Tariffying times

Weekend reads for April 12, 2025

Hello, friends! And happy Saturday. (This may be the last time we call it that. The word “Saturday” comes from Latin, which is foreign, and under the Trump tariffs we are likely to start using a domestic name for this day, Billy Bob Day. That is, unless the Roman Empire is willing to negotiate.)

This week we saw more cuts, more capitulations, and more damage done to American institutions and harm done to people. But this week also reminded us that there is hope. Millions of Americans took to the streets for the “Hands Off!” rallies — the biggest show of strength against Donald Trump and Elon Musk so far. And while it might not have been in the people’s interests, even the regime’s real bosses — the masters of finance — got organized and pushed back against Trump’s tariffs.

As we do for our supporting subscribers each weekend, we’ve gathered below the very best essays, reviews, and interviews we’ve come across this week. As always, we hope you make some space today for reflection and that these readings give you food for thought.

Ink readers are not doomscrollers. We are bloomscrollers. Going deeper and thinking outside of the firehose of bad-news updates.

Among the links you’ll find in today’s edition of Weekend Reads:

• New music by the undead

• What the garment industry can teach us about tariffs

• How ambiguity reveals what data can’t

• What comes after the Protestant work ethic

• An argument for international cooperation on behalf of individuals, not states

• The New Deal’s lost solution for an aging America

• Rachel Kushner on the emptiness at Gen X’s heart

You won’t want to miss any of it. Thank you so much to our supporting subscribers for making this newsletter possible. If you haven’t yet joined our community, why not become part of this, and help us build the future of independent media today?

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The people united

As the week closes, the Department of Justice is in open defiance of the courts. Independent agencies hang by a thread as the Supreme Court chips away at their insulation from the White House. And the tantrum of needless cuts to critical programs continues, making us all less safe. And while there has been some welcome political pushback, Democrats are still voting to confirm Trump appointees. Opposition is building — as we mentioned above, last weekend’s mass protests were the biggest yet — but it’s early, and there’s lots of work ahead to build a real movement that’s up to the task.

When we talked to journalist and former MSNBC anchor Joy Reid earlier this week, she laid out in blunt terms what that work entails. On the electoral side, she described a Democratic Party that somehow managed to win the victories that built the 20th century, but has failed to defend them since. And that needs to change.

But it’s never been clearer that the real opposition can only be the people. The “Hands Off!” rallies were huge, and their geographical reach suggests a breadth of dissatisfaction with the regime that could bloom into a serious resistance movement. But there’s work to do there, too. The crowds skewed very white, however, and as Reid observer, that’s indicative of a deeper problem in American progressive politics, which is that in a real way, Black Americans, who’ve led the fight for social justice for the last century, have lost their trust in white Americans, white progressives included.

The diversity has been reduced because of this sense of betrayal that Black people feel, that we keep trying to lead this country toward a more perfect union.

And white people keep saying no. They keep saying we want the devil, because the devil will protect our supremacy. And our supremacy matters to us much more than even our own economic survival. Our supremacy is so central to who we are as Americans. We need to be the central characters in the American story. We need to be the main character. And we want that so badly that we're willing to punch ourselves in the face economically… We're willing to lose our livelihoods, our jobs, our businesses, our farms, our whole lives — and including maybe our physical lives — to protect our supremacy.

Defunding Tesla, getting the masses in the streets, calling reps — that’s one job. But there’s another one that needs doing. It’s on white progressives to rebuild trust with Black America by wholeheartedly rejecting white supremacy. And that means showing up and delivering on every front, electoral and otherwise. The Trump regime may want to sweep the very idea of racism under the rug, but the resistance can’t afford to do that any longer, not if it wants to build the power that it takes to demand real change.

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Spring break activities

If you’ve got school-age kids, they’re likely on spring break over the next week or two — and so is Congress. The Senate and the House are both on recess, which means your representatives are going to be back home in their districts. It’s not really meant as a “vacation” — it’s officially a “Work Period,” where reps are meant to head home and answer to their constituents in the interest of accountability. What better way to welcome them home than to take them at their word by presenting your demands? It’s a great time to get their attention and to remind them that you’re expecting them to use every available tool to block the Trump-Musk regime’s agenda. Indivisible has put together a helpful page to help you get started.

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And now, your weekend reads

On brand

Instead of blunt instruments like deporting immigrants (who make our clothes) and erecting blanket tariffs (which increase costs), we should make the US more competitive on the global market, leveraging our soft power. Follow the Italian model: make cool stuff people want to wear. [Derek Guy/Die Workwear]

Songs from beyond the grave

[Alvin] Lucier was the perfect collaborator. In 1965 the composer became the first artist to use brainwaves to generate live sound in his seminal work Music for Solo Performer. Longtime fans of his work, the Revivification team started brainstorming ideas with him back in 2018. But it wasn’t until 2020, then aged 89 and suffering from Parkinson’s disease, that the composer agreed to donate his blood to Revivification.

First, his white blood cells were reprogrammed into stem cells. Then, led by Hodgetts, the team transformed the cells into cerebral organoids – clusters of neurons that mimic the human brain. [The Guardian]

It’s only human nature