Democrat Politics

President Donald Trump has pulled the Secret Service detail of former Vice President Kamala Harris, potentially endangering her life.

On Friday, it was revealed that Trump revoked an extended period of Secret Service protection for the former vice president that was put in place by former President Joe Biden. Traditionally, vice presidents receive six months of protection after leaving office, but Biden signed a memo that gave Harris a total of 18 months of protection.

Harris was the first woman, first Asian and first Black person to serve in the position. 

Trump’s revocation is occurring shortly before Harris begins a 15-city tour promoting her new book, “107 Days,” which chronicles her run against Trump in last year’s presidential election.

“This is another act of revenge following a long list of political retaliation in the form of firings, the revoking of security clearances and more. This puts the former Vice President in danger,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass told CNN. Bass said she and California Gov. Gavin Newsom would be working together to make sure Harris is protected in their state, where Harris lives..

In March, Trump ended Secret Service protection for Hunter and Ashley Biden, former President Biden’s two surviving children. By contrast, when Biden took office in January 2021, he extended protections for Trump’s children by six months.

Then-President Joe Biden walks with his son Hunter Biden outside the White House last July.

Trump’s decision on Harris comes despite threats to her life that have led to criminal prosecution. Last year, a Virginia man was indicted for allegedly threatening to kill her. Last year, a Tennessee man was also charged with threatening to kill Harris, Biden, and former President Barack Obama.

In office, Trump has embraced right-wing terrorism, hailing as heroes the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters who attacked the Capitol in his name. He has pardoned hundreds of them. The Air Force recently revealed that Jan. 6 rioter Ashli Babbitt, who was killed by law enforcement protecting the building, will receive military honors.

Political violence and Trump go hand in hand. Throughout his time as a political figure, he engaged in violent rhetoric about his political rivals. During the 2024 election, he mused about putting former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, who supported Harris, in front of a firing squad.

“Let’s put her with a rifle, standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. Okay? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face,” Trump said in October.

He has also frequently referred to liberals and members of the Democratic Party as “the enemy from within.”

Trump has effectively declared open season on Harris and has pointed a rhetorical gun at her and other Democrats.

President Donald Trump rode into office preaching that he’d bring prices down “on Day 1,” yet his policies have almost comically worked to do the exact opposite. Now he’s set to deliver the most obnoxious and visible price hike to Americans—and in particular, his core base.

For nearly a century, the de minimis rule has allowed goods valued under a certain amount—currently $800 or less—to enter the United States duty-free. It was designed to streamline trade-in low-value items, spare consumers from customs paperwork, and keep the mail moving. About 1.4 billion packages came into the country under this exemption last year. Starting Friday, that loophole vanishes.

Those lower-cost goods—once waved through without fuss—now carry a crushing new burden. 

The numbers are dramatic—subject to a 10-50% tariff depending on origin or a flat fee of $80, $160, or $200 per package. Letters or gifts under $100 are still safe—for now—but everything else from trinkets to T-shirts to cookware is about to cost a lot more, take longer to arrive, or vanish altogether from availability. 

President Donald Trump announces his tariffs in April. 

Just think about all the stuff you buy on Amazon without ever checking the country of origin.

A FlavorCloud analysis found that $30 cotton slippers from China will now cost $45, a $37 nutritional supplement from Canada will cost $60, and a Japanese chef’s knife formerly priced at $240 will now cost just shy of $300. And if that wasn’t bad enough, returns will now be subject to a second round of tariffs, making them expensive and likely impractical. 

The first MAGA rumblings about this surfaced back in April. We all had a good laugh at the Trump voter who was outraged that her $100 shipment of cheap SHEIN crap had a $42 tariff slapped on it.

“Before anyone wants to add their blame Trump for everything bs and say that’s what you get for voting for Donald J. Trump I know what Trump said he said the tariffs would be on China New Mexico and Canada not on American citizens,” she said.

Some people might willfully retain their blinders, but there’s going to be a lot more blaming Trump for everything. And given how much he’s bragged about tariffs being his go-to solution for everything he thinks ails the United States, not even his deepest sycophants will be able to shift away blame.

Remember, Trump was the first Republican to win low-wage earners, while Democrats easily won those who make more than $100,000 per year. Young voters, not knowing any better, also voted for Trump in distressingly large numbers. But who are the two groups most impacted by the elimination of the de minimis exemption? These two, of course—driving a stake deep into the heart of Trump’s job approval ratings, which have already been steadily falling. If there’s one thing voters hate more than higher prices … actually, there’s nothing they hate more.

Postal systems from Germany, France, Mexico, India, Thailand, South Korea, Singapore, New Zealand, Japan, and Australia have already paused or limited U.S. shipments while scrambling to figure out duty collection. What used to be a swift package delivered in days will now be stuck in limbo—delayed, redirected to costlier private couriers, and tagged with extra hidden fees that hit consumers mid-delivery.

