May 1, 2025

Thursday, May 1, 2025. Annette’s Roundup for Democracy.

Let’s get rid of Hegseth.

Hegseth, the Signal classified information discloser, takes more actions against women and America.

In his Manchester New Hampshire speech, JB Pritzker argued that military service members don’t deserve to be told they can’t serve in certain roles because they are “Black or gay or a woman” by “a washed-up Fox TV commentator.”

Let’s second that. What is Hegseth still doing in a cabinet position? Who would you want making decisions of which Americans should be allowed to serve their country?

Hegseth, in multiple interviews and in his most recent book, has suggested that women shouldn’t serve in combat roles and that military standards were lowered in order for women to get into these jobs. He walked back some of those comments during his confirmation hearings.

Last week, the Army announced new fitness standards in line with his orders to make the standards for women and men in combat roles the same, with the likelihood that women will fail these tests that are not a true measure of a candidate’s combat-worthiness.

Hegseth’s tweet

Apparently anxious to distract attention from his various meltdowns, the dipsomaniacal chode who runs the Department of Defense put out a tweet announcing his latest initiative:

Community notes quickly pointed out that the Women, Peace, and Security Act was actually a Trump-era initiative. It was signed by Trump and — irony is on fire here — written by Kristi Noem (Trump’s DHS secretary), and enthusiastically supported by Marco Rubio (Trump’s Sec of State). Back in 2019, Trump’s White House declared: "Trump was the first global leader to sign bipartisan legislation of this kind, making the United States the first country in the world with a standalone, comprehensive law on Women, Peace and Security."

And here is Rubio less than 30 days ago:

Hegseth’s CYA? In a follow-up tweet, he insisted that: “The woke & weak Biden Administration distorted & weaponized the straight-forward & security-focused WPS initiative launched in 2017. So—yes—we are ending the “woke divisive/social justice/Biden (WPS) initiative.” Biden ruined EVERYTHING, including “Women, Peace & Security.”

Except, of course, Hegseth and Trump are in charge now. But instead of fixing anything, Hegseth shut it down. It almost makes you think he has no idea what he’s doing. (The Bulwark)

One more thing.

Should we point out Hegseth removed Maya Angelou from the West Point library and let Mein Kampf stay?

Should we ask again – What is Hegseth still doing in a cabinet position? Make calls to your Red elected officials to tell them to do something to get him removed.

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Let’s get rid of Trump Tariffs.

• The economy is in pain.

• Our colleges are in pain.
• Our nonprofits are in pain.
• Our laws are in pain.
• Our Constitution is in pain.
• Our people are in pain.

But the Senate couldn’t pass a bill to undo Trump’s tariffs on most U.S. trading partners.

The vote deadlocked at 49 to 49, meaning it failed despite three Republicans joining Democrats.

Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky and a cosponsor of the resolution, crossed party lines to support it, as well as Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. But the defections were not enough to make up for the absences of two supporters: Senators Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, and Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, who backed a similar measure this month.

A subsequent procedural vote on the measure prompted Vice President JD Vance to go to Capitol Hill on Wednesday evening to cast the deciding vote to table it, formally ending the effort to challenge Mr. Trump’s use of the emergency power for wide-ranging tariffs.

Even if the resolution had passed the Senate, it had no path to enactment. The White House has threatened a veto. (New York Times).

https://x.com/HalfwayPost/status/19176643336155837

One more thing.

Toy stores may see a shortage of dolls, like these I’m a Girly dolls, because of President Trump’s tariff policies, an executive of an industry group said.

At the cabinet meeting, Trump begrudgingly accepted — if only for a moment — that his tariffs and the ensuing trade war with China may in fact lead to supply chain snarls and higher costs for American consumers. Addressing fears that soon there will be empty shelves in stores, Trump said: “Well, maybe the children will have to have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, ya know? And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.” (New York Times)

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Another attempt to fight the tariffs failed too.

So Much That’s Wrong, All In One Story.

A move by Amazon to show the cost of tariffs to its customers gets smacked down by the White House.

