House Republicans Pass Big Beautiful Bill feat. Rep. Ro Khanna
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It's Friday, April 11th. I'm Jane Koston, and this is What A Day, the show that would like to congratulate Education Secretary Linda McMahon on her very exciting ideas for AI in education. Or, as she would call it, AI in education.

A1. I heard this morning, I wish I could remember the source, but that there is a school system that's going to start making sure that first graders or even pre-Ks have A1 teaching every year starting that far down in the grades. And that's just a wonderful thing. Kids are sponges. Yeah.

Now, I don't know what she's talking about, but I am kind of hungry.

On today's show, egg prices are still up and Secretary of State Marco Rubio warns international students about getting their visas revoked if they cause a ruckus. But let's start with the aftermath of Liberation Day because we're still knee deep in it. If you're not feeling better after President Donald Trump paused the biggest so-called reciprocal tariffs on 75 countries on Wednesday, you're not alone. The stock market is just as confused as you are. Here's CBS News.

Markets tumbling out of the gate today. They have yet to recover after one of the most historic days of gains in recent history. The bounce back followed President Trump announcing a pause in reciprocal tariffs on most of the U.S.'s trade partners, while once again raising the levies on China. Yesterday, the president said he was increasing tariffs on Beijing to 125 percent. Why the anxiety? Because let's be real here.

None of us, not one single person, has any idea what Trump is going to do next on tariffs. Case in point, the 90-day pause on massive tariffs on some of our biggest trading partners. During Trump's cabinet meeting on Thursday, a journalist asked, could we see an extension of that pause? For Trump, the answer is maybe. I mean, if we can't make the deal that we...

want to make or we have to make or that's, you know, good for both parties. It's got to be good for both parties. And then we go back to where we were. You go back to the numbers that you made last time? Yeah, I think so. Wouldn't it stand the cost? Yeah. We'll have to see what happens at that time.

You know, the art of the deal is when you just mix shit up on the fly. I'm beginning to understand Trump's many bankruptcies. But while all of that has been roiling the markets and Americans' economic lives, the House GOP did get something done. They adopted a budget that could result in massive cuts to the social safety net, including Medicaid. In

In fact, House Republicans were able to get the budget adopted because they promised hardliners like Texas Republican Representative Chip Roy that there would be more than a trillion dollars in cuts to, quote, mandatory spending.

Programs like Medicaid and Medicare. But according to House Speaker Mike Johnson, don't worry. They'll just be putting in work requirements to go after gamers or something. No one has talked about cutting one benefit in Medicaid to anyone who's duly owed. What we've talked about is returning work requirements. So, for example, you don't have able-bodied children

young men on a program that's designed for single mothers and the elderly and disabled. They're draining resources from people who actually do that. So if you clean that up, insure it up, you save a lot of money and you return the dignity of work to young men who need to be out working instead of playing video games all day. Tough news for Trump's biggest online fans who seem to spend most of their time tweeting about how women having jobs makes them sad.

Anyway, here's a reminder. Roughly a fifth of Americans are on Medicaid and might not even know it because Medicaid programs might have different names in different states. Take Medi-Cal in California, for example. So to talk more about the tariff debacle and the House GOP's budget, I spoke with California Democratic Representative Ro Khanna.

Representative Khanna, welcome to What A Day. Thank you for having me. So the Trump administration wants to paint his retreat from most of the reciprocal tariffs that aren't reciprocal as really the art of the deal, as if this was the plan all along. I do not buy that. Do you?

Well, what deal did he get? Look, I say to people, there's only one thing we've learned now that can check Donald Trump's unconstitutional power, the United States bond markets. And the reality is he saw the yields on bonds going to 4.5, 4.6 percent, the world selling off U.S. treasuries. And more than the markets, that spooked him. But you're seeing today the markets equally uncertain and less

losing about half of what they gained yesterday. And the reason for that is people are waking up and realizing, wow, there's still 10 percent tariffs on every country. There's still a trade war with China. And just because he pulled back from total self-destruction doesn't mean that he has fixed his policy errors.

House Democrats were trying to revoke Trump's national emergency authority to impose tariffs, and it looked like it would have some Republican support. What are you hearing from Republicans in the House about this?

Behind the scenes, this is the first time they have been flabbergasted by what the president has done. I mean, there is the cardinal sin in America is destroying wealth, destroying money, destroying livelihoods. And that's what Trump is doing. And so you've had some courageous or common sense Republicans in swing districts like Don Bacon, who's actually introduced legislation that I'm on to take back Congress's power over tariffs.

I think this is the one place you may see Republicans breaking from Trump. You've seen a few already. And over the next month, depending on how the economy and markets do and bond yields do, you may see more. You represent Silicon Valley and tech companies are being hit pretty hard by these tariffs. Reuters reported Thursday that Apple chartered cargo flights to get 600 tons of iPhones out of India before the tariffs hit.

