Coffee Talk with Tiff…

June 5, 2025 12:41 pm EDT Tiff Editorial (Open Thread), News Commentary Comments Off on Coffee Talk with Tiff…
Coffee. Photo by Jonathan Thursfield.

It’s Thursday…

President Shitshow’s public schedule for…

Thursday, June 5 2025
9:00 AM
In-Town Pool Call Time
The White House In-Town Pool
11:30 AM
The President greets the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
Stakeout Location 
Open Press
11:45 AM
The President participates in a Bilateral Meeting with the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
Oval Office White House
Press Pool
12:15 PM
The President participates in a Bilateral Lunch with the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
Cabinet Room 
Closed Press
4:00 PM
The President participates in a Roundtable Discussion with the Fraternal Order of Police
State Dining Room White House
Press Pool

Yesterday, President TACO, signed proclamations that ban travel for 12 or 19 countries.

From the White House…

06/04/2025:

From the New York Times:

The ban, which goes into effect on Monday, bars travel to the United States by citizens of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. And it limits travel from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.

Here are some of the exemptions:

New York Times. 06/04/2025; updated 06/05/2025.
  • Green card holders: People with green cards — individuals who have a pathway to U.S. citizenship — are exempted from the ban. When a travel ban was introduced by Mr. Trump during his first term in 2017, chaos and confusion ensued at airports. The Department of Homeland Security had to put out a statement clarifying that green card holders could enter the country. This time, the administration is making that exemption clear in the order itself.
  • Dual citizens: People who are American citizens but also hold citizenship with a banned country are exempt under the order.
  • Those seeking visas through connections to U.S. family members: Immigrants from the banned countries who seek visas through connections to their spouses, children, or parents who are American citizens will still be able to apply for them.
  • Certain athletes: Athletes and coaches traveling to the United States to take part in major sports events, along with their families, will still be allowed into the country. The United States is one of the hosts of the World Cup in 2026, and Los Angeles is the site of the Summer Olympics in 2028. This exception will allow soccer players from targeted countries, like Iran, which has already qualifed, to enter the United States for the World Cup.
  • Refugees granted asylum: Those who have been admitted as refugees or were granted asylum are exempted under the order.
  • Afghans who helped the U.S.: The order exempts Afghans who seek to enter the U.S. under a special visa program for those helped the U.S. government during the two decades of war after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
  • Iranians fleeing religious persecution: Iranians who are escaping the country because they belong to a religious minority, like Christianity, are also exempted.

Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Restricts Foreign Student Visas at Harvard University

Enhancing National Security by Addressing Risks at Harvard University

Wall Street Journal (06/04/2025–gift link):

The proclamation issued by the White House late Wednesday ramps up Trump’s attacks on the university, which has fought back against the administration in federal court. The proclamation seeks to prevent students from receiving visas to study for six months and perhaps longer.

The escalation comes as Harvard has declined to negotiate with Trump after the school rejected a series of demands from the administration’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism. Those demands included oversight of faculty hiring, viewpoints and student admission at Harvard. Trump has pulled billions of dollars in federal research funds, threatened Harvard’s tax-exempt status and probed its acceptance of foreign donations.

[snip]

Around a quarter of Harvard’s student population comes from abroad, with the proportion even higher in certain graduate schools, and the university relies on its tuition payments, which are often full-fee.

Trump’s proclamation suspends foreign nationals from entering the U.S. to study through the student-visa program, effective Wednesday. It says the secretary of state will decide whether foreign nationals who are currently at Harvard should also have their visas revoked.

Wall Street Journal (06/04/2025–gift link).

A note: the reason the athlete’s exemption exists, is because the US is suppose to hold two world events. Their fans however, will not be able to attend.

The above tweet is how I found the NYT article that lays out who is exempt from the new travel ban.

This will have another negative impact on our economy; while these events do not lead to long term health of the economy, they do in fact lead to short term gains for cities and states that are involved in hosting the events. And some times businesses especially small ones, use those short term gains to stay open.

