Elon Musk and President Trump in happier times -- last Friday, Musk's last day as DOGE chief (White House photo).
•Contributing Pundit Jerry Lanson writes about ICE’s “menacing” immigrant arrests in the left column, as Pundit-at-Large Stephan Macaulay reconsiders Bidenomics in the right column.
•Whether you are pro-Trump or anti-Trump, we welcome your reaction to these commentaries. Email editors@thehustings.news and please indicate your political leanings in the subject line.
Can Musk Kill Bill? – World’s Richest Lifeform/ex-DOGE chief/MAGA Bad Boy Elon Musk has called the House’s Big Beautiful Bill Act an “abomination” on his X-Twitter, NPR’s Morning Edition reports. X-Twitter is decidedly not President Trump’s Truth Social.
Meanwhile, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office scores the bill passed by the House and working its way through the Senate as adding $2.4 trillion to the federal deficit over 10 years.
Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) wants to get the Senate’s version out by the Fourth of July, but all it will take is four of these five; Senate budget hawks Ron Johnson (R-WI), Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rand Paul (R-KY) along with moderates Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Susan Collins (R-ME) to sink BBB Act in the upper chamber.
The Travel Ban 12 – The Trump White House has issued a travel ban for 12 countries, a sort of repeat of the first Trump administration’s first big action. The Banned Dozen are: Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, The Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
It was not immediately known why these 12 were called out, The New York Times reports. And nothing about South Africa, from which at least 49 white Afrikaners have immigrated to the US in recent weeks.
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WEDNESDAY 6/4/25
Steely Plan – While you were sleeping tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum doubled to 50%. This comes hot on the heels of President Trump’s approval and credit-taking last Friday for a deal in which Japan’s Nippon Steel purchased the US’s premier producer, U.S. Steel.
Appearing in Pittsburgh last week, Trump drew cheers from United Steelworkers members when he announced the doubled tariffs.
There is one exemption to the 50% tariffs: The United Kingdom, which has a tentative deal with the Trump administration to exempt steel, cars and other goods from tariffs, though as Marketplace notes the vaguely detailed, tentative deal still could fall apart. Meanwhile, the European Union is already preparing retaliatory tariffs on the US.
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Recission Package Goes to the Hill – The White House has handed over a $9.4 billion recission package of DOGE cuts to Congress to claw back $8.3 billion in foreign aid and $1.1 billion for NPR and PBS already voted into law. Congress can pass the package with a simple majority, though some Republican lawmakers have expressed concerns, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Under a 1974 law, Congress has 45 days to review or overturn spending already approved. Russ Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget has suggested “pocket recissions” could come at the end of the fiscal year, September 30.
Musk, Meanwhile … Recently dearly departed DOGE chief Elon Musk has “thrown a wrench” into Majority Leader John Thune’s (R-SD) plans to get the Big Beautiful Bill Act passed by the House last month through the Senate relatively in-tact by July 4, The Hill reports. Musk, who has returned his attention to Tesla, SpaceX and X-Twitter (beyond posting constantly on it), called the deficit-building bill “pork-filled” and “disgusting.” He already has the backing of Senate budget hawks Ron Johnson (R-WI), Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rand Paul (R-KY).
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Where in the World is Secretary Hegseth? – Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is not in the NATO capital of Brussels, where nearly 50 nations have gathered for what is known as the “Ramstein Format” now in its third year, a group of NATO nations organized to discuss military aid for Ukraine. The Associated Press reports that Hegseth would only arrive in Brussels after the Ramstein Format is done.
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Ukraine Defends Without US
TUESDAY 6/3/25
Another Ukrainian Battlefield Victory -- As talks of new ceasefire talks between Ukraine, Russia and the US continue, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) carried out its third attack since Vladimir Putin’s full-scale war begain in 2022, on the Crimea Bridge used by the Russian military to bring weapons into Ukraine (SBU photo via The Kyiv Independent).
‘Dear Leader: Why I Want This Job’ – The spoils system has returned, with new civil service applicants now required to describe how they would “help advance” President Trump’s policy priorities, Newsweek reports. White House domestic policy chief Vince Haley issued a memorandum May 29 via the Office of Personnel Management that requires job recruits to answer essays on their work ethics, skills and experience, commitment to the Constitution and plans to “advance the President’s Executive Orders and policy priorities,” according to the magazine.
Newsweek reports it has emailed the OPM for comment outside normal working hours.
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Boulder Attacks – Mohamed Sabry Soliman, the Egyptian citizen suspected of throwing Molotov cocktails Sunday in Boulder, Colorado, at marchers protesting in support of Jewish hostages of Hamas in Gaza, has been charged with 16 counts of attempted first degree murder and of a hate crime, NPR reports. Soliman remains in custody with a $10 million bond, The New York Times reports. Authorities have identified four additional victims suffering minor burns in addition to the eight victims identified Sunday including a Holocaust survivor and two people in critical condition.
