President Donald Trump has a shady new "BFF" he has been keen to keep close to him at all times, and as his one-time biographer told The Daily Beast, this decision reveals that he is well aware of how badly all of his massive failures are going.

Michael Wolff is a longtime author and journalist who has had extensive access to Trump and his officials over the years, famously writing several books about the tumult behind the scenes of his first term. During the latest episodes of his Daily Beast podcast, "Inside Trump's Head," he discussed the odd scenario playing out between the president and his Hollywood "BFF," director Brett Ratner. The disgraced Melania filmmaker accompanied Trump on his recent visit to China, with Wolff calling him the president's "security blanket."

“So when the trip in China finished — and, again, why was Brett Ratner in China? Other than to be there as Donald Trump’s BFF and security blanket, and the guy he could talk to?“ Wolff said. ”And in fact, when the trip ended, Donald Trump said to Brett Ratner, ‘I’ve got to be able to get in touch with you at all times.’”

Ratner was, at one point, a prolific, if critically maligned, director of major studio films, before allegations of sexual assault in 2017 made him a pariah in Hollywood. He has recently made a minor comeback as a close ally of Trump, notably directing the documentary about his wife, First Lady Melania Trump, which flopped at the box office after Amazon spent an unusual amount of money to produce and market, prompting allegations of bribery.

Ratner claimed that his visit to China with Trump was related to location scouting for Rush Hour 4, the comedy sequel he is returning to direct, which only exists because the president demanded that it be made.

Daily Beast editor and podcast co-host Hugh Dougherty called the situation with Trump and Ratner "crazy" and "ironic," given that it is famously easy for people to speak with the president by phone.

"He answers his phone at 6:30, at 2:30 in the morning. He’s on his phone at four in the morning," Doughterty said.

"Well, I think the issue here is Brett Ratner,” Wolff said, then imagining that Trump's mindset is essentially. “'You’re on point, you’re... my BFF, so I’ve got to be able to speak to you whenever I need to speak to you.’”

On a deeper level, Wolff explained that Trump needs new friends around him, as all his other allies are becoming figures that he is blaming for the ongoing failures of his administration.

“Well, there’s no one around him. I mean, literally. Everybody is now someone to blame,” Wolff said. “That’s the important thing — I think — takeaway here. Well, actually, there are a couple of takeaways here. But one of those takeaways is that he understands how bad things are... Now, in his way of processing that, is to blame someone else. But, of course, that doesn’t change how bad things are. And things are very bad.”

He added later: “And then, the other takeaway is a character takeaway, that the friendship with Brett Ratner exactly goes to the character of it all, or the Epstein of it all, or the Trump of it all, or the grab them by the p—— of it all.”

President Donald Trump's costly attempt to renovate the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has blown up in his face, with the Daily Beast reporting that he is now taking drastic emergency steps to fix the algae bloom before July 4.

As part of his broader campaign to renovate and remodel Washington D.C., to his own personal taste, Trump undertook a $13.1 million project to paint the city's iconic Reflecting Pool a new shade of blue, which he insisted would make it more "patriotic." After rushing through the process and awarding a no-bid contract to a Virginia firm for the job, the project was completed last and promptly went sideways when the pool became infested with a massive bloom of green algae, making the watery landmark so green that it could be seen from planes thousands of feet in the air.

Still hoping to have an "American Flag Blue" Reflecting Pool ready for the country's 250th birthday next month, Trump's National Parks Service is now in crisis mode. As the Daily Beast noted in a Thursday report, the government is "desperately seeking additional workers to help address the issue," and has upgraded the situation internally to a "regional and national priority."

"An email addressed to National Park Service employees and reviewed by the outlet stated that officials were working on 'critical pre-July 4th operational needs' and were seeking 'additional personnel to assist immediately,'" the report explained. "Specifically, workers are needed to support 'scrubbing and pump out operations' at the pool. They are being asked to work 12-hour shifts starting this week and continuing through the weekend."

It continued later: "The algae bloom appeared within 24 hours of the end of renovation work earlier this month. Workers have already been deployed to vacuum algae from the pool and disperse hydrogen peroxide into the water, but the algae and resulting green tint to the water have remained."

Different theories have been floated around to try and explain what is going on with this sudden algae bloom. Some have suggested that the light waves reflected off the new blue paint job are more conducive to producing algae, while Cochise Wanzer II, president of the Pool Service Company in Arlington, Virginia, told the Associated Press that the development was wholly unsurprising, given the type of water used.

“What do you expect?” Wanzer said. “You’re basically taking natural, untreated river water, pumping it in and expecting it to do something different from what it would do out in the open.”

Wanzer also added that the navy blue paint job made the pool "nice and dark," increasing the pool's temperature to a level at which algae grows better.

The Trump administration, as the Daily Beast noted, has attempted to defuse criticism of the situation, claiming that the algae bloom is typical of the immediate aftermath of such a project and being handled, while also taking the opportunity, unsurprisingly, to hail Trump as an "expert builder" while denigrating Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

We get the latest analysis on the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran from Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Parsi discusses the increasing “desperation” of U.S. strategy, Iran’s long-term economic control over the Strait of Hormuz and growing “hawkishness,” and the dangerous possibility of nuclear warfare.

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran enters its sixth week, President Trump has threatened to bomb Iran’s power plants and bridges unless the Strait of Hormuz is reopened by Tuesday. Trump’s attacks on civilian infrastructure would constitute war crimes under international law.

In a profanity-laced Truth Social post on Easter Sunday, Trump wrote, quote, “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!” — three exclamation points. “Open the F—in’ Strait, you crazy b-------, or you’ll be living in Hell–JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah,” the president wrote — he used the actual word.

Iranian officials warned with retaliating, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Naval Command saying in a post on X, the Strait of Hormuz, quote, “will never return to its former state, especially for America and Israel,” unquote.

