A Case Study in How Trump Treats His Friends 

Hello, it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender☕️

Learning from her predecessors, ex-Attorney General Pam Bondi was the ultimate yes man. 

Perhaps unflagging sycophancy could protect her from the fate of Jeff Sessions, President Trump’s first Attorney General back in 2017, who provoked his rage by recusing himself from investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Trump forced him out, then put a coda on his political career by endorsing Tommy Tuberville in the 2020 Alabama Senate primary.

Maybe full-throated commitment to Trump’s various conspiracy theories could convince him that she wasn’t another Bill Barr, Trump’s second Attorney General who turned on the President (sort of) after the Jan. 6 insurrection (despite calling Trump “unfit,” Barr still endorsed him over Joe Biden).

Bondi had no such qualms. She was happy to go after Trump’s political enemies, even with laughably weak cases. She performed bombastically before congressional committees. Even on the Epstein files, often cited as her greatest blunder, she was following Trump’s (confusing) lead; she professed eagerness to release the files in early spring, at the same time Trump was promising that “100% of all of these documents are being delivered.” She attempted to backtrack with him from May onwards, around the time that Trump was reportedly informed that his name was in the files. 

Not only did that pliability not save her job, it didn’t even save her from humiliation. Trump reportedly gave her the boot during the short ride to the Supreme Court, after which she was forced to sit in the packed courtroom during the birthright citizenship case. She asked him if she could stay on until the summer, per multiple outlets — and he said no. For some salt in the wound, someone in Trump’s orbit seemingly widely leaked that the president reached his decision because of suspicion that Bondi had tipped off Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) about plans to release files on a decade-old FBI inquiry into his ties to a suspected Chinese spy. Swalwell denied being tipped off about anything. 

Bondi can’t publicly express any chagrin over her shoddy treatment; her career depends on staying in Trump’s good graces. “It’s ALL so positive,” she texted the Wall Street Journal when asked about her future. 

Trump, seemingly pleased by the recent blood-letting, may hunger for more. The names of various Cabinet members, including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and FBI Director Kash Patel, have been floating around as potential next targets. 

To live by Trump is to die by Trump, and those in his orbit are paying the price for pledging obeisance to such a fickle master. 

— Kate Riga

President Trump’s Magical Mystery Ceasefire 

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump made a momentous announcement on his Truth Social platform. 

“Iran’s New Regime President, much less Radicalized and far more intelligent than his predecessors, has just asked the United States of America for a CEASEFIRE!” Trump declared. 

Along with declaring that the new Ayatollah Khameini is not the same as the old Ayatollah Khameini (who was killed in U.S. strikes), Trump’s pronouncement raised the prospect of an imminent deal to end the war in the face of a potential recession due to Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz. However, Trump has continually made shifting statements about the timeline of the war he launched with Israel in late February. And experts were almost immediately skeptical of his supposed “CEASEFIRE.”

By the end of the week, Trump’s vision of a deal seemed to have collapsed entirely. On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported the current effort to reach a ceasefire that is being led by Pakistan had “reached a dead end” when Iran “officially told the mediators it isn’t willing to meet U.S. officials in Islamabad in the coming days and that U.S. demands are unacceptable.” 

That outcome isn’t necessarily shocking considering the U.S. hasn’t quite been a reliable negotiation partner in the past. Trump’s war began when the U.S. was supposedly actively engaged in nuclear negotiations with Iran. 

TPM reached out to the White House to ask if Trump is still confident about an imminent ceasefire. As of Friday evening, we have not received a response. 

However, Trump certainly seems to have moved on from the supposed ceasefire. On Friday afternoon, Trump pivoted from optimistically Truth Social posting about a deal to openly fantasizing about how some more bombing can break the oil blockade. 

“With a little more time, we can easily OPEN THE HORMUZ STRAIT, TAKE THE OIL, & MAKE A FORTUNE. IT WOULD BE A ‘GUSHER’ FOR THE WORLD???” he wrote.  

Time will tell whether this latest presidential vision also ends up being as unreal as his ceasefire deal. 

