TRADE WAR: President Trump last night blew up the order of world trade once more with an executive command setting new import tariffs while citing a trade deficit with many countries that constitutes, he claimed, “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States.”

  Stock markets around the world fell on opening this morning.

  Trump is setting a policy that is protectionist and isolationist. Tariffs as high as 50 percent will be levied on a list of 60 countries, some of which have been on the brink of signing a trade deal with the US.

  On a day in which Switzerland is hit with a 39 percent tariff, Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent them a cluelessly cheerful congratulations on their national day.  “We wish the Swiss people a successful and meaningful celebration and look forward to continued collaboration in the years ahead,” he said.

  The tariffs would take effect at 12:01 AM on August 7^th, a week after the date Trump had originally said was set in stone. Goods loaded on ships before August 7th that enter the US before October 5th will not be subject to the new tariffs, the administration said.

  One exception is that Canada will be held to the August 1 deadline. President Trump said early yesterday that it would be “very hard” to make a trade deal with Canada after its prime minister said he planned to recognize Palestine as a state. The big items that would be tariffed are autos, steel, and aluminum.

   One country that escapes the lash of tariffs, for now, is Mexico. Trump extended the deadline for Mexico by 90 days saying, “The complexities of a Deal with Mexico are somewhat different than other Nations because of both the problems, and assets, of the Border.”

REGIME NEWS:

— The President sent letters to 17 of the world’s biggest drugmakers demanding that by late September they reduce some of their US prices to the much lower levels they charge other wealthy countries. He wrote, “If you refuse to step up, we will deploy every tool in our arsenal to protect American families from continued abusive drug pricing practices.”

— The Republican-controlled Senate confirmed Joseph Kent as head of the National Counterterrorism Center, overlooking his conspiracy claims that the FBI helped spur the January 6^th insurrection and his brief political association with white supremacists.

ASLEEP OFF THE JOB: The emergency management coordinator of Kerr County, Texas testified in a public hearing yesterday that he was sick and asleep when floodwaters rose on July 4^th wiping away, homes, livelihoods, and lives. The official, William B. Thomas IV, said he was off work July 3^rd to take care of his elderly father then went to bed sick that night.

  All the leading officials from Kerr county were absent from the emergency management meeting before the flood hit, yesterday’s hearing revealed. 

  County judge, Rob Kelly, the top ranking official in Kerr County who directs emergency management, was in his second home, two hours away from the rising disaster. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick excoriated Kelly, saying “Judge Kelly, I never saw you on day one,” which would have been July 4^th. Patrick said, “You should have been here, you should have been here directing that response.”

THE WAR ROOM: Ukrainian military intelligence says it has additional evidence confirming the scale of Russia’s forced removal of Ukrainian children and efforts to erase their identification as Ukrainian, The Institute for the Study of War reports. The ISW says that, “Russia’s deportation of Ukrainian children is systematic, intentional, and likely a violation of the Geneva Convention, which classifies the forcible transfer of children of one group to another group as a constituent act of genocide.”

   Ukrainian intelligence is reported to have hacked into the servers of the Crimean occupation administration and uncovered the names and locations of Ukrainian children Russia has deported or re-located with foster parents since 2022. They say they have confirmed Russia’s deportation of 19,546 Ukrainian children to date, although other estimates put the number as high as 35,000.

THE SPIN RACK:  Smoke from Canadian wildfires has prompted air quality alerts in the Great Lakes region of the country. It is expected to linger over the northern and central plans and possibly drift east. — Former Vice President Kamala Harris has written a memoir titled “107 Days” about her run for president to be released on September 23^rd. Harris wrote with guidance from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Geraldine Brooks. — A 28-year-old Arkansas schoolteacher has been arrested in the stabbing murders of a married couple hiking with their children at Devil’s Den State Park. He was detained after a five-day search in a nearby city while getting a haircut. — The Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that a 68-year-old death row prisoner may be executed without turning off his pacemaker. His defense said the pacemaker might keep sparking, trying to keep him alive even while lethal drugs are killing him. — The World Meteorological Organization certified that a lightning mega flash that spanned 515 miles from Dallas to Kansas City, Missouri, on October 22nd, 2017, set a record for the largest bolt ever recorded. 

BELOW THE FOLD:  Construction is expected to begin next month on President Trump’s $200 million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom in a remake of the East Wing of the White House.  

 The White House State Ballroom will seat 650 people, more than triple the current capacity of the East Room, which is currently the largest room at the White House. 

  Trump said in a social media post earlier this summer that the ballroom was never built “because nobody previously had any knowledge or experience in doing such things, but I do, like maybe nobody else.” 

  With Trump overseeing the project you can expect the room to be decorated with a lot of gold leaf and that it will be the greatest ballroom ever built, like nobody’s ever seen before.

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