Once the United States has imposed tariffs on its major trading partners it could engage in bilateral talks with countries on new trade arrangements, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Sunday.
"We're going to reset the baseline, and then we can enter into these bilateral agreements, potentially with countries, so that our trade is fair," Rubio said in an interview on the CBS show "Face the Nation."
U.S. strikes on Yemen will continue until the Houthis no longer have the capability to attack global shipping and the U.S. Navy, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the CBS News "Face the Nation" program on Sunday.
The NAACP is rallying around a Virginia high school track star at the center of a viral-video controversy and on the receiving end of criminal charges after she smashed a competitor in the head with a baton in the middle of a state-championship 4x200-meter relay race.
In videos that most observers find damning, Alaila Everett, a senior at I.C. Norcom High School in Portsmouth, is seen swinging her baton into the back of the head of Kaelen Tucker, a junior at Brookville High School. Reeling from the pain, Tucker grabs her head and staggers to the ground alongside the track at Liberty University in Lynchburg. Everett proceeds to awkwardly flail her baton-arm. An attorney and former multi-sport, standout athlete who reviewed the footage for ZeroHedge said Everett's follow-on motions look like theatrics meant to portray the head-blow as an accident, rather than an attack springing from a loss of impulse control as Tucker overtook her.
This is literally is crazy. A high school track runner was attacked with a baton during a relay race, leaving her with a concussion and a possible skull fracture.
— Mean Mug (@meanmuglife) March 10, 2025
No apology from the runner or the coach. How is this not being treated like assault? pic.twitter.com/Hka2FUgOS0
Everett and her squad were immediately disqualified from the championship competition, while Tucker was diagnosed with a concussion and possible skull fracture. In TV interviews after the incident, Everett admitted the act "looked purposeful," but said the hammer-blow to Tucker's head was an accident caused by the baton catching on Tucker's clothing, which supposedly caused Everett to lose her balance. "I know my intentions, and I would never hit somebody on purpose." Not satisfied to merely proclaim herself innocent, Everett also cast herself as a victim: "Everybody has feelings. So, you're physically hurt, but you're not thinking of my mental, right?"
Track star Alaila Everett has been charged with assault & battery following baton Incident after seen crying & saying it wasn’t intentional. 😳⛓️💥
— Rain Drops Media (@Raindropsmedia1) March 12, 2025
The family claim she never apologized & tried to get sympathy for herself so they pressed charges. pic.twitter.com/B556sGnz7l
Runner who hit another girl with a baton says it's all a "misunderstanding" due to the camera angle.
— TaraBull (@TaraBull808) March 10, 2025
The victim suffered a concussion and potential skull fracture and said she was bumped before the strike.
Does it look like an accident? pic.twitter.com/9qSJht6ZLZ
Feelings are one thing; facts are another -- and this video from second angle appeared to conclusively torpedo Everett's claim of innocence:
This chick intentionally attacked her opponent with a baton and is now crying victim.
— Cabot Phillips (@cabot_phillips) March 14, 2025
And of course, the NAACP says racism is the reason she’s being blamed for her actions. pic.twitter.com/ONDsaBsf4B https://t.co/evGyOsGCoR
Speaking of feelings, Tucker and her mother say neither Everett nor Everett's coaching staff made any effort to check on her well-being or reach out afterwards. Asked what she would like to communicate to Everett, Tucker said, "Why did you do it, and why haven't you apologized yet?"
After video of the incident went viral, Portsmouth NAACP issued a statement declaring Everett innocent:
“Alaila is NOT AN ATTACKER and media headlines that allude towards that in any way is shameful. We understand the sensitivity of the circumstances for both athletes and their families involved but this narrative must not go unaddressed."
Contrary to the NAACP's assertion, most observers concluded Everett was indeed an "attacker" -- including Lynchburg Commonwealth prosecutors, who filed a misdemeanor charge of assault and battery against her on Wednesday. The next day, Everett held a small rally outside her high school in Portsmouth, which is across the Elizabeth River from Norfolk. Crying again, she reiterated her increasingly-rejected claim of innocence and victimhood. "There’s nobody else who wanted to hear my story except for people that know me and people that know I would never do anything like that."
NEW: The Virginia runner who bashed the head of an opponent with a metal baton holds a rally after getting charged with assault.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) March 14, 2025
Odd.
Alaila Everett started sobbing while holding a rally outside of her high school in Virginia.