— Hunter Walker

Inside the Complex Tariff Refund Process Leaving Small Biz Behind

President Donald Trump’s drastic tariff hikes cost some small businesses their livelihoods. Collecting tariff refunds is presenting another headache, especially for small firms without administrative capacity to comply easily with the refund process.

Here’s a snapshot of that process:

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection system that processes all tariff payment entries and liquidates them into the U.S. Treasury is called the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE). Over the normal course of business, trade entities and support firms input the estimated tariff costs of a transaction into ACE. Importers have to list which levies apply to a transaction. As a result, CBP can mostly track the 53 million International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) tariff transactions made by more than 330,566 U.S. importers since last April. Those funds are automatically liquidated after 314 days.

Just before the Supreme Court overturned Trump’s IEEPA tariffs on February 20, CBP mandated the use of its automated clearing house (ACH) electronic payment system, sending some importers scrambling to enroll in the ACH, along with the ACE system, in order to receive refunds via an under-construction Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE) system.

A lot of acronyms, I know. 

The point is: the CBP refund system is automated and its payment system is electronic, which is good. But the new system adds one more step for already-strapped businesses to go through. It’s also taking a lot out of CBP staff. In a March 6 filing, a CBP official wrote that processing the more than 53 million IEEPA refunds — unprecedented for the agency — would require 4.4 million “man hours” to complete and would divert staff from roles like monitoring “illicit actions that threaten U.S. domestic industry.” 

To collect their refunds, firms have to file a claim in ACE. CBP staff must verify that claim, and the system will automatically aggregate an importer’s IEEPA tariff refund amount with interest. The refund will be paid by the U.S. Treasury. The Cato Institute, a Libertarian think tank, estimates every day that tariffs aren’t repaid could cost taxpayers $23 million.

As of March 30, CBP estimated the claims portal was 85% complete. The claims processing system was 60% complete. The system’s review portion, which will also liquidate or reliquidate the amount owed in the claims, was 80% complete. And the refund component was 75% complete.

— Layla A. Jones

Trump’s Budget Request Is Out

President Donald Trump is now asking Congress to give the Department of Defense a $1.5 trillion budget — formally requesting $350 billion to be approved through the party line reconciliation process — for the upcoming fiscal year that starts in October.

If the request, which was laid out in the president’s budget request, is approved it would be the largest boost to the military’s budget in modern history, not counting the times the U.S. was involved in a war where they had boots on the ground.

The defense request for reconciliation exceeds the previous reports that the Pentagon was seeking over $200 billion in additional emergency funding for the Iran war.

Including the whopping $350 billion in a reconciliation bill could further complicate the already complicated politics of doing a second — and possibly even a third — reconciliation package. Almost all congressional Republicans will have to be onboard with it for it to pass both chambers. It may also lead to more likely unnecessary cuts to the social safety net, as we laid out earlier this week.

The president’s budget request, among other things, includes requests to cut $1.6 billion in research programs run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — which the OMB described as “a variety of Green New Scam programs” — and asks Congress to find $45 million in savings by eliminating the Department of Interior’s “‘renewable energy’ programs.” The White House is also asking for $642 million in cuts to “woke and wasteful international financial institutions” within the Treasury Department budget.

The request also asks for $30 million to create a National Fraud Division for combatting what the Trump White House describes as a “rampant and pervasive problem of fraud” within, for example, safety net programs, like Medicare. The amorphous “waste, fraud and abuse” line, of course, has been one of the main talking points Republicans have been relying on to explain away their historic cuts to social safety nets in their 2025 reconciliation bill.

Democrats have already begun railing against the request from Trump.

“The vision President Trump has outlined for America in his budget is bleak and unacceptable,” Senate Appropriations Committee ranking member Patty Murray (D-WA) said in a statement. “President Trump wants to slash medical research to fund costly foreign wars. It doesn’t get more backward than that, and the only responsible thing to do with a budget this morally bankrupt is to toss it in the trash.”

— Emine Yücel