Karoline Leavitt Freaks Out After Two Brutal Tariff Losses in 24 Hours

Washington doesn’t know what to do about its tariff plan anymore.

Components of the White House’s tariff plan were shot down by two different judges on Wednesday and Thursday, sending the Trump administration’s controversial economic strategy—and its subsequent public defense—into a tailspin. During a White House press briefing on Thursday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt aggressively asserted that the administration would “win” its appeals, all while insisting that other countries would blindly continue to negotiate with Donald Trump, even as the future of his tariff agenda is up in the air.

“Why would other countries continue these trade deal negotiations?” asked NBC News’s Gabe Gutierrez.

“Because other countries around the world have faith in the negotiator in chief, President Donald J. Trump. And they also probably see how ridiculous this ruling is, and they understand the administration is going to win,” Leavitt said. “And we intend to win, we already filed an emergency appeal, we expect to fight this battle all the way to the Supreme Court.”

Leavitt then shared a missive for foreign nations, claiming that the president “reserves other authorities” to enact the trade policy.

“But I can confirm our ambassador for trade, Jamison Greer, already heard from other countries this morning that they intend to continue with the negotiations,” she added.

Trump’s tariff plan was blocked by a trade court Wednesday, with a three-judge panel ruling that the president’s plan exceeded “any authority granted” by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Less than 24 hours later, another court intervened in Trump’s levies, denoting in a two-page order that the duties were “unlawful.”

Even Fox News’s Peter Doocy poked holes in the administration’s strategy, asking why—if the judiciary says the tariffs are illegal—Trump wouldn’t ask House and Senate Republicans to just draft a new law. In response, Leavitt lied.

“Well, these laws have already been granted to the president by the Constitution, and by laws that have been previously passed,” Leavitt said. (If that were true, the court system would not have blocked the trade policy.)

Earlier this month, Justice Department lawyers were rebuked by the Supreme Court for refusing to accept lower court rulings, with Justice Elena Kagan flaming administration officials for driving cases they had uniformly lost to the nation’s highest judiciary.

White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett insisted Thursday that Donald Trump “always wins,” even after the president’s vacillating tariff policies faced a massive defeat in federal court.

During an interview on Fox Business’s Mornings With Maria, host Maria Bartiromo asked Hassett for his reaction to a journalist teaching Trump about a new investing theory, TACO, which stands for “Trump always chickens out.” The economic adviser replied to the dig with another slogan.

“I think if President Trump had just a minute more, if you go back into the room behind the Oval, he’s got all his hats and things over there, and he has a hat which is the accurate response to what that person said, which is ‘Trump always wins,’” Hassett said. “If you go look, a lot of people are wearing that hat, ‘Trump always wins’ and ‘Trump was always right.’”

Hassett claimed that Trump’s tariffs had forced other countries to “come to the table with massive concessions, opening up their markets to our products, and lowering their tariffs on us.” So far, only Israel, India, and Vietnam have moved to slash tariffs on U.S. products. Negotiations with other trading partners, such as the European Union, are still ongoing.

Hassett insisted that Trump’s volatile tariff policies had been “really, really effective for the American people, and it’s unfortunate that people would attack it, as the journalist did or the way the judges just did, that these activist judges are trying to slow something down in the middle of really important negotiations.”

A panel of three federal judges in the U.S. Court of International Trade unanimously ruled Wednesday evening that Trump had exceeded his legal authority by imposing sweeping tariffs on dozens of countries, based on vague claims of “national emergencies.” The Trump administration has already said it will appeal the decision, and through his broad smile, Hassett desperately attempted to downplay the loss.

“And the idea that the fentanyl crisis in America is not an emergency is so appalling to me, that I’m sure that when we appeal that this decision will be overturned,” Hassett continued. Trump had used a domestic public health crisis as a rationale for imposing steep tariffs on China, claiming the country had failed to thwart fentanyl production and trafficking.

But contrary to Hassett’s claim, the panel had not found that the fentanyl was not an urgent issue but simply that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act did not authorize the president to impose worldwide, retaliatory tariffs.

The Department of Health and Human Services is canceling an enormous contract with Moderna, ending a multimillion-dollar partnership to develop vaccines for emerging flu strains.

The agency, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., signaled in February that it would be conducting a review of a $590 million contract penned during the Biden administration. Kennedy—a virulent vaccine conspiracy theorist—has been highly critical of the messenger RNA process utilized by Moderna to expedite vaccine development. The contract had been awarded through the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, which issues money for treatment programs aimed at curbing potential future pandemics.

The nixed contract comes on the heels of positive interim results from an early-stage trial of the shot for the H5 bird flu virus, months after strains of the virus wiped out millions of birds across America’s poultry farms.

“While the termination of funding from HHS adds uncertainty, we are pleased by the robust immune response and safety profile observed in this interim analysis,” CEO Stephane Bancel said in a statement. Bancel noted that Moderna would “explore alternatives” to continue funding for the new vaccine, reported AFP.