I've been a little confused by the Silicon Valley reaction to all of this. What are you hearing from people in the industry right now? Well, I'll share with you a private text. I won't say who it was from. He said, well, we voted for Trump over Vice President Harris because we, and he used some profanity, both of them. But we thought at least under Trump, we would make money. And now we're realizing that's not the case.

And I said back, well, I said, how are those IPOs looking and how are the mergers and acquisitions looking? Because you were so critical of President Biden and Lina Khan and in the administration for having antitrust enforcement. How is it looking now? So I think you have, at least in Silicon Valley, some beginning of buyer's remorse of what this administration is doing.

We are not out of the woods of economic catastrophe yet. A lot of the tariffs are paused, but tariffs against China are going up, and Trump says they're now at 145%. You sit on the House Select Committee on China. Is this a reasonable strategy to combat China's growing global influence?

Not the way he's gone about it. First of all, there's still 10 percent tariffs on every single country in the world. And I think we need to remind people of that, that he just took away the reciprocal tariffs. But he's got a blanket 10 percent tariff means almost every good that we import is 10 percent more. Your cars, your groceries, your construction costs for homes and commodities.

construction costs for factories. Secondly, he's gone after the China with a blanket policy. I mean, it's one thing to do what President Biden did, protect steel, protect aluminum, have strategic tariffs on industries that make sense and have a tough negotiation. But he is just doing a trade war with China

And that's, I think, what's what's been destabilizing as opposed to smart policy. And the important thing is, is also not combining it with any federal investment. There's no financing to bring chips back. There's no financing for steel. There's no financing in the workforce. There's no government procurement. And tariffs alone aren't what's going to build America's industrial base.

What would a trade war with China really mean for the U.S. and for Americans? Because it feels like that's maybe where we're heading. Well, it depends how bad it gets. You can't just reverse 40 years of policy in one day, what he calls Liberation Day, or you're going to destroy companies. I mean, if you're a factory here and you have source parts from China, you can say, OK, let's try to bring those supply chains back. But if on day one you say you can't get those parts, you can't get those parts.

What's going to happen to the factory here? And I guess the question is, usually Trump is the master at political spin. But you know what you haven't seen? Any people, any business leaders standing with him saying we're investing in new factories in America because of Donald Trump's tariffs. You know why? Because they're not doing it. So I want to talk about what happened Thursday morning. House Republicans approved a budget framework to enact Trump's agenda.

Two Republicans joined Democrats in voting no, but it seems like Republicans have made their weird coalition work in ways they haven't been able to do in recent years. Where does that leave Democrats?

Well, let's be clear what they're voting for. They're voting for up to $1.5 trillion of cuts in Medicaid and social services, like food stamps, like funding for kids' schools and working class neighborhoods, like student loans. They're voting for those cuts to finance a $4 trillion tax break to the wealthiest Americans, where 83% of it is going to go to the top 1% of Americans.

And you have a lot of people uneasy with that because they understand that you can't take away people's health care to fund tax breaks for the very wealthy. But they're going down this this road. And by the way, they're adding massively to the deficits. And so we'll see if they actually do in reconciliation vote for this. But it would be a political disaster for them.

But I think that to some degree, Democrats had kind of been banking on Republicans not being able to get their tiny majority and their very messy coalition of people who don't like each other to work together. And so far, that's not happening. So what can Democrats do?

Well, we were banking on that because as Democrats, we don't want these Medicaid cuts. We don't care about the politics of it for 2026. We want to make sure that people aren't being taken, their health care isn't being taken away. And I think the thing to do is to organize...

in these red districts. Uh, I did, as you may know, three of these town halls in Bakersfield, Anaheim, Norco one thousand people are showing up and members of Congress will respond to that. And so what we need to do is continue to organize in these districts so that the representatives have a choice. They can either lose their seat next time around, uh,

and be loyal to Trump and Musk, or they can stand with the people in their district. Some of these districts, two-thirds of the folks are on Medicaid. And so when people say, what can you do? What can I do? Find a red district near you that is close and help knock on doors, call people, do social media in those districts. Representative Khanna, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for having me. Really appreciate it.

That was my conversation with California Democratic Representative Ro Khanna. We'll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads.

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Testing, testing. We are live from Chick-fil-A. This is Grant. And this is Laura. And a little thing we love about the Chick-fil-A Smokehouse Barbecue Bacon Sandwich is that sweet bun. And that chicken filet was perfectly crispy and soft at the same time. And that Smokehouse Barbecue sauce, it's a lot of fun. And the brown sugar bacon definitely had a little bit more pizzazzed

Here's what else we're following today. Headlines.

