April 15 2025

Trump Targets Mass Deregulation Across Federal Agencies

Trump Administration Launches Trade Probes for Semiconductor, Drugs

FTC Claims Meta’s Instagram, WhatsApp Acquisitions Fueled Monopoly Power

Opinion: The Government SHOULD Reduce Medicaid Spending

Xi Jinping Tours Southeast Asia in Bid to Carve Out Sphere of Influence

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1. Trump Targets Mass Deregulation Across Federal Agencies

Across the more than 400 federal agencies that regulate almost every aspect of American life, from flying in airplanes to processing poultry, Mr. Trump’s appointees are working with the Department of Government Efficiency, the cost-cutting initiative headed by Elon Musk and also called DOGE, to launch a sweeping new phase in their quest to dismantle much of the federal government: deregulation on a mass scale. Usually, the legal process of repealing federal regulations takes years — and rules erased by one administration can be restored by another. But after chafing at that system during his first term and watching President Joseph R. Biden Jr. enact scores of new rules pushed by the left, Mr. Trump has marshaled a strategy for a dramatic do-over designed to kill regulations swiftly and permanently. At Mr. Trump’s direction, agency officials are compiling the regulations they have tagged for the ash heap, racing to meet a deadline next week after which the White House will build its master list to guide what the president called the “deconstruction of the overbearing and burdensome administrative state.” The approach, overseen by Russell T. Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, rests on a set of novel legal strategies in which the administration intends to simply repeal or just stop enforcing regulations that have historically taken years to undo, according to people familiar with the plans. The White House theory relies on Supreme Court decisions — some recent and at least one from the 1980s — that they believe give them the basis for sweeping change.
Source: NYT

2. Trump Administration Launches Trade Probes for Semiconductor, Drugs

President Donald Trump’s administration pressed forward with plans to impose tariffs on semiconductor and pharmaceutical imports by initiating trade probes led by the Commerce Department. The moves, announced Monday in the Federal Register, are a precursor to imposing tariffs and threaten to broaden the president’s sweeping US trade war. The Commerce Department said it had begun investigating the impact on US national security of “imports of semiconductors and semiconductor manufacturing equipment” as well as “pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical ingredients, including finished drug products” in a pair of register notices. The probes, which began April 1 and were ordered under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, could play out for months. Under the law, the Commerce Secretary is expected to deliver the results of his investigation within 270 days, though Trump and other officials have signaled these efforts could conclude more quickly.
Source: Bloomberg

3. FTC Claims Meta’s Instagram, WhatsApp Acquisitions Fueled Monopoly Power

Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp helped give it “monopoly power”, the US Federal Trade Commission told a court on Monday at the start of a blockbuster trial that could force the $1.5tn tech giant’s break-up. The case before a Washington district court is expected to give the clearest signal yet about the Trump administration’s stance on antitrust policy — and its appetite to take on Big Tech. Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg was in court on Monday. He appeared in a dark suit and tie instead of the casual shirt and large gold chain he has sported more frequently. “If Instagram continues to kick ass on mobile or if Google buys them, then over the next few years they could easily add pieces of their service that copy what we’re doing now,” Zuckerberg wrote in a 2011 email, which Matheson presented as evidence. This could be “true about almost any app”, Zuckerberg responded in court. “Instagram could hurt us meaningfully” and was “pretty threatening to us”, he said in a 2012 email presented as evidence by the FTC of his intentions to adopt a “buy-or-bury” strategy.
Source: FT

4. Opinion: The Government SHOULD Reduce Medicaid Spending

Editor's Note: One of the goals of citizen journal is to educate citizens with knowledge they can use to participate in American civic life—to vote, attend public meetings, protest, pen op-eds, and fully exercise all rights granted by the First Amendment. Our goal is to serve as a starting point on your journey to forming your own opinions. We strive to be neither Right nor Left, but instead informative and accessible to all readers.

