Stocks tumbled on Monday as Donald Trump unveiled new tariff rates for a number of countries, taking a few steps closer, once again, to the brink of a global trade war.

Trump in early April paused a number of hefty planned tariffs from going into effect for 90 days, promising to secure 90 trade deals in that time. The administration had only announced three deals with that deadline—this Wednesday—fast approaching, so Trump this week pushed the deadline to August 1. He also said his administration would announce a combination of tariff letters and trade agreements throughout the week.

Throughout Monday afternoon, the president took to Truth Social to share photos of 14 such letters on Truth Social—and they read not unlike Trump’s wild Truth Social posts. Countries such as Japan, South Korea, South Africa, and several smaller countries were told they will be hit with tariffs ranging from 25 to 40 percent, effective August 1.

“Our relationship has been, unfortunately, far from Reciprocal,” stated the letters, which were all identical but for the addressees and rates (leading TNR’s Jason Linkins to dub them “the Lorem Ipsum Accords”). The U.S. trade deficit “is a major threat to our Economy and, indeed, our National Security!” they continue, and the tariffs, Trump warns, “may be modified, upward or downward, depending on our relationship with your Country.”

The stock market didn’t take kindly to Trump reviving the prospect of trade war, as the Dow, S&P, and Nasdaq fell 0.9, 0.8, and 0.9 percent, respectively.

Planned Parenthood is suing President Trump over a provision in his “big, beautiful bill” that effectively defunds the crucial service provider. 

“The prohibition specifically targets Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its member health care providers in order to punish them for lawful activity, namely advocating for and providing legal abortion access wholly outside the Medicaid program and without using any federal funds,” Planned Parenthood wrote in the lawsuit, which was filed in Boston federal court Monday. “Thus, this statute must be doing something more — and it is. The Defund Provision is a naked attempt to leverage the government’s spending power to attack and penalize Planned Parenthood and impermissibly single it out for unfavorable treatment.” 

The Trump administration is celebrating this defunding under the guise of stopping more abortions. But the true impact of the cuts will be more people losing basic health care like pregnancy tests, cancer screening, and contraception. Under the Hyde Amendment, health care providers, like Planned Parenthood, have been banned from using federal funds for abortion for more than 40 years.

“This case is about making sure that patients who use Medicaid as their insurance to get birth control, cancer screenings, and STI testing and treatment can continue to do so at their local Planned Parenthood health center, and we will make that clear in court,” Alexis McGill Johnson, the chief executive of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement.  

According to a report from The Daily Beast, Senator Ted Cruz was vacationing in Greece as tragedy struck his state. Over the July 4 weekend, flash flooding took the lives of at least 95 people in Texas, including 27 children and counselors at Camp Mystic, an all-girls camp along the banks of the Guadalupe River.

Cruz was sightseeing in Athens as first responders began launching search and rescue operations, The Daily Beast reports. The senator reportedly landed in Greece on Thursday, July 3; was spotted at the Parthenon on Saturday, July 5; and is believed to have not caught a plane to San Antonio, Texas, until Sunday.

Cruz was accompanied at the Parthenon by his family and a security guard, according to a reported eyewitness, who told The Daily Beast: “As he walked past us, I simply said, ‘20 kids dead in Texas and you take a vacation?’” The senator is said to have “sort of grunted and walked on,” while his wife, Heidi Cruz, “shot [the source] a dirty look,” before “they continued on with their tour guide.”

During Cruz’s reported vacation, the senator posted about the flooding a number of times on social media.

He wrote on Friday, from his personal X account, “Please pray right now for everyone in the Hill Country, especially Camp Mystic,” adding that he’d spoken with Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, and the chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, as well as with President Trump.

On Monday, Cruz reiterated that he had spoken on the phone with the Texas officials “in the first few hours of this flood” and had told Trump, “early in what was transpiring,” that “this appears to be bad, really bad. There may be a very significant loss of life unfolding right now in Texas.”

On Friday and Saturday, Cruz shared messages on his official congressional X account, saying that he and his wife were “lifting up the victims of the central Texas floods in our prayers.”

The Daily Beast’s report recalls the infamous February 2021 incident in which the senator took a trip to Cancun, Mexico, during a historic winter storm that killed an estimated 246 Texans and left millions more freezing without power and drinking water.

During that 2021 scandal, which Cruz admitted was “obviously a mistake,” the senator shipped out to the tropics with his family, who wanted to escape the “FREEZING” weather, per texts from Heidi Cruz unearthed by The New York Times. Senator Cruz said he had planned to stay in Cancun for the weekend but returned to Texas early on “the first available flight,” as “leaving when so many Texans were hurting didn’t feel right.”

The MAGA influencers who victoriously walked........

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