☕️ SERENDIPITY ☙ Thursday, April 10, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Trump caps tariffs; markets surge; China buckles; Main Street wins; exec orders fly; water rules flushed; censors probed; traitors named; courts back Trump; GOP targets rogue judges; and more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Thursday! The news maelstrom continued whipsawing wildly yesterday. Behold, another astonishing roundup: Trump caps tariffs for compliant countries and stock market balloons in historic half-day rally; China’s ship of industry creaking under tariff pressure; Treasury Secretary declares its Main Street’s turn; tariff plan working at warp speed; Trump ‘pauses’ busy day to sign raft of terrific new executive orders under cover of media market consternation; Biden’s war on water pressure drains to a trickle; censorship official under criminal investigation; Trump calls Biden-era Resistance leader a traitor; Dominion lawyers under the DOJ microscope; triple Supreme Court decisions support Trump agenda and prune judicial overreach; and House Republicans move to halt nationwide injunctions.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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Yesterday delivered more gifts, and it’s not even close to Christmas. The Wall Street Journal ran the story headlined, “‘This Is a Great Time to Buy’: Tariff Pause Sparks Historic Rally.” The one-day market explosion was bigger than the covid rally (which incidentally, was also under Trump’s presidency).

“Seven minutes after markets opened yesterday,” the Journal reported, “the President posted on social media that it was time to buy.” President Trump used all caps, triple exclamations, and signed the tweet with his digital initials.

A few hours later, the President announced a ‘partial pause’ in his tariff plan, and the market leaped like a spring deer, gaining 3,000 points and $5.1 trillion in recovered value in a single Wednesday afternoon.

It was the third biggest one-day gain in the markets since World War II ended.

In other words, anyone who believed the President’s stock tip made extremely good money yesterday. So good in fact that Adam Schiff (D-Ca) and Democrat Party Leader Alexa O’Cortez (D-NY) are now demanding investigations into insider trading, which in the old days we’d have called an IQ-test fail, since literally the entire world got the same tip. So… What insiders?

Oh, I know what they’ll say: He knew we wouldn’t believe him!!! Sad.

Honestly, I can’t believe Trump has Congressional Democrats dying to talk about insider trading. Bring it.

💰 The media’s reaction was stunning and brave; they finally realized that the world wasn’t going to be destroyed by an orange asteroid and everything was going to be … oh wait. That’s a different timeline.

Our timeline’s media exploded in outrage. President Flip Flops on Failed Plan! GOP in Chaos! Trump Bails Out Billionaire Buddies! Orange Asteroid Coming Back in 2035! You just can’t please some people. Their pagan god is the stock market, and the President literally handed these folks the stock tip of their lifetimes on a silver salver. (They should have believed him. After all, he did name his platform TRUTH Social.)

But … Not good enough!

What did Trump have to do? Place the orders for them? As we say in the South, some folks would complain if they were hung with a new rope.

💰 Despite the fear and confusion the media spread yesterday about one of the biggest Stock Market rallies in history, Trump did not, in fact, pause tariffs. He just lowered tariffs across the board to a flat 10% for every country but one: CHYNA. China got more tariffs.

The President described the 90-day 10% baseline tariff as a reward for cooperation. “More than 75 Countries,” Trump wrote, “have called to negotiate a solution, and haven’t, at my strong suggestion, retaliated in any way, shape, or form.”

It is a measure of Trump’s negotiating genius that the media is now acting like 10% is nothing. Note that the UK’s tariff was always 10%— and that was enough to cause Keir Starmer’s upper lip to start twitching and forced him to cough up a confession that globalism is dead.

It only took two days to get them all in line. It was classic Art of the Deal. Rule No. 10—control costs. Having created urgency to grab the world’s attention, Trump eased off the gas pedal, containing domestic difficulties while hanging onto his leverage.

