ‘hundreds of millions of dollars’ into an opposing campaign.”
In 1934, newspapers publicized threats by major companies, most famously Hollywood studios, to leave California in the event of a Sinclair victory. The Wall Street Journal, Fortune magazine and other media outlets have recently warned of similar threats.
And there may be something similar about the political dynamics.
Sinclair’s opponents could offer only a weak alternative candidate. Merriam had few friends and many critics.
In 2025, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who abandoned the primary when he was running as a Democrat and is now running as an independent, is arguably weaker still, having been rescued by President Donald Trump from a corruption indictment that might have sent him to prison. If he is the best hope to stop Mamdani, the campaign strategy will likely parallel 1934. All attack ads — little effort to promote Adams.
But there is an important difference in the way the New York contest is setting up. Andrew Cuomo remains on the ballot as an independent, and his name could draw votes that might otherwise go to Adams.
Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, will also be on the ballot. Whereas in 1934 two candidates divided progressive votes, in 2025 three candidates are going to divide the stop-Mamdani votes.
Religion also looms large in the campaign ahead. The New York City metro area’s U.S. Muslim population is said to be at least 600,000, compared to an estimated 1.6 million Jewish residents. Adams has announced that the threat of antisemitism will be the major theme of his campaign.
The stop-Sinclair campaign also relied on religion, focusing on his professed atheism and pulling quotations from books he had written denouncing organized religion. However, a statistical analysis of voting demographics suggests that this effort proved unimportant.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
A Third Whistleblower Challenges Bove, and a Criminal Defendant Challenges Habba
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
More Bad News for Bove
A third whistleblower has come forward to the Senate Judiciary Committee, charging that Emil Bove, Trump’s nominee for a lifetime appointment to the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, misled senators during his confirmation hearing, the Washington Post reports.
This latest whistleblower follows two others who accused Bove of telling Justice Department attorneys to ignore court orders blocking Trump’s deportations. Specifically, former DOJ attorney Erez Reuveni said that Bove had told department lawyers to say “fuck you” to judges blocking Trump’s scheme to render Venezuelan detainees to an El Salvador prison. Bove claimed in his confirmation hearing he did not recall saying this.
“We have substantial information relevant to the truthfulness of the nominee,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) said in a floor speech yesterday. But Senate Republicans have shown no interest in even finding out what the new whistleblower has to say.
The opposition of Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Susan Collins (R-ME) is insufficient to deprive the Republicans of the 50-vote majority necessary to confirm someone who allegedly told DOJ attorneys to flout court orders to be a judge for the rest of his life. Bove is 44.
Meanwhile, a New Jersey defense attorney is seeking to have drug and gun charges dismissed against his client on the grounds that Alina Habba’s second appointment as interim U.S. Attorney was “under questionable legal authority,” Politico reports. Even if the motion is ultimately unsuccessful, it points to potential turmoil and disruptions as a result of the supposedly tough-on-crime Trump administration’s extreme measures to keep his close ally in power as the state’s top federal prosecutor.
As Morning Memo reported last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi thumbed her nose at an order issued by federal judges in New Jersey, who had blocked Habba’s continued appointment following the expiration of her 120-day interim term. (Bondi said that DOJ “does not tolerate rogue judges — especially when they threaten the President’s core Article II powers.”) Trump then withdrew Habba’s nomination to serve in the role permanently (subject to Senate confirmation). That cleared the way for Bondi to make Habba her “chief deputy” — a maneuver that in turn allowed her to reappoint Habba for an additional 210-day interim term.
If Bove is confirmed to the Third Circuit, he potentially could be on a panel of judges to hear appeals of challenges to Habba’s or any other DOJ-installed U.S. Attorney’s appointment in New Jersey.
Trump Administration Greenlights Proselytizing in the Federal Workplace
Under a memo issued by the Office of Personnel Management yesterday, federal workers are permitted to talk to their co-workers about their religion, including engaging a colleague “in polite discussion of why his faith is correct and why the non-adherent should re-think his religious beliefs.” They are also allowed to engage in religious displays, conversations, or prayer in public spaces and with members of the public.