Earlier this morning, Iranian media reported explosions after an Israeli attack on the South Pars petrochemical complex in the city of Asaluyeh. The South pars is one of the world’s largest natural gas reserves, shared between Iran and Qatar on the Persian Gulf. South Pars accounts for about 70 to 80% of Iran’s gas supply. A separate U.S.-Israeli strike also targeted South Pars facilities in Iran last month.

Meanwhile, Iranian state media reported today that Majid Khademi, intelligence chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was killed in a joint U.S.-Israeli strike.

For more, we go to Washington, D.C., where we’re joined by Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, author of several books, including Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy.

We’re certainly not seeing any triumph of diplomacy right now, Trita Parsi. If you can talk about President Trump’s expletive-laced Easter Day message to Iran?

TRITA PARSI: What we’re seeing here is a repeat of previous threats and deadlines, but now, of course, with far greater tone of desperation from Trump. He has issued threats of this kind several times before. He hasn’t fully acted on them, backed down, recognizing that he doesn’t have escalation dominance. He cannot escalate his way out of this conflict, because if he goes after the power plants on a large scale, the Iranians will do the same to the infrastructure in the GCC and Israel, and the situation will become much worse, particularly in terms of oil prices shooting up.

Nevertheless, he is increasingly desperate, because he’s realizing he cannot just end the war by walking away. He has to have some sort of a negotiated settlement. But the negotiated settlement will be very different from the one that he first had in mind, because the realities on the ground are such that he is not in a dominant position. He cannot dictate terms. And as a result, now he’s trying to issue these ultimatums in the hope that the Iranians will surrender.

But there’s no sign whatsoever that the Iranians are in the mood of a surrender or even accepting his deadline. The Iranians are not going to accept a ceasefire that puts them in the same position as Lebanon and Gaza have been put in when they have agreed to ceasefire by the United States and Israel, which have turned out to be just temporary pauses in order for the United States or Israel to be able to regroup, rearm and then relaunch attacks. And this is clearly frustrating Trump, because he’s realizing he’s not in that position of dominance that he thought he would be.

AMY GOODMAN: If you could talk about the significance of South Pars right now, owned — the north part run by Qatar, the south, Iran, and, of course, it is a major source of energy for Iran, like 70 to 80% of its energy, threatening to blow that up, as well as bridges?

TRITA PARSI: So, South Pars is a very important field for the Iranians. It’s shared, a gas field. It’s shared with Qatar, although Qataris are extracting much more gas out of it, because the Iranians don’t have the technology, given all of the sanctions that have been imposed on Iran for a significant amount of time. Asaluyeh is another place nearby that is now being attacked currently by the Israelis, that is critical for Iran’s domestic energy consumption. And we have seen that when those fields or facilities have been struck in the past, the Iranians have retaliated. It was when the Israelis attacked South Pars last time that the Iranians struck at these gas facilities inside of Qatar, that set those back three to five years.

It’s very important to understand the difference here, in the sense that we have an oil problem right now, because a lot of tankers are being stuck in the Persian Gulf. They cannot transit through. But the oil is still being extracted out of the ground. The infrastructure of oil has not been targeted on a large scale. If Trump escalates, then those will likely be targeted. And then you don’t only have a bottleneck problem, you also have a production problem. The bottleneck problem can be resolved relatively quickly, and oil prices can go down. But if you have a production problem, then that means that the production will not go up for quite some time, and that will create a much longer-term problem on the oil markets. And that would be much, much worse than the current situation.

So, the Iranians have a lot of different ways that they can escalate matters further. Trump is aware of this, of course. This is part of the reason why he hasn’t acted on a lot of his threats. But he seems to be getting increasingly desperate, and he may actually take steps that will be absolutely devastating for the global economy and then for his own presidency.

AMY GOODMAN: If you can respond to — The Guardian just said, “Iran confirms it has received ceasefire plan, but says US is not ready for peace. The US, Iran and a group of regional mediators discussed the terms for a potential 45-day ceasefire that could lead to a permanent end to the war.” And then you have Ali Abunimah tweeting a few hours ago, “US is trying with Iran the same approach as with Gaza: phased agreements which the Americans and 'Israel' will break, and vague future arrangements to be hammered out in an indeterminate future.” Your response?

TRITA PARSI: Ali is absolutely right. This is the concern and the fear on the Iranian side, that any type of a ceasefire would be to the benefit of the United States and Israel. They would not end the war. It would just be a tactical pause. In the meantime, the Iranians would be giving up a lot of their leverage, for instance, the control over the straits. So I don’t see any chance of that succeeding at all, unless it is coupled with not this type of a phase approach, but there is actually a full agreement that includes sanctions relief and other measures.

Now, the Iranian position, I think, in some ways, have evolved and, frankly, hardened. The straits is not necessarily a tool they will use for negotiations to end the war, but rather something that they will use after the war, the control of it, in order to establish this mechanism in which countries will have to pay transit fees to go through the straits, and they will use that to restore economic relations with a lot of countries in the world that they used to have economic relations with but who have essentially stopped dealing with Iran economically because of U.S. pressure. All of those countries nevertheless need access to the straits, and the Iranians are essentially planning to use their control of the straits to reestablish those economic relations, rather than as a leverage to end the war.

AMY GOODMAN: Your response to President Trump telling Fox News the U.S., quote, “sent a lot of guns to the Iranian protesters. We sent guns through the Kurds. I think the Kurds kept them,” unquote?

TRITA PARSI: So, here’s a very important revelation. We saw that during the protests in December and January, that there were some things that were very, very different from the past. We saw that there were elements within the protest movement, or acting underneath the protest movement, that used massive amounts of violence, both against civilian infrastructure, mosques, banks, etc., fire stations, but also against government forces — that’s why a lot of government forces were killed — which we have simply not seen before. These were armed elements. They operated in a rather professional and systematic way. And a lot of protesters — and I spoke to some of the protesters who were out there genuinely protesting against the policies of the government — saw these forces and were quite stunned, because they had never seen anything like that before.