If you come to this country as a student, we expect you to go to class and study and get a degree. If you come here to vandalize a library, take over a campus and do all kinds of crazy things, we're going to get rid of these people and we're going to continue to do it. So when we identify lunatics like these, we take away their student visa. No one's entitled to a student visa.

That's Secretary of State Marco Rubio at a cabinet meeting on Thursday. He's telling our very bored-looking president why the administration's revoking hundreds of student visas. Rubio says the press covers student visas, quote, like they're some sort of birthright. A student visa is like me inviting you into my home. If you come into my home and put all kinds of crap on my couch, I'm going to kick you out of my house. And so, you know, that's what we're doing with our country, thanks to the president.

Well, I guess I'm the press and I happen to not be so chill about student visas being pulled, especially by this administration. So here's where we are. Last month, Rubio said the State Department had revoked more than 300 visas. Reasons varied from accusations of supporting terrorist organizations to old misdemeanors, which

which means Rubio's been busy and he's still at it. On Wednesday, the federal government submitted a memo over the case of Mahmoud Khalil. He's the Columbia University activist detained by immigration officials over his role in pro-Palestinian campus protests last year. The Associated Press obtained the memo. The administration argues it could deport Khalil based on his beliefs. Rubio does not accuse Khalil of any crime, but wrote that Khalil's presence in the U.S. undermines, quote, "...U.S. policy to combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States."

Khalil is a legal permanent resident, by the way. His attorneys say the memo proves the administration is targeting their clients' free speech rights. The filing comes ahead of a hearing over whether Khalil can continue being detained during immigration proceedings. That's set for today.

So when I got in, the press went absolutely crazy the first week. They said, eggs have quadrupled in price. I said, I just got here. Tell me about it. And Brooke Rollins and our team did a great job. And eggs are down now 79 percent and they're all over the place. It wouldn't be a Trump press conference without a Trump mischaracterization, right? For this Monday press conference, it was...

eggs. He's saying egg prices are down, but the very same week, Thursday to be precise, his own Bureau of Labor Statistics said that eggs hit a record high, $6.23 per dozen. Still, he couldn't stop beating the egg theme.

Here he is at a cabinet meeting Thursday. And eggs are down. Eggs are down. Big, right? Yes. Big. Wholesale prices. Retail will come. Easter is the Super Bowl for eggs. So, you know, there may be a little fluctuation, but no, we feel really good about it. Thank you. That's what I hear. Thank you. Thank you. Maybe you're thinking, I know we all live in echo chambers, but how can he directly contradict the facts? I mean, easily, it's Donald Trump. But...

To give Trump a smidgen of credit, you may have heard a cabinet member clarify that prices were down for wholesalers, just not for the rest of us at grocery stores. Maybe this is because Trump can't remember the last time he bought eggs at the store and doesn't know the difference. The Social Security Administration seems to be rolling back plans to restrict phone services. You may remember when the Department of Government Efficiency, Doge, strolled into SSA headquarters to tackle fraud.

SSA then announced folks would have to go online or visit in person to file for benefits or change banking information. Need to call instead? Nope. We're talking about seniors and some folks with disabilities, so the plan hit some backlash, of course. SSA delayed and then rolled back some of that. Multiple outlets say they've seen a memo that indicates the plan has almost been entirely reversed. So phones are mostly okay for now.

In the memo, Acting Deputy Commissioner Doris Diaz wrote that the agency, quote, assessed cases of widespread fraud in teleclaims and found minimal instances. According to the memo, the SSA is suggesting implementing anti-fraud technology for telephone claims, which leads us to ask, why didn't they just do that in the first place? And Dana's an incredible guy, and we spoke to President Putin about it, and they made a deal. They released the young ballerina,

And she is now out. And that was good. So we appreciate that. This is President Trump giving credit to Dana White, the CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship. And that ballerina released is Ksenia Karolina. You might remember her as the Russian-American convicted of treason in Russia last year. She'd been sentenced to 12 years in prison for making a $52 donation to a charity aiding Ukraine.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio says Carolina was headed home to the U.S. Thursday after being wrongfully detained for over a year. Officials in the U.S. had called her case, quote, absolutely ludicrous because it was absolutely ludicrous. In return, Russia's main security agency said the U.S. released a man accused of smuggling sensitive U.S. electronics to Russia. And that's the news.

One more thing. As we've been talking about on the show, as of Wednesday, when Trump announced a 90-day delay in the implementation of his batshit tariffs, the situation is looking slightly less terrifying, at least for now.

But it's still ongoing. Maybe you've been getting emails from every small business you've ever bought something from, telling you that their prices are going to go up or that they're still trying to figure out their sourcing or something else that sounds anxiety-inducing. I know I have, from some of my favorite cooking supply places. I love to bake and cook because how the hell else am I supposed to get through the next four years? But the spices I use in my cooking are being tariffed too.