Portsmouth NAACP is now *defending* Everett and… pic.twitter.com/kTysxJioku
“It bothered me to my heart to see how the whole world was dragging this young lady, dragging her character based on what they thought they saw," local "community activist" Germain Green Green told the gathering. "I just wanted to step up, speak out, and bring unity and let this young lady know that the city of Portsmouth has her back.”
After meeting with prosecutors, Portsmouth NAACP's James Boyd told WAVY that "the criminal justice system should not be used in this situation, and for charges of assault and battery to be levied against her, you have to prove her intent and maliciousness, and those things are not present here.”
Having seen all the angles, who are you going to believe -- Everett and the NAACP or your lying eyes?
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/naacp-backs-high-school-runner-who-bashed-competitor-head-baton
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced Friday it has revoked the visa of one Columbia University student and arrested another person involved in the pro-Palestinian protests, escalating its crackdown on those engaged in demonstrations over the conflict in Gaza.
The stripping of the visa comes just days after the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a former grad student at the university, by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Khalil has a green card, which can only be revoked by an immigration judge.
But Ranjani Srinivasan, a citizen of India and doctoral student in urban planning at Columbia University, had her F-1 student visa revoked on March 5, according to DHS.
The federal agency said Srinivasan “was involved in activities supporting Hamas, a terrorist organization,” sharing a video of her passing through airport security.
Columbia said it would not comment on individual students.
Another protester, Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian from the West Bank, was arrested by ICE for allegedly overstaying her F-1 student visa.
Kordia’s visa was terminated in January 2022 for lack of attendance, and she was arrested in April 2024 over her involvement in the pro-Palestinian protests on campus.
“Columbia has no record of this individual being registered as a current or former student at the University,” a university spokesperson said.
An official with the university said there is no record that Kordia was arrested on campus or involved in campus activities. The university believes she was arrested outside the school on public streets.
DHS did not give specifics about the alleged activities of either student.
In announcing Srinivasan’s departure, DHS promoted its new app, the CBP Home App, adding that the Srinivasan used the app’s new “self-deport” feature by uploading her travel plans and indicating her intent to leave the country.
“It is a privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the United States of America. When you advocate for violence and terrorism that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement.
The Trump administration has been under fire by free speech experts for releasing few details about the foreign students it has targeted and potentially conflating their First Amendment right to protest with illegal actions such as giving a terrorist group monetary resources.
F-1 student visa holders only have 15 days to leave the country after the visas are revoked.
Student visas can be revoked for multiple reasons, including criminal concerns, prolonged absence from school, giving incorrect information or changing schools without permission.
The announcement shows an expansion of activity since ICE arrested Khalil, a lead negotiator during the Columbia pro-Palestinian encampment last spring.
Immigration and civil rights advocates have blasted the move, calling it an abuse of federal immigration authorities to target free speech.
Khalil’s attorneys have sued to get his case moved to New York after ICE took him more than 1,000 miles away from his home to be held in Louisiana.
His lawyers noted Khalil has yet to be charged with a crime, and it is still unclear what activities the federal government targeted him over.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression has sent a letter to the Trump administration demanding to know the reason for the arrest.
Federal officials, including President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, said Khalil’s detention was only the beginning of targeting foreign students who participated in the encampments.
“We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again,” Trump said. “If you support terrorism, including the slaughtering of innocent men, women, and children, your presence is contrary to our national and foreign policy interests, and you are not welcome here. We expect every one of America’s Colleges and Universities to comply.”
The DHS announcement comes a day after its agents searched two Columbia dorm rooms, with the university saying the agents obtained two judicial warrants but gave no information about why the search was conducted or who was the target.
by J. Peder Zane via RealClearPolitics,
Even in their darkest nights, politicians trust that their steady savior will once more ride to their rescue – their fiercest opponents. That’s why Democrats, as lost and bereft as they may be, are not engaging in soul-searching following their crushing defeat in November but instead banking on Donald Trump’s missteps to reverse their fortunes. We’re just one more trade war from relevance.
Hoping the other guy fails may be a time-honored strategy embraced by both parties, but it is no way to govern. That helps explain our country’s fiscal mess.
The reasons Democrats lost to a man they cast as an unhinged threat to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are legion. President Biden was old and weak in a world that demands strength – especially the power to stand up to radical elements of his party that pushed unpopular policies.
But the knottier problem Democrats must address – and which Republicans should now be wary of as they hold the reins of power – is the towering belief in their own goodness, which robbed them of their moral compass, leading to corruption and deceit.
