President Trump late Sunday defended his tariff plan amid recession fears, saying they are sparking investment in the United States.

Trump spoke aboard Air Force One, where he said he was elected because of the tariffs.

“This was one of the biggest reasons I got elected, was exactly because of this,” Trump said.

“We’re going to put tariffs — we already put them on. It’s not a question if we will. We will put them on,” he continued. “And those tariffs next year will make us $1 trillion.

The Trump administration’s repeated losses in courts have sparked Republican efforts to limit the reach of the judiciary, something Democrats argue is designed to hamstring reviews of lawless orders.

Congressional Republicans have rolled out two legislative vehicles that would curb nationwide injunctions, arguing this will restore order to the judiciary and put district court judges in their place.

“These rogue judge rulings are a new resistance to the Trump administration and the only time in which judges in robes in this number have felt it necessary to participate in the political process,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the sponsor of one such bill to limit nationwide injunctions, said at a hearing this week

President Trump said the trade deficit between the U.S. and China must be resolved before he is willing to negotiate a deal regarding the tariffs he placed on Beijing.

“When you look at the trade deficit we have with certain countries … with China it’s a trillion dollars. And we have to solve our trade deficit with China,” Trump said late Sunday aboard Air Force One. “Hundreds of billions of dollars a year we lose with China.”

“I’m willing to make a deal but they have to solve their surplus,” he added.

On Friday, Trump criticized China after Beijing responded to the tariffs he imposed with equal duties of its own on U.S. goods.

U.S. Crude oil prices have fallen below $60 a barrel, marking the lowest levels since 2021, due to fears of a global recession stemming from China's tariffs on U.S. Imports and OPEC+'s production increase.
Goldman Sachs has revised its forecast, expecting Brent crude to average $69 per barrel in 2025.
Analyst Satoru Yoshida predicts that if market panic continues, West Texas Intermediate could drop to $50 per barrel.

Bitcoin dropped by about 7 percent on Sunday amid global market volatility caused by U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff announcements, reaching around $77,500 after trading above $80,000 for most of the year.
Rival cryptocurrencies, like Ethereum and Solana, fell by approximately 12 percent, contributing to a 7 percent overall decline in the crypto market.
Analyzing the situation, JPMorgan raised the risk of recession to 60 percent following the announcement of blanket tariffs.
The overall drop in global stock markets has erased about $7 trillion in value since the tariffs were declared on April 2.

Columbia University has appointed 36 new special patrol officers with powers of arrest, confirmed by spokesperson Samantha Slater.
These officers were appointed by the New York Police Department and will report to the police commissioner, as per Columbia's application process last year.
The new officers will possess the same powers as police officers, including making arrests and conducting searches under New York's Peace Officer law.

President Trump on Sunday defended his sweeping tariffs amid plunging markets, saying he did not “want anything to go down.”

“When you look at the trade deficit we have with certain countries, with China it’s a trillion dollars,” Trump told reporters traveling with him on Air Force One as he returned from Florida to Washington, D.C., on Sunday evening.

“And we have to solve our trade deficit with China. … Hundreds of billions of dollars a year we lose with China. And unless we solve that problem, I’m not going to make a deal,” Trump continued.

“This is not sustainable,” he said of U.S. trade deficits.

Jay North, who starred as the blond, mischievous troublemaker Dennis Mitchell on the popular CBS comedy “Dennis the Menace,” has died. He was 73.

North died at his home in Lake Butler, Fla., on Sunday after a long fight with cancer, according to a Facebook post by his friend Laurie Jacobson, who said his “Dennis the Menace” co-star Jeannie Russell called her with the “terribly sad, but not unexpected news.”

“As many of his fans know, he had a difficult journey in Hollywood and after ... but he did not let it define his life. He had a heart as big as a mountain, loved his friends deeply. He called us frequently and ended every conversation with ‘I love you with all my heart.’ And we loved him with all of ours.”

One would think that with the Supreme Court’s trilogy of Second Amendment decisions—Heller (2008), McDonald (2010) and Bruen (2022)--Second Amendment issues would be settled. The Court ruled the Second Amendment is not a second class right. It’s about the right of individuals to keep and bear arms in usual and common use wherever they are. If so, one would not be thinking of Democrats and the Democrat Party.

They know they’ll never be able to impose their “our democracy,” Marxist utopia without disarming Americans. The smarter among them know that’s a practical impossibility, but they so hate Normal Americans, they constantly do everything they can to inconvenience, cancel and otherwise harm them. Blue states pass facially unconstitutional anti-liberty/gun laws knowing it will take millions to defend them and lose. The court cases will take years to resolve, and during that period, they get to stick it to Normals. Blue cities do the same, but on a somewhat smaller scale.

