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Democrats will press ahead with Senate tariff vote despite U-turn

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Despite a partial U-turn, Senate Democrats are vowing to move forward and put their GOP colleagues on the record on President Donald Trump’s latest tariffs.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a lead author of a resolution that would overturn the basis for Trump’s global levies announced last week, said in an interview Thursday that Democrats still plan on forcing a vote on the measure. Trump on Wednesday put a 90-day pause on most of the tariffs on Wednesday, though he left in place a lower, 10 percent levy and announced severe retaliatory tariffs on China.

“My colleagues are telling me they want to move ahead,” Wyden said Thursday. “It’s the same trade chaos — I don’t know if you’ve seen the [financial market] numbers, but the only thing going up on the index today is volatility.”

Senate Democrats and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) introduced the resolution earlier this week, and they are expected to force the vote once the Senate returns from a two-week break.

Four Republicans previously joined Democrats in a successful Senate vote to nix Trump’s earlier Canada tariffs. Speaker Mike Johnson moved to block a House vote on that measure and has undertaken a similar move to block a future House vote on the global levies.

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Congress

Khanna on Trump White House: ‘They need to have a 21st century understanding of the economy’

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Rep. Ro Khanna took sharp aim at President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff policies on Sunday, warning they’ll raise prices on American electronics rather than bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States.

“I understand they have 19th century policies of McKinley, but they need to have a 21st century understanding of the economy,” Khanna (D-Calif) said on CBS’ “Face the Nation, referencing the Trump administration’s protectionist trade approach and his admiration for President William McKinley. Critics of Trump’s tariff policy have argued that the lessons of McKinley’s 19th century America are not applicable today.

The California Democrat said the White House’s plan to revive domestic manufacturing is already unraveling, pointing to the Trump administration’s decision to exempt smartphones and computers from his tariff regime after financial markets spiraled into chaos last week over his sweeping global tariffs announcement.

“They were chaotic and they were totally haphazard,” Khanna said. “So you had Howard Lutnick on, saying that we were going to bring manufacturing back, and electronics manufacturing back, to the United States, and they realized suddenly that that wasn’t going to happen.”

“Actually, the iPhone price would go up to 1,700 or 2,000 dollars,” he continued. “And by the way, if that manufacturing moved, it would probably move to Malaysia or Vietnam.”

Khanna, whose district includes Silicon Valley, argued that if the U.S. really wants to compete with China and rebuild advanced manufacturing, it needs investment — not tariffs.

“If you want to bring back the manufacturing to the United States, you have to invest in the workforce, you have to have some investment tax credit for the facilities, and you have to be able to buy the things we make in the United States,” he said.

Khanna’s remarks come ahead of a speech he is expected to give on Monday in Ohio — Vice President JD Vance’s home state — where he plans to cast Vance and Trump as “stubbornly cling[ing] to 19th-century dogma in a 21st-century world” with their approach to foreign and domestic policy. The speech also is part of a broader push led by Khanna to position himself as a counterweight to Vance.

“This is not something the president will be able to spin,” Khanna said. “Either we’re going to see new factories come or we’re not, and tariffs just aren’t going to do that. “

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Democrats go all in on unproven insider trading allegations as they target Trump’s tariffs

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Congressional Democrats are raising increasingly pointed concerns about potential financial malfeasance by President Donald Trump and his allies surrounding his dramatic recent tariff moves, despite a lack of evidence of wrongdoing.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Friday joined the growing number of Democrats formally calling for investigations zeroing in on the wild swings in the stock market amid Trump’s escalating trade war. It’s one of the central messages the party has coalesced around in the 48 hours since Trump partially reversed his implementation of sweeping trade barriers.

Trump on Wednesday morning posted to Truth Social that it was a “GREAT TIME TO BUY” despite the chaos within the financial markets. Hours later, Trump announced he was pausing the most sweeping global tariffs for 90 days, causing a temporary but dramatic stock market rally.

Some Democrats quickly questioned whether there was financial gain to be had amid the market whiplash, though no evidence has emerged of insider trading or other wrongdoing, and top party leaders have now followed suit.

In the latest salvo, Schumer joined Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Schumer in requesting SEC Chair Paul Atkins to launch an investigation into where Trump or those around him “engaged in insider trading, market manipulation, or other securities laws violations.”