In fairness, this is not a partisan kink but a human foible. Most every person and institution makes themselves the hero of their own story. We instinctively explain away, justify, and forgive even our most abject shortcomings. We seek to elevate ourselves by exposing the speck in our brother’s eye so we can ignore the log in our own. Even as we abhor this all-too-human behavior in others, it is a near universal survival strategy that allows us to feel good about our fallible selves.
Democrats, however, turned this mindset into a giant chalice of Kool-Aid when Trump emerged on the scene in 2015. As they described their opponent in apocalyptic terms, they truly came to see themselves as the embodiment of all that was right and good – the sole champions of truth and justice, democracy and the rule of law, women and children and non-GMO apple pie. Once you know you are on the right side of history, anything is permitted because the ends always seem to justify the means.
This belief drove the Democrats’ staggering deceit. Saddled with a senescent but compliant president, these self-proclaimed defenders of the Constitution lied about Biden’s decline while advancing a vigorous program of change. The identities of those who were actually running the government during the last four years is one of the great mysteries of our time – a high-stakes whodunit that only deepened with the revelation that it was not Biden himself but a mechanical marker that signed many of the presidential orders that aimed to transform America. Autopen-gate raises the troubling question: Did Biden even know what he wasn’t signing?
Perhaps CNN’s Jake Tapper will reveal all in his forthcoming book, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, It’s Cover-Up and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.” But that seems unlikely given how complicit he and his legacy media colleagues were in dismissing the president’s obvious decline. If they had their way, Biden would be embarking now on his second term.
It seems much more likely that Tapper et al. will embrace the narrative offered by the New York Times in its stab at damage control – that a tight-knit group of Biden’s “family and inner circle” engineered a massive cover-up. This is quite a stretch. An overwhelming majority of Americans – a majority of rank-and-file Democratic voters – doubted that Biden was all there. His failings weren’t covered up; they were brazenly denied. The turn of mind that justified this deception is also why Democrats and their media allies continued to insist against all evidence that Trump had defended the neo-Nazis who marched at Charlottesville and had instructed Americans to inject bleach to thwart COVID. History, of course, is littered with such people, who convince themselves that lies are tools of the truth.
This belief led progressives to embrace Orwellian actions that directly contradicted their self-proclaimed values – weaponizing the justice system to defend the rule of law and seeking to censor free speech in the name of open and honest debate. Even as they cast Trump as a kleptocrat who saw high office as a tool for personal enrichment, they dismissed and downplayed the Biden family’s extensive corruption.
In the final days of the 2020 election, future Secretary of State Antony Blinken corralled 51 former intelligence officials to sign a letter falsely suggesting that Hunter Biden’s notorious laptop – filled with emails and other documents showing how he sold access to his father’s foreign entities – was, as Joe Biden put it, “a Russian plan.”
After these pay-for-play schemes dried up, Hunter turned his hand to art. It all seemed fishy, as the first son commanded high prices, which were mostly paid by Democrat donors and a Biden appointee. The legacy media had no interest in probing whether this was yet another scheme to funnel money to the sitting president’s family – evidence of such malfeasance would do nothing but hurt the cause. Hunter appears to have answered in a court filing earlier this month, reporting that “In the 2 to 3 years prior to December 2023, I sold 27 pieces for art at an average price of $54,481.48, but since then I have only sold 1 piece of art for $36,000.”
We are now learning that this hallowed corruption extended to policies concerning the poster child for progressive virtue, climate change. As James Varney reported for RealClearInvestigations, much of the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund created in 2022 as part of the Inflation Reduction Act has been awarded to groups with minor track records but major ties to the Democrat party. Citing just one of the many examples. Varney unearthed a group called Power Forward Communities that was awarded $2 billion just one month after gaining nonprofit status from the IRS. Its CEO, Tim Mayopoulos, led Fannie Mae during the Obama administration. The fund engaged in so many other questionable practices that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin moved this week to terminate the program.
The Biden administration did not invent hypocrisy, cronyism, and greed. But its corruption and deceit stand out because of the Democrats’ decision to cast themselves as the guardians of morality in an epic political battle between good and evil. This out-of-touch self-regard drove them to ignore ethical guardrails and advance deeply unpopular policies. If we are god, then everything is permitted.
Now that it can wield the cudgels of power, the Trump administration should learn from its opponents’ hubris. As it seeks to expose and punish the excesses of the last administration, it should remember Nietzsche’s timeless warning, “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”
Otherwise, they will end up rescuing their foes.
