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Plus: Despite DOGE cuts, government spending is up

Trump Marks 100th Day of Second Term

President Donald Trump is marking the 100th day of his second term in office with a speech in Macomb County, Michigan, this evening after taking steps to ease auto tariffs earlier in the day.

The White House is touting Trump's record since returning to the White House, noting that he has signed more executive actions than any other president in history. It also boasts that Trump has delivered on two key campaign promises: securing the border and lowering inflation.

Trump called it "the most successful first 100 days of any administration in the history of our country, and that's according to many, many people." But the president's approval rating is at a historic low, as consumer confidence is plummeting as fears of a recession rise.

While the 100-day milestone has prompted plenty of retrospectives and instantanalyses, we'll note that the president has completed less than 7% of his second term and still has 1,360 days to go.

Here's what else is happening.

Trump Called Bezos to Push Back on Reported Amazon Tariff Pricing Plan

A report that Amazon is planning to disclose tariff costs for some items on its website sparked a furious response from the White House Tuesday, including a phone call from President Trump to Jeff Bezos, the founder of the e-commerce giant, to complain about the plan.

Punchbowl News reported this morning that Amazon was going to start including import costs as a line item in the total cost of some products. Doing so would make it clear that U.S. consumers pay some portion of tariff fees imposed by the federal government - something most economists say is true but has been repeatedly denied by Trump administration officials, who, along with the president, insist that import taxes imposed by the U.S. are paid by exporting nations.

Amazon denied the news report and said that a plan to list import costs was considered at one of its subsidiary sites but never put into place. "The team that runs our ultra-low-cost Amazon Haul store considered the idea of listing import charges on certain products," an Amazon spokesperson told Engadget. "This was never approved and is not going to happen."

Asked about the report Tuesday morning, before Amazon issued its statement, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt came out swinging. "This is a hostile and political act by Amazon," she said. Leavitt then asked rhetorically why Amazon did not include some reference to inflationary price hikes during the Biden administration and claimed that Amazon is working with "a Chinese propaganda arm," raising doubts about the motivations of the country's largest e-tailer.

Later in the day, Trump said the potential conflict had been settled. "Jeff Bezos was very nice. He was terrific," Trump told reporters. "He solved the problem very quickly. Good guy."

Still, it seems likely that Trump was initially angry about the reported plan, which threatened to lay bare the complicated pricing dynamics associated with tariffs and higher import costs. "Of course he was pissed," an administration official told CNN. "Why should a multibillion-dollar company pass off costs to consumers?"

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick jumped into the fray, questioning the idea that a company would even pass on the cost of tariffs to consumers in the first place. "It's nonsense," he told CNBC. "A 10% tariff is not going to change virtually any price," he said - conveniently ignoring the much higher tariffs Trump has placed on goods from China, which can reach as high as 245%, a level that virtually all economists agree would push prices sharply higher for affected goods.

Speaking on the Senate floor, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer encouraged businesses to disclose any increases in their import costs. "To the large businesses that sell to consumers, I say show your customers how much tariffs are hurting in their pocketbook," he said. "People deserve to know the impact tariffs have on their finances."

Quotes of the Day

"I have a deal done, done, done, done, but I need to wait for their prime minister and their parliament to give its approval, which I expect shortly."

− Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, announcing what would be the first new trade deal of President Trump's second term, in an interview with CNBC. Lutnick would not name the country involved. He did say that he was not dealing directly with China, but was "relying" on Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to strike a deal with Beijing. "Treasury Secretary Bessent is focused on China. That's his portfolio. He's got to get something done with China. And my portfolio is the rest of the world's trade deals," Lutnick said.

Hopes for progress on tariff deals pushed stocks higher on Tuesday.

"Some people believe that the tariff disruptions will settle down as more negotiations happen and greater thought is given to how to structure them to work in a sensible way. However, I am now hearing from a large and growing number of people who are having to deal with these issues that it is already too late. ... [I]t is also increasingly being realized that the United States' role as the world's biggest consumer of manufactured goods and greatest producer of debt assets to finance its over-consumption is unsustainable, so assuming that one can sell and lend to the U.S. and get paid back with hard (i.e. not devalued) dollars on their U.S. debt holdings is naive thinking, so other plans have to be made."

− Billionaire investor Ray Dalio, in a lengthy post on social media arguing that the global economic order is breaking down, that it is too late to undo those changes spurred by the Trump trade war and that there is a growing risk that the United States "will increasingly be bypassed" by countries adapting to the new realities.

Democrats Says Trump Admin Has Blocked $430 Billion in Funds

Top Democratic appropriators say that President Trump and his administration have improperly frozen or cancelled more than $430 billion in funding that Congress has provided for a wide array of programs.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro and Sen. Patty Murray, the ranking Democrats on the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, launched a new database tracking the blocked funding. The 114 items listed, compiled by Democratic appropriations staffers, range from a cancelled $3 million contract for a hub coordinating long Covid research to more than $100 billion in frozen FEMA grants. And the Democrats say the list is not exhaustive.