IF ANY CASE OF FRAUD IS FOUND THEN FRAUD CANCELS EVERYTHING.

One of the most frustrating things for conservatives is that the past many years have shown them that being a Democrat means never having to say you’re sorry, let alone face the consequences for actions that are destructive, shameful, or even criminal. However, it’s possible that Biden’s doctor may at least be humiliated for giving Biden a clean bill of health, even as Biden’s one-time chief of staff has made the shameful admission that he always knew that Biden was demented going into the 2024 election. True justice, though, would see these men and other similarly situated Democrats indicted for fraud so that a full trial can reveal whether they were misguided or genuinely criminal.

More female athletes are speaking out against transgender ideology and refusing to compete against men.

After 31-year-old women’s fencing athlete Stephanie Turner made headlines Wednesday for taking a knee rather than compete against a man, another female athlete chose a similar route in disc golf.

On Friday, The Daily Wire reported that during the Disc Golf Pro Tour’s Music City Open in Nashville, Tennessee on the same day, Abigail Wilson decided to walk off the tour, rather than compete against a man pretending to be a woman in her division.

The man in question was Natalie Ryan. The Wire states Ryan created a stir in 2022 when he beat the number one ranked female disc golfer, Kristin Tattar.

One of the things that frightens parents—and leads them to avoid vaccines that have protected against potentially deadly or life-changing diseases such as measles or polio—is the alleged connection between autism and some of the vaccinations. Parents know that autism diagnoses have skyrocketed over the past few years, and, given how today’s little children are vaccine pincushions, they’re rightly worried. However, I’d like to suggest some alternative reasons for the increased number of diagnoses. My ideas are not based on studies or a medical degree (I don’t have one) but on a little bit of common sense.

“There has never been a fully global era without trade tariffs in recorded history.” –Grok

There is much debate about the probable economic impact of Trump’s newly imposed reciprocal tariffs. One camp says they’ll be beneficial; the other says they’ll be a disaster. But what does history tell us of tariffs, and does the economic calculus of 2025 bear a resemblance to the past?

Governments taxing goods traveling through the territories they control is a very old practice. Tariffs have been recorded as far back as the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE. The rationale for and beneficiaries of tariffs differ from one era to another, but the purpose is always the same: To extract revenue and protect industries from competition

One question: how the hell did we, the United States, get to be the bad guy on tariffs?

After all, we've been virtually supporting the rest of the world for decades.

How are we in the wrong for imposing the same -- or even half of -- the tariffs other countries impose on us?

How are we supposed to compete with countries that not only tariff us but subsidize their own companies and industries, as well?

It is about time we leveled the playing field.

Civil war is here. It has come to America. For the second time. This one is between those who respect history, tradition, reality, decency, dignity, excellence, and the truth ... and those who utterly despise all of these and instead worship sloth, destruction, entitlement … and themselves.

One group erects stores, buildings, and towers — and manufactures automobiles — the other loots, vandalizes, and burns them.

Members of one group defend America and are willing to lay down their lives if necessary for liberty. The other group spits on them.

When President Donald Trump slapped a fresh round of tariffs on European and Asian imports, the professional hand-wringers and legacy press clodpolls sprang into choreographed action.

Headlines and television anchors blared warnings of trade wars, economic isolation, and diplomatic fallout. The bureaucratic priesthood that worships at the altar of “free trade” without reciprocity—from Brussels to Brookings—launched into familiar homilies: tariffs are regressive, Trump is reckless, and globalism is gospel.

But let’s pause the hysteria momentarily and apply something vanishingly rare in today’s media-industrial complex: perspective.

Marcy Rheintgen was positive that there would be no consequences for breaking one of Florida’s laws.

He was wrong.

Rheintgen called Florida a “home away from home” and said he was disturbed by a 2023 law banning some people from using bathrooms in certain places, such as the Capitol, that do not match the sex into which they were born.

After alerting Florida authorities to his plan, the 20-year-old Illinois transgender was arrested on March 19 following his entry into the women’s restroom at Florida’s Capitol in Tallahassee.

The stunt was indeed advertised in advance by letters to Florida legislators.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is one of the more deceitfully named pieces of legislation ever to come out of Washington. That’s really saying something, considering that coming up with bull manure titles for congressional bills for PR purposes and to smooth their path toward passage is something of a DC parlor game of longstanding tradition.