J. Peder Zane is a RealClearInvestigations editor and columnist. He previously worked as a book review editor and book columnist for the News & Observer (Raleigh), where his writing won several national honors. Zane has also worked at the New York Times and taught writing at Duke University and Saint Augustine’s University.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/democrats-path-out-wilderness
What did you think of Donald Trump’s speech at the Department of Justice on Friday? It was one of those speeches that divides the world. I liked it. But even while watching it, I asked myself, “Gosh. What is The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, the Associated Press, etc., going to make of this?”
Actually, I did not ask myself that because I knew they would explode in horrified rage. The Times, for example, carried a trembling story under the headline “Trump’s Grievance-Filled Speech Makes Clear His Quest for Vengeance Is Personal.” In case that wasn’t clear enough, a subhead explained that “The sole offense of those President Trump singled out in remarks at the Justice Department appeared to have been trying to hold him accountable for his actions.” Oh really?
Just to show how dispassionate the Times is about Donald Trump, we learn from his byline that Alan Feuer, the reporter who wrote this cri de coeur, “covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.”
Extremism, eh? Political violence, you say? According to Feuer, Trump’s address was “a grievance-filled attack on the very people who have worked in the building and others like them. As he singled out some targets of his rage, he appeared to offer his own vision of justice in America, one defined by personal vengeance rather than by institutional principles.”
Perhaps Alan Feuer had tapped into a different address. The one I saw was plenty plainspoken. Trump identified some of the bad actors, from Joe Biden and Merrick Garland on down, that had done so much to corrupt the Department of Justice over the last four years. He also mentioned James Comey, the disgraced former director of the FBI who was instrumental in propagating the Russia collusion hoax and destroying the career of Gen. Mike Flynn. He did not mention, but might have, former FBI agents like Peter Strzok, once deputy assistant FBI director. It was Strzok who, during the Trump 2016 presidential campaign, assured his paramour Lisa Page not to worry about Trump’s winning that election. Quoth Page: “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” “No,” replied Strzok. “No, he won’t. We’ll stop it.”
Somehow, Alan Feuer never got around to figures like Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe, or the FBI agent who actually altered an email to say that Carter Page was not a CIA asset when in fact he was, thus getting the ball rolling on “Crossfire Hurricane,” the FBI’s clandestine investigation of the first candidate and then President Trump.
In fact, the FBI was part of the biggest political scandal in the history of the United States: the effort by highly placed—exactly how highly placed we still do not know—members of one administration to mobilize the intelligence services and police power of the state to spy upon and destroy first the candidacy and then, when that didn’t work, the administration of a political rival.
Reporters like Alan Feuer, and his counterparts elsewhere in the wards of anti-Trump hysteria don’t like it when Trump calls bad people “bad people,” but that is just too bad. Feuer says that the “sole offense” of those Trump singled out was trying to hold Trump accountable. In fact, Trump’s real tort was having had the temerity to be elected in the first place. It was that outrage that provided the only predicate for the weaponization of the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the intelligence agencies.
Trump’s speech at the DOJ was full of praise for Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and other newly ascendant members of the DOJ team. He outlined some of the major challenges law enforcement faced, beginning with the border crisis and the scourge of fentanyl. But his main point was that a two-tier system of justice is no system of justice. On the contrary, it is a travesty of justice. The mouthpieces of Leviathan had their collective knickers in a twist because Trump was brazen enough to call out the perversion of the DOJ under Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, and Christopher Wray. Joe Biden’s attempt on his way out of office to pardon so many bad actors looks like it might backfire. Why? For a couple of reasons. One, he wasn’t really issuing pardons. Rather, he issued a sort of plenary indulgence for any crimes that they may have committed (not quite a “pardon,” since in many cases there was no charge of which they might be pardoned).
Then, too, it turns out that those get-out-of-jail-free cards might not have been signed by good ’ole Scranton Joe but by an autopen when Joe was physically (or perhaps only mentally) absent. Is that constitutional? This thoughtful law article suggests that the answer may well be “no.” The matter of the Constitution’s signature requirements (Article I, § 7, clause 2) is something that President Trump might want to have his Department of Justice look into with respect to that promiscuous sea of indulgences with which Joe Biden left office.
In any event, while the regime media is full of fletus et stridor dentium while it wanders around in outer darkness, Donald Trump was clear about the fact that his Department of Justice was going to be very different from the stasi-like operation of the previous administration. “We will expel the rogue actors and corrupt forces from our government,” Trump said.Report Ad
We will expose and very much expose their egregious crimes and severe misconduct, of which was levels never seen before.