On the red side of the hanging dock, after giving a stay of execution to cooperating countries, Trump added even more tariffs to the one country that didn’t call to negotiate. Punishment.

Despite its brave Kung Pao face, China is courting disaster. Headline from the New York Times, this morning:

And consider another China headline from this morning’s Wall Street Journal:

“Shipments from China to the U.S.,” the Journal explained, “could drop by more than half in the coming years if the tariffs remain in place.” It doesn’t look good. A Great Economic Wall is assembling around the Asian giant. The article explained:

Some economists say it will be difficult for Chinese manufacturers to replace U.S. customers. Demand from Chinese households and businesses has been weak. Some other countries have erected their own trade barriers against China, as they worry about a flood of cheap Chinese goods hurting their own domestic industries.

The “other countries” also know that they don’t want to be in China’s overpriced sneakers (manufactured using slave labor).

In other words, yesterday’s news was completely consistent with our analysis in yesterday’s C&C.

💰 The social media hot takes were off the charts. Not content with letting the man work, many conservative commenters complained about the unpredictability of Trump’s tariff policy, as though predictability were something they’d suddenly expected from a President who’s been serving up surprises since Day One.

Unpredictability is part of the plan. It’s not a bug. It’s a classic Trumpian feature: confuse the enemy, delight the audience, and keep the headline writers two steps behind. It is working perfectly.

We’re watching a global trade realignment happen at Warp Six. It’s true that trade haggling typically takes months or even years, as twin trading teams and legions of stakeholders behind them dicker over where to dangle every comma.

But that’s not how it’s happening this time. This time, we’d be much better off if we prepare ourselves for things to happen at Trump speed instead of at the glacial pace of global bureaucracy.

💰 Some commenters —including a small group of C&C readers— carped that President Trump’s temporary tariff baseline adjustment reeked of discombobulation and uncertainty. He’s just winging it! He has no plan!

Let’s get real. The only thing we know for sure is that we don’t know the plan. People, please. This is the same President who survived four years of brutal lawfare, two assassination attempts, and everything the Democrats and deep state could throw at him. You really think the man who carefully engineered victory in the face of all those obstacles is flying by the seat of his pants?

Give me a break. Cough up the black pill.

The truth is, yesterday many more thoughtful commenters were beginning to see the same outlines of Trump’s breathtaking global realignment. And Trump’s proxies, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, dished more details and doubled down on support for Main Street. Yesterday’s CNBC headline:

“Wall Street has grown wealthier than ever before, and it can continue to grow and do well,” Bessent told the American Bankers Association’s Washington Summit. “But for the next four years, the Trump agenda is focused on Main Street. It’s Main Street’s turn. It’s Main Street’s turn to hire workers. It’s Main Street’s turn to drive investment, and it’s Main Street’s turn to restore the American Dream,” he added.

Bessent underscored that comment by tweeting the clip of his remarks. You can watch them here (0:27).

The bottom line is: we need to get comfortable not knowing all the details. We’re learning about the plan as it unfolds. It won’t be smooth. As Dave Sekera, Morningstar’s chief U.S. market strategist told CNBC yesterday, “Trade negotiations have yet to start and once they do, there will be positive and negative headlines as each party positions itself to extract the maximum amount of concessions possible.”

As Trump said on Tuesday, hang on! We’re on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, and the speed lever has been pushed up to eleven.

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Make Seinfeld Great Again. All these breathless tariff headlines seem to suggest that Trump is completely consumed with international economics. Not even close. Yesterday, the Guardian ran a story headlined, “Trump signs executive order on water pressure to ‘restore shower freedom.’” The sub-headline added, “White House says order will ‘make America’s showers great again’ and ‘end the Obama-Biden war on water pressure.’”

Trump’s new executive order erased Biden’s stingy cap of 2.5 gallons-per-minute for showers, sinks, and toilets. The White House statement hilariously explained, “Twice in the last 12 years, the Biden and Obama administrations put out massive regulations re-defining the word ‘showerhead.’”