“It is unconscionable that as American families are concerned about their financial security during this economic crisis entirely manufactured by the President, insiders may have actively profited from the market volatility and potentially perpetrated financial fraud on the American public,” the senators said in the letter.

The White House accused Democrats of “playing partisan games instead of celebrating President Trump’s decisive action yesterday to finally corner China,” according to a statement from spokesperson Kush Desai provided to media organizations. Trump, he added, was seeking “to reassure the markets and Americans about their economic security in the face of nonstop media fearmongering.”

In a separate letter Friday, Schumer, Schiff, Warren and Wyden sent a letter requesting state attorneys general also launch investigations into any potential violations of state laws, including by members of Congress.

“We do not make this request lightly. No one — not even a president — is above the law. … Any proven misconduct must be prosecuted and punished to the fullest extent permitted by the laws of your states,” they added.

The senators’ actions followed two days of increasingly strident reactions from top House Democrats.

“We need to get to the bottom of the possible stock manipulation unfolding before the American people — including what, if any, advance knowledge members of the House Republican Conference had of Trump’s decision to pause the reckless tariffs he put in place,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Thursday.

As the minority party in both chambers, there aren’t many options available for Democrats to force an investigation —- they don’t hold committee gavels, and they have limited avenues for getting legislation considered.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said she and her colleagues were discussing “several options” including a discharge petition to force a vote on a congressional stock trading ban, though that effort faces an uphill climb after previous attempts to ban congressional stock trading have fizzled out.

The disclosure of lawmakers’ stock trades has presented a perennial ethics issue for members of Congress. Any trades that happened around the tariff-induced market swings must be publicly disclosed through congressional ethics authorities by May 15.

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House Republican sues Capitol Police for $2.5 million over 2021 office search

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A House Republican is suing the federal government for $2.5 million, claiming he was retaliated against by the Capitol Police four years ago for his vocal criticism of the department’s leadership after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack.

Rep. Troy Nehls’ unusual lawsuit, filed in federal court in his home state of Texas, accuses the Capitol Police of improperly entering his office in November 2021 and taking pictures of a whiteboard that had notes related to legislation.

The Capitol Police declined to comment on the lawsuit, but the department has long denied the allegations that leadership targeted Nehls for his criticism. An officer indicated he entered the office during a regular security sweep, according to a department report, because the door was left ajar and took pictures of the notes because he found them concerning.

“If a Member’s office is left open and unsecured, without anyone inside the office, USCP officers are directed to document that and secure the office to ensure nobody can wander in and steal or do anything else nefarious,” Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger said after Nehls first surfaced his allegations in 2022. “The weekend before Thanksgiving, one of our vigilant officers spotted the Congressman’s door was wide open. That Monday, USCP personnel personally followed up with the Congressman’s staff and determined no investigation or further action of any kind was needed.”

But Nehls called the actions part of an attempt to chill his criticism of the department. His lawyer, Terrell Roberts, has represented the family of Ashli Babbitt, a Jan. 6 rioter who was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer as she attempted to enter the lobby near the House chamber.

A spokesperson for Nehls did not immediately return a request for comment.

It’s unclear why Nehls filed the civil claim in Texas rather than Washington, where his office is located and where the alleged breach took place. It’s also unclear why he waited more than three years to file the lawsuit.

The Texas congressman, who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election, was one of a handful of Republicans initially selected by then-GOP leader Kevin McCarthy to serve on the panel investigating the Capitol riot, then withdrawn by McCarthy after then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi vetoed some of his other picks. Nehls continued to criticize the Capitol Police’s handling of the events at the Capitol that day and called for a grand jury investigation of the officer who shot Babbitt.

Nehls’ lawsuit accuses the Capitol Police of violating his First and Fourth Amendment rights, as well as the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause, which protects members of Congress from being questioned by authorities outside the legislative branch. However, the Capitol Police, as Nehls acknowledges, are housed within Congress, so it’s unclear how that clause would be applied.

Nehls’ allegations against the Capitol Police sparked an inspector general investigation that concluded in 2022 and undercut Nehls’ claim of nefarious actions by the department. The inspector general recommended the department update its policies on how to handle open office doors in a way that “strikes the proper balance of protecting congressional representatives and their staff from physical outside threats while simultaneously protecting their legislative proposals and work product from possibly inappropriate photography, scrutiny, and questioning by USCP employees.”

After the report, the Capitol Police swiped at Nehls for “spreading unfounded conspiracy theories” about its officers’ actions.

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