"Just one hundred days into office, President Trump and Elon Musk are continuing their unprecedented assault on our nation's spending laws, and it is families, small businesses, and communities in every part of the country who are paying the price," Murray and DeLauro said in a joint statement. "Instead of tackling the cost-of-living crisis, President Trump is making it worse-blocking funding for Head Start centers, holding up funding to help families cool their homes this summer, cancelling programs to help feed kids in schools, ripping away funding for birth control and cancer screenings, and so much more."

The Democrats said Trump is slashing research, transportation, public safety and disaster relief programs the help American families while seeking to provide billion in tax cuts for the wealthy. Thay also contend that the Trump administration has been guilty of an unprecedented lack of transparency on spending and cuts. "No American president has ever so flagrantly ignored our nation's spending laws or so brazenly denied the American people investments they are owed," they said.

Despite DOGE Cuts, Government Spending Is Up This Year

Elon Musk's DOGE Service has shaped much of President Trump's second term so far - and reshaped much of the government through its massive cuts to the federal workforce and programs, including at least 121,000 employees laid off or targeted for layoffs, according to a CNN analysis, and nearly the same number who have opted into a deferred resignation program, according to a Politico analysis.

"DOGE has hollowed out or shut down 11 federal agencies and says it has terminated more than 8,500 contracts and 10,000 grants," Politico reports. "It has wiped out foreign aid and volunteerism in the U.S., slashed education spending and made sweeping changes to the way the government makes procurements, hires contractors and shares data."

Yet for all the noise created by the DOGE buzzsaw and the turmoil Musk and Co. have caused, overall government spending has actually increased this year. The Penn Wharton Budget Model's federal budget tracker, which uses Treasury data, shows that total spending is up 5.9% for the year so far compared with the same period in 2024 - a difference of more than $80 billion, Penn's Kent Smetters told Politico.

There are, of course, some notable areas where spending has fallen. Spending by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is down 32.4% from last year based on the tracking data after the agency was targeted for deep cuts early on and eventually saw its remaining programs absorbed into the State Department. Spending by the State Department is down 24.4%, and Education Department outlays are down 11.2%.

But DOGE itself might not save much this year. The group now claims it will save $160 billion through its cuts, far less than Musk originally targeted. The promised savings have been questionable on their own, but DOGE's work also comes with a cost, and the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit focused on the federal workforce, now estimates that DOGE's actions will cost $135 billion (the White House dismissed the report).

"Not only is Musk vastly overinflating the money he has saved, he is not accounting for the exponentially larger waste that he is creating," Max Stier, the chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service, told The New York Times. "He's inflicted these costs on the American people, who will pay them for many years to come."

Republicans Release Plan to Overhaul Student Financial Aid System

Republicans on the House Education and Workforce Committee on Monday released a plan to overhaul the nation's financial aid and student loan system, which they say will reduce spending by $330 billion to help pay for President Trump's tax cut agenda. The committee held a markup session for the proposal today.

Some highlights:

• The proposal would impose a $50,000 borrowing cap on federal student loans for undergraduates ($100,000 for graduate students) starting in 2026, pushing more students into the private loan industry;

• Four income-driven repayment loan repayment plans would be consolidated under a single set of rules, effectively eliminating President Joe Biden's SAVE plan, which has been hung up in the courts, and borrowers would need to make payments for 30 years, up from the current 10-20 years, to be considered for forgiveness;

• The option to claim unemployment and economic hardship deferments would be eliminated for federal student loans disbursed after July 1, 2025;

• The rules for Pell Grants, which target lower-income families, would be tightened, requiring students to be enrolled 30 academic hours per year rather than 12 hours per semester. The grants would also be made available to more people in workforce training programs, and the program would receive $10.5 billion to stave off a funding shortfall;

• Colleges and universities would face "skin-in-the-game accountability" through new rules requiring institutions to repay the federal government a portion of non-performing loans taken out by their students; schools could also be rewarded for how well they do graduating low-income students.

Dueling views: Committee Chairman Tim Walberg, a Republican from Michigan, said the proposal takes aim at the "gravy train of taxpayer dollars" that many conservatives believe are responsible for driving up the cost of higher education.

"This plan brings accountability and holds schools financially responsible for loading students up with debt," he said in a statement. "The bill also includes other reforms that will lower costs for students and families while ensuring the fiscal sustainability of targeted programs like the Pell Grant. Bottom line, it's time to fix this broken cycle that is costly to taxpayers and leaves students worse off than if they never went to college."

Higher education advocates were less enthusiastic. The plan would leave "students at much higher risk of being exploited by the industry, making loans more expensive, reducing access to grants," Jessica Thompson of The Institute for College Access & Success, a non-profit that advocates for lower cost and broader access in education, told The Washington Post. "This bill could drag us back 50 years by restricting access to higher education to people who have financial means."