It’s even funnier that it is true. Only Democrats could consume 13,000 words defining “showerhead.”

The White House statement continued: “The Biden definition was a staggering 13,000 words. The Oxford English Dictionary, by contrast, defines ‘showerhead’ in one short sentence.”

Another campaign promise, fulfilled, with a water hose. Biden’s legacy is swirling around the toilet bowl. But it got better.

🔥 It’s so confusing; if they love lawfare so much, why do they wail when they’re on the receiving side? Yesterday, the New York Times ran a sneering story headlined, “Trump Signs Orders Punishing Those Who Opposed His 2020 Election Lies.”

Yesterday, President Trump signed three new executive orders, suspending security clearances and requiring the DOJ to investigate two mid-level officials and a law firm. The first official was Christopher Krebs, an infamous offender who briefly ran Biden’s Orwellian censorship agency, the so-called “CISA.”

Krebs once publicly declared on behalf of CISA that the 2020 election was the “most secure election in history.” And he coordinated with the FBI and Big Tech to build Biden’s industrial-strength censorship complex. From Trump’s Order:

Krebs’ misconduct involved the censorship of disfavored speech implicating the 2020 election and COVID-19 pandemic. CISA, under Krebs’ leadership, suppressed conservative viewpoints under the guise of combatting supposed disinformation, and recruited and coerced major social media platforms to further its partisan mission. CISA covertly worked to blind the American public to the controversy surrounding Hunter Biden’s laptop. Krebs, through CISA, promoted the censorship of election information, including known risks associated with certain voting practices. Similarly, Krebs, through CISA, falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen, including by inappropriately and categorically dismissing widespread election malfeasance and serious vulnerabilities with voting machines. Krebs skewed the bona fide debate about COVID-19 by attempting to discredit widely shared views that ran contrary to CISA’s favored perspective.

The Krebs Order was titled, “Addressing Risks from Chris Krebs and Government Censorship.” The next order was even better.

The second sanctioned official was sanctimonious Miles Taylor, a former HHS chief of staff who wrote an anonymous 2018 New York Times editorial, headlined, get this, “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.” His editorial bragged, “I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations until he is out of office.”

He also penned a book —anonymously— that leaked classified discussions between Trump Officials. Now he’s being investigated. “I think he’s guilty of treason, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said while signing the Order (1:22).

Haha! Karma, meet Nemesis! Taylor may soon experience some internal resistance of his own— in the part of his body he normally sits on.

Taylor’s Order was titled, “Addressing Risks Associated with an Egregious Leaker and Disseminator of Falsehoods.” Wait till you see the next one.

The third order targeted the far-left law firm Susman Godfrey with similar sanctions as those applied to other Resistance-involved law firms. Susman’s Order was titled, “Addressing Risks from Susman Godfrey.” Susman represents Dominion Voting Systems in its $800 million dollar lawsuit against Fox News.

In the Order’s words:

Susman spearheads efforts to weaponize the American legal system and degrade the quality of American elections. Susman also funds groups that engage in dangerous efforts to undermine the effectiveness of the United States military through the injection of political and radical ideology, and it supports efforts to discriminate on the basis of race.
Susman itself engages in unlawful discrimination on the basis of race.

Now the law firm has lost its federal contracts, it security clearnances, and is under criminal investigation. And it is banned from entering federal buildings (like court houses). Susman immediately published a statement on its website vowing “to fight this unconstitutional order.”

Times readers did not receive links to the orders themselves or even any language from the orders. That’s why you read C&C.

Most MAGA folks were thrilled, but the glass-half-empty crowd sneered: We want to see Obama in cuffs, not some mid-level flunkies! But like I said at the top—you just can’t please some people.

Look: Everybody knows you dismantle a crime syndicate from the bottom up. It hasn’t even been 100 days yet. We also badly need to discourage any new Resistor types with funny ideas from playing the same games as Krebs and Taylor.

