Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD1) has built his brand on conservative orthodoxy: smaller government, lower spending, and hardline health policy. But as Congress wrestles with budget priorities in 2025, Harris has positioned himself not just as a fiscal hawk — but as a political grenade thrower. He’s opposed relief for local taxpayers through a higher SALT deduction cap. He’s championed deep Medicaid cuts that threaten rural hospitals, addiction treatment, and low-income health care. And he’s made clear he’s more concerned with ideological purity than the real-world fallout for the people he represents.

That’s a problem — because Maryland’s 1st Congressional District, which covers the entire Eastern Shore and parts of Harford and Baltimore counties, depends heavily on the very programs Harris is fighting to slash.

Harris vs. His District

Let’s be clear: this isn’t about partisanship. It’s about representation. Harris’s constituents include working-class families, elderly residents, young parents, farmers, and veterans — many of whom rely on Medicaid for health coverage, and many of whom are shouldering high state and local taxes.

When Harris fights to keep the federal SALT deduction cap at $10,000, he’s hurting homeowners in places like Harford and Cecil counties who would benefit from more breathing room on their tax bills. When he demands cuts to Medicaid, he’s undermining the health care lifeline for thousands on the Shore — and directly threatening treatment programs in the middle of a deadly fentanyl epidemic.

Rural Maryland and the Medicaid Lifeline

No part of Maryland benefited more from the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid expansion than the Eastern Shore. In Caroline, Dorchester, Wicomico, and Somerset counties, the uninsured rate dropped dramatically between 2013 and 2015. Tens of thousands of residents gained coverage — most for the first time in their lives.

Today, over 160,000 residents in the Shore region are on Medicaid. They’re not statistics — they’re the nursing aide in Easton caring for seniors, the single mom in Salisbury taking her child to a pediatrician, the retired couple in Cecil County trying to afford prescription meds. Many are also Republicans who voted for Harris.

Yet Harris is pushing for work requirements and tighter eligibility that would strip coverage from those same people. He calls it fighting fraud. In reality, it would mean bureaucratic red tape and medical uncertainty for thousands.

Strained Hospitals and the Opioid/Fentanyl Crisis

The Eastern Shore isn’t just rural — it’s ground zero in Maryland’s opioid crisis. Overdose deaths have surged, fueled by fentanyl’s spread. Local initiatives like “Go Purple” campaigns and school outreach are helping, but treatment centers remain underfunded and overwhelmed.

Medicaid pays for a large portion of addiction treatment in the U.S. Roughly 40% of non-elderly adults with opioid addiction are covered by Medicaid. Harris’s budget priorities — cutting Medicaid while touting border enforcement — ignore the fact that without treatment access, prevention is hollow.

Providers like Chesapeake Health Care have warned they’re already stretched thin. If Harris’s proposed cuts go through, clinics will close. Nurses will leave. And the people who need help the most will slip through the cracks.

A Reality Check: Medicaid Cuts Would Hit Republican Strongholds the Hardest

The numbers make one thing undeniable: the counties most loyal to Harris and former President Trump are the same counties that stand to lose the most if Medicaid is cut.

Across Maryland’s 1st District:

• In Caroline County, 22.7% of the population is on Medicaid. Trump won 67.9% of the vote there in 2024.
• In Somerset County, where 25.7% of residents rely on Medicaid — the highest in the district — Trump still won by a landslide.
• Even in Cecil and Dorchester Counties, with Medicaid enrollment around 18–23%, Trump’s vote share was over 64% and 56%, respectively.

These are not outlier cases — they are the heart of Harris’s base. And yet, his policies would strip benefits from the very people who put their faith in him. These aren’t abstract numbers — they’re the backbone of his district: low-income families, seniors in nursing homes, disabled residents, and children who qualify for CHIP.

Cutting Medicaid in this region isn’t just bad policy — it’s a betrayal of trust.

