| | | Economic uncertainty and concerns over freedom of speech under President Donald Trump dominated this week. Here are the big stories. For a daily review, sign up for The 7: Tracking Trump newsletter from The Washington Post. What is Trump planning for the economy? | | The Dow Jones is on track for a second-straight losing week and its worst weekly decline since June 2022. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images) | | Everyone from Wall Street bankers to average Trump voters seems confused about what the president’s plans for the economy are. Tariffs are on, then they’re off. In his first term, Trump paid close attention to the markets; this time he won’t rule out a recession, as stocks struggled. Economists are warning that the risk of a recession is now higher than previously thought, in large part because of new White House policies. Layoffs of thousands of federal workers are reverberating well beyond the government. The cost of many household goods and groceries remain high as Americans — including Republicans — start to better understand how tariffs will likely raise the price of goods. There is “concern,” the Wall Street Journal reported this week, “among some Republicans that Trump lacks a cohesive economic plan.” And that his popularity could be suffering for it. “It’s very clear that people voted for him to juice the economy, lower inflation, stop illegal immigration and get away from woke culture,” Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican pollster, told The Post’s Natalie Allison and Cleve R. Wootson Jr. “If you look at what’s dominating the news these days, it tends to be massive cuts in federal employment and Ukraine and a plunging stock market.” Democrats look like they’ll avoid playing a part in a government shutdown |  | | Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) speaks to the media this week. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post) | | This week offered congressional Democrats their first big moment of resistance in the Trump era, but it appears they’ll decide not to take a dramatic, united stand. The government will shut down at 12:01 a.m. unless Congress passes a bill to keep it open. Lawmakers are taking it right up to the edge. (This stems from when lawmakers were supposed to fund the government back in October and missed the deadline.) Republicans control both chambers of Congress, but they need a handful of Senate Democratic votes to help pass a funding bill. All week, Senate Democrats agonized over whether to help Republicans out. They were caught between two unsavory options: risk normalizing Elon Musk’s potentially unconstitutional slashing of the government or vote no and trigger a shutdown that could be blamed on them while allowing Trump to decide which agencies stay open or close. Democrats had a particularly tough decision, explained Molly Reynolds, a congressional budget expert with the Brookings Institution. “Most times we’ve stared down shutdowns in recent years, it’s been because there’s a bloc of Republicans who want something badly enough to engineer one,” she said. “ … Democrats are generally predisposed to keeping the government open and running; this matters to them more than it does to Republicans. But on the other hand, they see DOGE and Elon Musk — rightly — as a severe threat to both the basic functioning of the federal government and to Congress’s constitutional power of the purse.” By the end of the week, Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) said he would reluctantly support Republicans’ spending bill, lowering the odds of a shutdown. “For sure the Republican bill is a terrible option,” Schumer explained. “But I believe allowing Donald Trump to take … much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option.” Trump’s concerning erosion of free speech |  | | Hundreds of people protest the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil inside Trump Tower this week. (Cate Brown/The Washington Post) | | Columbia University protester Mahmoud Khalil was arrested over the weekend potentially for no other reason than that he publicly supported Palestinian causes. He’s been detained ever since, and the administration is trying to deport him. It’s a “five-alarm fire” for free speech, experts tell me, and just one way they say the administration is actively trying to erode the rights of groups it doesn’t agree with. “Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest is part of an across-the-board campaign to suppress dissent across the administration,” Rachel Goodman, a First Amendment expert with the pro-democracy group Protect Democracy, told me. Other examples: - Trying to root out anti-diversity efforts in government, businesses and schools: “That is textbook viewpoint-based discrimination,” a federal judge wrote of Trump’s anti-DEI executive order.
- Deciding which reporters get proximity to the president, replacing some liberal outlets with Trump-friendly ones: “It’s scary he can do some of the things he’s doing to the press,” Tom Jones, with the journalism nonprofit organization Poynter, told me.
- Banning the Associated Press from key parts of the White House for the news organization’s decision on what to call the Gulf of Mexico: “The Constitution does not allow the government to control speech,” the AP responded in a lawsuit.
- Penalizing a law firm that has represented Trump’s opponents: “It sends little chills down my spine,” a federal judge wrote this week. “Why shouldn’t we be chilled by this?”
- Investigating Democrats who criticized Trump on TV and government lawyers who prosecuted Jan. 6 defendants: “We are living in a dangerous time,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-California) responded, “and elected members of Congress must have the right to forcefully oppose the Trump administration.”
The Education Department gets slashed |  | | This week the Trump administration said it was slashing the Education Department virtually in half, after Trump campaigned on shutting it down entirely. Almost immediately, the process students use to apply for financial aid went down for hours, The Post reported. “It took less than a day for something important at the Education Department to stop working,” according to the article. The administration says that schools will ultimately be empowered by a smaller government overseeing grants, loans, civil rights violations and guidance. But they have yet to explain how — as critics warn that this was a grave overreaction to conservative criticism of the agency. Some parents sued for decimating the offices that protect students from discrimination. “It will ultimately undermine the effectiveness of the entire education system,” former education secretary John B. King Jr. told my colleagues. | | | | |