All of the examples of protected conduct cited in the memo involve Christianity or Judaism, but not other religions. The memo cites the acceptability of displaying a cross, crucifix, rosary beads, mezuzah, tefillin, or Star of David, or of citing or keeping a Bible at one’s desk. It does not cite any examples of permissible workplace religious expression from Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, or other religions.
Christian nationalists have long portrayed a secular workplace as one that discriminates against conservative Christians, who claim that their religious freedom demands they be allowed to share the gospel with co-workers or refuse service to prospective clients or the public on the grounds their conscience forbids same-sex marriage, for example. While the movement has long focused on private workplaces, the new OPM guidance exemplifies how the Trump administration’s plans to completely remake the federal workplace include Christianizing it. Project 2025 envisioned a broad Christianization of the federal government and American workplaces, calling on the new administration to “enact policies with robust respect for religious exercise in the workplace, including under the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), Title VII, and federal conscience protection laws,” and to “provide robust accommodations for religious employees.”
Speaking of Project 2025
Project 2025 author and former Heritage Foundation official Paul Dans has announced a primary challenge to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) next year. During the height of the 2024 presidential campaign, Dans had stepped down from his Heritage post amid rising public opposition to Project 2025, and the Trump campaign’s duplicitous effort to “distance” him from the controversial policy tome. Now Dans is accusing Graham of “betraying” the state’s conservatives, and is taking credit for helping Trump “implement the America First agenda that’s reshaping America into the country we have always dreamed of.” Former Trump campaign advisor Chris LaCivita, now advising Graham, accused Dans of having attempted to “torpedo” Trump’s 2024 prospects, and ominously predicted his Senate primary campaign would “end prematurely.”
That’s right: Dans left Heritage because he was supposedly talking too much about the blueprint document that the Trump administration has since largely implemented, and Graham’s campaign is accusing him of having tried to torpedo Trump’s campaign by being too public about it.
Speaking of Religious Freedom
Several non-MAGA religious denominations have filed a fourth lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s rescission of a 2011 policy restricting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids at “sensitive locations,” including houses of worship. The plaintiffs, which include several synods of Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, three Quaker groups, American Baptist Churches USA, Alliance of Baptists, and Metropolitan Community Churches, allege that ICE raids and the prospect of ICE raids at houses of worship infringe on congregants’ ability to participate in religious services and fulfill religious obligations. The raids are not hypothetical: the complaint cites several arrests outside of California churches since the Trump administration ended the sensitive location policy.
Christian Right Activists Suddenly Concerned Some of Their Own Might Be Deported
Although Trump’s anti-immigrant policies are widely supported by white evangelicals, some leaders are now worrying that deportations might sweep up some of their fellow travelers, including parishioners and pastors. At Right Wing Watch, Kyle Mantyla reports on an episode of Christian right activist Jim Garlow’s podcast “sound[ing] the alarm over the prospect that tens of thousands of Latino Christians could be forcibly deported from the United States because of the Trump administration’s policies.”
Feds Forced to Drop Charges Against Anti-ICE Protesters in L.A.
Federal immigration officers in Los Angeles made false or misleading statements about the arrests of protesters against Trump administration crackdowns earlier this month, the Guardian reports. As a result, in addition to the previously reported refusal of grand juries to indict protesters, federal prosecutors have also been forced to drop felony charges against some protesters who had been charged with assaulting or impeding officers.