Now we have the revelation, which a lot of people suspected, but we have it from the horse’s mouth, saying that the U.S. actually was providing weapons to the Kurds and other armed elements inside the country. This, I think, shows that the image we had originally, that this was just peaceful protesters clamped down by the government, was perhaps a bit simplistic. They were overwhelmingly peaceful protesters, but within them, or underneath them, there were other elements that were using the protests to essentially start a violent conflict and uprising. That was clamped down together with a lot of peaceful protesters. The Iranian government seemed to have not made much of a distinction between the two and killed several thousand people. But it was a very different scenario from what you had in 2009, for instance, in which the protest movement was not only peaceful, but also ensured that it was not hijacked by violent elements. This time around, it seems like that was not a full possibility.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei responding to Trump’s threat to attack civilian infrastructure if the new deadline for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz is not met.

ESMAEIL BAGHAEI: [Iran’s reaction would be one of reciprocating] any such attack. Our armed forces have made it clear that in case Iran’s infrastructure is attacked, we would react in kind. They would — our armed forces would target any similar infrastructure that is owned or in any way or manner related to the United States or contributes to their act of aggression against Iran. This is not something that we will do it voluntarily or by willful decision. This is something that is as part of our defense measures against their illegal act.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson. If you can respond to what he said, Trita Parsi?

TRITA PARSI: So, this is a continuation of what we’ve seen in the past, that the Iranians will retaliate in kind, but they will target the facilities that they have within their reach, that are mainly in the GCC states, which then will be putting not only the GCC states in a terrible, terrible situation, but the entire global economy. We’ve seen that the Iranians have targeted American bases and other facilities, some of them civilian facilities, in those countries.

We have now also seen emerging evidence that many of these countries’ territory and airspace was used by the United States to attack Iran. Now, whether those countries started allowing them to be used after the Iranians started attacking them or whether those attacks were taking place from the outset or whether those attacks from their airspace or territory is being conducted without the approval of these governments is unclear at this point. But the fact that the territory is being used in several cases, Qatar — sorry, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, UAE, at this point is not quite clear. Evidence has emerged of that.

And that’s a very negative and dangerous development, particularly if it eventually leads to the Saudis and the Emiratis fully joining in on the war. That will be — again, we’ve already seen this conflict spread, but that will be major, major escalation and will make it much more difficult to be able to bring this war to an end.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about Iranian intelligence agents arresting the prominent human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh at her home, according to her daughter? She’s 64 years old, Sotoudeh, renowned for defending activists, opposition politicians, and women prosecuted for removing their headscarves. Are you concerned about the possibility that Evin Prison — who knows by what side? — could also be bombed, which has been — which, of course, is where so many dissidents are held?

TRITA PARSI: We saw that in the June war, that the Israelis did strike at the prison. Whether they did so because they believed that that actually would be a beneficial act that would bring people out in the streets or protesting or put them on the side of being opposed to the repression of the Iranian government is unclear. But it really did backfire on the Israelis. Whether they would do it again remains to be seen. So far, they’ve been focused more on attacking pharmaceutical factories and also universities.

But I think an important point that we’re seeing here is that the Islamic Republic is being changed, but it is being changed in a much more hawkish direction. This is a direct consequence of this war that was illegally launched by Israel and the United States. It was also highly predictable that under these circumstances, the Iranian government would likely become more repressive and have more restrictions on the political space in the country. We’ve seen that pattern before. So, rather than this being some sort of an effort that would bring about democracy in Iran, as some people apparently have thought, the track record was already very clear that the most likely outcome would be that we would see the most repressive and hawkish version of the Islamic Republic coming out of this war.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us also if you’re able to communicate with people in Iran, the state-imposed near-total internet shutdown now the longest nationwide blackout on record of any country.

TRITA PARSI: It is very challenging, but I’ve managed to get through to quite a few people. It is not the same type of a blackout that we saw on January 8th 'til a couple of days, in which the Iranians really shut down everything, jammed Starlink and everything else. It's not that level, but it is nevertheless extremely restrictive. And I don’t see any likelihood of that opening up as long as the war continues to go on.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, are you concerned the U.S. or Israel would use a nuclear bomb against Iran?

TRITA PARSI: So, I’ve had conversations here in Washington, and I have been quite taken aback by seeing that a lot of former officials are very candid that this is an option on the table. It comes out of the fact that Trump appears to be increasingly desperate. He could end up going on bombing Iran for another two weeks trying to achieve some major spectacle and then just walk away, knowing that he doesn’t have the ability or the patience for the real diplomacy that is needed, doesn’t have the willingness to give compromises. So he may just escalate it in a spectacular way and then walk away, leaving the straits in the control of the Iranians. And that could potentially include the use of a nuclear weapon.

The fact that that actually is being discussed or is being contemplated and discussed by former officials as an option that Trump is looking at, or the Israelis are looking at, is telling us about how badly this war is going, how desperate the situation is becoming, and how tremendously, tremendously dangerous this would be for the entire world. As one former official told me, this would make the United States the absolutely most hated country in the world, if it uses a nuclear weapon as a way of just demonstrating its military superiority.

AMY GOODMAN: Trita Parsi, thanks so much for being with us, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. A number of books he’s written, including Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy.

New book titles about President Donald Trump are no longer resonating as they once did, signaling a major slowdown in the political nonfiction boom, Politico reported Tuesday.

Despite the nation's early appetite for Trump tell-alls, sales have significantly dipped. The report quoted insiders as saying that publishing houses are seeing “a slump … across all of nonfiction,” with enthusiasm waning in the president's second term.

Industry figures described a landscape where big advances are drying up and success now hinges on established names or partisan angles.

READ MORE: 'Deserves more blame': Historian reveals why Trump is in a 'deeply structural bind'

The report noted: "Trump’s first term saw books authored by prominent journalists sell hundreds of thousands of copies each as the public rushed to learn the inside details of Trump’s norm-shattering presidency."

