Top officials in the West Wing — including President Trump and Steve Bannon — will closely monitor Tuesday's special election in Georgia's 6th congressional district. (The vote is to replace Tom Price, the new Health and Human Services Secretary.)
Why Trump cares: Whether he likes it or not, the media will portray this election as an early verdict on his presidency. The year's first special election, in Kansas' usually reliable deep-red 4th district, was way closer than it should've been. A loss in Georgia would further weaken Trump and make his legislative agenda — which relies on him holding his popularity like a knife over recalcitrant Republicans — a fair bit tougher.
Trump just signed his "Buy American, Hire American" Executive Order in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after visiting Snap-On Tools. What it means:
Buy American:This will call on the government to prioritize buying American-made products and minimize waivers and exceptions to Buy American laws. Starting today the number of waivers awarded will shrink, according to a briefing from two senior administration officials.
Hire American:H-1B visas are currently doled out in a lottery system, but this order calls for a change to a merit system so that companies don't bypass American workers for cheaper labor from guest workers. The administration can't lower the number of visas awarded — for now.
On the trip with him to Wisconsin: Steve Bannon, Keith Schiller, Kellyanne Conway, Stephen Miller, Sarah Sanders, and Kenosha native Reince Priebus.
Billionaire Trump nemesis Mark Cuban told Fox Business Network's Charlie Gasparino today that he believes the growing influence of Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, and Steve Mnuchin in the White House at the expense of chief strategist Steve Bannon's nationalist wing is the work of Trump's chief economic advisor Gary Cohn, saying:
[Cohn is leading] a Democratic invasion of the White House.
Trump is signing his "Buy American, Hire American" Executive Order today in Wisconsin. Last night we wrote an explainer on "Hire American." Here's a primer on the "buy" side:
Fewer waivers: The order will call on the government to focus on buying American-made goods, and reduce the number of waivers the government uses to legitimize purchases from other countries.
The legal grounds: That's all in accordance with The Buy American Act of 1933 (BAA). It's a Depression-era law intended to reduce foreign competition and to create jobs for Americans.
It doesn't ban foreign purchases: It just makes buying American goods the preference, except for when the cost of domestic goods is prohibitive or not available given the amount desired. Plus, if trade agreements with other countries cover foreign procurements, government agencies can get waivers to make those purchases lawful.
As President Trump publicly declared last week that he was "sending an armada" to the Sea of Japan in an attempt to send a message to North Korea, the carrier group was actually sailing thousands of miles in the other direction to war game with the Australian Navy, per the NYT, which reported that the mixup was due to "a glitch-ridden sequence of events."
Reversing course: The carrier group is on its way now and will arrive near the Korean Peninsula next week.
President Trump will sign an executive order Tuesday directing federal agencies to implement the "Buy American, Hire American" mentality of his campaign.
The contradiction: Trump has been receiving a lot of criticism for his impending order, as many argue it's not a policy his own businesses have followed.
How the media called out Trump's hypocrisy:
The New Yorker: "The Foreign Workers of Mar-a-Lago."Newsweek: "America First? Trump Businesses Keep Hiring Foreign Workers."Teen Vogue: Ivanka Trump's Clothing is Made in China, Indonesia, and Vietnam."CNN Money: "Trump's vineyard is hiring — foreign workers."CNN Politics: "Donald Trump sought cheap labor overseas for clothing lines."Daily Beast: "A Visa Ban — But Not For Trump's Foreign Workers."New York Daily News: "Donald Trump's Florida clubs are hiring — but the jobs will go to foreign workers."
The Chicago murder and crime rates are predicted to have decreased in 2017, per a new report from NYU's Brennan Center for Justice. Chicago's murder rate is expected to drop by 2.4 percent and its the crime rate by 3.4 percent.
Previously, Donald Trump mentioned spiking violent crime rates throughout his campaign and presidency, stating the murder rate is "the highest it's been in 47 years" and that he'd "send in the Feds" to Chicago.
The facts:
Trump's assertion about the murder rate isn't true — there's been a steady decrease since 1991. On April 18, the Brennan Center for Justice released an analysis of crime trends in the United States over the last 25 years, stating that "crime rates have dropped dramatically and remain near historic lows despite localized increases in some places."
The Brennan Center called Trump's claim of a historic yearly murder rate increase "highly concentrated" due to a murder rate jump in just three cities — Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington — with the caveat that murders are at such a historic low that "modest increases in the murder rate may appear large in percentage terms."
Why it matters:
The murder rate has jumped in certain cities, though certainly not to the exaggerated levels presented by Trump — and the Brennan Center's analysis shows how some stats can be cherrypicked to present an incorrect view of the nation as a whole.
Senator Elizabeth Warren told TODAY's Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie that she does not intend to run for president, but she does intend to run for reelection in Massachusetts.
When Lauer pressed about a potential POTUS campaign, stating that "a lot of people are already printing those bumper stickers that say 'she was warned, she was given an explanation, nevertheless she persisted.'" Warren simply gave him a tight-lipped smile in return.
