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Ex-Pence Chief Scorches Tariff Rebates—Likens Them to Soviet-Style Central Planning

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Marc Short, who served in the first Trump administration as White House Director of Legislative Affairs and then as Vice President Mike Pence’s Chief of Staff, is blasting not only President Donald Trump’s tariffs but also U.S. Senator Josh Hawley’s (R-MO) plan—supported by Trump—to hand out tariff rebate checks to every person in America.

On Monday, NBC News described Hawley’s plan to “provide tariff rebate checks of at least $600 per adult and child to American families,” as “similar to the stimulus checks the government distributed during the Covid pandemic.”

Short, a conservative Republican who got his start in politics in the 1990s, has an MBA from the University of Virginia.

In a social media post Monday, he scorched the Trump tariff agenda—slamming both the tariffs themselves and the proposed rebates (which he acknowledges are paid by U.S. consumers)—and likened it all to Soviet-style, communist, or socialist economies, where government “central planners” dictate prices and decide who gets what.

READ MORE: ‘Adios’ to GOP House Control if Trump Can’t Fix Issue That Got Him Elected: CNN Analyst

“Why do we need rebates if foreign nations are paying the tariffs?” Short asked. “And how bout Congress exercises its constitutional authority and eliminates [the] tariff tax rather than trying to be central planners redistributing $. ?”

Last week, Short also blasted the tariff system, the proposed rebates — and the Trump administration.

“I’ve never seen a Republican administration with this many central planners,” he wrote on social media. “Rebating tariff revenue sounds like a Democrat idea. If you really want to help working families, don’t send checks—cut the tariffs. It’s Americans paying them, not foreign governments.”

Those remarks came alongside an interview (video below) of him speaking with Bloomberg News.

“I’ve never seen a Republican administration with so many central planners in their economics department,” he said.

“This is basically the policy of the Democrats, which you’ve seen in the last couple of years, the Republicans advanced legislation to raise a federal minimum wage,” Short said. “You’ve seen Republicans embrace more regulations. And so I think it reflects the dramatic shift [economically] in the Republican Party.”

READ MORE: Ghislaine Maxwell Files SCOTUS Appeal as Trump Again Leaves Door Open to Possible Pardon

“I think rather than saying ‘rebate checks,’ it’s important to remind people that the money rolling into the Treasury is a tax on the American people. It’s not a foreign government paying the tariff. It’s American citizens paying the tariff. So rather than giving a rebate check, one thing to do would actually be to lower the tariffs, if that’s what they want to do to provide help to working families.”

President Trump’s tariffs are widely unpopular.

Last week, a YouGov poll found a majority of Americans (56%) disapprove of Trump’s tariffs. Nearly seven in ten Americans (69%) say tariffs are paid by U.S. companies and consumers. A majority (55%) said tariffs do more to hurt rather than help Americans. And nearly half (49%) said Trump does not have a clear U.S. trade policy.

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Rewarding’: Fox Host Wants Kids to Pick Blueberries as Red States Slash Child Labor Laws

 

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‘We’d Bomb Mexico’: Republican Breaks Ranks and Blasts Trump Over ‘WMDs’

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December 17, 2025

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U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) delivered sharp criticism of President Donald Trump’s policy of using military force to destroy vessels the U.S. Department of Defense believes are smuggling illicit drugs, including fentanyl, to the United States.

Critics have called the strikes illegal, murder, and war crimes. Earlier this week, President Trump signed an executive order designating illicit fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction.

“The framers understood a simple truth,” Congressman Massie said on the House floor on Wednesday. “To the extent that war-making power devolves to one person, liberty dissolves. If the president believes military action against Venezuela is justified and needed, he should make the case, and Congress should vote — before American lives and treasure are spent on regime change in South America.”

The U.S. Constitution vests the power to declare war in Congress.

READ MORE: ‘Negative, Negative, Negative’: Trump Faces Bleak Midterm Prospects Says Analyst

“Let’s be honest about likely outcomes,” Massie continued, “Do we truly believe that Nicolás Maduro will be replaced by a modern-day George Washington? How did that work out? In Cuba, Libya, Iraq, or Syria?”

“Previous presidents told us to go to war over WMDs,” he said, referring to weapons of mass destruction, the alleged reason President George W. Bush took America to war against Iraq. “Weapons of mass destruction that did not exist.”

“Now, it’s the same playbook, except we’re told that drugs are the WMDs,” Massie explained.

“If it were about drugs, we’d bomb Mexico, or China, or Colombia. And the president would not have pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández,” he said, the former president of Honduras serving time in a U.S. prison after having been convicted of drug trafficking.

Massie also issued a warning: “This is about oil and regime change.”

READ MORE: FCC Scrubs Website After Chair’s ‘Independent Agency’ Assertion Ignites Heated Clash

 

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‘Negative, Negative, Negative’: Trump Faces Bleak Midterm Prospects Says Analyst

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10 hours ago

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December 17, 2025

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Can President Donald Trump break a pattern held by several of his predecessors — rebounding into a positive net approval rating by next year’s midterm elections?

