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Hello once again from the Surge, Slate’s roundup of the most relevant characters of the week in the delightful novel called United States Politics in 2025. (We’re workshopping a catchier title.) I’m Ben Mathis-Lilley, filling in for Jim Newell, who is currently protesting the administration’s refusal to exempt bananas from import tariffs, even though they can’t be grown at scale domestically, by standing outside the Department of Commerce dressed as a sad banana. Good luck, sir!
This week we had the usual mess of absurd economic chaos and disconcerting announcements from people who are shutting down entire government departments on the basis of things they saw on Facebook. But first, the preliminary public opinion verdict on whether Donald Trump should have unlimited Judge Dredd powers is in … and it’s not good news for Mr. Dredd’s many fans in the White House.
1.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia
More than a distraction.
Last week, the biggest story in the country was Democratic Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s trip to El Salvador to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a resident of his state who was deported to (and imprisoned in) Central America by the Trump administration in defiance of a court order. A number of other Democrats—most of them bravely anonymous—grumbled that the trip, and its focus on the highfalutin issue of due process rights, was a “distraction” from the politically safer “kitchen table” work of hammering Trump on tariffs and the economy. According to this week’s polls, that ostensibly savvy take was pretty much wrong. Trump’s approval numbers on his handling of immigration have gone underwater, and voters specifically say that they don’t like the idea of deportations like Abrego Garcia’s going forward without judicial review. The president’s overall approval, too, has dropped to its lowest point thus far in his term. And if the next item is any indication, that trend isn’t turning around any time soon.
2.
Xi Jinping
China unplugs the phone.
There are downsides, it turns out, to getting worked up and announcing tariffs of eleventy billion percent on the country from which the United States imports a vast portion of its basic consumer goods, especially when you have no plan in place for procuring those goods from another source. Donald Trump was informed about those downsides this week when the CEOs of Walmart and Target told him that the slowing of shipments from China will create price shocks and empty-shelf shortages. In response, Trump appeared to make a U-turn in his position on Sino-U.S. trade, telling reporters that he’d be willing to compromise on tariffs and that the White House was “actively” discussing a resolution to the situation with the Chinese government. For their part, though, the Chinese say that this is completely false and that they won’t be speaking to the U.S. at all until Trump unilaterally revokes all of the comically large tariffs he imposed a few weeks ago. President Xi doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to get on the horn, keeping busy this week by reaching out to countries in Europe to discuss areas of potential economic collaboration. It might be a long, hot summer in America for anyone who was planning to buy, well, almost anything.
3.
Jerome Powell
Safe. For now!
In more salutary news for those rooting against the collapse of the economy, the president also did a 180 this week on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Existing law is generally interpreted to hold that Fed chairs can’t be fired by the president over mere policy disagreements, but Trump has been arguing otherwise in recent weeks because he’s mad that Powell won’t juice growth by cutting interest rates. The reason that Powell isn’t doing that, though, is that cutting rates (which incentivizes borrowing and spending) would likely supercharge the inflation that’s already expected to result from tariffs. Finance and business leaders don’t want this, and have been bugging Trump’s economic advisers to make him leave Powell alone. (Regular people probably wouldn’t enjoy the consequences of a loyalist MAGA hack leading the Fed, either.) On Wednesday, the president backtracked and said he has “no intention” of trying to fire Powell. (The markets approved.) And we all know that when this chief executive makes a promise, you can take it to the bank for at least a few minutes.
4.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
None of this sounds very healthy!