"But similar books aren’t exactly flying off the shelves in his second term, and the bar to getting onto the coveted New York Times bestseller list has been lowered as the overall nonfiction book market has dipped," it added.

An "industry watcher" told Politico: "There’s definitely a slump, and it’s across all of nonfiction. Part of it is that we were just actually tired of this, and we’re exhausted, and we don’t want to spend 30 bucks and six or eight hours of our time feeling worse.”

The report further highlighted that the book 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America by Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf sold around 6,000 hardcover copies in its first week. According to last Wednesday’s NPD BookScan figures, the book debuted at No. 4 on the Times bestseller list, underscoring how the threshold for nonfiction success has dropped.

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By comparison, a No. 4 bestseller from July 2017, then-Sen. Al Franken’s (D-Min.) memoir, moved nearly 11,000 copies in the same time period, even weeks after release, per the report.

Michael Wolff, best known for Fire and Fury, saw his 2018 book sell 25,000 copies in its debut week and eventually top 900,000 in total sales.

But the report reveals that his latest release, All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America, launched in March, sold only about 3,000 print copies in its first week and has reached approximately 11,000 overall so far.

These middling results are prompting publishers to rethink investments in Trump‑themed projects.

READ MORE: (Opinion) This White House lie shows they know Trump is in trouble

One agent told Politico: “Editors are not spending anywhere near the amount of money that they did this time eight years ago. The days of just writing a book to write a book and checking the box for someone’s career — those days are over.”

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments this week in a case challenging President Donald Trump’s tariffs, with plaintiffs arguing that his unilateral levies on imported goods violate the Constitution, which grants Congress the power to impose taxes and regulate foreign commerce. The Trump administration has justified his unprecedented use of tariffs under a 1977 law known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, but several justices seemed highly skeptical of that argument, potentially putting President Trump’s signature economic policy at risk.

“There is no genuine emergency. There is no war that is the precipitating basis for invoking IEEPA. And even if it were, it would not allow the imposition of tariffs,” says legal expert Lisa Graves, founder of True North Research and co-host of the podcast Legal AF.

Graves also discusses her new book, Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights.

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

We’re staying on the subject of the Supreme Court but now turning to a major case before the court on President Trump’s authority to impose sweeping tariffs on foreign goods. The court heard oral arguments on Wednesday. Solicitor General John Sauer argued President Trump has the power to unilaterally impose the tariffs under a 1977 law known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, which grants the president the authority to regulate commerce during wartime or other national emergencies. This is the solicitor general arguing.

JOHN SAUER: I want to make a very important distinction here. We don’t contend that what’s being exercised here is the power to tax. It’s the power to regulate foreign commerce. These are regulatory tariffs. They are not revenue-raising tariffs. The fact that they raise revenue is only incidental. The tariffs would be most effective, so to speak, if no — no — no person ever paid them.

AMY GOODMAN: Challenging the policy in the case is a group of small businesses. This is the plaintiffs’ attorney and former solicitor general, Neal Katyal, speaking outside the court.

NEAL KATYAL: Our message today is simple: The Constitution, our framers, 238 years of American history all say only Congress has the power to impose tariffs on the American people. And tariffs are nothing but taxes on the American people, paid by Americans. This case is not about the president; it’s about the presidency. It’s not about partisanship; it’s about principle. And above all, it’s about upholding the majestic separation of powers laced into our Constitution that is the foundation for our government. We thank the justices today for their extensive questioning in this case, and we look forward to the resolution.

AMY GOODMAN: The case has moved quickly through the federal courts. The court has heard roughly two dozen emergency appeals by the Trump administration, which the conservative majority has largely allowed Trump’s aggressive agenda to go forward. But this is the first time the court will make a final decision on one of those policies. On Wednesday, the justices, including conservative justices, appeared skeptical of the government’s argument. This is Chief Justice John Roberts.

CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS: You have a claim source, an IEEPA, that had never before been used to justify tariffs. No one has argued that it does until this, this particular case. Congress uses tariffs and other provisions, but — but not here. And yet — and correct me on this if I’m not right about it — the justification is being used for a power to impose tariffs on any product, from any country, for — in any amount, for any length of time. That seems like — I’m not suggesting it’s not there, but it does seem like that’s major authority, and the basis for the claim seems to be a misfit.

AMY GOODMAN: For more on tariffs and the Supreme Court, we’re joined by Lisa Graves. She is the director and founder of the policy research group True North Research. Her new book is titled Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights. She’s also the former deputy assistant attorney general. And she’s joining us now from Superior, Wisconsin.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Lisa. So, in fact, the chief justice is the main focus of your book on the Supreme Court. Talk about the significance of this case. And did it surprise you, the skepticism of the conservative majority, including the three Trump appointees?

LISA GRAVES: Well, this is an important case. And I wish that I could have confidence in the — I suppose, the sincerity of those questions that John Roberts posed, but we know that just last year he invented immunity from criminal prosecution for a president, for President Trump, out of whole cloth, despite the fact that the Constitution does not provide that power. So, now here we are, over a year later, with this court deciding whether this president has the power to engage in tariffs, even though the Constitution expressly gives those powers to Congress. And this law, IEEPA, does not provide any tariff power to the president.

And as you know and your listeners know, tariffs are taxes that end up being paid by the American people in the costs of the goods that we ultimately purchase. And Trump has bragged about how these tariffs are supposedly producing so much revenue, billions and billions of dollars of revenue, and yet we had the administration argue before the court that the revenue was incidental, that this is just a normal regulatory power. It’s not. Nothing’s normal.

I do think this court, the Roberts Court, is going to strike this down, but that’s in part because this court, you know, occasionally will rule against this president. But as you note and noted at the top of this show, 24 times so far this year, this court has intervened to allow reckless and damaging actions to happen to the American people, irreparable harm on the American people. And in this instance, with the business community weighing in, perhaps it will decide against Trump this one time, and then try to use that as a shield to say, “Look, it’s fair,” when in fact this court, under John Roberts, has behaved in innumerable ways, in very unfair ways, in counter-constitutional ways and in ways that have decimated our rights, including our voting rights.

