Navarro says tariffs would end if Americans ‘stop dying from fentanyl’
Peter Navarro, Trump's senior trade adviser, told Fox Business this morning that the metric for the president to end the now-paused tariffs against Canada and Mexico will be for Americans “to stop dying from fentanyl.”
“It’s important to remind people always when they talk about tariffs, is why; 75,000 Americans are dying every year alone from fentanyl poisoning,” Navarro said. “The people who are dying are prime age workers, so that we’re actually having a severe economic impact.”
Comparing Canada and Mexico with China, Navarro said the difference between them is that China “has a long history ... of simply not doing what it said it was going to do.”
“This is not our first rodeo," Navarro told anchor Maria Bartiromo. "We have to have institutional memory. And you, above all people, should remember the hysteria over the initial China tariffs, and all we had was prosperity and zero inflation. So let’s trust in Trump. Trust in Trump.”
Senate panel advances RFK Jr.’s nomination to be health secretary
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cleared a key hurdle today after a Senate panel voted to advance his nomination to be health and human services secretary to the full chamber.
The vote was 14-13 on party lines.
Cassidy says he will support RFK
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said just before the vote that he would support RFK's nomination. Cassidy, a doctor and chair of the Senate health committee, was considered a pivotal vote.
Cassidy, who grilled Kennedy on vaccines during last week's hearing, previously said he was “struggling” with Kennedy’s nomination.
Crapo says he plans to vote for RFK Jr.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, said in his opening statement that he plans to vote for Kennedy.
"He has spent his career fighting to end America's chronic illness epidemic, and has been a leading advocate for health care transparency, both for patients and for taxpayers," Crapo said.
Crapo added, "Mr. Kennedy has proven his commitment to the role of secretary of the HHS, and I will vote in favor of his nomination. I strongly encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to do the same."
With military housing costs skyrocketing, Democratic senators request Pentagon action
During his 11 years as a Marine, Brenden Taylor and his family have moved several times. But when they left Okinawa, Japan, in 2022 for Camp Pendleton in Southern California, finding an affordable home to rent using his military housing allowance became an almost impossible challenge. Finally, they found something they could afford in Murietta, a 45-minute drive from the base.
Rising rents are a problem for many families. From 2021 to 2023, the median U.S. rent increased 25%, adjusted for inflation, according to research from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. During the same period, renters’ median household incomes rose only 5%, the study found.
Concerned about the price hikes, 15 Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee, led by ranking member Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ruben Gallego of Arizona, want the Defense Department to investigate what’s driving them.
Trump pushes RFK Jr. nomination moments before committee vote
Trump pushed RFK Jr.'s nomination this morning in a post that echoed some of the conspiracy theories that Kennedy has pushed about autism.
"20 years ago, Autism in children was 1 in 10,000. NOW IT’S 1 in 34. WOW! Something’s really wrong. We need BOBBY!!! Thank You! DJT," Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Kennedy has repeatedly linked vaccines to autism despite that theory having been debunked. At his confirmation hearing, he didn't back away from that position or other anti-vaccine comments he has made, prompting concern from Democratic and some Republican senators, including Bill Cassidy, R-La, a doctor and longtime vaccine advocate.
Rubio says El Salvador offers to accept deportees and house U.S. criminals
Secretary of State Marco Rubio says that President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador has offered to accept deportees from the U.S. of any nationality, including violent American criminals now imprisoned in the United States.
Gates talks Trump and Musk 'disruption': 'I want to engage positively to get things back on track'
Billionaire Bill Gates reflected in an interview on NBC's "TODAY" show this morning on his recent meeting with Trump, Elon Musk and Musk's efforts to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Gates, whose foundation works to improve the lives of people in developing countries, said he told Trump at their meeting at Mar-a-Lago before the inauguration, "We both believe in saving lives." Trump seemed "receptive" in the meeting, he said.
"TODAY" co-anchor Savannah Guthrie noted that just a few weeks later, Trump pulled the U.S. out of the World Health Organization, and that Musk is trying to shut down USAID.
Asked if he thinks Trump was placating him, Gates said, "I’m still hopeful. You know, I think all Americans can agree that keeping people alive for very little money. We should be proud of that. It started back with President Bush. There’s some disruption going on now, and I want to engage positively to get things back on track."
Asked about whether he's comfortable with the amount of power Musk has, Gates said he admires the tech billionaire's work in the private sector, but he said in the case of USAID, "He doesn’t appreciate the phenomenal work that goes on. It’s not partisan work."
"It’s nutrition," Gates said as an example. "I give billions of dollars to the same thing that USAID does. I go out in the field and study these things."
Gates said if Musk really understood USAID's activities, he wouldn't be telling its employees not to do that work.
Trump says he will continue funding Ukraine’s war effort — but he wants something rare in return
Trump says he wants access to Ukraine’s bonanza of rare earth and critical minerals in exchange for the billions of dollars in military aid Washington has been supplying to Kyiv.
It’s an idea previously suggested by Republican senators and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who sought to appeal to Trump’s dealmaker persona as a way of keeping alive Washington’s support of Kyiv.
“We’re looking to do a deal with Ukraine where they’re going to secure what we’re giving them with their rare earth and other things,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. “I want security of the rare earth, and they’re willing to do it.”
Musk and DOGE are hacking the government
In the shorthand of the tech industry, Elon Musk has hacked into the government.
The billionaire tech magnate has never been elected to office or been confirmed by the Senate for a high-level government job, but in the span of a few days, Musk has still gained access to sensitive federal data through his position as head of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency project, or DOGE, to push a far-reaching agenda and potentially spark a constitutional crisis.
Musk has embraced Silicon Valley’s most notorious instincts to “move fast and break things” in a lightning battle to muscle into the computer systems and power structures of federal agencies. As he did with his corporate takeover of Twitter in 2022, he has brought in a team to assess details such as office building leases, budget line items, vendor contracts and the performance of individual employees — with the stated intention of radically downsizing the organization.