The Official "Damned Trump" Thread: Phase II

[Angrboda]

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said Wednesday that researchers at the New York Federal Reserve who produced a study finding American businesses and consumers are shouldering 90% of the cost of President Donald Trump’s tariffs should be “disciplined.”

“It’s, I think, the worst paper I’ve ever seen in the history of the Federal Reserve system,” Hassett told CNBC in an interview.

“The people associated with this paper should presumably be disciplined, because what they’ve done is they’ve put out a conclusion which has created a lot of news that’s highly partisan based on analysis that wouldn’t be accepted in a first-semester econ class,” Hassett continued.

The New York Fed and the Fed Board of Governors declined to respond to CNN about Hassett’s comments.

Hassett’s primary concern with the research was, in his view, that it only focused on price-related effects of tariffs and not changes in the volume of imports.

However, that’s not entirely true. In assessing the tariff burdens, the authors calculate average duty rates over various periods of time. They define that as “the total monthly tariff revenue divided by the total value of imports in the month,” meaning import volume is taken into consideration. Specifically, they looked at how “global supply chains shifted in response to the higher tariffs.”

Kevin Hassett says Fed researchers should be ‘disciplined’ over report that Americans are paying tariffs

[Thumpalumpacus]

At the same time, Trump has painted himself as champion of historically Black colleges and universities. The White House on Wednesday highlighted the Trump administration’s move last year to steer $500 million to HBCUs. The one-time boost largely came from federal money taken away from colleges serving large shares of Hispanic students. The award for HBCUs came days after the Education Department pulled $350 million from other grant programs targeting colleges with certain percentages of Hispanic students and other minority groups. The Trump administration said those grant programs were unconstitutional.

Trump, weeks after backlash over racist post, hosts Black History Month reception

Like any profligate liar, he believes enough dumbasses will ignore his behavior while they believe his tales.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Never one to miss taking a shot at Obama, Fat Arse had this to say about the passing of Jesse Jackson:

“The Reverend Jesse Jackson is Dead at 84. I knew him well, long before becoming President. He was a good man, with lots of personality, grit, and ‘street smarts,‘” the 79-year-old wrote on Truth Social.
  Continue reading

“Jesse was a force of nature like few others before him,” Trump continued, adding, “He had much to do with the Election, without acknowledgment or credit, of Barack Hussein Obama, a man who Jesse could not stand.”

The jealousy is palpable.

Boru

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

The president's niece, Mary Trump, responding to suggestions that she should change her last name, said, 'Maybe Donald should change his. "Donald Epstein" has a nice ring to it.'

Boru

[Angrboda]

An exasperated Colorado federal judge on Wednesday ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to return to court and explain why it has so far not appeared to be following orders on detaining undocumented immigrants in the state without warrants.

“These things shouldn’t be that difficult,” Senior U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson told Trump administration lawyers in a remote hearing on a preliminary injunction they are apparently not complying with.

“The policy of (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) was a good policy and all they have to do is comply with their own policies, and we’re good. But, for whatever reason, they insisted on not agreeing to that … and here we are sitting here today. I don’t get that.”

https://www.cpr.org/2026/02/18/trump-adm...ado-judge/

[Angrboda]

A federal judge threw out on Wednesday an administrative board's decision endorsing the Trump administration's policy of subjecting thousands of people arrested during its immigration crackdown to mandatory detention.

U.S. District Judge Sunshine Sykes in Riverside, California, vacated the decision, opens new tab by the Board of Immigration Appeals after finding the administration had failed to comply with her earlier order declaring unlawful the underlying policy of denying detainees the chance to seek release on bond.

Sykes' Wednesday ruling, in a class action lawsuit that covers migrants nationwide, is more sweeping than decisions by hundreds of other U.S. judges holding the policy is unlawful and ordering detainees to be freed or given bond hearings.

Sykes, appointed by former Democratic President Joe Biden, called the administration's actions "shameless" and accused it of trying to continue its "campaign of illegal action" by still refusing bond hearings despite her prior ruling.

"Respondents have far crossed the boundaries of constitutional conduct," Sykes wrote.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Justice, which oversees the board, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sykes' ruling means the board's decision can no longer be used by immigration judges to deny bond hearings, said Niels Frenzen, a professor at the University of Southern California's Gould School of Law who represented the plaintiffs.