Middle-Income Families, SALT Deductions, and Tax Burdens

Harris hasn’t just ignored working families’ health needs. He’s also actively fought against letting them keep more of their hard-earned income.

In high-tax states like Maryland, the 2017 SALT deduction cap meant many homeowners could no longer deduct their full state and local tax payments. That especially hit middle- and upper-middle-income residents in places like Harford County and Queen Anne’s. Families who once deducted $15,000–20,000 in taxes on their federal returns are now capped at $10,000 — paying thousands more to the IRS each year.

A recent GOP tax proposal sought to raise the cap to $30,000 for many filers. Harris opposed it, calling it a gift to blue-state liberals — even though the relief would have directly helped his own constituents. Even other Republicans from high-tax states backed the change. Harris blocked it.

Undermining a Key Trump Promise

In 2024, President Trump campaigned on fighting the fentanyl crisis and supporting working families. Whether voters believed in his sincerity or not, the promise resonated. But Harris’s refusal to protect Medicaid — a key funder of addiction treatment — runs counter to that pledge.

If Trump says America must “crush the opioid epidemic,” then how can a congressman who guts addiction services claim to be on board? Harris is undercutting one of his party’s core campaign promises with actions that leave Maryland families more vulnerable, not less.

Who Is Andy Harris Fighting For

The record is clear. Andy Harris has:

• Fought to limit a tax deduction that would help local homeowners.
• Championed Medicaid cuts that could devastate rural hospitals and addiction clinics.
• Ignored the pleas of constituents and providers sounding the alarm about health care access.
• Undermined one of his own party’s key campaign messages on opioids.

We are not discussing theoretical outcomes, or legislative debates. These are kitchen-table issues. Harris’s constituents are paying more in taxes, receiving less in care, and watching their safety nets fray — all while their congressman insists he’s looking out for them.

Maryland’s 1st District deserves better. It deserves leadership that puts people over partisanship, service over slogans, and health over ideology.

And most of all, it deserves a representative who doesn’t punish the district just to prove a point in Washington.

The People vs. Andy Harris was originally published in The Political Prism on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The war wasn’t lost because democracy failed — it was lost in the decisions made after the invasion

In today’s politics, “neocon” has become a slur. From the populist wings of both the left and right, the Iraq War is held up as proof that American power should never be used to shape events abroad. It’s become a cautionary tale — a clean, convenient narrative: the U.S. invaded a country on false pretenses, tried to impose democracy, and got exactly what it deserved.

But that version of history is too neat. It trades understanding for outrage. Yes, the war was launched on intelligence about weapons of mass destruction that proved disastrously wrong, a fact that rightfully eroded public trust and critically undermined the war’s legitimacy from the outset. Yes, it spiraled into chaos. But no, the subsequent effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq was not inherently doomed by these origins alone, nor by the idea of intervention itself. Iraq failed not because democracy was impossible, but because the U.S. made a series of catastrophic decisions — each avoidable, each compounding the damage.

The real lesson of Iraq isn’t that intervention always fails. It’s that power used without planning, humility, or local understanding almost certainly will.

Too Few Troops to Secure the Country

In early 2003, Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki warned Congress that it would take “several hundred thousand” troops to stabilize postwar Iraq. His advice was summarily ignored. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld believed a leaner force would be able to accomplish American objectives. The Pentagon sent fewer than 100,000 troops.

The result was predictable. Baghdad was looted. Infrastructure collapsed. Ammunition dumps were left unguarded. Militias and criminals filled the vacuum. We didn’t lose control of Iraq — we never established it.

The first failure wasn’t strategic — it was logistical. We tried to remake a country with too small a footprint and no plan to maintain order.

De-Baathification: Breaking the Bureaucracy

On May 16, 2003, Coalition Provisional Authority head Paul Bremer signed Order No. 1, banning senior Baath Party members from serving in government. That wiped out tens of thousands of civil servants — many of whom had joined the party to keep their jobs, not out of loyalty to Saddam.