Yesterday morning, Punchbowl News reported that Amazon planned to display how much tariffs are costing U.S. customers on each purchase. As CNBC noted, “The amount added as a result of tariffs will be displayed right next to each product’s total listed price,” according to someone familiar with the plan who spoke to Punchbowl.

This move would make good economic sense for Amazon. Some 70 percent of its goods are sourced in China, according to Wedbush Securities, and it now faces devastating 145 percent tariffs on those items. Because its margins on its online products is around 10 percent, it cannot absorb these tariffs itself and must pass them along to the consumers. And many customers who aren’t yet aware of the impact of the tariffs will want to know why their items suddenly cost so much more.

But this would also mean that Amazon’s customers would understand that they are paying for Trump’s tariffs, not China. This has been hard for many Americans to understand, given Trump’s contrary disinformation on the subject. And the White House clearly prefers to keep voters ignorant on the matter.

Indeed, when word of the planned tariff display reached the White House, it was livid. “This is a hostile and political act by Amazon,” said Press Secretary Leavitt in response to a question about Amazon’s plans, adding disingenuously that “Amazon has partnered with a Chinese propaganda arm.” She then got an obligatory, false and irrelevant dig in at President Biden: “Why didn’t Amazon do this when the Biden administration hiked inflation to the highest level in 40 years?”

A phone call between Trump and Jeff Bezos, however, led Amazon to beat a hasty retreat. Trump crowed that Bezos “solved the problem very quickly, and he did the right thing.” Amazon now claims that showing the tariffs was never the plan and it was only under discussion for one of their services.

Sure, Jan.

On this 100th day of the Trump’s second term, this story highlights for me so much of what’s wrong these days. If you winced or shook your head at this disgraceful chain of events but only have a generalized feeling of disgust and dismay, this discussion may help clarify why this story evokes those feelings.

Bullying

While the White House has long been said to have a bully pulpit, it’s never had such a bully actually in it. Trump has used the office to extort and coerce a host of institutions and individuals, from law firms and universities to CEOs and world leaders.

In this case, Trump went after the world’s largest online retailer simply because it wanted to provide clear information to its customers. Through his consistently annoying mouthpiece Karoline Leavitt, he turned a private company’s policy of cost transparency into a “hostile and political act” and even suggested Amazon was in cahoots with the Chinese Communist Party.

It’s mind bendingly over-the-top and unfounded, but that matters about as much to this White House as the due process rights of migrants. Trump attacked a company for not toeing the party line on tariffs, and any conservative who believes in low regulation and small government should be condemning this. (The silence of the GOP is telling.)

Cowardice, Capitulation, Corruption - Thy name is Bezos.

Capitulation

As distressing as the bullying by Trump is, the quick capitulation by what should be powerful forces opposing him has been far more disheartening.

It seems that here, Bezos folded his hand without so much as a fight. We don’t know what Trump said on the call with Bezos, but we can imagine. “Nice space program you’ve got there, even sending the ladies up. Would be a shame if anything happened to it.”

Or perhaps, “The government is looking into all kinds of things with your companies. We can make this harder or easier for you.”

By the end of it, Bezos had backed down but at least, as Esquire noted, he got a pat on the end from Trump: “Jeff Bezos was very nice. He was terrific. He solved the problem very quickly and he did the right thing. He’s a good guy.”

Perhaps to save face, Amazon seems to have cooked up a story denying the original reporting. Per CNBC reporting,

Less than two hours after the press briefing, an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC that the company was only ever considering listing tariff charges on some products for Amazon Haul, its budget-focused shopping section.

“The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store has considered listing import charges on certain products,” the spokesperson said. “This was never a consideration for the main Amazon site and nothing has been implemented on any Amazon properties.”

But in a follow-up statement an hour after that one, the spokesperson clarified that the plan to show tariff surcharges was “never approved” and is “not going to happen.”

Again, this makes little sense not to do. Customers have a right to know why prices went up so much, particularly if a new fee or tax is being passed along to them. Receipts in stores routinely show state and local taxes. Why not import taxes?

