I write on Liberation Day, just hours before our president unveils new tariffs which will either unleash a new Golden Age or splat the United States against the global economy’s windshield. While I cannot say with total certainty which of the two scenarios is likelier, I’m inclined to believe actual economists over Stephen Miller—but that’s just because I tend to value the opinions of people who know what they’re talking about.
Beyond freeing this country from the world’s financial markets, Liberation Day also serves to mark the unfettered behavior of this new administration more broadly. Free from standards, free from precedents, free from decency—I could go on. Over the weekend, President Trump told NBC News he was looking into serving a third term; in the same interview, he threatened Iran’s leaders with “bombing the likes of which they’ve never seen before” if they did not agree to a new nuclear deal. (No mention of the fact that we had a nuclear deal with Iran until Trump pulled us out.)
Vice President J.D. Vance, meanwhile, is picking Twitter fights over details emerging about the immigrants sent, without due process, to hard labor prisons in El Salvador—a barber, a young man with a tattoo honoring his autistic brother, and a migrant specifically forbidden from being repatriated to El Salvador because doing so would likely result in his persecution or torture. In this last case, the administration has acknowledged the error but refuses to lift a finger to amend it.
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