An Iraqi engineer put it simply: “We hated Saddam, but we knew how to run things. Then the Americans fired us all.”

Ministries shut down. Public services collapsed. A fragile state was gutted at its core. While navigating the complexities of dealing with former Baathists would have presented its own undeniable challenges, the sweeping nature of their removal proved catastrophic for basic governance. This was not just removing Saddam — it removed the people who kept the lights on.

Disbanding the Army: Fueling Insurgency

A week later, Bremer dissolved the Iraqi military. Nearly half a million trained soldiers were dismissed with no pay and no plan. Many expected to be reintegrated into a new army. Instead, they were left angry, armed, and unemployed.

Many joined the insurgency. Others sold their skills to militias or terrorist groups. While the prospect of reforming or integrating an army shaped by Saddam’s regime was undoubtedly fraught with difficulty, its outright dissolution without a viable alternative created an immediate security vacuum. Iraq was not just left defenseless — we created a massive pool of combat-ready fighters with every reason to resist the new order.

This wasn’t in the original plan. It blindsided even senior U.S. officials. But once the decision was made, the damage was locked in.

The Wrong Lessons

Today, Iraq is used to justify a sweeping rejection of American interventionism. The dominant message — especially in populist circles — is that the U.S. should never try to shape outcomes abroad. That any use of force is hubris. That any attempt at state-building is doomed.

This kind of historical revisionism of a complex topic is as dangerous as the arrogance that launched the war in the first place.

The failure in Iraq wasn’t the belief that democracy could take root. It was the reckless way we went about trying to make it happen. No strategy. No security. No understanding of the local landscape. Instead of careful reconstruction, we relied on ideology, improvisation, and wishful thinking.

Some compare Iraq to Vietnam, framing both as cautionary tales of American overreach. But the failures were fundamentally different. Vietnam was a war of strategic misjudgment — an unwinnable attempt to prop up a fragile regime against a nationalist insurgency. Even perfect execution couldn’t have salvaged it. Iraq, by contrast, was a war of execution failure. The strategic premise — that Saddam’s regime could be replaced with a more stable, democratic alternative — was not inherently impossible. But the U.S. shattered Iraq’s institutions, ignored security realities, and improvised its way through occupation. Vietnam failed because we misunderstood the fight. Iraq failed because we misunderstood the aftermath.

This isn’t a defense of neoconservatism. The ideology failed in large part because it overestimated the power of ideas and underestimated the reality on the ground. But that’s not the same thing as saying American power should never be used. It’s saying that when it is used, it must be used wisely — and with a long view.

We learned the wrong lessons. The war didn’t prove that intervention is always a mistake. It proved that intervention without strategy, legitimacy, or respect for local dynamics is a recipe for collapse.

What This Means Now

Iraq’s scars remain. The state is still fractured. Iran holds enormous influence. Corruption is endemic. And America, burned by failure, has grown skittish — even in the face of rising authoritarian aggression.

But history doesn’t pause. From Ukraine to Taiwan, the U.S. is again being asked: When do we act? When do we hold back?

The answer can’t be a reflexive “never.” Iraq shouldn’t make us afraid to use power. It should make us smarter about how we do it. Intervention isn’t inherently doomed. But success demands more than firepower and slogans. It requires rigorous planning, which includes deep cultural, historical, and political analysis before action; patience to see through long-term objectives beyond immediate military goals; the fostering of broad international legitimacy and burden-sharing; and above all, humility regarding the limits of external power and the complexities of societal change.

Americans were warned Trump threatened democracy. They didn’t listen. Now the threat is at the courthouse door.

In the final weeks of the 2024 campaign, Democratic messaging coalesced around a simple warning: Donald Trump was a threat to American democracy. Some pundits rolled their eyes. Swing voters bristled. Progressives grumbled it lacked economic urgency. But that warning wasn’t a slogan. It was an alarm. And now, not even six months into Trump’s second term, the danger is becoming visible in ways impossible to ignore.