All in one day —one day— Trump tweaked tariffs, handed out stock tips like lollipops, surfed a record-setting market wave, restored our hot showers, torched Biden’s censorship stooge and leaker-in-chief, and reminded activist law firms that lawfare cuts both ways.

Shock and awe. The outrage media must be getting exhausted. Amazing.

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Finally, at the risk of cutting into my editing time, I couldn’t leave you without yet more terrific news. The Wall Street Journal ran an Editorial Board piece headlined, “Trump’s Triple Win at the Supreme Court.” The sub-headline added, “The Justices tell lower courts to stay in their proper judicial lane.”

First, “a 5-4 majority handed the President a partial victory Monday,” the editorial explained, “by allowing his Administration to continue deporting Venezuelans believed to be members of the Tren de Aragua gang under the Alien Enemies Act.”

The “partial loss,” if you can call it that, was a ruling that will delight my libertarian-minded readers. The Court ruled that deportees have limited due process rights under the Alien Enemies Act, deserving at least some notice and an opportunity to challenge removal. But that’s where it also got interesting.

The order held that deportees must challenge their deportations in the district courts in which they are detained rather than going judge shopping in the District of Columbia or Maine. And they must do it individually — they can’t seek class-wide relief for all deportees, as the far-left’s lawfare teams have argued.

And the Administration can still summarily deport illegals under other laws besides the Alien Enemies Act.

👨‍⚖️ Next, in a second order, the Court reversed a lower court ruling requiring the Administration to re-hire 16,000 fired employees who were still on probationary status. The Justices held that the environmental groups and unions challenging the dismissals lacked standing to sue.

Boom.

Instead of running to court, fired federal workers must challenge their terminations individually in the Merit Systems Protection Board. No more class actions.

👨‍⚖️ Rounding out the trio of wins for the President, in a third 5-4 unsigned order, the Court overturned a lower decision, and allowed the Education Department to strip $65 million in grants for teacher training. The Court explained that a limited waiver of sovereign immunity does not include lawsuits “to enforce a contractual obligation to pay money.”

In other words, NGO plaintiffs who want the Administration to release frozen funds must seek relief individually in federal claims court, not with nationwide injunctions.

The Journal’s Editors said the trio of decisions “will reduce cases that come before the Court on its so-called emergency docket and give different lower courts an opportunity to consider the merits before Justices do.”

In short, the Journal said “the resounding and useful message to lower courts is to stay in your lane.”

Rather than celebrating the major victory, glass half-full types complained that either Chief Justice Roberts or Justice Barrett had joined the minorities in alternating opinions. It baffles me why we insist on this kind of loyalty test. Trump is winning. The Court has its own political concerns and a keen desire to maintain an appearance of fairness.

As a lawyer, I encourage everyone to remain calm and not panic until I give the signal. The Supreme Court is working just fine.

🔥 But even that wasn’t all! The New York Times reported a story yesterday headlined, “House Votes to Curb National Injunctions, Targeting Judges Who Thwart Trump.” Remember, this is the same Times who thought it would be a tremendous idea for Biden to pack the Court, for fairness.

Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a bill on party lines barring federal district judges from issuing nationwide injunctions (with certain exceptions in cases where multiple states challenge federal laws).

The bill, named the No Rogue Rulings Act, faces stiff headwinds in the Senate, where seven Democrats would need to join Republicans and defeat the Senate filibuster. But it’s a great start, and delivered its own kind of message.

In sum, the judicial winds are beginning to shift. It might seem like a painful slog, but in judicial timeframes, things are happening lightning fast.

Enjoy all the terrific news, and those of you with stock portfolios, tally your earnings.

Have a terrific Thursday! I’ll be back tomorrow, to keep your heads spinning with the latest and greatest whirlwind roundup of essential news and commentary.

Don’t race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

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