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about who actually brought this case. The businesses are not corporate giants. They’re small and medium-sized. And when you say everyone knows that these are taxes, explain more fully who pays these tariffs, as President Trump says, you know, “We’re going to get these countries to pay.” That’s not, in fact, who pays.

LISA GRAVES: Yeah, that’s not who pays. So, the tariffs are tariffs on goods sold in the United States, imported in the United States, which means, ultimately, whether it’s businesses buying those goods as components for building products or whether it’s consumers buying things at the grocery store or a department store, it’s the American people who pays. Right now some of the businesses that are involved in these — in imports are not passing those tariffs on to the American consumers. They’re waiting to see what ultimately happens and absorbing those costs. But those costs are already being passed on to the American consumers in lots of ways. And so, it is — this idea that this is some sort of non or revenue incidental tariff, that it’s supposedly foreign-facing so it doesn’t affect us, that’s not true. It’s we, the American people, who ultimately pay the cost of those tariffs.

And Congress has the power to tax. Expressly, in the Constitution, it’s given to it, not the president. And simultaneously, in that same provision, Congress is given the power to impose tariffs. This statute that the Trump administration is hanging its hat on does not give the president the power to tariff or to tax. And there’s a good reason for that. It’s not just that it’s in our Constitution. Trump’s behavior is exactly why no president has ever been given this sort of power, because putting that power in the hands of one person allows for arbitrary, capricious, whimsical, vindictive action by one person, as we’ve seen Trump do. That initial round of tariffs was announced as including tariffs on Penguin Islands, but not North Korea and Russia. The tariffs are arbitrary. We’re seeing sort of a shakedown process in some of the efforts to try to get countries to appease Trump’s ego in exchange for dropping tariffs or limiting them. That’s not how tariff policy is supposed to go. It’s supposed to be passed by Congress through genuine deliberation. And more than that, because it’s a tax on the American people, it has to be something that only Congress can do, because Congress has the power of the purse, not the president. And we cannot have this president, you know, exercising all the powers, basically, of the legislative branch and the executive branch.

AMY GOODMAN: This is an exchange between Justice Elena Kagan and the Solicitor General John Sauer during oral arguments, speaking about emergency powers.

JOHN SAUER: The president has to make a formal declaration of a national emergency, which subjects him to particularly intensive oversight by Congress, repeated — you know, natural lapsing, repeated review, reports and so forth, that says you have to consult with Congress to the maximum extent possible.

JUSTICE ELENA KAGAN: I mean, you, yourself, think that the declaration of emergency is unreviewable. And even if it’s not unreviewable, it’s, of course, the kind of determination that this court would grant considerable deference to the — to the president on. So that doesn’t seem like much of a constraint.

JOHN SAUER: But it is a constraint.

JUSTICE ELENA KAGAN: And, in fact, you know, we’ve had cases recently which deals with the president’s emergency powers, and it turns out we’re in emergencies everything all the time about like half the world.

AMY GOODMAN: English, please, Lisa Graves.

LISA GRAVES: Well, so, this question under IEEPA is whether there is an emergency that’s the basis for regulation or sort of an embargo. And in this instance, there isn’t. The administration has claimed that the fentanyl crisis somehow allows it to impose these wide and arbitrary tariffs. It’s also claimed that the trade deficit, which has been part of our, you know, economy for decades, is some sort of national emergency. It’s not. We’ve seen Trump assert emergencies in Portland, in Los Angeles. Like, he basically just uses the word “emergency” to try to get away with anything.

And it is true, the Supreme Court has traditionally deferred to declarations of emergencies by presidents. But I don’t think it has any obligation to defer to this president’s claims of emergency, which are factless, which are baseless, and which are just another argument, the kind of argument John — that John Sauer tends to make in justification of his client getting to do whatever he wants. So, there is no genuine emergency. There is no war that is the precipitating basis for invoking IEEPA. And even if it were, it would not allow the imposition of tariffs.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Lisa Graves, you’ve written this new book. It’s called Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights. If you can talk more about the major points in this book, as you specifically look at Chief Justice Roberts? Start with the whole issue of the Voting Rights Act. Talk about Chief Justice John Roberts’ origin story.

LISA GRAVES: Yes. So, John Roberts chose to clerk for Bill Rehnquist, who was one of the most notorious anti-voting rights people on the Supreme Court. He, in his personal capacity, sought to make it harder for Arizonans to vote, targeting Black communities in Arizona with voter suppression, himself personally, in Bethune, in the neighborhood of Bethune. Then, when he was on the court, right before John Roberts joined him, he issued a decision, the first decision trying to cut back Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, to say that effects would not count.

So, then what happened was, Bill Rehnquist called Ken Starr, who was then the chief of staff for the new attorney general for Ronald Reagan, and urged him to hire John Roberts. John Roberts was hired by the Reagan administration and put in charge of voting rights. John Roberts had no experience in voting rights, no experience in litigation. The only experience he had was clerking for — basically, stodging for — the most regressive justice on Supreme Court when it came to voting rights. Rehnquist, by the way, actually urged that his justice he clerked for dissent from the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Rehnquist aided Barry Goldwater, the guy who — one of the, you know, senators who opposed the Civil Rights Act.

So, this is the origin story of John Roberts. He spent hundreds of hours trying to block Congress from repairing that, from overturning that ruling. And then, the Voting Rights Act was extended for more than 20 years, into 2007, and then, when John Roberts became the chief justice of the United States in 2005, as soon as there was a case teed up for him to do so, in the Shelby County case, he ruled against the Voting Rights Act. He struck down other key enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act, Section 4 and Section 5, that required preclearance of changes in jurisdictions that had a history of voter suppression or history of targeting Black voters. And that Shelby County decision unleashed this wave of voter suppression and voter restriction we’ve seen over the past decade. And now, right now, this court, the Roberts Court, is considering overruling Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and allowing white-majority legislatures to dilute the Black vote in Louisiana and other states.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Lisa Graves. Her new book is just out. It’s called Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights. As you observe this court right now, what are your biggest concerns? And how do the other justices feel about the chief justice?