A new confirms that reality is sinking in: a majority of Americans — including a substantial share of independents — now view President Trump as a dangerous authoritarian figure. The public is catching up to a truth that too many dismissed when it mattered most.

The stakes are playing out in the economy, due process, journalism — and now judges.

Several weeks ago, F.B.I. agents arrested a respected Milwaukee judge, Hannah Dugan, accusing her of “obstructing justice” by directing an undocumented immigrant out a side door of her courtroom — allegedly bypassing federal immigration agents waiting to arrest him.

Whatever one thinks about the underlying facts, the arrest of a sitting judge by federal agents is an exceptionally rare event in the American legal system, often described by observers in this instance as a major escalation. Occurring under highly politicized circumstances, it represents an unmistakable departure from typical judicial accountability measures and appears as retaliation dressed up as procedure.

The timing is no accident. Nor is the broader strategy. Trump’s second term has made plain that loyalty is the organizing principle of governance. Trade policy? A weapon to reward allies and punish critics. Law enforcement? A tool to settle political scores. Wall Street insiders reportedly receive private tariff briefings while dissenters face threatst. Allies like Elon Musk are celebrated in orchestrated spectacles. Enemies — whether journalists, immigrants, or now judges — are made examples of.

When institutions bend to serve one man’s grievances rather than the public good, democracy degrades. And when those institutions fear reprisal for basic independence, the transformation from republic to something else accelerates.

Many voters in 2024, battered by inflation and tired of political noise, brushed aside the warnings. “Democracy is on the ballot” sounded to them like an abstraction, a distraction from kitchen table concerns. They weren’t wrong to want leaders focused on their lives. But they were wrong to think democracy’s health could be separated from those everyday struggles.

This is not to blame the public — the Democratic Party must be more effective in messaging, acknowledging, and more importantly, listening to voters. Yet, the undeniable truth still remains: democratic institutions are the very framework that makes solutions possible — and once corroded, they are brutally difficult to rebuild.

I returned to political activism because I knew how fragile stability could be. Life, the economy, civil liberties — all can unravel when systems designed to safeguard fairness falter. I didn’t believe democracy would defend itself. I still don’t. The Wisconsin judge’s arrest isn’t an isolated incident. It’s a warning shot. A test of how much outrage — how much civic muscle — remains.

Benjamin Franklin famously said America was given “a republic, if you can keep it.” The task was never passive. It still isn’t.

Those who shrugged off warnings about Trump now face a sobering truth: the threat is no longer a hypothetical. It is here. It is active. It is powerful. And it just placed handcuffs on a sitting judge.

The republic still stands. But complacency has a cost — and we’ve already made the down payment.

The bedrock of capitalism isn’t merely supply and demand. It’s a foundation built on predictable rules, on mutual trust, and on the principle that economic success flows from merit, competition, and investment within a stable framework. But that foundation is cracking. What occurs when the levers of economic power are explicitly wielded not to uphold these principles, but to enforce political will?

That question currently defines our reality. President Trump is governing with priorities different from the traditional tenets of capitalism. The modern Republican Party, too, appears to have shifted its focus. Their allegiance rests with control — deploying economic policy as a strategic weapon to reward political loyalty, punish opposition, and shape the economy in service of consolidating power. Economic policy is being repurposed for political dominance, rather than solely serving the free market.

The most immediate and visible manifestation of this shift has been the aggressive return of protectionism as a central governing tool. Since Inauguration Day, President Trump has hammered away at established trade relationships, elevating tariffs from negotiating tactics to instruments of national policy. In contrast to the nuanced debates over trade deficits seen in the past, this represents a fundamental rejection of comparative advantage and global integration, favoring economic nationalism enforced by executive action. It’s implementation now operates as a primary, unpredictable force reshaping global commerce.

