President Trump put a 90-day pause for tariffs on at least 75 countries that have opened negotiations with the White House. China is not one of them. For China, he raised to tariff to 125%, effective immediately and China responded with an 84% tariff on the U.S.

Additionally, he lowed the reciprocal tariffs to 10% for everyone who is not China.

The stock market rallied on this news. It makes it all the more clear that the tariffs were an opening offer to force countries to make a better deal. This seems to have been his plan all along.

In fact, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessett said exactly that on Wednesday at the White House: “This was his strategy all along.”

Investor and early Facebook founder Chamath Palihapitiya predicts that tariffs are also a tactic to transfer wealth back to the middle class. He calls it an economic NATO but just for the U.S., not for a block of countries.

It will be an important weekend for Iranian diplomacy as President Trump sends an envoy to speak with diplomats from Iran in Oman.

President Trump indicated that Israel could lead the U.S. into military action with Iran but then clarified that no one leads the U.S. into war because we do what we want.

“If it requires military, we’re going to have military,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “Israel will obviously be very much involved in that — it’ll be the leader of that. But nobody leads us. We do what we want to do.”

Then why did Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu send his demands for the talks via a video message? He says that he wants for Iran what happened to Libya.

The U.S. caused regime change in Libya by forcing the country to blow up their own nuclear facilities under U.S. supervision and then using NATO to assassinate former leader Muammar Gaddafi. Libya was prospering before the U.S. got involved. President Trump has criticized Hillary Clinton for leading this charge against Libya. Would he turn around and do it to Iran?

Netanyahu also said that another possibility is that Iran would “drag out the talks, and then there is the military option.” He’s hardly one to talk about dragging out peace talks, having demurred on ceasefire talks with Gaza for 18 months.

According to recent reports, Israel hit another civilian neighborhood in Gaza, killing at least 30 people including 8 children.

The media is crazed about the measles outbreak in Texas after two children died but when you look into the case of the children’s deaths, the real fear is medical incompetence, not the measles. This story is terrifying but measles is the least of it.

The most recent death involved a young girl who had been hospitalized with a blood infection after suffering from tonsillitis complicated by chronic mononucleosis. When she was brought into the hospital, the father asked for inhaled budesonide by nebulizer but the staff treated her as if she was suffering from COVID and treated her with steroids instead. Like the first little girl, the staff missed things that could have been treated with antibiotics and the girls suffered and died. The first death involved a similar tale of missteps including the wrong antibiotic.

These are not scary stories about measles. They’re scary stories about doctors and hospitals and there is a productive way to learn from them but not with media scare tactics about measles vaccines. Did you know that medical error has been shown to be the THIRD leading cause of death in the U.S.!?

There have been measles outbreaks in Europe and Canada too but they don’t have the hysteria and push towards vaccination that has broken out in the U.S. Why do you think that is?

Immigrants to the United States can say what they want about Christians, white people, black people, hispanics. But they cannot have ever said anything that the government considers “antisemitic” or they will have their visas denied.

The Department of Homeland Security admits that it will scan the social media of immigrant applicants and use it as grounds for denying immigration benefit requests.

“This will immediately affect aliens applying for lawful permanent resident status, foreign students and aliens affiliated with educational institutions linked to antisemitic activity,” the government says.

Again…why just this one group? Why can applicants have negative attitudes about all other groups but this one?

This may explain why elite universities say that they have had their students’ visas canceled by the government without explanation.

Ukrainian President Zelensky admitted that Ukraine has been attacking inside Russian borders for the first time. This is something President Biden promised Ukraine would never do but they’ve been doing it all along.

Zelensky also claimed on X that Chinese citizens are “fighting as part of the Russian army.” He posted a video of a man he claims the Ukrainian army captured fighting for Russia.

A few months ago, he claimed that North Korean nationals were also fighting for Russia. Ukraine uses mercenary armies from over 50 countries, including the U.S., Canada, U.K. and France so why would this matter?

Zelensky is clearly desperate to escalate the war with Russia and evade peace. Another peace enjoy is reportedly coming to the U.S. It would be wise to exclude the President of Ukraine from this envoy.

New Justice Department filings against Ryan Routh, the man who tried to shoot President Trump in Florida last year, show that he believed he was communicating with a Ukrainian officials prior to the assassination attempt, trying to get himself a “stinger or RPG” for the attack.

There is no proof that the person was actually from Ukraine but there is also no proof that they were not. Ukraine sells or loses at least half of the weapons that are sent from abroad.

While Zelensky stalls for peace, Russia reports that it will participate in the second round of peace talks with the U.S. on April 10 in Istanbul. Russia also says that it plans to deploy more “several hundred ground-based robots to the Russian military” so…not a moment too soon, eh?