Trump will sign an executive order, "Buy American, Hire American," Tuesday in Kenosha, Wisconsin, according to two senior administration officials who briefed reporters Monday. Here's what's in the order:
The order will call on the U.S. Trade Representative and the Commerce Department to maximize content made in America and "minimize waivers and exceptions to Buy American laws" in trade with other countries.
An overhaul of the H-1B high-skilled worker visa program, calling to move away from the current lottery system to a merit-based system that prioritizes higher-paying jobs.
The Trump's held the annual Easter Egg Roll this morning, telling the kids:
"We will be stronger and bigger and better as a nation than ever before. We're right on track. You see what's happening and we're right on track," he added, "I've seen those kids, and they're highly, highly competitive."
Social moments:
1. Melania giving Trump a nudge when he forgot to put his hand over his heart during the national anthem.
President Trump made a strategic miscalculation by telling China's President Xi that he'll get a better trade deal if he helps out on North Korea, says Richard McGregor, an authority on Chinese internal politics. (McGregor wrote the seminal book "The Party," which Trump has reportedly said is his favorite on China.)
McGregor told Axios:
"For Trump to have a modicum of credibility, he couldn't trade off advances on North Korea against the concerns of the people who put him in the White House in the first place... The Chinese often talk about win-win outcomes, which, the cynics joke, means the Chinese win twice. By linking trade and North Korea, Trump is only making that outcome more likely."
During the darkest days of the campaign, when Trump trailed Hillary Clinton by wide margins in just about every poll, Trump's campaign staff searched hard for some good news to print out and place on their boss's desk.
One trusty source of good news: the Rasmussen Reports polls, which historically tilt Republican.
Today, the President, who's been concerned about his approval ratings, retweeted a rare burst of good news — "Trump approval hits 50%." The source of this information will be no surprise to Trump's campaign staff.
The shift from reasonable Trump to dangerous Trump is well underway in the Russian media, as demonstrated nicely by this pair of comments from Russian journalist Dmitry Kiselev, who heads the Kremlin-backed Rossiya Segodnya (which isn't the same thing as RT):
September 2016: "Trump's leading in the race. His ability to state things as they are, and his intention to end the recent extreme Russian-American tensions — all this puts him in a very risky situation. Now they may just kill him."
April 2017: "The world is a hair's breadth from nuclear war... War can break out as a result of confrontation between two personalities; Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un. Both are dangerous, but who is more dangerous? Trump is."
Why it matters: This is a good, albeit imperfect, way to see what Putin is thinking. As a Kremlin spokesman said of Kiselev, "His position is close, but not every time."
Kellyanne Conway has called on Hillary Clinton and other leading Democrats to repudiate the sporadic violence at recent anti-Trump protests.
Speaking from the South Lawn of the White House ahead of the Easter Egg Roll, Conway told Fox and Friends that Clinton, Tom Perez and Bernie Sanders should stop trying to make Trump's victory "go away" and instead "move forward and help us negotiate."
Our thought bubble: Conway's call echoes what Dems demanded of Trump during the campaign. But she bemoaned the fact that Trump's rivals keep bringing up the election, while in the same breath noting that Trump beat Clinton "handily" — and after Trump himself boasted about his margin of victory in a tweet. It seems no one is ready to move on.
North Korea is quickly becoming President Trump's biggest challenge, but it long predates the new administration. Below is a timeline of how the U.S. and its allies have tried to push North Korea away from building a nuclear arsenal.
Fromthe heart of Trump country, Craig Gilbert writes in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "Trump's election did more than change the expectations of Republicans and Democrats about the economy's future performance. It altered their assessments of the economy's actual performance."
The numbers: "When GOP voters in Wisconsin were asked last October whether the economy had gotten better or worse 'over the past year,' they said 'worse' — by a margin of 28 points. But when they were asked the very same question last month, they said 'better' — by a margin of 54 points. That's a net swing of 82 percentage points between late October 2016 and mid-March 2017."
What it means: "What changed so radically in those four and a half months? The economy didn't. But the political landscape did."
After a reprieve over the weekend with the bellyflop of the North Korean missile test, experts warn that tensions with the U.S. will "remain dangerously high for the indefinite future."
Why it matters: Just 12 days from Trump's 100-day mark, his biggest test (including of his vow to both talk and act tough) is unfolding in real time — with massive global consequences.
Mike Pence has toured Camp Bonifas, a military base near the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, just a day after North Korea's failed missile launch and amid heightened tensions between Pyongyang and Washington.
Pence quotes: "North Korea would do well not to test [Trump's] resolve ... all options are on the table ... the era of strategic patience is over."
Why it matters: The Trump administration is trying to send a signal that they stand with South Korea and are prepared to confront the threat from the North. Pence called the failed launch a "provocation" after arriving for the first leg of his 10-day Asia trip.