The market’s reaction has been stark and undeniable. The S&P 500 is down more than 13% since January 20th, marking the worst opening for a presidential term since the dot-com crash. While a brief rebound has occurred following President Trump’s partial tariff suspension on all but Chinese imports, the overall market remains deeply down for the year. The market’s volatility doesn’t stem from cyclical conditions. It’s a direct response to policy-induced uncertainty. Investors are no longer weighing earnings forecasts — they’re interpreting press conferences, gauging loyalty tests, and waiting for rumored deals.

This politicization extends beyond tariffs. We are witnessing economic outcomes being tied directly to political alignment and public behavior. On March 11th, the White House lawn was transformed into a Tesla showroom, with President Trump praising Elon Musk, livestreaming the display, and announcing his intention to purchase a vehicle. Days later, Tesla stock received a bump. The message to the corporate world was unmistakable: play along and benefit, resist and suffer.

That message wasn’t theoretical. It mirrored the fate of organizations that ran afoul of Trumpworld. Earlier this year, the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) became a target of Trump’s wrath after helping sue the administration over transparency. Trump publicly threatened to revoke the group’s tax-exempt status via the IRS.

Reward Musk. Punish CREW. Corporations, nonprofits, and now even whole industries must navigate a system where economic outcomes are decided not by merit, but by perceived loyalty to the executive.

This represents a profound departure for the Republican Party. The party of Milton Friedman, the champion of limited government and free markets exemplified by Ronald Reagan (who warned against using economic tools to punish dissent), has transformed. Economic nationalism, executive intervention, and leveraging economic power for political gain have supplanted the old dogma. The nuance is gone, replaced by a system increasingly driven by patronage — a worldview that divides the economic landscape into political allies and enemies — China, immigrants, “woke” corporations — using markets as tools of punishment, rather than platforms for prosperity.

The consequences are clear and ongoing. Global capital becomes wary of investing in an environment where policy shifts based on political whim. Domestic businesses delay crucial hiring and investment decisions, unsure of the rules tomorrow. The vital currents of consumer and business confidence, the lifeblood of a healthy economy, are poisoned by unpredictability and the perception of an unfair, politically manipulated system. Confidence is more than just a feeling in a complex economy; it is an essential operating condition.

This week’s reporting from Fox Business has only reinforced that suspicion. According to their sources, White House officials have been leaking inside information about tariff negotiations to preferred Wall Street allies. If true, it’s not just unethical — it’s potentially criminal. But more importantly, it cements a sense that economic knowledge, too, is being distributed based on political access. In capitalism, information moves markets. In this system, information is hoarded, then weaponized.

You don’t need to subscribe to any specific economic theory to see the danger. You only need to recognize the stakes when the clear, impartial rules that govern economic interaction are replaced by the arbitrary demands of political power. The American right has shifted from advocating for open markets and limited intervention to embracing weaponized tariffs and executive score-settling, reflecting volatility designed for control, not growth.

If any political force intends to be seen as capable stewards of the economy, they must champion the return of predictability, rules, and fairness to economic policy. They must stop letting the definition of economic strength be dictated by those who see it only through the lens of political leverage.

Adam Smith wrote of the inherent human drive “to better his condition,” powerful enough to drive progress even against governmental errors. But when government actively, deliberately introduces instability and uses economic power for political control, it is more than an error. It risks fracturing the fundamental contract — the expectation of fair play within a predictable system — that underpins both economic participation and democratic trust.

In this new reality, the invisible hand of the market is being replaced by the discernible hand of patronage.

Trade is more than economics. It’s a form of diplomacy. When nations build supply chains together, sign contracts, and depend on one another’s exports, they create mutual incentives for peace. That doesn’t guarantee harmony, but it raises the cost of conflict. History has shown us what happens when those ties break down. And today, under President Trump’s renewed economic war with China, we’re inching toward that precipice again.

China has responded to President Trump’s sweeping new tariffs — now over 100% in some cases — by banning rare earth exports, targeting American agricultural goods, and signaling that further escalation is on the table. Meanwhile, Trump’s MAGA allies have cheered the tariffs as “economic patriotism,” ignoring the basic geopolitical fact that this is not just a trade dispute. It’s a provocation.