The Making of Trump’s “Border Attack Dog”
The Phoenix New Times’ Stephen Lemons is out with a deep dive into Trump’s vicious “border czar,” Tom Homan, a veteran of Arizona immigration enforcement under Republican and Democratic presidents whose former colleagues remember as a “reasonable” person who “abhorred Donald Trump.” But now:
In the second Trump administration, Homan seems to be enjoying all the attention that helming a cruel and chaotic mass deportation scheme has afforded him. The 63-year-old — that’s a year younger than George Clooney, though Homan appears a million city miles older — has become a mainstay of conservative media. He threatens to arrest Democratic lawmakers who oppose the actions of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents whom he’s let off the leash. He gloats over the abduction and removal of non-criminal migrants to foreign gulags. He peddles bullshit about the doxing of ICE agents to justify hiding their identities. Ironically, considering how much his agents conceal their faces, Homan’s love of the MAGA spotlight has made his craggy visage one of the most recognizable among Trump’s cronies.
In Epstein Scramble, Mike Johnson Blames Democrats for His Early House Summer Recess
In an interview with the Family Research Council’s radio program This Week on Capitol HIll, the House Speaker claimed that Democrats are to blame for the House calling an early recess to avoid a possible vote to force the Trump administration to release the Epstein files.
Although MAGA influencers have spent years clamoring for the release of the Epstein files, it has not been a huge issue for the Christian right. That’s why Johnson could mislead that audience into believing the whole transparency debate is the Democrats’ fault, accusing them of an underhanded attempt to derail Trump’s agenda. Displaying some serious chutzpah, Johnson claimed the Democrats are “suddenly trying to manufacture something … with the so-called Epstein files.”
Elon Musk Still the DOGE Villain
Unidentified creative activists have been displaying a 12-foot high replica of Elon Musk’s head at national parks this summer, seeking to link longer wait times with DOGE cuts of National Park Service staff. They have wheeled the head on a flatbed bearing signage reading “Make America Wait Again” and “Now With Longer Lines Thanks To Doge Cuts!”
Important Read
Princeton University authoritarianism expert Kim Lane Scheppele lays out the stakes in Trump’s assaults on universities, and how to combat them.
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I Really Need Your Attention for Two Minutes
Tomorrow is two weeks since we launched this year’s annual TPM Journalism Fund drive. We’re doing okay. But we’re at the point where we really, really need that second wind. We’re at $316,000 and we need to get to $500,000. If you’ve been considering contributing or meaning to but you just haven’t found the right moment, can you make it today? It would really help. Any amount helps. You can just click right here. It’s super simple and quick. Just take a moment and make today the day. We really appreciate it.
Cooper In
I think this was pretty much in the cards. But now it’s official. Former Gov. Roy Cooper (D) enters the North Carolina Senate race, which is now an open race after Sen. Tom Tillis (R) announced his essentially (Trump) forced retirement. Nothing is a sure thing for Democrats in North Carolina. But this is about the best case scenario they could have hoped for — no incumbent, one of the most if not the most popular Democrat in the state running. (I heard from someone that the new Gov., Josh Stein, may be slightly more popular now.) Of course it is an absolute must pick up for Dems to be in contention to take hold of the Senate. So they’re at least laying the groundwork if the winds are moving just right next November.
Hulk Hogan and the Lawsuit That Changed Journalism and America
A few days ago I got in a back and forth with someone on Facebook about the Jeffrey Epstein story. This person insisted it’s a non-story and criticized the Times — that’s what was important to him — for devoting so much time to it. It was a “pseudo-story” as the journalism argot has it, a kind of pent-up story with no substance or consequence or even existence beyond journalists pretending it’s real. I said that this was a category error. As journalists, our job is to cover and explain what is actually happening, not to act as gatekeepers deciding what’s up to our standards of substance or policy-seriousness or whatever else.
Now, it’s very true that “what’s actually happening” is carrying a lot of weight here. Lots of things are happening all the time. The Kardashians are happening. Reality TV shows are happening (a complicated topic we’ll return to). Fad diets are happening. But in political news when we say that “something is happening,” I mean chains of events which are driving public opinion, changing the dynamics of political power, shifting policy in ways that affects people’s lives, etc. When a sitting president is facing a significant rebellion in his political coalition, having his presidency consumed by efforts to contain the cause of that rebellion and so forth that is a major story. The fact that the essence of what is happening — the beliefs, conspiracy theories, etc. — are, in many ways, absurd does not change that fact. Indeed, if you can’t wrestle with the heavy amount of absurd at the heart of our political moment you will simply be lost or be having an irrelevant conversation with other gatekeepers.