LISA GRAVES: Well, I think this court is behaving illegitimately. These emergency orders overturning the well-reasoned, factually founded, legally grounded decisions to impose temporary restraining orders in the face of unilateral, extreme actions by this president, where the plaintiffs have shown irreparable harm, these are illegitimate actions by this court basically to aid Donald Trump. And it’s part two of what it did last year in effectively pardoning Donald Trump, preventing the trial, the trial around January 6th, to go forward, and basically paving the way for his return to power. And now, once in power, John Roberts has helped to empower Donald Trump further with the help of his fellow Republican appointees.

I think the Democratic appointees to the court, in the minority, are very frustrated, as you can see from the dissents in these cases, where the court is not describing why it is overturning these lower court rulings and allowing Trump to put his foot on the gas pedal to go forward with them while people are being harmed every day.

I think that this Roberts Court is out of control. It’s behaving arrogantly. It has aggressively intervened in those cases, just like with the immunity decision. It could have let the lower court rulings, which were based on well-grounded precedent, stand, but instead it has sought to aid Trump at almost every turn and, in doing so, has exposed itself as a hyperpartisan court that isn’t really behaving like a court but is behaving like an arm of the MAGA Trump presidency.

AMY GOODMAN: What most surprised you in doing the research for your book?

LISA GRAVES: Oh my goodness. Well, it was a small thing. But, you know, everyone knows that John Roberts talked about how he was going to be a fair umpire just calling balls and strikes. When I looked into his background, it turned out that he never played baseball in high school or college. He was actually a football player. And his coach told a right-wing dark money group that helped support his confirmation that John Roberts was particularly skilled as a tackler, as someone who studied his opponents and sought to find out ways to tackle them. That’s who we really have at the helm of the Supreme Court, is a player on the field who’s moving that right-wing, regressive, Reagan revolutionary agenda forward, not the fair umpire that he claimed to be and that he sought to put — plant into the American people’s minds as who he is. He’s not that umpire. I’ve actually decided to call him a “Trumpire,” because he’s been so willing to help Trump in almost every way as he expands the presidency far more than any other president has had such power. And in fact, that ruling really took out one of the key pillars of the checks and balances in our democracy, making the oath that John Roberts administered to Donald Trump, that he would faithfully execute the law, almost meaningless.

AMY GOODMAN: Lisa Graves, I want to thank you for being with us, director and founder of the policy research group True North Research. Her new book, Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights. She was speaking to us from Superior, Wisconsin.

U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), the Ranking Member of the powerful House Rules Committee, blasted his Republican colleagues for their support of President Donald Trump’s budget bill that will cut $1 trillion from Medicaid, hundreds of billions from Medicare, and greatly reduce the food program known as SNAP—also by hundreds of billions—while giving massive tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans.

As the House began voting on the legislation on Wednesday, giving members just one hour for debate in a rush to meet the President’s July 4 deadline, Rep. McGovern took to the floor.

The Massachusetts Democrat denounced Republicans’ “attack” on SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. “You can live without a lot of things, but you can’t live without food,” he reminded his GOP colleagues.

Speaking to “those Republicans who think that it’s okay to give [billionaire] Jeff Bezos a tax cut, and at the same time, cut food benefits for struggling families,” McGovern declared, “we don’t share the same values.”

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“Unloading billions of dollars in new costs on states, money they do not have, will force them to cut benefits and throw needy people off of SNAP. It is a rotten thing to do,” he added.

“And I believe there’s a special place in hell for people who take food away from veterans, from seniors, from children, from foster youth, and from hungry families. This is sick. This is disgusting.”

He called the rushed floor vote “legislative malpractice.”

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“We are not on a deadline,” he reminded House members. “No looming crisis.”

“We’re here because Donald Trump wants a Fourth of July party to celebrate this garbage bill. He wants fireworks and flags and cameras, not for this country, but for himself. So he says, ‘Close your ears, close your eyes, and vote for this bill.’ Honestly, sounds more like a cult than a Congress to me.”

After listening to a Republican—who was standing next to a big poster of President Donald Trump and fireworks—call for members to support the bill, McGovern declared, “Cult much?”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

The city of Clyde sits about two hours west of Fort Worth on the plains of north Texas. It gets its water from a lake by the same name a few miles away. Starting in 2022, scorching weather caused its levels to drop further and further. Within a year, officials had declared a water conservation emergency and, on August 1 of last year, they raised the warning level again. That meant residents rationing their spigot use even more tightly, especially lawn irrigation. The restrictions weren’t, however, the worst news that day: The city also missed two debt payments.

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist's weekly newsletter here.

Municipal bond defaults of any kind are extraordinarily rare, let alone those linked to a changing climate. But, with about 4,000 residents and an annual budget of under $10 million, Clyde has never had room to absorb surprises. So when poor financial planning collided with the prolonged dry spell, the city found itself stretched beyond its limits.

The drought meant that Clyde sold millions of gallons less water, even as it imported more of it from neighboring Abilene, at about $1,200 per day. Worse, as the ground dried, it cracked, destroying a sewer main and bursting another, quarter-million dollar, hole in the town budget. Within days of Clyde missing its payments, rating agency Standard & Poor’s slashed the city’s bond ratings, which limited its ability to borrow more money. Within weeks, officials had hiked taxes and water rates to help staunch the financial bleeding.

“There’s more to a drought than just the cost of water,” said Rodger Brown, who was mayor at the time and is now interim city manager. “It tanks your credibility.”