In order to see how small businesses are preparing to handle these tariffs, even as Trump keeps them in limbo as to what those tariffs will be and when they'll go into effect, I spoke with Ori Zohar, co-founder and co-CEO of spice company Burlap & Barrel. Ori Zohar, welcome to Water Day. Thanks so much for having me here. So let's start with the basics. You bring nearly all of your spices in from overseas where they're grown by local farmers you partner with. What are some of the biggest ways these tariffs are going to hit your business?

So there is no meaningful domestic spice industry to protect. We bring in some domestic chilies and we have a father-daughter salt team in upstate New York. But really, the biggest thing is that spices don't grow in America. There's no cinnamon industry or cumin industry. And so these tariffs are going to charge us a tax on things that we have no alternate domestic source for.

Yeah, I seem to remember that the 18th and 19th century were riven with war, fought over this very issue because of the lack of domestic spice production in the UK, Europe, and America. So I'm not surprised. But which of your spices would be hit hardest by these tariffs?

So Vietnam is one of our biggest source. We have a number of farmers that work there, including our best-selling royal cinnamon, which is this really spicy, sweet Vietnamese cinnamon, a robusta black pepper. We bring in garlic powder and shallot powder and onion powder and star anise and all these other spices. But Vietnam just has a beautiful climate for growing really the world's best spices. And that, with the threat of maybe a 46% reciprocal tariff, maybe more, definitely keeps me up at night.

And speaking of Vietnam, how are you dealing with all the uncertainty? Because like your cinnamon, which comes from Vietnam, as you mentioned, it was facing a 46% tariff under Trump's original plan. And then Trump went, I decide something else. Now it's 10% while he negotiates a new deal. You don't know what that new deal will even look like, if it'll ever happen. So in a few months, maybe the tariffs go back up to 46%. Maybe they stay at 10%. Maybe they end up somewhere in the middle. Maybe they go away entirely. How do you even plan around that?

You don't. I think most companies in our position, we're trying to figure out what's going to go on in the holidays, November and December right now. And we don't even know what's going to happen in the rest of April. And so we're taking it day by day. We're trying to avoid knee-jerk reactions that will kind of mess things up. And we're looking at any other place that we can possibly save money that doesn't involve passing costs on to our partner farmers. We're a social enterprise. That's not how we work. Or increasing prices on U.S. consumers, which I think is what's going to happen across all the other foods where there is no domestic alternative for.

Yeah, I think many of the people listening may have gotten emails from companies talking about how their prices may have to rise. You wrote a really interesting Instagram post about how Burlap and Barrel plans to respond to the tariffs. As you mentioned, you're not going to change what you pay your farmers and you're not going to raise your prices. How are you going to accomplish that?

So we're a single origin spice company that sources from farmers in 30 countries. We can't just uproot all this in the same way that like cinnamon trees can't be uprooted that have been growing there for centuries and harvested for generations. We're trying to get really crafty about it. We're trying to see just how much we can kind of

play around with our invoices from the origin countries and all that. But really, we're trying to find ways to cut costs that won't impact the customer experience. Maybe we ship a little bit slower. Maybe we save a little bit of money on our packaging. Maybe we're also putting a bunch of our fun, innovative projects on hold. We had a crazy dried kimchi that we did a couple of years ago that we lost money on every single jar that we sold. Not the best business case, but we're going to put some of the fun innovation projects on hold now. We really wanted to do an advent calendar this year.

that that was going to get printed in China and shipped over here. And so that's off the table now. So we're being more conservative. Ori, thank you so much for speaking with me. Yeah, great to chat with you too. That was my conversation with Ori Zohar, co-founder and co-CEO of Burlap and Barrel. Before we go, Trump's tariffs might finally do what indictments couldn't, damage his polling.

On the newest episode of Polar Coaster, Dan breaks down the numbers and the aftermath of the Wisconsin and Florida special elections. Plus, he answers questions from the Discord. Caroline Rustin moderates. Not a member? This month only, we are offering a free 30-day trial of our Friends of the Pod subscription. With your subscription, you'll also enjoy ad-free episodes of Offline, Love It or Leave It, Pod Save America, and Pod Save the World.

You'll also join our Discord community where you can process and discuss the news with fellow listeners all around the world. Sign up at crooked.com slash friends to start your 30-day free trial now. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review. Remember to email us about how you and your family and your business are handling the tariff tear and tell your friends to listen.

And if you're into reading and not just about how you can email us at whataday at crooked.com to tell us how you and yours are handling figuring out where to source your business's materials or what to do about your dad's retirement plans, like me, Whataday is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Jane Koston, and we want to hear from you.

Water Day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Raven Yamamoto and Emily Fore. Our producer is Michelle Eloy. We had production help today from Tyler Hill, Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters, and Julia Clare. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our executive producer is Adrian Hill. Our theme music is by Colin, Gillyard, and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

Bye.