DL Open Thread: Friday, August 1, 2025
More Trump Tariff Rope-A-Dope:
Stock markets in Europe and across Asia-Pacific countries have fallen after Donald Trump announced new tariffs on dozens of US trading partners.
Last night, as the latest deadline to reach deals approached, Trump signed an executive order imposing tariffs ranging from 10% to 41%.
Rates were set at 25% for India, 20% for Taiwan and 30% for South Africa ahead of Trump’s self-imposed deadline of 1 August for striking trade deals with countries worldwide.
Trump also extended the deadline for a tariff agreement with Mexico by another 90 days. (Get back, TACOCAT).
Share prices have weakened in response – with Germany’s DAX down 1.9% and France’s CAC losing 2.2%, as European stock markets fell to a one-month low.
Asia-Pacific stock markets were on track for their worst week since April, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 losing 0.6%,
South Africa’s stock market is now down almost 1.5%.
Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, said he was disappointed that Donald Trump was raising its tariffs from 25% to 35%.
And there was shock in Switzerland, which has been lumbered with a 39% tariff rate – which manufacturers fear will lead to job losses.
Might I point out that, while most markets have dropped in response to Trump’s latest ploy, they haven’t fallen that far. Most have become hip to TACOCAT’s tricks. In other words, his chosen insiders are buying on the dips. Again.
He Never Promised Us A Rose Garden:
The iconic White House Rose Garden is now more of a rose display area after President Donald Trump paved over the grass expanse.
Trump discussed his plans for the space, which sits outside the Oval Office, when he gave Fox News personality Laura Ingraham a White House tour in March. At the time, some construction was underway and Trump explained that he felt ditching the greenery would improve events in the space.
“Every event you have, it’s soaking wet, it’s soaking wet, and people can’t — and the women with the high heels, it just didn’t work,” Trump said.
Trump further added that “people fall into the wet” and declared, “grass, it just doesn’t work.”
The Trump Impeachment Never Happened:
The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History has removed explicit reference to President Donald Trump from an exhibit about impeachment, a spokesperson said on Thursday.
The museum in Washington D.C. made the change as part of a review that it agreed to undertake following White House pressure to remove an art museum director, the Washington Post, which first reported the removal, cited a source as saying.
The spokesperson in a statement said “a future and updated exhibit will include all impeachments.”
Trump signed an executive order in March calling for “improper, divisive or anti-American ideology” to be removed from the Smithsonian – the vast museum and research institution that is a premier exhibition space for U.S. history and culture.
The order raised concern of political interference at the institution as well as fear that his administration is undoing decades of social progress and undermining the acknowledgment of critical phases of American history.
The Washington Post reported the exhibit now notes that “only three presidents have seriously faced removal.”
The temporary label – which read “Case under redesign (history happens)” – also offered information about the impeachments of former presidents Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998, as well as Richard Nixon, who would have faced impeachment had he not resigned in 1974, the newspaper reported, citing a photograph of the label.
The spokesperson said that after a content review, the Smithsonian decided to restore the exhibit to how it looked in 2008.
Goebbels would be proud.
How Israel Deals With American Union Organizers. Hey, at least they apparently didn’t starve him to death:
On Saturday night, the Israeli Defense Forces surrounded, beat, and choked American labor leader Chris Smalls as they unlawfully boarded the Handala, the most recent aid ship trying to reach Gaza as part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. Smalls was the only Black person on the flotilla and was punished much more severely than any of the other 20 members detained.
“When he reached the Israeli prison, U.S. human rights defender Chris Smalls was physically assaulted by seven uniformed individuals,” the Freedom Flotilla Coalition announced Tuesday morning. “They choked him and kicked him in the legs, leaving visible signs of violence on his neck and back. When his lawyer met with him, Chris was surrounded by six members of Israel’s special police unit. This level of force was not used against other abducted activists. We condemn this violence against Chris and demand accountability for the assault and discriminatory treatment he faced.”
Smalls entered the public eye in 2022 after successfully founding a labor union at a Staten Island Amazon factory, garnering national praise and even a White House invitation from President Biden. Now he remains beaten and battered in IDF custody.
The IDF targeting the one Black man on the aid ship is sadly unsurprising, as is the lack of uproar from U.S. politicians and large media outlets. Yet another U.S. citizen assaulted and detained by the IDF, yet not a peep from either side of the aisle because Smalls is a Black American leftist who was standing up to Israel’s campaign of mass starvation and trying to deliver baby food and flour to suffering Palestinians in Gaza.
Can you say ‘proof of concept’? Deportation flights to Tel Aviv beginning soon. Wonder if Avelo serves bread and/or water on those flights…
Today’s Random News-Journal Headlines: ‘Miller Lite Is Pouring Out 50,000 Free Beers Today: How To Get Yours’. ‘When Do We Fall Back? What To Know About Daylight Saving Time Ending’.
Sussex Struggles With Land Use Issues. At least they’re trying:
The Sussex County Land Use Reform Working Group was supposed to send a list of recommended action items to the Sussex County Council by the end of August. But in the final steps of the process, some members are expressing concern about the draft recommendations, which could delay the group’s timeline.
“I don’t think that those draft recommendations in their current form go far enough,” said Jill Hicks, a working group member and president of the Sussex Preservation Coalition, a grassroots organization advocating for smart development, about the working group’s July 24 meeting. “I don’t think that they’re specific enough to really satisfy what County Council and the public are looking for.”
County Council formed the group after three newcomers beat out incumbents in the November 2024 elections. They campaigned on changing the county’s development policies, and their victory was fueled by resident frustrations over how the five-person council had previously handled new development.
Unfortunately, these changes on Council happened decades after development was allowed to run rampant and unfettered in Suxco.
What do you want to talk about?
The notion that Trump has “chosen” insiders rather than “employees with access to the information” is a curious one. Since when has Trump ever, in even the smallest way, looked after someone other than himself?
trump is building the white house to look like maralago. i think in the next 3 years he sells maralago and moves fulltime into the white house declaring all the work done on it during his time makes it his to live in forever. supreme court rules 6-3 in his favor