It will be challenging but not impossible, says CNN forecaster Harry Enten, who noted that if he doesn’t, it could spell trouble for congressional Republicans on the November ballot.

“I would say the report card is negative,” Enten said on Wednesday. “It’s minus. It’s no good.”

READ MORE: FCC Scrubs Website After Chair’s ‘Independent Agency’ Assertion Ignites Heated Clash

Enten then shared a critical statistic.

“Every single day since March 12th, Trump has been in the red. Negative. That is days in row, 281. He has spent more time underwater than Jacques Cousteau, for goodness’ sake.”

“The bottom line is this, the American people don’t like what Trump’s doing, and they haven’t liked what Trump’s doing for a long period of time: 281 days,” he explained, noting that his net negatives are on “all the key issues.”

“He’s underwater across the board.”

“Immigration, a key issue for him: underwater by six points. Foreign policy, which has been one of his better issues, underwater by 14 points. Trade and tariffs, of course, this has been a key component of Trump’s presidency: underwater by 15 points.”

READ MORE: Trump Bets ‘Dangling’ Cash Will Shift Voters’ Views: Report

“The economy, the reason Trump got elected to a second term, underwater by 16 points, and the Epstein case — which I think will be talking a lot about going into the latter part of this week — underwater by 29 points. Negative, negative, negative, negative, negative,” he exclaimed.

Enten noted that there are still ten and a half months until the midterms.

“But if history is any guide, it’s not a good one for you, because take a look at your term two, negative net approval ratings at this point, when positive by the midterm, well, we have three examples: Richard Nixon, he was forced out of office, of course. He never went positive. George W. Bush, he never saw positive territory again. Barack Obama earlier this century, he did not go positive by the midterm.”

And now, “It’s just negative across the board for the president of the United States. He is, again, gonna have to break history. He has done it before, but he’s really gonna have to do it if he really wants to give his Republican Party much of a chance come the 2026 midterms, because if the numbers look like this and look like this, well, this will become another X.”

READ MORE: GOP Crack-Up Continues as Another House Republican Calls It Quits

 

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FCC Scrubs Website After Chair’s ‘Independent Agency’ Assertion Ignites Heated Clash

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11 hours ago

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December 17, 2025

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), established by Congress in 1934 as an independent agency to regulate a wide swath of communications, is not an independent agency, according to its Trump-appointed chairman, during a raucous debate on Capitol Hill.

The FCC has jurisdiction over radio, broadcast television, satellite, and cable communications, and oversees licensing of broadcasters, with some authority to revoke licenses for regulatory or technical violations.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for the licenses of outlets he has criticized to be revoked.

In a heated debate, U.S. Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) challenged FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Project 2025 author, over the agency’s independence.

“Yes or no, please, yes or no?” Senator Luján asked Carr during a Commerce Committee oversight hearing on Wednesday. “Is the FCC an independent agency?”

READ MORE: Trump Bets ‘Dangling’ Cash Will Shift Voters’ Views: Report

When Carr immediately declared, “I think that…” Luján pulled him back.

“Yes or no, is all we need, sir. Yes or no, is it independent?” the New Mexico Democrat asked again.

“Well, there’s a test for this in the law, in the key portion of that test,” Carr replied.

“Yes or no, Brendan,” Luján again asked.

“So just so you know, Brendan,” the senator continued, “on your website, it just simply says, man, the FCC’s independent. This isn’t a trick question.”

“Okay, the FCC is not…” Carr began.

“Yes or no?”

After more back and forth, Carr ultimately declared, “the FCC is not an independent agency.”

The Bulwark reported that in 2021 Carr declared that the FCC is an independent agency.

The Bulwark’s Sam Stein reported early Wednesday afternoon, “FCC folks have been frantically scrubbing their website to remove reference to it being an ‘independent’ agency now that Carr this morning said it’s not.”

An archived version of the FCC’s website reads: “An independent U.S. government agency overseen by Congress, the Commission is the federal agency responsible for implementing and enforcing America’s communications law and regulations.”

READ MORE: GOP Crack-Up Continues as Another House Republican Calls It Quits

That page now calls it a “U.S. government agency overseen by Congress.”

Axios’ media correspondent Sara Fischer on social media declared, “This is INSANE. I took this screenshot of the @FCC website at 11:52 a.m. ET where it explicitly states the FCC is an independent agency. 25 minutes later, it has been removed following Carr’s comments during this hearing!”

“This, combined with SCOTUS appearing poised to uphold POTUS firing of FTC commissioners,” Fischer added, “shows how effective Trump has been in diminishing the independence of federal agencies that are supposed to regulate the media/ad/tech industries.”

READ MORE: White House Teases Out What Trump Will Say in Rare Oval Office Address

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