In keeping with this mission, we want to highlight a significant debate within the Republicans' new budget proposal, mentioned in item 4 of our April 11, 2025 edition. A substantial portion of the savings in this bill—which aims to reduce government spending by $2 trillion over a decade—comes from proposed cuts to Medicaid (means-tested government health insurance).

The following excerpt comes from the OPINION section of the Wall Street Journal, typically representing the voice of the establishment Republican Party, and argues IN FAVOR OF reducing Medicaid. citizen journal is not advocating either FOR or AGAINST this position, and in a future edition, we will publish the case AGAINST reducing Medicaid.

Medicaid, the fast-growing entitlement that now spends more than $850 billion a year while delivering subpar healthcare for the poor. More than six in 10 able-bodied adults on Medicaid report no earned income, according to a report from the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), a think tank. Voters tend to think of Medicaid as a safety net for low-income pregnant women and disabled Americans. But Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act expanded the program into a permanent entitlement for childless men in prime working age. Democrats claim those on Medicaid are working. But that… is derived from government survey data, which are self-reported and rely on sample sizes as small as a few dozen. FGA, by contrast, obtained administrative records from state Medicaid agencies in 23 states… It found that millions are declining to work at all, which is damaging to the country economically and culturally. Republicans offered exceptions for nearly anyone with a plausible reason. Pregnant, have children, or caring for an incapacitated relative? You’re exempt. Got a doctor’s note attesting that you’re unfit to work? Exempt. Ditto for anyone enrolled in school or getting help for alcohol or drug abuse. Medicaid is lousy insurance that doctors often don’t accept because of its low reimbursement rates. It should be a temporary last resort, and the GOP aim should be to move as many people as possible off the Medicaid rolls and onto employer options. House Speaker Mike Johnson was on firm ground when he told a reporter recently that Medicaid isn’t “for 29-year-old males sitting on their couches playing video games” and that “we’re going to find those guys, and we’re going to send them back to work.” Work as a condition for benefits is an American economic and cultural norm. If more healthy men get back into the workforce, and ultimately off Medicaid, the program will be able to focus on the poor for whom it was originally intended.
Source: WSJ

5. Xi Jinping Tours Southeast Asia in Bid to Carve Out Sphere of Influence

President Xi Jinping of China kicked off a weeklong tour of Southeast Asia Monday, landing in Hanoi and trying to rally other nations to Beijing’s side as American tariffs threaten manufacturing networks and economic growth. In an essay published Monday in Vietnamese state media just before his arrival, Mr. Xi called on other countries to join with China in defending stability, free trade and “an open and cooperative international environment.” “There are no winners in trade wars and tariff wars,” Mr. Xi wrote, echoing comments he made recently in Beijing. “Protectionism has no way out.” Mr. Xi’s weeklong tour of Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia aims to amplify that message. As President Trump’s tariffs send shock waves through the global economy, Mr. Xi is both striking back against the United States, and telling the world that he is now the leader to rely on for wealth creation and for nations that feel betrayed by the wild swings of Mr. Trump’s “America First” agenda.
Source: NYT

April 15, 1955: Entrepreneur Ray Kroc opens his first McDonald’s franchise location in Des Plaines, Illinois. The chain’s burgers cost 15 cents, a price that will remain unchanged for the next 12 years, when they rise to 18 cents.

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Sources

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/15/us/politics/trump-doge-regulations.html
2. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-14/trump-moves-to-put-tariffs-on-chips-drugs-in-motion
3. https://www.ft.com/content/4ce636d2-8438-4a68-821b-74dc7a150d52
4. https://www.wsj.com/opinion/medicaid-work-requirements-republicans-congress-budget-mike-johnson-7920f38c?mod=hp_opin_pos_1
5. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/world/asia/china-vietnam-tariffs-trump.html?campaign_id=7&emc=edit_mbae_20250414&instance_id=152570&nl=morning-briefing:-asia-pacific-edition®i_id=279126082&segment_id=195998&user_id=2c1c6898d4514014305be9647762af86