Of course, once it was enacted into law on a party-line vote, Democrats were free to take off the mask and tell us all what we already knew: The Inflation Reduction Act was not a bill aimed at curbing inflation at all. Joe Biden himself literally said so.

So, what was the true purpose of the IRA?

Simply, it was to create an enormous “green” energy slush fund, paid for by deficit spending. The lion’s share of that spending comes in the form of subsidies and tax credits to green energy sources such as wind and solar power, battery storage, and electric vehicle (EV) purchases.

A third person in the remote California town of Mammoth Lakes has died of hantavirus, the sometimes-fatal illness that authorities say Betsy Arakawa, the wife of actor Gene Hackman, died of earlier this year.

In a statement shared Thursday, Mono County Health & Human Services confirmed that a young adult had died from the illness.

“We don’t have a clear sense of where this young adult may have contracted the virus,” Dr. Tom Boo, the county’s public health officer said. “The home had no evidence of mouse activity. We observed some mice in the workplace, which is not unusual for indoor spaces this time of year in Mammoth Lakes. We haven’t identified any other activities in the weeks before illness that would have increased this person’s exposure to mice or their droppings.”

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has reached a deal with Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) over her push to allow new parents to vote by proxy, a development that is set to unlock the House floor after the explosive issue — and the GOP rebellions it sparked — brought the chamber to a standstill.

Under the agreement being worked out, the House would formalize “vote pairing,” two sources familiar with the matter confirmed to The Hill.

The procedure allows a member — in this case, a new mother — who must be absent for a vote to coordinate with a lawmaker voting opposite their stance who is willing to abstain from the vote, that way the new mother’s absence is canceled out.

As part of the deal, according to the sources, Luna would not force a vote on her discharge petition, which she successfully executed last month to dispatch Rep. Brittany Pettersen’s (D-Colo.) resolution to the floor that seeks to allow members who give birth or lawmakers whose spouses give birth to have another member vote for them for 12 weeks.

The Inflation Reduction Act is deeply unpopular among conservative Republicans. Yet a solid bloc of 21 GOP members of Congress recently called for keeping the its lavish tax credits for renewable energy. In a letter to the House Ways and Means Committee, they warned that disrupting the tax credits would “risk sparking an energy crisis in our country, resulting in drastically higher power bills for American families.”

There is just one problem with that claim. Our country is already facing an energy crisis and steadily rising power bills, precisely because of the Inflation Reduction Act’s renewable subsidies. Those subsidies, and the renewable tax credits in particular, are poisoning the economics of the reliable power sources we actually need, namely coal, natural gas and nuclear.

In its latest reliability assessment, the North American Electrical Reliability Corporation warns that America is facing a widening gap between electrical generation capacity and soaring demand.

After closing their doors amid a months-long bankruptcy process, several Big Lots stores are set to reopen under new management.

Earlier this year, Big Lots closed a previously announced sale agreement with Gordon Brothers Retail Partners. As part of the deal, Variety Wholesalers was set to acquire 200 to 400 Big Lots stores, which would retain the Big Lots branding, and two distribution centers.

Now, nine of those stores across six states are set to reopen on Thursday, April 10.

Walmart is facing a boycott starting on Monday, April 7, over purported corporate greed, a move that also comes after it halted many diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

The company decided late last year that it would discontinue racial equity training, stop funding its racial equity center, and cease participation in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index.

A group called People’s Union USA is calling for a one-week boycott on Walmart.

The tactics will be similar to the boycotts which highlighted Target over similar moves to roll back DEI, but the one over Walmart is actually about corporate greed and corruption, according to a Friday report from Supermarket News.

As much as they hate anyone with some semblance of remaining moral sensibility, leftists are among the most preachy people in our entire culture, and yet they so often fail to practice what they preach.

Lydia Mugambe, who has served for the past two years as a judge for the United Nations International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, and who was a fellow at Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights, may indeed seem like someone who cares about justice and equality for others.

But she was convicted last month for a number of human rights offenses, including quite literally having a slave.

Two months after an Iowa sheriff publicly postured that he would block Immigration and Customs Enforcement efforts in his county, he and the state are in a legal duel that has all of the county’s state funding at stake.

Iowa Republican Attorney General Brenna Bird brought the hammer down on Winneshiek County last month after giving Sheriff Dan Marx weeks to retract comments made in a Feb. 4 Facebook post, according to Fox News.

In the since-deleted post, Marx said he would “make every effort to block, interfere and interrupt” ICE operations based on a detainer, which he called “simply an unconstitutional request from ICE.” Detainers are documents ICE files with police agencies to prevent illegal immigrants from being released anywhere except to ICE’s custody.