Drought, of course, isn’t the only climate-driven disaster hitting places like Clyde. Hurricanes, floods and fires are bankrupting cities across America. After flames ripped through Paradise, California in 2018, the town’s redevelopment agency defaulted on some of its obligations. Naples, Florida resorted to selling $11 million in bond to rebuild its pier after Hurricane Ian in 2022. Earlier this year, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power had a harder time raising money after massive fires swept the city. Kerr County, Texas is in the midst of raising taxes after devastating floods in July.

Each episode underscores how climate shocks once seen as exceptional are now straining local budgets. But drought may be the most insidious of these threats. Compared to other types of disasters, it often hits everyone in a community, affects large areas, and can last months, if not years. There are also fewer defenses and relatively limited government assistance. Experts worry that drought could ultimately prove an enormous risk to the $4 trillion municipal bond market that underwrites everything from roads and schools to the water running through millions of taps.

“I personally think this is a dark horse in the conversation right now,” said Evan Kodra, the head of climate research for the financial data company Intercontinental Exchange, or ICE. “It should be a bigger deal.”

This year alone has seen droughts in at least 43 states, from Vermont to California, affecting 125 million people. And ICE projects that more of the currently outstanding municipal debt will be located in areas prone to drought by 2040 than hurricanes, floods and wildfires combined. The financial effects of prolonged water woes can mount in ways not seen in one-off events, said Jeremy Porter, the chief economist at First Street Foundation, a nonprofit climate research firm.

“Drought is one of those things, if there is an impact, there’s a step-function impact,” he said. “You just don’t have the capacity to cover the risk.”

Also unlike with its headline-grabbing cousins, drought has a much weaker federal safety net when something does go wrong. The Department of Agriculture offers some aid to farmers, but there’s little funding for individuals or municipalities. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, hasn’t issued a drought-related emergency or disaster declaration in the United States since 1993, despite states requesting aid. “There is no adapting to drought,” said Porter. “The federal government is probably not going to come in.”

As the planet warms, the dry conditions that sent Clyde into the financial abyss are only set to become more frequent and more intense. Intercontinental Exchange researchers found that even in a ‘best-case’ climate scenario, drought, heat stress and water stress will place billions of dollars of municipal bonds at risk by 2040. Under a worst-case situation, that number could reach hundreds of billions. While Clyde’s default was relatively tiny, municipal debt is the bedrock of everything from hedge funds to retirement accounts, making a string of such events potentially catastrophic for the economy.

But well before dramatic rolling defaults, the financial pressures of drought will likely alter daily life in many regions. That’s already the reality for one community in Arizona, where the rush for water has turned into a years-long financial and political standoff.

Rio Verde Foothills lies on the outskirts of Scottsdale. Residents there have been trucking water in from its larger neighbor ever since the unincorporated, “wildcat” development was founded in the early 2000s. The arrangement worked well until 2021, when a severe drought gripped the area and Scottsdale decided it could no longer spare the dwindling resource. Cut off residents of Rio Verde scrambled and eventually signed a $12 million contract with the state’s largest private water company, Epcor Utilities, to build a permanent supply line.

Three years later, though, the feud continues. Scottsdale agreed to keep providing water through the end of this year while Epcor Utilities built new infrastructure. But construction is months behind schedule and Scottsdale is sticking to its deadline — leaving the foothills once again facing a cutoff. (Epcor remains confident this won’t happen.)

Even when the new line is connected, Rio Verde Foothills residents could see their water bills double or triple. Hikes like that are going to be a far wider concern across the West than outright disconnection, says Sara Fletcher, an environmental engineer at Stanford University who works on water scarcity issues. “Water prices are going up, and up, and up,” she said. “They are going to go up much faster than inflation for the past decade.”

The irony of drought is that as people conserve water to combat it, there is less money for the utility, whose costs remain relatively fixed. That results in “drought surcharges”, or other fees, for customers. It’s a cycle that was on full display in Clyde.

By August, 2023, the wave of aridity that hit West Texas had stretched for months, and officials in Clyde declared a stage 2 water emergency, which targets a 20 percent decrease in demand. By the following year they raised it to stage 3, or a 30 percent decline — one step below mandatory rationing. The measures worked, but at a cost. “Water sales are one of the main things that a city, almost any city, has,” said Brown. “That’s big for a city’s revenue generation.”

According to Clyde’s financial statements, it sold 7 million gallons less in 2023 than the year prior. It also had to import water from nearby Abilene at a premium of around $3 per thousand gallons. While Brown didn’t know exactly how much Clyde bought, he said it wasn’t as much as in some previous droughts but still significant. The bigger blow came when the parched ground split, shifted, and ruptured a major sewer line. The roughly $250,000 repair bill turned the cracks in the town’s finances into crevasses

“You can’t have people out here without the services. So we had to fix it,” he said. These new liabilities and dwindling income came on top of millions of dollars in debt that Clyde had amassed over the years, despite having kept taxes or utility prices relatively flat. It created what Brown called a “perfect storm.”

On August 1, 2024, the city missed two bond payments — one for $354,325, another for $308,400 — and filed a claim on its bond insurance to cover them. By the end of the year Clyde had failed to meet a total of $1.4 million in liabilities. Standard & Poor’s slashed the ratings of the bonds with missed payments from A- to D, and the city’s creditworthiness to B, moves that will raise future borrowing costs for the city.

So far residents have absorbed the added costs, which has allowed the city to continue to operate. But the spiral from expensive, inaccessible, or nonexistent water could have been much worse. High bills can lead to compromises in daily life, whether that be letting parks wither or skipping showers. Over time, those inconveniences could make a town a less desirable place to live, which, in turn, might result in lower property values, a dwindling tax base, and, consequently, more financial troubles.

“If you don’t have water, if you don’t have a functioning city, there is a vicious cycle dynamic that could come into play,” said Kodra at Intercontinental Exchange. “Once your property tax base is decently lower than it was, then it’s harder to borrow money to dig out of that hole.”