At an April 16 press conference, Health and Human Services chief Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made the demonstrably untrue claim that individuals with autism cannot hold jobs, have romantic relationships, or play sports. At a press conference this week, he announced that he will pursue a ban on food dyes, which he has erroneously identified as a proven carcinogen. He also said that he would be issuing new nutritional guidelines calling for Americans to completely eliminate sugar from their meals, which fits into his history of recommending high-fat, no-sugar “carnivore diets” that are beloved by online health influencers but not actual doctors. The Food and Drug Administration, meanwhile, suspended a milk-safety testing program because of job cuts—the FDA is an HHS agency—and Politico reported that Kennedy is considering removing the COVID-19 vaccine from the list of recommended shots for children. There are now also 10 different measles outbreaks across the country. It’s going to be a long, hot summer for getting COVID, the measles, and milk-borne puke diseases!
5.
Pete Hegseth’s Many Enemies
Leak season.
Last week, three advisers to embattled Fox News host–turned–Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth were fired amid an internal investigation into leaks at the Pentagon. (“Leaking” in Beltway parlance is when you call a reporter to tell them something mean about a co-worker you don’t like.) This does not appear to have plugged things up. This week, various outlets—citing “sources familiar” and so forth—reported that Hegseth shared likely-classified information with his wife and brother, that his wife (who does not have a military background) has asked to be given a security clearance, that Hegseth has ordered the installation of a TV-makeup studio near the Department of Defense press briefing room, and that he loaded the Signal chat app on an unsecured personal computer in his office. (He denied the makeup report, and spokespeople deny that he has exposed classified information to individuals who aren’t authorized to see it.) Long story short, there are still evidently a lot of people around Pete Hegseth who think he is a big-league bonehead and would like everyone else to know it too. According to the latest reporting, though, Trump does not have imminent plans to relieve Hegseth of duty.
6.
Thomas Friedman
I think we could sharpen this concept a bit.
It’s a tough political moment for Thomas Friedman, the New York Times op-ed-page centrist who’s famous for his love of globalism and the tech industry. Even mainstream Democrats have ditched free-trade neoliberalism in favor of populism, while Big Tech has (at least for now) allied itself with Trump’s distasteful brand of crony-oligarch fascism. In a column this week, though, Friedman lays out what he believes could be a winning middle way: A political party that is singularly focused on building robotic taxicabs. I am not making this up:
I struggle these days whenever someone asks me for my political affiliation. But if you really force me, I’d describe myself as a “Waymo Democrat.” Waymos are the self-driving electric taxis started by Google. My party’s bumper sticker would read, “A chicken in every pot and a Waymo in every city.”
That’s an unusually long bumper sticker! In the column, Friedman explains that the National Institutes of Health should be encouraged to do “more research in robotic cars,” that Elon Musk should “junk [his] stupid chain saw, replace it with car tools and create a nationwide competition with Waymo for robotaxis,” and that “the best way for Democrats to demonstrate they are the party of the working people is … by nurturing new industries, like robotaxis.” Count us skeptical that a platform centered on taxi rides is going to win over rural America and change the course of economic history, but also, what are “car tools”?
7.
Dan Bongino
Keeping you safe by doing whatever this is.
Dan Bongino is a conspiracy-theorist podcaster, social media crank, and multi-time losing congressional candidate who, because he was once a police officer and Secret Service agent, has been named deputy director of the FBI. His main work activity appears to be posting lengthy, cryptic tweets meant to mollify MAGA and QAnon fanatics who are upset that he and FBI Director Kash Patel have not yet announced mass arrests of deep-state Democrat pedophiles. Over the weekend, he posted a long message complaining that the New York Times was planning to report that he’d gotten roughed up, injuring his shoulder, in a sparring match with an agency jujitsu instructor. (Bongino wrote that he had merely sustained “a bit of swelling” in his right elbow, not an “injury,” and that he had felt compelled to face off with the instructor because it is “what men do.” The eventual Times piece focused mostly on Patel but did mention Bongino’s sparring match.) And according to an NBC report from earlier this month, the Bureau is seeking internal volunteers to rotate off their regular jobs (i.e., their jobs fighting crime) to provide Bongino with a 24-hour-a-day security detail that could require “as many as 20 agents.” Let’s hope all the bad guys out there were planning to take the next three and a half years off!