Even if the delivery logistics are worked out, consumers will now see a new line item on any potential purchase, labelled “tariff,” that will serve as a constant reminder of Trump’s new tax on their purchases—if they can even afford to place orders in the first place.

And remember, this is just one sliver of the tariff pie, as U.S. consumers and businesses face steep cost hikes on everything else coming from overseas, including the raw materials that even “made in America” products require.

Voters were too stupid to understand what they were voting for as Trump nonsensically promised pain-free tariffs paid by other countries. Now, their education begins. 

Indiana and Tennessee opted out of Summer EBT, which gives families grocery support when schools close for summer.

By Bryce Covert for ProPublica

Last year, Stephanie Couch had some help getting through the summer months when her two daughters, ages 11 and 14, were out of school. Both girls receive free breakfast and lunch at school, but those meals disappear during the summer. In 2024, the Tennessee resident received Summer EBT — short for electronic benefit transfer — which loads $120 for each child onto a card that parents can use to buy groceries to fill that gap. “It meant a lot,” she said. She was able to buy all of the fruits and vegetables her growing children needed.

This summer looks different: While last year Tennessee and Indiana joined the Summer EBT program, also known as SUN Bucks, this year their Republican governors chose to opt out of the federal program. That left Couch with a lot less money. Some nights, meat was off the table; other times, dinner was just ramen. She’s skipped both meals and bills to get through the summer, sometimes not paying her electricity bill in full or paying her rent late. Her girls have noticed that there’s less food in the house. “When we don’t get nothing to eat, they know,” she said.

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Couch, a single mother, works full time as a custodian on the Fort Campbell army base. “I’m not just laying around just waiting on a hand out. I work,” she said. “But I don’t make enough to really cover everything.”

She called her governor’s decision not to participate in Summer EBT this year “wrong,” adding, “How can they not feed the kids?”

In 2020, Congress created Pandemic EBT, a program that sent the parents of children who receive free and reduced-price school meals up to $120 per child, paid for entirely by the federal government, while schools were remote and, after in-person school resumed, during the summer break. Summer EBT, the first new federal food program created in decades, was meant to step in once that program ended to keep money flowing to families during the summer months when their children don’t get fed at school, but states had to  opt in and cover half of the cost of administration. Last year was its first year, and 13 states, all with Republican governors, decided not to participate. Indiana and Tennessee weren’t among them. But this year they reversed course and decided to join those states sitting it out.  Capital & Main reached out to the governors of both states, as well as the agencies that administered last year’s programs, but did not hear back before publication.

In a statement provided to NBC News, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee described the Summer EBT program as a pandemic-era program, when in fact it grew out of a USDA pilot program launched in 2011. The USDA’s evaluation found the money reduced food insecurity among American children by a fifth. Tennessee even participated in it in its final year in 2018.

Lee also said the program was “mostly duplicative” because other programs, like the Summer Food Service Program, already existed. That program typically serves free meals to kids at specific sites, but only about one in six eligible children receive meals through it. Couch, for example, works from midday until as late as 11 p.m. on some nights, leaving no time to take her children there.

The existing programs “are not enough to serve the families who need support during the summertime,” said Signe Anderson, senior director of nutrition advocacy at the legal nonprofit Tennessee Justice Center. Some Tennessee counties don’t have any summer meal programs; those that do don’t always operate every day and may open in the middle of a work day. Less than 65,000 Tennessee children participated in summer lunch programs in 2023, compared to the 700,000 children served by Summer EBT last year.

Janice Cleveland’s 17-year-old granddaughter is one of the 700,000 served last year who now isn’t receiving any food assistance. Last summer, Cleveland, who gets by on disability insurance and Social Security income, was able to pay her bills and have enough to feed her granddaughter thanks to Summer EBT. But this year she was confused when the benefits didn’t show up. She called the number on the back of her card and was told her state wasn’t offering the program. “That was a big blow,” she said, adding that she hasn’t been able to afford soap and other necessities. She is unable to take advantage of the pre-selected food at summer meal sites given that she’s diabetic and has a sensitive stomach and has to be very careful about what she eats.

Stories of families losing access to food are widespread. “We’ve heard from parents who haven’t been able to pay [their] bills,” Anderson said. “We often hear from parents who skip meals so their kids can eat during the summer time.”

Instead of participating in Summer EBT, Tennessee created its own program to send one-time $120 payments to 25,000 students in just 15 counties at a cost of $3 million. Running Summer EBT statewide, officials estimated, would have cost about $4 million, though that bill could have been smaller if the state had applied for a $1.1 million federal grant to cover administrative costs.

“The economics of it doesn’t make sense when the state could have reached 700,000 kids across the state,” Anderson said. “It feels almost cruel to do something so limited when you know you could be serving so many more kids.”

Cost may have been a reason that Indiana Gov. Mike Braun didn’t participate in Summer EBT this year, given the state’s $2 billion projected shortfall. But, argued Mark Lynch, director of advocacy at the Indy Hunger Network, the $3.7 million cost was dwarfed by the roughly $80 million in Summer EBT benefits residents would have received and spent.