I’ve argued at various points that TPM was ahead of the curve roughly during the Obama years because we paid a lot of attention to what was then sometimes called The Crazy — the subterranean world of GOP and far-right politics; the colorful, weird and almost-always super racist congressmen (and sometimes women) from obscure rural districts. That was portrayed as a sort of moving circus, cheap laughs, click-bait — not real politics. We were often criticized for giving it so much attention. I never thought that was right. And unfortunately the Trump presidency itself vindicated our read of that era. The Crazy was the reality of Republican politics. It was the John Boehners and Paul Ryans who were a kind of respectable veneer placed over its true engine of power and motive force. From the outside, it appeared that these leaders had to run the GOP while wrangling the far-right Freedom Caucus. In fact it was the Freedom Caucus that ran the GOP through a tacit collaboration with presentable and ultimately tractable figures like Boehner and Ryan. Trump’s intuitive political genius was to see that you could ditch the front man and run the GOP directly from the Freedom Caucus, which has been the story of the Trump Era.
Continue reading “Hulk Hogan and the Lawsuit That Changed Journalism and America”Trump Targets NGOs to Dismantle Civil Society
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
An Existential Threat to NGOs
As President Trump continues his onslaught on centers of power he can’t directly control — higher education, media, and law firms — I want to zero in for a moment on NGOs. We don’t usually think of nongovernmental organizations as having much overt political power, but collectively they form a safety net of sorts for democracy.
NGOs collect and analyze data, advocate for and against public policy, provide crucial social services, and, perhaps most importantly in the current moment, they litigate in defense of democracy and the rule of law. Collectively, they serve as a bulwark of civil society.
Trump targeted NGOs in one of his early anti-DEI executive orders, but we’ve seen the administration use the pretense of “anti-discrimination” to root around in all manner of internal operations and functions of universities and other targets, so the threat is broad and existential. No NGO is safe, whether they’re legal advocacy groups fighting the important court battles of the Trump II era or aid organizations dependent on USAID funding to fulfill their civic missions.
In one especially glaring example, the administration has brought Media Matters to its knees, helped by serial civil lawsuits against it by Elon Musk, as the NYT reported in detail over the weekend. A liberal advocacy group with a two-decade track record of pillorying outlets that traffic in right-wing propaganda and steadily raising substantial funds from donors is now facing an existential threat from the ongoing attacks, including from the White House and Federal Trade Commission.
Vanita Gupta, a civil rights attorney who comes from the legal advocacy NGO world and served as the No. 3 in the Biden DOJ, wrote in a NYT op-ed over the weekend:
All of this suggests a bigger, more fundamental goal: to shut down debate, cut off services to disfavored communities and dismantle civil society. These actions are unconstitutional, un-American and harm us all.
The history of the first six months of the Trump II presidency will be written with a heavy emphasis on the role of NGOs. The ACLU, labor unions, and other legal advocacy NGOs have won decisive victories in courts against lawless mass deportation, funding freezes, and the dismantling of government agencies. Even when they’ve lost in court, they’ve exposed new information, forced courts to draw lines, and mitigated some of the worst Trump impulses.
I’m often been asked since Jan. 20, Why isn’t anyone doing anything? I gently point to NGOs. These are real people doing important things with minimal resources and a lot of guts.
AEA Detainee Describes Being Raped at CECOT
An openly gay Venezuelan men who was among those removed to El Salvador under the Aliens Enemies Act and is now free after being repatriated recounts being forced to perform oral sex on a guard at CECOT.