Speaking of the economy…

CBS News linked to Procter & Gamble’s blog post regarding the upcoming non-manufacturing job cuts.

I’m skipping the open remarks and going right to the plan.

Accelerating Productivity

A key element to take advantage of these growth opportunities and mitigate cost challenges is productivity.

To realize the tremendous potential for growth ahead, we are raising the bar on integrated superiority across all vectors, fueled by the next level of productivity.

In Fiscal 2026, we’ll begin a 2-year effort to accelerate P&G’s growth and value creation. These changes across our portfolio, supply chain and organization are designed to unlock significant opportunities for stronger delivery of P&G’s integrated growth strategy.

This is not a new approach, rather an intentional acceleration of the current strategy to widen P&G’s margin of advantage in superiority, fueled by productivity, to win in the increasingly challenging environment in which we compete.

There are three main areas of focus: portfolio, supply chain and organization design.

Fueling Growth and Value Creation through Productivity. 06/05/2025.
  1. The portfolio choices include exits of some categories, brands and product forms in individual markets. They may also include some brand divestitures. More details will be shared in the months ahead.
  2. These portfolio moves enable the business to make related interventions in our supply chain — right-sizing and right-locating production to drive efficiencies, faster innovation, cost reduction and even more reliable and resilient supply.
  3. Finally, there will be additional changes to ensure an even more agile, empowered and accountable organization design — making roles broader, teams smaller, work more fulfilling and more efficient, including leveraging digitization and automation.

Taken together, each of these actions is intended to widen P&G’s margin of advantage in superiority leading to growth and value creation.

In doing all this, P&G expects to reduce up to 7,000 non-manufacturing roles, or approximately 15 percent of our current non-manufacturing workforce over the next two years. As always, employee separations will be managed with support and respect, and in line with our principles and values and local laws. Specific impacts by region or site are not available at this time.

Plans will be implemented over the next two fiscal years, allowing us appropriately sequence the delivery of important innovation and operational projects. As we do this, our top priority remains delivering balanced growth and value creation to delight consumers, customers, employees, society and shareowners alike.

Fueling Growth and Value Creation through Productivity. 06/05/2025.

Sometimes my notifications feed on twitter is funny in a “oh the irony” type of funny…

Filings for U.S. unemployment benefits rose to their highest level in eight months last week but remain historically low despite growing uncertainty about how tariffs could impact the broader economy.

New applications for jobless benefits rose by 8,000 to 247,000 for the week ending May 31, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s the most since early October. Analysts had forecast 237,000 new applications.

Weekly applications for jobless benefits are considered representative of U.S. layoffs and have mostly bounced around a historically healthy range between 200,000 and 250,000 since COVID-19 throttled the economy five years ago, wiping out millions of jobs.

In reporting their latest earnings, many companies have either lowered their sales and profit expectations for 2025 or not issued guidance at all, often citing President Donald Trump’s dizzying rollout of tariff announcements.

AP News. 06/05/2025.

The BBB is still going through things…

A note before we go further; make no mistake, Musk isn’t suddenly “good” or even “okay” now that he’s speaking out against the BBB that’s horrid. I’m sure he has some personal own benefit reasons for his speaking out now against the terrible spending madness.

But, the R’s in the House appear afraid of Musk.

I’m sure it’s Musk’s money they fear the most, but that’s besides my point.

President TACO responded to the Musk attack on the BBB…

Show more =’s He happened to be a Democrat. We won, we get certain privileges.”

Show more =’s he hasn’t said bad about me personally but I’m sure that’ll be next. But I’m very disappointed in Elon.”

Show more =’s In the entire history of civilization, there has never been legislation that both big and beautiful. Everyone knows this! Either you get a big and ugly bill or a slim and beautiful bill. Slim and beautiful is the way. https://x.com/cb_doge/status/1930658555612324271/video/1

Speaking of the BBB and the fight to paint the CBO as deep state democratic controlled loser out to get President TACO…

Here’s what they said yesterday…

The Summary:

This letter responds to a request for the Congressional Budget Office to estimate the budgetary and economic effects of increases in tariffs implemented through executive action between January 6 and May 13, 2025. The following estimates for the 2025–2035 period reflect the effects relative to the budget and economic projections that CBO published on January 17, 2025, which incorporated tariff rates in place on January 6, 2025.

