Trump’s tariff approach seems basically to be “flood the zone.” Flood the zone with chaos and constant changes, so nobody knows the current levels and so nobody can realistically plan for the future. The only certain thing is that the future will have less free trade: “Since Mr. Trump came into office in January, the average effective U.S. tariff rate has soared to 16.6 percent from 2.5 percent, according to tracking by the Budget Lab at Yale University, a nonpartisan research center,” per the Times.

Clemency on autopilot: The Trump White House, Congress, and the Department of Justice are ramping up investigations into former President Joe Biden’s aides, trying to suss out whether the former president was really in control toward the end of his term as his mental-acuity problems were becoming more of a political liability.

Toward the end of his presidency, Biden issued preemptive pardons for allies he believed could be targeted by Trump or otherwise find themselves in legal trouble—including, controversially, his son Hunter (who pleaded guilty to tax charges in September 2024, and was found guilty of being an illegal drug user in possession of a firearm earlier that year as well). He also reduced sentences for nearly 4,000 federal prisoners. But Biden was not signing each slip himself, and there’s been lots of speculation about how much clemency decisionmaking was being delegated to aides.

“Biden did not individually approve each name for the categorical pardons that applied to large numbers of people, he and aides confirmed,” The New York Times reported yesterday. “Rather, after extensive discussion of different possible criteria, he signed off on the standards he wanted to be used to determine which convicts would qualify for a reduction in sentence.

“Even after Mr. Biden made that decision, one former aide said, the Bureau of Prisons kept providing additional information about specific inmates, resulting in small changes to the list,” continued the Times. “Rather than ask Mr. Biden to keep signing revised versions, his staff waited and then ran the final version through the autopen, which they saw as a routine procedure, the aide said.” But staffers saw lots of covering-for-Biden as routine procedure, and at times they took great license simply to make decisions for him, so these assurances don’t really make clear who was making the decisions.

Scenes from New York: Unfortunately for landlords—and anyone who wants to rent housing at a semi-reasonable price in New York City—mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who won the Democratic primary last month, absolutely loves Local Law 97.

This is a climate-related measure, passed by city council (arguably almost as bad at policy as Mamdani) back in 2019, that forces landlords to make very expensive upgrades to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of their buildings. “Local Law 97 targets about 50,000 properties that are larger than 25,000 square feet,” reports The New York Times, “calling for a series of reductions in emissions over the upcoming years. To meet the deadlines, some properties may have to take expensive steps like replacing oil-burning boilers or installing solar panels.” Landlords may also have to switch to electric appliances, which can be extremely costly when you’re talking about hundreds of units. Under the timelines detailed in the law, the next set of limits, scheduled for 2030, requires a 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions; the aim is net-zero emissions by 2050.

It all seems like a make-work program for Department of Buildings enforcers and a jobs program for people involved in retrofitting buildings. And it’s likely to result in landlords passing on costs to tenants.