Good Read
Former TPMer Matt Shuham: I Watched 20 Arrests In Trump’s America. Here’s What They Looked Like.
Quote of the Day
Former U.S. Pardon Attorney Liz Oyer, who continues to speak out after being fired by the Trump administration:
Those in the legal profession are facing hard and often costly choices at the moment. This is not a lecture or a judgment. It is a sincere plea to my colleagues to look beyond the short-term costs of standing up and speaking out, and to consider the longer-term consequences of staying in the shadows and bearing witness silently. If you are alarmed by the damage that has been done in just six months—if you are afraid of where we may be in year—please consider sharing your name, showing your face, and voicing your concerns.
It Just Gets Worse
The Trump administration gave sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell limited immunity to answer questions from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, CNN reports. Meanwhile, Trump is playing not-very-coy about pardoning Maxwell:
The Corruption: New Air Force One Edition
The latest developments:
- CNN got ahold of the agreement between Qatar and the Trump administration for the “unconditional donation” of a 747 to the Pentagon for short-term use as a replacement for Air Force One before it’s given to the Trump presidential library for his personal use.
- The NYT reports that the money needed to bring the plane up to Air Force One standards — a process that may be too time consuming to complete before Trump leaves office — appears to be hidden away in a $1 billion Air Force transfer to an unnamed classified project.
Only the Best People
Darren Beattie, fired during Trump I for attending a white nationalist conference, is the Trump II pick to lead the U.S. Institute of Peace.
Make America Gruesome Again
WSJ: RFK Jr. to Oust Advisory Panel on Cancer Screenings, HIV Prevention Drugs
How Long Before Hegseth Gets Canned?
WaPo: Hegseth Team Told to Stop Polygraph Tests After Complaint to White House
Now’s the Time to Contribute to TPM
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Since January, we’ve had a swell of new Morning Memo readers. Some of you may not be as familiar with TPM, so I wanted to offer the perspectives of some of my colleagues on TPM and why it’s worth your support:
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See Ya Next Week
I’m off for a few days to raft the Colorado River through the lower Grand Canyon with my three brothers. I’m a little leery of the hike down Wednesday, where the bottom of the canyon is forecast to be 110 degrees Fahrenheit, especially since I clumsily broke a toe last month. It’ll be fiiine.
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These Are the Communities Most Likely to be Hurt By Hospital Closures and Medicaid Cuts
As Congress negotiated the details of the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” a parade of independent analyses warned about the impact it would have on millions of Americans’ health care. Noting those findings, a handful of Republican lawmakers expressed alarm that the Medicaid and Medicare cuts contained within the bill would directly harm their constituents, decimating funding for rural hospitals. Majorities in both chambers voted the bill through anyway.
What members were warned about is now coming to pass.
The hospitals most at risk of closure because of the bill’s massive cuts to federal spending on Medicaid and Medicare are located in communities that are mostly white and poorer on average than the rest of the nation. They’re also more likely to have supported President Donald Trump, and are mostly represented by Republicans in Congress, according to a Talking Points Memo analysis of a new report on rural hospitals from the University of North Carolina.
The Democratic National Committee is launching a messaging campaign “to show how Trump’s policies are hurting the people who voted for him the most,” putting up billboards outside rural hospitals that have had to close or cut back services. Per the DNC, at least 10 rural hospitals have announced full or partial closure since Trump took office. Among those hospitals were at least three that explicitly cited uncertainty around the future of federal funding in announcing their imminent closure. While some facilities decided to close before the federal spending bill passed, experts said hospitals — which plan their budgets several years out, rely on Medicaid accounts for one-fifth of hospital care spending — likely saw the writing on the wall.
“I’m deeply concerned about my rural constituents, folks in small-town Georgia,” Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) told TPM.
“Even in the instances where the hospital doesn’t close,” he continued, “many of them will have to cut services — labor and delivery, for example, which is dangerous and potentially deadly for women who are trying to bring a child into the world.”