The answer is quite simple: It makes the White House look bad while educating consumers about who really bears the cost of Trump’s tariffs. And we can’t have that.

Corruption

There’s a deep irony here. Amazon probably thought it had bought favor with the White House by funding the inauguration to the tune of $1 million and even paying $40 million for the rights to produce a documentary about Melania Trump. This was a straight out cash donation to the Trumps, presumably in exchange for access and favoritism.

Instead, what this particularly oligarch learned is that Trump now sees him as weak. Any company so afraid of being hurt by the White House that it will come offering tens of millions will be a pushover when it comes to other matters.

Or perhaps there is a real quid pro quo at work, too. Drop the transparency around tariffs, play like a loyal corporate citizen, and maybe this pesky antitrust case will go away. Or maybe you’ll even get exemptions from the tariffs if you play especially nice.

The close and private contact between Trump and Bezos, where Trump is essentially a mob boss running a protection racket, was on full display.

Gaslighting

Throughout the campaign, and to this very day, Trump maintains the fiction that his tariffs will be paid by the countries exporting goods to the U.S., and not by the U.S.-based importers who will then pass along the cost of the tariffs to consumers here.

This has gone hand-in-hand with other fictions, including his insistence as late as yesterday that tourism in the U.S. is actually up when in fact it has fallen off sharply. “Tourism is way up. Tourism is doing very well,” Trump insisted to ABC News in an exclusive interview on Tuesday.

At some point, such fictions will run headlong into reality. Prices will shoot up. Layoffs will be widespread. The economy, which just today registered negative growth for the first quarter as tariffs sapped it of strength, will enter a recession if it hasn’t already.

But for now it appears the White House is trying to forestall that reckoning, perhaps long enough to ram through its economic agenda extending tax breaks to the wealthy while slashing Medicaid and food programs for the poor. And it can’t have companies like Amazon go and inform customers of the truth.

This isn’t going to change the fact of impending sticker shock. While customers may not know the exact number that the tariffs have added to their bills when shopping at Amazon, other companies such as Temu and Shein, which are based in China, are beginning to add these charges expressly to the checkout page.

Whether or not Amazon is transparent won’t matter in the end. Tariffs will be blamed, and by extension Donald Trump.

Chaos

The tariffs, particularly those on Chinese goods, went up so suddenly and drastically that importers and manufacturers have had little time to adjust. Many goods were already en route to U.S. ports when the trade war began, sticking businesses with the unexpected costs of covering the high duties.

Trump’s rat-a-tat tariff pronouncements—with tariffs on, then off, then up, then exempted, then back on—have made business planning nearly impossible. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent defended this chaos as “strategic uncertainty” for ongoing trade negotiations. This could take the title for Best Trump Speak long held by Kellyanne Conway for “alternative facts.”

Now big companies can’t even be certain they can explain to their customers that they are not price gouging them but rather simply passing along a tariff that Trump imposed. Should they try, they might also get called out for “hostile and political acts,” or worse, labeled enemies of the state and propaganda arms of the Chinese.

That leaves corporate America both without the ability to accurately plan and without the freedom to communicate with customers transparently. It’s small wonder many are simply pulling back and laying low.

Overtaxation

As I’ve written about in The Big Picture substack, Trump is far exceeding his constitutional authority by levying major tariffs without congressional approval. These tariffs amount to a massive tax on the American public without any supporting legislation, and we need to keep beating this drum.

I’ll get into why his actions are unconstitutional in my larger piece tomorrow in The Big Picture concerning Trump’s first 100 days. Suffice it here to say, Congress never contemplated the use of “emergency” presidential declarations to override its constitutionally delegated authority over the public purse and all matters concerning taxation.

Trump’s overreach on tariffs is so bad that the White House now has to work overtime to hide and deny its damaging effects. It’s so bad we can’t even see the numbers in real time on an actual receipt, and anyone who tries to show it is by default an enemy of the nation.

Americans can put up with a lot. But historically speaking, massive new taxes, imposed in a tyrannical way where ordinary citizens don’t get any say, don’t go over well here. If there’s one thing that will undo the Trump presidency utterly, it is his disastrous mismanagement of the economy, including a now predicted sharp rise in inflation and a nosedive into recession.

That moment is fast coming if not already upon us, and Trump is desperate to keep the facts from being known. Let’s ensure that if cowardly Bezos and Amazon can’t speak or show the truth, the rest of us still can and will. (The Status Kuo, Substack).

Schumer stopped Trump’s proof of citizenship for voting.

May Day protesters will rally nationwide against the 'war on working people'

May Day is not officially acknowledged in the U.S. because of what historians say is an ongoing resistance to unity among the working class. This resistance is prompting protesters to take action on Thursday, regardless.

Tens of thousands of protesters are expected to take to the streets nationwide on Thursday in May Day rallies opposing the Trump administration.

May Day, celebrated by workers across the globe as International Labor Day, occurs on May 1 each year. This year, activists in the U.S. aim to build on the momentum of recent widespread grassroots protests against policies implemented by the Trump administration.

Anti-Trump protesters have expressed a range of concerns regarding the administration's recent actions, including the elimination of thousands of federal jobs, immigration raids, and billionaire Elon Musk's involvement in downsizing the U.S. government.

A protest against the Trump administration's 'war on working people'
On May Day, protesters are honing their message to decry what they say are attacks on the working class and immigrants. Organizers for the effort, called May Day Strong, say the administration and its billionaire allies pose a threat to labor rights, public services, and the safety of immigrants regardless of their legal status. Organizers have stated their opposition to violent forms of protest.

"This is a war on working people," organizers said on the May Day Strong events web page.

"They're defunding our schools, privatizing public services, attacking unions, and targeting immigrant families with fear and violence," they added. "We are reclaiming our power from corporate elites, and we will not be intimidated by Trump, Musk, or their billionaire backers. They've ruled for too long."

The White House did not immediately respond to NPR's request for comment.

The U.S. does not officially observe the labor holiday, due to what historians say is an enduring resistance to working-class unity. Despite that resistance, America's working class has found ways to commemorate May Day since the 19th century.

The tradition began with a labor strike.

Why Americans protest on May 1
Before the 8-hour workday became standard, the organization now known as the American Federation of Labor planned a nationwide strike for May 1, 1886, to demand an 8-hour workday, as many workers were doing shifts twice that long.

The Chicago strike, known as the Haymarket Affair, turned violent when police clashed with civilians, and a bomb exploded. Although the bomb's intended target was unclear, four men connected to the protests were hanged for conspiracy to commit murder and became celebrated as the Haymarket Martyrs. The Pullman railroad strike also played a significant role in establishing May Day in the U.S. Workers from the Pullman Palace Car Company initiated a widespread work stoppage in May of 1894, prompting President Grover Cleveland to send federal troops to Chicago to break the strike.

This set the stage for the long history of co-opting May Day.

Inspired by the Chicago workers, the international socialist movement gained traction, with activists spreading Marxist literature. In an effort to to detach May Day from labor movements, U.S. presidents have tried to redefine its significance. President Dwight D. Eisenhower made May 1 as "Law Day" — to recognize how the rule of law protects civil liberties, and Labor Day was moved to September.

During his first term, Trump echoed his predecessors by declaring May 1 "Loyalty Day," a time to celebrate the country's loyalty to individual liberties. Previous May Days during Trump's presidency saw similar protests and boycotts by immigrants and workers who railed against the Republicans' border wall plans and mass deportations efforts.

But the protests held across the U.S. in 2006, triggered by a bill to increase penalties for illegal immigration, might serve as a better comparison. Those March protests saw some 2 million demonstrators rally in 140 cities and 39 states.

What distinguishes Thursday's planned May Day protests is the scale of the movement, said Joseph McCartin, professor of labor history at Georgetown University.

With more than 1,000 events planned for May 1 in over 1,000 cities, according to organizers, McCartin said the nationwide protests stand to become the world's most widespread May Day on record.

"These are going to be protests that bring out a broader array of people and a broader array of places, and I think that's going to be historic, at least for that reason," he said. (NPR)

Happy May Day.

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