"We hope that DHS and the immigration courts will now comply with the court's orders to provide bond hearings to the thousands of noncitizens who have been arrested," he said in a statement.

Federal immigration law prescribes mandatory detention for "applicants for admission" to the United States, while their cases proceed in immigration courts and they are ineligible for bond hearings.

Bucking a long-standing interpretation of the law, the DHS last year - as part of President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown - took the position that non-citizens already residing in the United States, and not only those who arrive at a port of entry at the border, qualify as applicants for admission.

The Board of Immigration Appeals, which is part of the Justice Department, issued a decision in September that adopted that interpretation, leading to immigration judges nationally employed by the department to mandate detention.

US judge throws out immigration board's ruling endorsing Trump mass detention policy

[Fake Messiah]

What do you know, Bruce Springsteen is a loser.

The White House has made its feelings perfectly clear regarding Bruce Springsteen, calling one of the world’s best-selling artists a “loser” in a raging new statement.

The veteran rocker, a longtime critic of Donald Trump and his administration, recently announced the US leg of his upcoming and politically charged tour, ‘The Land Of Hopes And Dreams’, which launches in Minneapolis on 31 March.

Unsurprisingly, the tour – with its poster emblazoned with the rallying cry “No Kings” - is not being celebrated by Trump and his administration.

In a comment to Politico, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung hit out at The Boss, using his own song titles against him.

“When this loser Springsteen comes back home to his own City of Ruins in his head, he’ll realize his Glory Days are behind him and his fans have left him Out in the Street, putting him in a Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out because he has a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his brain,” Cheung said.

In case you were wondering, “Trump Derangement Syndrome” is the frequently trotted out pseudo-scientific pejorative / Orwellian Newspeak weaponised by those who want to silence critics of the president’s actions and policy positions.

https://www.msn.com/en-xl/news/other/whi...r-AA1WEOr1

[Thumpalumpacus]

I'm surprised Cheung hasn't gagged on Trump's ball-sack yet.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I'm surprised Cheung hasn't gagged on Trump's ball-sack yet.

I’m not. I suspect that one of the qualification to work in this administration is to have no gag reflex. Lack of a spine also helps.

Boru

[Thumpalumpacus]

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (WAVY) — The Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) is warning that federal rule change could lower disability compensation for millions of veterans.

On Tuesday, the Department of Veterans Affairs amended an interim final rule that it says clarifies the VA’s longstanding interpretation of the CFR 4.10 in the Code of Federal Regulations. It provides the basis for evaluating disabilities for veterans.

By doing so, the rule amends the text to correct judicial interpretations that VA has concluded misconstrue the rule of medication and treatment in evaluating functional impairment.

That change reads in part: “Specifically, this amendment clarifies that veterans should be compensated for the actual level of functional impairment they experience and, therefore, that the ameliorative effects of medication should not be estimated or discounted when evaluating the severity of a veteran’s disability at the time of the disability examination.”

The VFW made a statement on their concerns about what this rule will do.

“For years, courts held that VA could not reduce ratings based on the effects of medication, requiring evaluation of a veteran’s true functional impairment when evaluating a service-connected disability. This new rule reverses that standard, directing examiners to rate disabilities as they present, including the impact of medication, and to disregard unmedicated baseline severity.”

The rule change could lower compensation for millions of veterans who suffer from mental health issues, physical ailments such as bone or muscle injuries and hypertension.

Experts are worried the change could lead to veterans choosing not to take medication so as to be rated higher and to receive larger compensation.

Six million veterans are currently receiving disability compensation, many of whom are on at least one medication. That is the concern for the Disabled American Veterans’ (DAV) national commander.

“DAV is extremely disappointed and alarmed by VA’s decision to issue an Interim Final Rule today that could potentially reduce disability compensation for millions of disabled veterans. The new regulation would allow VA to reduce disability compensation ratings for veterans who take medications to control their conditions or reduce their symptoms,” Coleman Nee said in a statement.

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/57455...sation-va/

Instead of "thank you," the Trump Administration once again tells us vets "Fuck you for your service."