The legislation, which President Trump signed into law on July 4, is expected to slash $1 trillion in Medicaid funding over the next 10 years and lead to 10 million people losing their health insurance.
“In a lot of these rural communities, in mine, it’s true, 70% of these people voted for Republicans, voted for Trump,” said Rob Davidson, an emergency physician in rural West Michigan who serves as executive director of the Committee to Protect Health Care. His organization equips physicians with tools to explain to communities that their GOP legislators are responsible for Medicaid and Medicare cuts.
“I think it’s important that they at least understand this is why this hospital is going away. Because of these cuts,” he said. Davidson said his organization is “flooding the zone with the realities of this kind of legislation… and making sure [community members] understand who did this.”
Even before Trump’s bill was signed into law, many rural hospitals were under intense financial pressure. In Sen. Josh Hawley’s (R) state of Missouri, one hospital’s complete closure, announced in June, cost the community more than 300 jobs. Hawley voted in favor of the bill and its accompanying gutting of Medicaid before introducing his own legislation attempting to reverse cuts. (His new bill stands little chance of passing.)
Arkansas Valley Regional Medical Center in a deep red Otero County, Colorado — represented in Congress, until recently, by Trump ally Lauren Boebert’s (R-CO) — announced plans to lay off 5% of its staff in June. A top hospital official told Colorado Public Radio that the Republican budget bill would “absolutely hurt” the hospital and other rural facilities. “Cutting Medicaid funding would have dangerous, real-life consequences,” the official said.
Davidson said he’s glad some impacted hospitals are pointing the finger at policy and, by extension, politicians.
“In some ways it’s refreshing to see that they’re willing to put a name to the reason why they’re doing it,” he said.
While the budget bill did include $50 billion specifically for a rural hospitals fund, that sum is only a drop in the bucket compared to what these hospitals stand to lose, said Zachary Levinson, a hospital costs project director at KFF, a health policy organization.
“Overall, the $50 billion fund would cover a little over one-third of the estimated reductions in fed medicaid spending based on KFF estimates,” said Levinson.
Robinson put it more bluntly.
“I think we — probably all of us — need to stop saying that it’s a rural health fund,” he said.
“It’s $1 trillion in cuts over a decade and $50 billion to help try to shore it up,” Davidson said later. “That’s 5% of the problem in a 5 year span. That math doesn’t work out.”
More than 330 hospitals were highlighted in the University of North Carolina report, which was commissioned by four Democratic senators and published by the school’s Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research. Sens. Edward J. Markey (D-MA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Jeffrey Merkley (D-OR) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) sent a letter to Trump and other members of his administration detailing the study’s findings.
The report flagged hospitals that are either among the top 10% in terms of the proportion of patients on Medicaid,or which have reported negative margins for at least three consecutive years, or both, for their vulnerability to changes in federal health care spending.
Only eight hospitals were both top Medicaid providers and had longer-term negative margins. Six of them are in states Trump won in the 2024 election. Five are in congressional districts with Republican representatives. All but one have higher rates of poverty than the 11.1% national average, and all but one were in majority white congressional districts. That trend continues when you zoom out. Six of the top 10 states with the highest number of at-risk hospitals elected Trump in 2024. The list is led by Kentucky, which has 35 vulnerable rural hospitals, and Louisiana, which has 33. Heavily Democratic California ranks third, with 28.
Leadership at the eight most at-risk hospitals cited by the Sheps Center didn’t respond to TPM’s requests for comment.
Congressional districts with rural hospitals skew even more Republican. All but one of the top 10 are represented by a GOP congressperson, and each of the Republican representatives backed, and even celebrated, Trump’s spending bill. One such representative was Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA).
None of the Republican members of Congress who represented the most vulnerable rural communities responded to requests for comment from TPM.
Cuts to individual Medicaid coverage conveniently aren’t slated to begin until immediately after the 2026 midterm elections.
Emine Yücel contributed reporting.