It’s going to be legendary. It will also be legendary for those who seek justice. We will restore the scales of justice in America, and we will ensure that such abuses never happen again in our country.
No wonder they are worried. The jig is up.
Roger Kimball is editor and publisher of The New Criterion and the president and publisher of Encounter Books. He is the author and editor of many books, including The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia (St. Augustine's Press), The Rape of the Masters (Encounter), Lives of the Mind: The Use and Abuse of Intelligence from Hegel to Wodehouse (Ivan R. Dee), and Art's Prospect: The Challenge of Tradition in an Age of Celebrity (Ivan R. Dee). Most recently, he edited and contributed to Where Next? Western Civilization at the Crossroads (Encounter) and contributed to Against the Great Reset: Eighteen Theses Contra the New World Order (Bombardier).
The passage of the continuing resolution to keep the government open was a remarkable example of the revolutionary movement through which we are living.
Traditionally, a continuing resolution requires a bipartisan agreement to get through the Senate.
Republican leaders meet with Democratic leaders to discuss it. And the continuing resolution becomes far more expensive – and gains a lot more ideological language.
After the 2024 election, many supposed experts said that President Donald Trump would have a hard time getting legislation through the extraordinarily narrow House Republican majority – or past the Senate’s 60-vote threshold.
The House Republicans have been in turmoil for a decade. Speaker John Boehner retired early in October 2015. His successor, Speaker Paul Ryan announced he would not run again in the middle of 2018. There was a 40-seat defeat in that mid-term election. Then Speaker Kevin McCarthy worked for four years to regrow a Republican majority, but a small, embittered faction simply made his speakership unsustainable. It took 15 ballots for McCarthy to win the Speakership. Then, he was forced out by the same embittered dissidents on Oct. 3, 2023.
Chuck Schumer, left, John Thune, right (Reuters)
Finally, Speaker Mike Johnson emerged as the consensus candidate for Speaker after three high-profile members failed to win 218 votes. Since Johnson had not been in leadership, it represented an enormous jump in responsibility. This led many to believe he would not be able to control the office, which had ultimately forced out Boehner, Ryan, and McCarthy.
Speaker Johnson has turned out to be far more successful – and a lot more strategic – than anyone expected. He also decided early that he could only be effective as President Trump’s ally.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune was a House veteran who has served 20 years in the Senate. At 64, he is a generation younger than former Leader Mitch McConnell. Thune has proven to be a good partner for President Trump and Speaker Johnson. The three have worked hard to get on the same page and to work together to get things done.
If you had told any so-called expert on Jan. 20 that Republicans could get a seven-month continuing resolution to keep the government open for the rest of the fiscal year through the House with only Republican votes, he or she probably would not have believed you. If you had then told them the bill would be difficult for Senate Democrats to undermine, they would have thought you were dreaming. Finally, if you told them that Speaker Johnson, President Trump, and Majority Leader Thune would out-maneuver the Democrats and give them no choice but to pass the continuing resolution or close the government, the experts would have dismissed you out of hand.
U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson shakes hands with President Donald Trump. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Yet, with help from Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, President Trump executed what would have been called in chess a fork.
A fork is a setting where your opponent has two chess pieces at risk. Both cannot be saved. The only choice is which one to sacrifice.
The continuing resolution coming out of the House was entirely Republican. It cut spending. It shifted spending from domestic policies Republicans opposed to into immigration enforcement and defense. More importantly, it rewrote current law to give President Trump and Elon Musk greater flexibility to cut spending and waste.
The Democrats were furious that they were being cut out of the process. They were desperate to defeat the Republican effort, so they could then offer to work with them and develop a much more liberal and anti-change bill.
When the Democrats failed to stop Speaker Johnson, they had only two choices. Both were painful.
They could all vote no. If the Senate Democrats did this, the Republicans would not be able to get past the filibuster, and so the government would shut down. In this case, standing up to President Trump might have been a political victory for their base. But it wouldn’t play well with the rest of the country.
Then the Democrats realized President Trump could cut more programs and reshape the bureaucracy even more under a shutdown scenario than he could if they passed the bill, which they thought already granted him too much power.
So, the choice for the Democrats became to pass a bill that gave President Trump more authority to cut government – or stop the bill and give him even more authority.
President Trump, Speaker Johnson, and Majority Leader Thune played this round brilliantly and won a huge victory.
They also proved that they could pass tax cuts, deregulation, and the other priorities on which President Trump and the Republicans campaigned on in 2024.
This was a big victory with huge implications for the future.