The mRNA method of building new vaccines came under scrutiny in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, when critics of the government vaccine mandate poked at the strategy—which allows bodies to build resistance to a virus without ever being exposed to the real deal—for developing immunity. MRNA vaccines have been around for decades but were relatively new to the U.S. at the time, prompting suspicion from anti-vax circles.

The mRNA acts as a “cellular messenger,” according to the National Institutes of Health, influencing the body’s cells to develop spike proteins that latch onto a virus, evoking the body’s immune response “without a person ever having been exposed to the viral material.” Further still, mRNA is a temporary addition to the body that “degrades easily and does not last long inside cells,” according to the NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute.

But the science didn’t stop conspiracists from claiming that the jab was causing more harm than good, spreading misinformation that the vaccine could alter an individual’s DNA makeup. Years later, mRNA vaccines have proven to be entirely safe, with millions of real-world lives saved by the Covid-19 vaccine as plausible examples of their efficacy.

Kennedy brushed off concerns about his anti-vax beliefs during his confirmation hearings to run HHS, claiming that under his leadership, the agency would not be limiting access to well-vetted vaccines. But months later, that hasn’t proven to be the case.

Instead, the health secretary has made it his mission to attack vaccine access in his time atop HHS. On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that it would no longer be recommending Covid-19 vaccines to pregnant women and young children, a decision that experts claim will allow insurance companies to stop paying for the shots and make it significantly more difficult to obtain them. That directive—issued by Kennedy—was made without the input of the CDC’s usual advisers, as the body’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is not scheduled to meet until the end of June.

As a reminder: Vaccines have proven to be one of the greatest accomplishments of modern medicine. The jabs are so effective at preventing illness that they have practically eradicated some of the worst diseases from our collective culture, from rabies to polio and smallpox, a fact that has possibly fooled some into believing that the viruses and their complications aren’t a significant threat for the average, health-conscious individual.

In an unsurprising development, President Trump has failed to stop any of the death and destruction caused by Russia’s war on Ukraine—a conflict he promised to end “in 24 hours” on the campaign trail.

A report from The New York Times documents how Trump’s “embrace” of Putin and the Kremlin, previously unheard of from a Republican, has only resulted in Russia doubling down on its aggression. The only new developments are negative, as Trump verbalized his frustration with Putin’s continual refusal to commit to a ceasefire deal after Russia carried out its largest bombing campaign in Ukraine to date last weekend.

“What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Tuesday night. “He’s playing with fire!” Trump has even floated placing sanctions on Putin.

Trump would have you believe that he and Putin go way back. The 2016 Russian investigations seemed to give Trump the idea that he had a real connection with the Kremlin. After leaving office, he constantly heaped praise on Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and when he returned to the White House, he eliminated the Justice Department office responsible for collecting evidence of Russian war crimes for international court prosecution. Now Putin is ignoring Trump and committing more war crimes.

“The president is the last one to figure out that Vladimir Putin doesn’t want a peace deal, that he’s playing for time, and he’s been playing the president, and it’s about time the president wakes up and understands that,” said New Hampshire Senator Jeanne, the highest-ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee.

Trump has been thoroughly outwitted and out-strongmanned here. The least he can do is continue to acknowledge that and provide Ukraine with the actual material and political support it needs, rather than berating its president like a child.

“It does sound like, from his various comments, that Trump is starting to understand what was clear from the beginning of all of this, which is Russia is the problem here,” the Center for a New American Security’s Richard Fontaine told the Times. “Russia is the obstacle, Russia is the reason this war started in the first place, not Ukraine.”

The Trump administration is escalating its war on international students by moving to cancel the visas of Chinese students in the U.S.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Wednesday night that the White House would work to “aggressively revoke” visas of Chinese nationals who are studying in “critical fields” or have ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Rubio also said that the State Department would “enhance scrutiny” of all visa applications from China, including Hong Kong.

The administration’s decision will likely escalate tensions between China and the U.S. and cause issues on university campuses, as students from China make up the second-largest nationality among international students in the country. In 2024, 20 percent of student visas to the United States were granted to Chinese nationals, and there are an estimated 275,000 Chinese students currently in the U.S.

Universities across the country depend on Chinese students in their research laboratories, and the fact that many pay full tuition is of great financial benefit. Chinese students electing to further their education in the U.S. are often the most academically talented students.

It’s not clear what Rubio meant by “critical fields,” although U.S. officials have been worried about Chinese researchers in the physical sciences, according to The New York Times. Rubio also didn’t elaborate on how the U.S. will determine affiliations and loyalties to the CCP, leaving open the possibility that authorities could draw such conclusions on individuals without evidence, as they have with Salvadoran and Venezuelan immigrants regarding gang membership.

The move is latest salvo on international students by the White House, which has sought to revoke visas and deport students from other countries on dubious grounds ranging from alleged antisemitism to allegedly smuggling embryos into the country that were actually brought for research purposes, and various minor infractions, including one case of a Japanese student who caught too many fish on a church trip.

Rubio’s announcement is also the latest provocation of China by President Trump, who inflamed ties with Beijing with his ill-planned tariffs before backtracking earlier this month. Will China retaliate against this attack on its students in the U.S., and will Trump stick to this decision or once again chicken out?