Indiana Governor Mike Braun is joined by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz during a news conference in Indianapolis on April 15.

Braun, who was elected in November, has argued that the previous administration failed to adequately plan for the program’s rollout this summer. Lynch disagrees with that assessment, and said that the program “ran perfectly and smoothly last year.”  

The state did improve its summer meal program, allowing families to pick up a week’s worth of food at a site instead of just one meal, Lynch said. But his organization has heard that people have had to wait in lines for as long as three hours to collect their food. Meanwhile, some food distribution sites move from location to location during the summer. “I am sure it was a hassle to some people to have to get to the meal sites instead of just being able to take that $120,” Lynch said.

The loss of Summer EBT doesn’t just hurt families. It hurts the states’ local economies, according to Anderson and Lynch. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated Tennessee’s benefits would collectively be worth more than $77 million, while Indiana’s would be over $80 million. Such spending ripples outward: Food stamps, for instance, have an economic “multiplier” of at least 1.5, meaning every dollar spent generates at least $1.50 in economic activity. That’s money that “goes directly into the economy,” Anderson said.

The failure to renew the program also comes ahead of deep benefit cuts to food stamps and Medicaid passed by Republicans in Congress in July. Lynch sees the loss of Summer EBT as the first in a series of benefit reductions Indiana residents will have to absorb. “This is the first time that Hoosiers literally felt money coming out of their pockets,” he said.

A cartoon by Pedro Molina.

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The Trump administration has made no secret of its hatred of international students—and if it can’t stop them from coming to the U.S., it’s going to figure out a way to kick them out early. The Department of Homeland Security just published a proposed rule that would limit international students to a four-year stay here, regardless of their degree program. 

There must be a room at the DHS where Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her merry band of bigots just come up with the worst, most jingoistic ideas possible. Actually, it’s probably just Vice President JD Vance reciting his favorite parts of the Great Replacement Theory and a bunch of groypers taking notes. No matter the impetus, there seems to be a near-infinite supply of this sort of thinking. 

Currently, foreign students can stay here as long as they are enrolled, full-time students. To anyone not absolutely blinkered with anti-immigrant racism, that makes sense. Sometimes, undergraduate programs take longer than four years. Sometimes, people finish their bachelor’s degree and shift to a master’s or doctoral program. This is how school works. It’s not nefarious. It’s not a Chinese plot or something. But according to the Trump administration, having international students stay in the country for more than four years means they have “taken advantage of U.S. generosity” and are “posing safety risks, costing untold amounts of taxpayer dollars, and disadvantaging U.S. citizens.”

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Under the proposed rule, to stay past four years, students would have to be assessed by DHS. The administration’s dozens of pages attempting to justify this are just straight-up nativism, always grounded in the assumption that foreign students are ready to engage in a little light immigration fraud every time they get a chance as opposed to just wanting to stay and finish their MBA or PhD. The doughy racists that populate the administration are terrified of pluralism, with the proposed rule describing the admission of international students as something that “places research universities and the nation at risk for economic, academic, or military espionage by foreign students.”

Requiring international students to let whatever fifth-tier bigoted college dropouts the administration eventually hires determine whether they can be allowed to stay and finish their degree is untenable. Even if the administration weren’t so transparently committed to mass deportation, why would a bright, eager, well-off foreign student choose to come to a country that may or may not let you finish your degree?

Of course, this administration is transparently committed to mass deportation, so what this really looks like is a way for DHS to restrict the speech, study, and activism of foreign students. If they don’t toe the literal party line and show sufficient fealty to Trump, they’re out. This isn’t speculation. The administration already sent a very clear message with the illegal detention of Rümeysa Öztürk. 

Pretending foreign students are dangerous or that they displace American students isn’t just xenophobic nonsense—it’s also economic nonsense. International students contributed $44 billion to the U.S. economy during the 2023-2024 academic year and supported over 378,000 jobs. Rather than taking rightful spots away from Barron Trump, foreign students usually pay more in tuition, get less scholarship money, and are not eligible for many forms of financial aid. They’re an asset to schools, not a burden.

This move joins the administration’s efforts to block schools from offering scholarships for Dreamers and trying to prevent Harvard University from enrolling foreign students. And of course there’s the part where they have already disappeared students who are here legally. 

All of these gambits have borne fruit. As the 2025-2026 academic school year starts, there has been almost a 50% drop in students from India from the previous year. The number of students arriving on visas in July 2025 saw a steep drop of 28.5% from July 2024. 

Actually, that dropoff could have been bigger, because some international students who were already here and currently enrolled may not have left the United States over the summer to return home or vacation, because schools told those students to stay here so that the administration couldn’t block them from returning. 

Uh, that does not make things better? Nice job withdrawing us from the world stage, conservatives. Less money, less expertise, less participation in the global community. Make America Great Again, indeed.