Authorities say Soliman had been planning the attack for a year and disguised himself as a gardener to avoid suspicion at the rally. He allegedly shouted “free Palestine!” as he was taken into custody – a protest meant to support a Palestinian homeland next to Israel but which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has equated with “heil Hitler” after a suspect in the fatal shooting of Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Milgrim, 26, at a reception by the American Jewish Committee for young diplomats at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., last month also shouted “free Palestine.”
Authorities say Soliman brought 16 additional incendiary devices to the Boulder rally. His immigration status is murky; Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin says Soliman has overstayed a 2022 tourist visa.
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The State of Trumpism
MONDAY 6/2/25
Buried in the Big Beautiful Bill – A provision buried in the House’s Big Beautiful Bill Act budget for the coming fiscal year would give presidents, including the current one obviously, protection against judges from enforcing their orders unless litigants post a bond that could match the amounts at stake in lawsuits. Court orders so far have ruled Trump administration policies as unlawful in 180 cases so far, USA Today reports, and the bill’s provision would remove courts’ ability to enforce the rulings.
Including tariffs … After the US Court of International Trade struck down Trump’s tariffs, the president took to his Truth Social to attack Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society, which have for decades been working to install an über-conservative federal judiciary (the US Court of Appeals has put temporary hold on the trade court’s ruling blocking tariffs). Trump was miffed that Leo gave him “bad advice” on “numerous judicial nominations, according to Politico, including his appointee to the trade court, Judge Timothy Reif, who voted with the two other judges on the panel – one a Reagan appointee and the other an Obama appointee – in blocking his tariffs.
On Truth Social, Trump called Leo, who has been working since at least the 1980s to strike down Roe v. Wade and to make the federal courts friendlier to corporations, a “sleazebag” who “probably hates America.”
“He openly brags about how he controls Judges, and even Justices of the United States Supreme Court – I hope that is not so, and don’t believe it is!”
Leo released this brief statement, according to Politico: “I’m very grateful for President Trump transferring the federal courts, and it was a privilege being involved. There’s more work to be done, for sure, but the Federal Judiciary is better than it’s ever been in modern history, and that will be President Trump’s most important legacy.”
Read … Trump’s SCOTUS picks, not tariffs.
PS, U.S. Steel … Trump used his appearance endorsing the deal by Japan’s Nippon Steel to purchase Pittsburgh’s U.S. Steel to announce he is doubling tariffs on import steel and aluminum to 50%. Now his reversal on the deal makes sense.
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No Ceasefire Deal – Ukraine and Russia ended their second round of peace talks in Istanbul, Turkey, Monday with no ceasefire deal, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced according to The Kyiv Independent, which had noted that there was little chance for a breakthrough after President Trump refused to impose sanctions on Moscow.
Ukraine played its cards … Kyiv precluded this second round of talks much in the same way the Kremlin has – with major attacks on the opposition. Ukraine on Sunday set off a series of attacks inside Russia Sunday. Key was an SBU security service attack on a Russian airbase in which first-person-view drones (FPV) destroyed 41 heavy bombers. The operation was called “Spider Web.”
The SBU started planning the operation a year and a half ago, a source told the Independent, and smuggled the FPVs deep inside Russia, huddled inside cabins placed on trucks.
“The SBU first transported FPV drones to Russia, and later, on the territory of the Russian Federation,” the source said. “At the right moment, the roofs of the cabins were opened remotely, and the drones flew to hit Russian bombers.”
No Spider Web for Trump … President Trump, who had something of a falling out with Russian President/dictator Vladimir Putin over Moscow’s missile/drone attacks on Ukrainian civilians during the last “ceasefire” suggested by the Kremlin, was not informed ahead of time of the SBU’s plans, according to The Hill, citing confirmation of the report by its sister network, NewsNation.
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Trump Win in Polish Election – Trump-backed conservative Karol Nawrocki narrowly beat liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski in Poland’s presidential elections Sunday, with 50.89% to 49.11% of the vote, according to The Associated Press. As president, Nawrocki will have more power than most parliamentary system presidents, Polityka Managing Director Andrzej Bobinski told NPR’s Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition Monday.
President Nawrocki has veto rights and oversees foreign policy and defense and security, Bobinski said. Since 2023, Prime Minister Donald Tusk has led a centrist coalition government working to reverse the illiberal revolution the previous conservative leadership imposed on the country’s press and courts, Bobinski said. Nawrocki will have little opportunity to stop the coalition government’s slow progress, he said, but will be able to help conservatives retake control of the government in future elections.
--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa