A Case Study in How Trump Treats His Friends
Hello, it’s the weekend. It’s The Weekender☕️
Having learned from her predecessors, former Attorney General Pam Bondi was the ultimate yes-man.
Perhaps relentless sycophancy could protect her from the fate of Jeff Sessions, President Trump’s first attorney general in 2017, who angered her by recusing himself from investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Trump forced him to resign, then put a damper on his political career by endorsing Tommy Tuberville in the 2020 Alabama Senate primary.
Perhaps a wholehearted commitment to Trump’s various conspiracy theories could convince him that she wasn’t another Bill Barr, Trump’s second attorney general who turned (sort of) against the president after the January 6 insurrection (although he called Trump “unfit,” Barr still supported him against Joe Biden).
Bondi had no such qualms. She was happy to go after Trump’s political enemies, even with ridiculously weak cases. She performed in a grandiose manner before congressional committees. Even on the Epstein files, often cited as her biggest mistake, she followed Trump’s (confusing) example; she said she looked forward to making the files public in early spring, just as Trump promised that “100 percent of all these documents would be delivered.” She attempted to backtrack with him starting in May, around the time Trump was allegedly informed that his name was in the files.
Not only did this flexibility not save her job, it did not even spare 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 until the summer, according to multiple outlets — and he said no. To add salt to the wound, someone in Trump’s orbit apparently widely disclosed that the president made his decision because he suspected Bondi of informing Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) of his intention to release files on a decade-old FBI investigation into his ties to a suspected Chinese spy. Swalwell denied being informed of anything.
Bondi cannot publicly express any regret over his mistreatment; his career depends on his ability to stay in Trump’s good graces. “Everything is so positive,” she wrote to the Wall Street Journal when asked about her future.
Trump, apparently satisfied with the recent bloodshed, may want more. The names of various cabinet members, including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and FBI Director Kash Patel, are being circulated as potential next targets.
To live according to Trump is to die according to Trump, and those in his orbit pay the price for paying obedience to such a fickle master.
-Kate Riga
President Trump’s magical and mysterious ceasefire
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump made a momentous announcement on his Truth Social platform.
“The president of the new Iranian regime, much less radicalized and much more intelligent than his predecessors, has just requested a ceasefire from the United States of America! » Trump said.
In addition to declaring that the new Ayatollah Khameini is not the same as the former Ayatollah Khameini (who was killed in US strikes), Trump’s statement 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 continued to make shifting statements about the timeline of the war he launched with Israel in late February. And experts were almost immediately skeptical of his supposed “CESEFIRE”.
By the end of the week, Trump’s vision of a deal appeared to have completely collapsed. On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Pakistan’s current efforts to reach a ceasefire were “at an impasse” when Iran “officially told mediators that it was not willing to meet with U.S. officials in Islamabad in the coming days and that the U.S. demands were unacceptable.”
This result is not necessarily shocking given that the United States has not been a reliable negotiating partner in the past. Trump’s war began when the United States was supposedly actively engaged in nuclear negotiations with Iran.
TPM contacted the White House to ask if Trump was still confident about an imminent ceasefire. As of Friday evening, we have not received a response.
However, Trump certainly appears to have moved beyond the so-called ceasefire. On Friday afternoon, Trump went from posting optimistically on Truth Social about a deal to openly fantasizing about how more bombing could break the oil blockade.
“With a little more time, we could easily OPEN THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ, TAKE THE OIL AND MAKE A FORTUNE. WOULD THAT BE A ‘GUSHER’ TO THE WORLD???” he wrote.
Time will tell whether this latest presidential vision ends up being as unreal as his ceasefire agreement.
-Hunter Walker
In the complex rate refund process, small businesses are left behind
President Donald Trump’s drastic tariff hikes have cost some small businesses their livelihoods. Collecting customs duty refunds is another headache, especially for small businesses that do not have the administrative capacity to easily comply with the refund process.
Here is an overview of this 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). During the normal course of business, business entities and supporting companies enter the estimated tariff costs of a transaction into ACE. Importers must indicate which levies apply to a transaction. As a result, CBP can primarily track the 53 million International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) tariff transactions made by more than 330,566 U.S. importers since last April. These funds are automatically liquidated after 314 days.
Just before the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s IEEPA tariffs on February 20, CBP mandated the use of its Automated Clearing House (ACH) electronic payment system, forcing some importers to scramble to enroll in ACH, as well as the ACE system, in order to receive refunds through a Consolidated Entry Administration and Processing (CAPE) system under construction.
Lots of acronyms, I know.
The fact is that CBP’s reimbursement system is automated and its payment system is electronic, which is a good thing. But the new system adds an extra step for companies already strapped for resources. It also requires a lot of work for CBP personnel. In a March 6 filing, a CBP official wrote that processing IEEPA’s more than 53 million refunds — unprecedented for the agency — would require 4.4 million “work hours” and divert staff from functions such as monitoring “unlawful actions that threaten U.S. domestic industry.”
To recover their refunds, businesses must file a claim with ACE. CBP personnel should verify this request and the system will automatically consolidate an importer’s IEEPA customs duty refund amount with interest. Reimbursement will be paid by the U.S. Treasury. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, estimates that unrefunded tariffs could cost taxpayers $23 million every day.
As of March 30, CBP estimated that the claims portal was 85% complete. The claims processing system was 60% complete. The review part of the system, which will also liquidate or reliquidate the amount owed in claims, was 80% complete. And the reimbursement component was 75% complete.
-Layla A. Jones
Trump budget request rejected
President Donald Trump is now calling on Congress to give the Defense Department a $1.5 trillion budget — formally requesting that $350 billion be approved as part of the process of reconciling party lines — for the next fiscal year that begins in October.
If this request, outlined in the president’s budget request, is approved, it would be the largest military budget increase in modern history, not counting the times the United States has been involved in a war where it had troops on the ground.
The defense reconciliation request exceeds previous reports that the Pentagon was seeking more than $200 billion in additional emergency funding for the war in Iran.
Including the whopping $350 billion in a reconciliation bill could further complicate the already complicated politics of crafting a second — and perhaps even a third — reconciliation package. Almost all Republicans in Congress will have to sign on to this plan for it to pass both chambers. It could also lead to unnecessary cuts to the social safety net, as we explained 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 new green scam programs” — and asks Congress to find $45 million in savings by eliminating the Interior Department’s “renewable energy” programs. The White House is also calling for $642 million in cuts to “woke and wasteful international financial institutions” within the Treasury Department’s budget.
The request also calls for $30 million to create a national fraud enforcement division to combat what the Trump White House describes as a “rampant and pervasive fraud problem” within, for example, safety net programs, like Medicare. The amorphous phrase, “waste, fraud, and abuse,” has, of course, been one of the main talking points that Republicans have relied on to explain their historic cuts to the social safety net in their 2025 reconciliation bill.
Democrats have already begun to oppose Trump’s request.
“The vision that President Trump has laid out for America in his budget is dark and unacceptable,” Senate Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-WA) said in a statement. “President Trump wants to slash medical research to fund expensive foreign wars. It doesn’t get any further back than that, and the only responsible thing to do with such a morally bankrupt budget is to throw it in the trash.”
-Emine Yucel