When trade collapses, history again shows us what often comes next.

In the lead-up to World War I, trade competition, colonial entanglements, and rising nationalism intersected with a fragile alliance structure. While no single cause triggered the war, the weakening of economic interdependence among powers removed a stabilizing force at the worst possible moment.

In the 1930s, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act triggered a wave of retaliatory tariffs that deepened the Great Depression and worsened international tensions. Japan, already resource-starved, viewed American economic barriers as a strategic threat. Within a decade, the U.S. and Japan were at war.

The lesson is not that trade always prevents war — but that its absence removes a key restraint. In a world with nuclear powers and tightly linked economies, that restraint is more vital than ever.

President Trump is lashing out not just at China, but at allies too. Tariffs on the EU. Tariffs on Japan. Even tariffs on neighbors like Canada and Mexico. This signals to the world that the U.S. no longer differentiates between adversaries and allies when wielding economic power. That erosion of trust makes building coalitions — the kind needed in a real conflict — far more difficult.

If the U.S. finds itself in a military confrontation with China, who joins us? Who has our back? We’ve already alienated much of the global south, undermined NATO cohesion, and turned key trading partners into economic adversaries.

China, for its part, is not unaware of American vulnerabilities. A deeply polarized society. A weary electorate still haunted by Afghanistan and Iraq. A political movement on the right that flirts with isolationism and downplays the threat of authoritarian regimes. These are not weaknesses lost on Beijing. They are calculations.

And let’s be clear: China is a nuclear-armed state with a rapidly advancing navy, cyber warfare capabilities, and credible missile forces. This is not Iraq. Not even Russia. A war with China would be catastrophic. It would devastate trade, destroy markets, and likely result in thousands — if not hundreds of thousands — of American deaths.

Trump’s base has long echoed the rhetoric of Charles Lindbergh and the isolationist wing of 1930s America. No more foreign wars. America First. But they now back a president who is playing with geopolitical fire. Do they understand what a conflict with China looks like? Or are they too caught up in the slogans to see the stakes?

It’s possible President Trump doesn’t want war. But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Wars are often started by leaders who thought they could avoid one. Or win it quickly. Or blame someone else for its consequences. His approach to Ukraine — urging surrender to Russian demands under the guise of peace — may not just be appeasement. It may be strategic repositioning. Empirically, he and his administration see China as the bigger fight. Or perhaps he’s being used, willingly or not, by factions in his orbit who want that fight.

None of this is inevitable. But the path we are on is familiar — and dangerous.

The American people have grown weary of endless regional wars. What happens when a global war knocks on their door? When the casualties aren’t measured in hundreds, but in thousands? When the economic pain isn’t inflation at Walmart, but widespread job losses, cyberattacks, and rationed goods?

Trade isn’t just about profits. It’s about peace. Break that system, and you’re left with far fewer tools to stop a bullet than to fire one.

Markets & Myths Part I

“The Art of the Dead Cat Bounce: Tariffs, Market Collapse, and the Cult of Victory”

Liberation Day. That’s what President Trump called it.

The day he slapped a 10% baseline tariff on nearly all imports, escalating to 54% for China (later hiked to 104%), 20% for the EU, 46% for Vietnam, and other countries. He declared it a show of strength. Markets called it what it was: chaos.

U.S. stock futures tanked instantly. Within days, the country saw one of the sharpest market crashes in history. The Dow plunged nearly 4,000 points in two sessions. Over $6.6 trillion in market value was wiped out. Then came the walk-back. Then the bounce. Then the next slide.

And still, Trump declared victory.

That’s the playbook now: create chaos, call it strategy, declare a win no matter the outcome.

The MAGA faithful called it 5D chess. Investors saw it for what it was: a dead cat bounce. The rest of us? We’re stuck inside a vibes-based economy where volatility is spun as vision.

The Myth: We’re finally winning the trade war.