CBO.gov. 06/04/2025.
  • Before accounting for how the changes in tariffs would affect the size of the economy, CBO estimates that the increase in collections of tariffs would reduce primary deficits by $2.5 trillion. That estimate accounts for how flows of U.S. imports and exports would adjust in response to the tariffs imposed as of May 13, 2025.
  • By lowering federal borrowing, those tariff collections would reduce federal outlays for interest by $0.5 trillion. As a result, in the absence of any effects on the U.S. economy, the changes in tariffs would reduce total deficits by $3.0 trillion altogether.
  • In CBO’s assessment, the changes in tariffs will reduce the size of the U.S. economy—in part because of tariffs imposed by other countries in response to the increases in U.S. tariffs. After accounting for that change in the size of the economy, CBO estimates that the changes in tariffs will reduce total federal deficits by $2.8 trillion.
  • Reductions in investment and productivity stemming from higher tariffs will be partially offset by increases in resources available for private investment resulting from the reduction in federal borrowing. CBO estimates that, on net, real (inflation-adjusted) economic output in the United States will fall as a result.
  • Inflation will increase by an annual average of 0.4 percentage points in 2025 and 2026, in CBO’s estimation, reducing the purchasing power of households and businesses.

CBO completed this analysis before courts issued decisions on May 28 and 29 related to certain tariffs in place as of May 13. As of June 4, the executive orders imposing the tariffs described in this letter remain in place pending consideration by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals.

CBO.gov. 06/04/2025.

This is what they said this morning…

The Summary:

CBO responds to a request from Senator Merkley for information about how federal deficits and debt held by the public would be affected by enacting H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, as passed by the House of Representatives on May 22, 2025.

CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimate that enacting the bill would increase deficits over the 2025–2034 period by $2.4 trillion, excluding any macroeconomic or debt‑service effects. That change stems from a reduction in revenues of $3.7 trillion and a reduction in outlays of $1.3 trillion over the 2025–2034 period.

CBO estimates that the additional debt-service costs under the bill would total $551 billion over the 10-year period. That change would increase the cumulative effect on the deficit to $3.0 trillion. CBO estimates that the debt-service increase from the change in revenues would amount to $716 billion. Other provisions would, on net, result in a decrease in debt-service costs of $166 billion.

As a result, and net of any changes in borrowing for federal credit programs, the agency estimates that debt held by the public at the end of 2034 would increase from CBO’s January 2025 baseline projection of 117.1 percent to 123.8 percent of gross domestic product.

CBO’s estimate of the additional amounts that the Treasury would borrow each year under H.R. 1 is determined primarily by the budget deficit. However, other factors, driven mostly by federal credit programs that are not directly included in budget totals, also affect the need to borrow from the public. As required by the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990, the deficit reflects the net subsidy costs (the expected lifetime costs to the government for loans or loan guarantees) rather than annual cash flows. The estimated increase in debt service and debt held by the public accounts for those changes in cash flows.

CBO.gov. 06/05/2025.

I know, I don’t have to tell you the roll of the CBO. But, some lurker who reads beyond one or two words might not understand their function.

They get a bill from someone in Congress (as a whole) and then they do maths and estimate the cost of that bill. That’s it, the whole job of the CBO is to figure out what something might cost. Obviously, they can only go by what’s in the bill that’s spending and revenue that we have or could have.

They are not some political arm of some deep state bullshit made up thing out to harm the “chosen one” of MAGA.

He’s still rambling away in the Oval…

He said he might sanctions on Ukraine and Russia…

That’s right he is saying he might sanction both countries if the war that Putin started isn’t ended because “it takes two to tango”…

This is an open thread

PS.

We have some good news to report…

About the opinions in this article…

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About Tiff 3325 Articles
Member of the Free Press who is politically homeless and a political junkie.