“We haven’t hit the point yet where people can’t get access to water,” said Porter. But there are inklings of that future, especially in the West. In Arizona, for example, water supply requirements for new developments are already beginning to halt some new construction.. According to Fletcher, “the fraction of the population that will face unaffordable water in the future is likely to increase unless we do something major.”

First Street also provided Grist with county-level data showing how the risk of prolonged water scarcity will change over the next 30 years. Of the 10 counties with the largest jump over that timeframe, seven are in Texas and three are in Florida. By 2055, more than 20 counties across the West will have a one in five chance of being in severe drought for at least 11 months out of the year. Over 500 counties could see 6 or more months.According to Fletcher, “the fraction of the population that will face unaffordable water in the future is likely to increase unless we do something major.”

Solutions won’t be easy to come by, and certainly won’t be painless. One logical conclusion might be that municipalities that are at risk of climate-impacts — like Clyde with drought or Tampa Bay with hurricanes — should simply pay more for their debt. In most sectors risk and interest rates traditionally correspond but, according to multiple studies, that’s not the case with municipal bonds.

“Climate poses a systemic credit risk to the municipal industry, of which it has never experienced,” said Thomas Doe, founder of Municipal Market Analytics. “[But] the marketplace is not pricing climate risk into bonds.”

The conundrum arises from the fact that people primarily buy municipal bonds to receive tax-exempt dividends. Demand, therefore, isn’t particularly sensitive to the price of the bond, but rather the risk of default, which remains extremely low. Another major bulwark against climate-pricing has been the federal government, which pumps billions of disaster aid into communities across the country — money that would have otherwise come out of state or municipal budgets.

“Bonds initially dip in price on the news of the event. Then they end up recovering because the federal government essentially rebuilds,” explained Doe. That support is in jeopardy with President Donald Trump’s deep cuts to government spending and that could eventually trickle into the municipal market. In the absence of aid, Doe says, bonds could start being priced in accordance with the risk.

Not all climate-debt, however, is bad.

This fall Norfolk, Virginia is planning to break ground on a $2.6 billion flood protection system, featuring a nearly 9-mile long seawall. The city is responsible for roughly $1 billion of that cost and is expected to issue new debt to help cover it. But Doe says that this type of climate-adaptation debt is generally considered good and should be encouraged, explaining that, “if it’s proactive, credit ratings look favorably.”

While you can’t build a wall against drought, the same principle applies for the admittedly limited tools that are available. Cities could, for instance, spend money making their water system more efficient, or building grey water recycling projects. Green infrastructure can also help keep rain from running off. More drastic steps might involve relocating people, or repurposing especially dry land for other uses, such as clean energy.

Although Clyde isn’t yet at a point where it’s climate-proofing its infrastructure, Lake Clyde is spilling over this year. That has provided the city a respite during which it can financially heal. Brown says the city has repaid its bond insurer, is back on track with debt payments, and is slowly rebuilding its emergency funds. The hope is that higher prices making the city’s recovery possible will mean less pain the next time the water runs low.

“We haven’t dug completely out,” said Brown. “But we’re still digging.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/cities/drought-is-quietly-pushing-american-cities-toward-a-fiscal-cliff/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

The sprawling reconciliation package that House Republicans are rushing through committee would trigger over $500 billion in automatic cuts to Medicare, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate released late Tuesday.

The CBO analysis, requested by Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), came just hours before Republicans convened a dead-of-night House Rules Committee hearing on the budget legislation as they scramble to meet their Memorial Day deadline.

If enacted, the Republican bill would add trillions of dollars to the deficit over the next decade by delivering another round of tax cuts skewed to the rich, partially offset by huge cuts to Medicaid and other programs.

According to the CBO, the bill's addition to the deficit would trigger a process known as sequestration under the Statutory Pay‑As‑You‑Go (PAYGO) Act of 2010, a law long reviled by progressives that requires spending cuts equal to legislation's average deficit impact.

Unless lawmakers offset the deficit impact of the Republican bill or agree to waive the PAYGO requirements—which the GOP measure does not do—the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) "would be required to issue a sequestration order not more than 14 days after the end of the current session of Congress (excluding weekends and holidays) to reduce spending by $230 billion in fiscal year 2026," the CBO said.

"The deficit will explode so badly it will trigger automatic cuts, including over half a trillion dollars from Medicare."

Under PAYGO, automatic Medicare cuts are capped at 4%. The CBO estimates that the Republican legislation would trigger roughly $45 billion in Medicare cuts in 2026 and a total of $490 billion in cuts to the program between 2027 and 2034.

"This Republican budget bill is one of the most expensive—and dangerous—bills Congress has seen in decades," said Boyle, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee. "The nonpartisan CBO makes it clear: The deficit will explode so badly it will trigger automatic cuts, including over half a trillion dollars from Medicare."

"This is what Republicans do—pay for massive tax breaks for billionaires by going after programs families rely on the most: Medicaid, food assistance, and now Medicare," Boyle added. "It's reckless, dishonest, and deeply harmful to the middle class."

Boyle highlighted the CBO's findings during his testimony at the House Rules Committee hearing, which began in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

"This is really the breaking news," Boyle said. "Over the last several months, there's been no discussion of Medicare at all. There has been of Medicaid, but not of Medicare."

"Because of the size of the deficits, because of the PAYGO or Pay-As-You-Go Act, that would trigger sequestration of Medicare, and it would total over $500 billion," Boyle continued. "The official figure that CBO confirms is $535 billion in cuts to Medicare."

Boyle and other Democrats said the looming Medicare cuts amount to a betrayal of President Donald Trump's vow to shield the program—a promise that was included in the GOP's 2024 election platform.

"They're not just cutting Medicaid," said Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.), referring to the reconciliation bill's roughly $600 billion in proposed cuts to the healthcare program for low-income Americans. "They're cutting Medicare too."

House Budget Committee Democrats wrote on social media that "Trump promised to protect Medicare."

"He lied," they added.

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