MAGA influencers and conservative media fell in line fast. They called the tariffs “economic patriotism.” Claimed Trump’s reversals were part of a long-game negotiation. Labeled the stock crash as “deep state panic.”

When Trump paused tariffs for 90 days (excluding China), they said it was the Art of the Deal. When markets surged on April 9, they cheered like the crisis was over. When the rally faded and volatility returned, they pivoted to blaming the Fed, the media, and investors themselves.

There is no coherent strategy here. Just myth-making.

The Market: Historic volatility, zero clarity.

April 2, 2025: Liberation Day declared. Market futures nosedive.
April 3:

• Dow drops 1,679 points (−3.98%)
• S&P 500 falls 274 points (−4.84%)
• Nasdaq crashes 1,050 points (−5.97%)

April 4:

• Dow loses another 2,231 points (−5.50%)
• S&P 500 sheds 322 points (−5.97%)
• Nasdaq falls 963 points (−5.82%)
• Over $6.6 trillion erased in 48 hours.

April 5: Tariffs go into effect. Panic deepens.
April 7: Rumors of a tariff pause spark a brief rally, but the White House denies it. Markets close lower.
April 9: Trump pauses tariffs on all nations except China (now 104%).

• Dow jumps 7.87%, Nasdaq 12.16%, S&P 500 9.52%.
• Biggest single-day gain in years. Relief rally.

April 10: Gains evaporate. Policy remains unclear.
April 11: Exemptions announced for tech products like smartphones and computers. Tech stocks stabilize slightly.

April 21: Retail giants like Target and Walmart report steep losses. Target is down 32% YTD. Investor confidence remains shaky amid continued Trump threats and Fed criticisms. What we’re watching isn’t strategy — it’s whiplash governance dressed up as intent.”

The Madness: From ideology to improv.

Trump’s base no longer responds to economic results. They respond to emotional alignment.

He can raise tariffs, walk them back, contradict himself — and it only reinforces the belief that he’s in control. Once again, it’s not policy — it’s improvisation by a White House making it up as it goes along.

The GOP is no longer ideological. It’s reactive. It’s tribal. Even conservative economists have vanished from the conversation. Take Thomas Sowell, who once dismantled the logic behind trade deficit driven panic with historical clarity:

“The argument is that this sends American jobs abroad. But that same argument was made in 1930. A thousand economists took out full-page ads across the country warning, ‘Do not put up international trade restrictions. It will not increase employment. It will just set off retaliation.’ It was a bipartisan disaster — and one of the worst economic mistakes in U.S. history. People pushing these policies today either haven’t studied history — or they’ve chosen to ignore it.”

That kind of clarity has vanished from today’s Republican Party. What used to be a movement grounded in free-market principles has become a feedback loop of political instinct and narrative loyalty. Economics is no longer a discipline — it’s a stage. And the policies are largely ad-libbed.

The Move: Don’t trust the bounce.

The April 9 rebound wasn’t recovery. It was mechanical: a short squeeze, followed by institutional covering. No fundamental change occurred.

Markets are now governed by headlines, not metrics. Investors are hostage to one man’s morning mood and a media ecosystem determined to paint failure as foresight.

Expect continued volatility. Retailers are squeezed. Manufacturers are scrambling for raw materials. China has banned rare earth exports. Foreign capital is wary. And there’s no clear endgame.

This is a confidence crisis masquerading as a trade strategy.

Final Word:

Trump doesn’t need a plan. He has a performance.

And in this performance, chaos equals power. Every drop in the market becomes a test of loyalty. Every contradiction is reframed as brilliance. Every outcome is a win, as long as you don’t measure it in dollars.

But for those of us with 401(k)s, jobs tied to global supply chains, or a basic understanding of economics, it isn’t winning. MAGA pundits can try to rationalize it as economic patriotism — but functionally, it’s vandalism.

Markets will survive. But the normalization of chaos-as-governance might not be so easy to undo.