WASHINGTON \u2013 In a prime-time speech Wednesday, President Donald Trump said the Iran war was \u201cnearing completion,\u201d though he failed to offer a concrete timeline and said U.S. forces would hit Iran \u201cextremely hard over the next two to three weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
The comments sent oil prices soaring and the stock market swooning. But that was not the only eyebrow-raising address Trump gave that day.<\/p>\n
In a private Easter Lunch and prayer service earlier in the day, the president was perhaps more candid.<\/p>\n
The speech to faith leaders was shut off to the press but released in a video\u00a0briefly<\/a> before it was pulled off the White House website.<\/p>\n In that speech, Trump returned his fixation on Minnesota\u2019s Somali community. He once again called Somalis \u201clow IQ people\u201d and \u201cbad people\u201d and repeated unproven smears of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-5th District, whom he called a \u201cstone cold crook.\u201d <\/p>\n Related: Trump, at the Davos forum, takes more shots at Minnesota, Somalis<\/a><\/p>\n But Trump also said something new. He intimated that the states should bear the full burden of subsidized daycare for low-income families.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can\u2019t take care of daycare. That has to be up to the states,\u201d Trump said. \u201cThe states have to take care of daycare, and they should pay for it.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump also suggested that other programs, including Medicaid and Medicare, should be left to the states, which he said could raise taxes to cover the expense.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis,\u201d Trump said. \u201cYou can\u2019t do it (federally). We have to take care of one thing: military protection.\u201d<\/p>\n And the president praised Education Secretary Linda McMahon for largely dismantling the U.S. Department of Education. \u201cLinda McMahon, she\u2019s done a great job,\u201d Trump said. \u201cShe\u2019s left education all to the states.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s musings on cost-shifting to the states were largely prompted by\u00a0the cost of the Iran war. The White House is expected to soon ask Congress for $200 billion to cover the cost of that conflict. But that is expected to receive pushback from most Democrats.<\/p>\n Rep. Betty McCollum, D-4th District, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, has made it clear she will oppose the White House\u2019s request for more money for the war.<\/p>\n \u201cPresident Trump\u2019s war in Iran is a strategic and diplomatic failure,\u201d McCollum said in a release. \u201cHis actions have made the Middle East more unstable \u2026 He failed to consult Congress or our allies. Now, he\u2019s asking Americans for an additional $200 billion to finance this conflict without explaining why this astounding amount of taxpayer funding is necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n Much more troubling for the White House is that there\u2019s no guarantee the war supplement would be supported by enough Republicans.<\/p>\n A growing number in the party\u2019s conservative wing insist the money be offset by cuts in other programs and other GOP lawmakers, including Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., oppose the war itself.<\/p>\n Bondi out<\/p>\n President Donald Trump on Thursday announced in a Truth Social post that he had fired U.S. Attorney Pam Bondi.<\/p>\n Trump was reportedly unhappy with Bondi\u2019s handling of the \u201cEpstein files,\u201d<\/a> the documents the Justice Department had collected on disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, which had become a political liability for the president.<\/p>\n The president was also reportedly frustrated by Bondi\u2019s failure to successfully prosecute his political enemies.<\/p>\n His former personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, will become acting Attorney General. Blanche had been Bondi\u2019s deputy.<\/p>\n Bondi is the second Cabinet secretary Trump has ousted. He removed Kristi Noem as Homeland Security secretary last month.<\/p>\n The public may not have seen the end of Bondi, however. She was subpoenaed last month to testify April 14 before the House Committee on Investigations and Government Oversight about her handling of the Epstein files.<\/p>\n Liberation Day<\/p>\n Thursday marked the one-year anniversary of \u201cLiberation Day,\u201d the day\u00a0 President Donald Trump unveiled his global tariff plan.<\/p>\n The tariffs Trump announced that day have been found unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court and removed.<\/p>\n But a group of Democratic state finance officials said this week that the duties have caused lasting damage to businesses and consumers and that the chaos they provoked will continue as Trump imposes other types of tariffs over which he has authority.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was predictable and avoidable,\u201d Minnesota state Auditor Julie Blaha said.<\/p>\n At a press conference with three Democratic colleagues, Blaha said Trump\u2019s tariffs have hit Minnesota farmers especially hard as other nations, including China, hiked their tariffs on U.S. farm exports or shut off their markets completely to American farmers.<\/p>\n She said tariffs amplified other problems on Minnesota farms. Those include higher costs for fertilizer and fuel due to the shipping logjam in the Strait of Hormuz caused by the Iran war, the loss of immigrant labor as farm laborers declined to show up for work because of Operation Metro Surge and cuts to nutrition programs, including food stamps.<\/p>\n Blaha insists the Trump administration should pay reparations to all who were hurt by the president\u2019s tariff policies, including consumers who paid higher prices for many goods.<\/p>\n The Trump administration is developing a system to compensate businesses for the levies they\u2019ve paid, even if they passed much of that cost on to consumers.<\/p>\n Blaha said compensation should go to consumers, too, but failed to say how that would be done.<\/p>\n \u201cThe federal government caused the problem,\u201d she said. \u201cThey should be responsible for the big lift to the money back to consumers.\u201d<\/p>\n In other news:<\/p>\n \u25aa\ufe0fMetro reporter Trevor Mitchell had a story this week about a plan to help Minneapolis businesses that have been hurt by Operation Metro Surge and digs into whether the money<\/a> procured for that aid will be enough.\u00a0 This and that<\/p>\n A reader\u00a0who read our story on the Iran war\u2019s impact on the price of fertilizer was critical of what he said is President Donald Trump\u2019s unfamiliarity with American farming.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTrump has no understanding of agriculture or empathy for farmers and it shows,\u201d the reader wrote. \u201cHe would have benefitted from a week of bailing hay, putting in 12 hour days.\u201d<\/p>\n Please keep your comments, and any questions, coming. I\u2019ll try my best to respond. Please contact me at aradelat@minnpost.com.<\/p>\n \n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2013 In a prime-time speech Wednesday, President Donald Trump said the Iran war was \u201cnearing completion,\u201d though…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-563929","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\u25aa\ufe0fGreater Minnesota reporter Brian Arola wrote about how student newspapers in the state are battling a tide<\/a> and even thriving in a dire journalistic landscape.\u00a0
\u25aa\ufe0fSure, the Iran war has caused gasoline prices to skyrocket across the nation and the globe. But not so much in Minnesota. This story<\/a> explains why.\u00a0
\u25aa\ufe0fAnd it\u2019s not only gasoline prices that have risen because of a shipping bottleneck in the Strait of Hormuz. Fertilizer shipments are impacted as well, resulting in a global spike in the cost of fertilizer<\/a> as Minnesota farmers are entering planting season.<\/p>\n