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Morning Brief: Trump Tariff Win, Accidental Texts, & Snow White’s Poisoned Box Office
Another foreign company brings business back to the United States, accidental texts reveal confidential conversations between cabinet members, a federal judge continues to stand in the way of Trump’s deportation agenda, and Disney’s newest live-action remake could become its biggest flop of all.
It’s Tuesday, March 25th, and this is the news you need to know to start your day. If you’d rather listen to your news, today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below:
You Win Some
(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Topline: South Korean car manufacturer Hyundai announced Monday that it would invest more than $20 billion in the United States to build new steel and auto plants. Meanwhile, senior Trump officials accidentally included a left-wing journalist in classified military discussions.
Hyundai has joined the long list of companies pouring billions of dollars into American manufacturing. On Monday, the South Korean car giant announced a nearly $21 billion investment in the United States — for context, that’s equal to the total amount they’ve invested here since 1986. As part of that effort, it will build a $6 billion steel plant in Louisiana that will employ more than 1,400 Americans. The company currently has two major auto plants on American soil — now it will open a third in Georgia, which will create another 8,000 jobs.
“With your leadership, Mr. President, Hyundai Motor Group is proud to be a stronger partner in America’s industrial future,” Hyundai’s Executive Chair Euisun Chung said at a White House press conference.
The president’s tariff policies had a significant influence on Hyundai’s decision to onshore jobs. As Hyundai Motor CEO Jose Munoz put it, “The best way for [Hyundai] to navigate tariffs is to increase localization.”
Monday’s announcement is only the latest in a series of investment pledges since Trump took office. Apple announced it was pouring $500 billion into new American manufacturing projects over the next four years. Before that, Japan’s SoftBank announced a hundred billion dollar investment in American AI infrastructure. Asian chip manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor is pouring a hundred billion dollars to build high-tech chips in America. The United Arab Emirates announced a ten-year, $1.4 trillion investment in high-tech manufacturing. According to the president, there have been up to $4 trillion worth of new investments in the United States since Inauguration Day.
“This investment is a clear demonstration that tariffs very strongly work,” President Trump said. “And I hope other things also, but the tariffs are bringing them in at levels that have not been witnessed.”
You Lose Some…
(Photo by Matthias Balk/picture alliance via Getty Images)
On Monday, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, published a report entitled “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans.” That is exactly what happened.
Two weeks ago, Goldberg was mistakenly added to a group chat on the unclassified messaging app Signal. The chat included Vice President JD Vance, SecDef Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, along with the heads of the CIA, DNI, etc. Over the course of multiple days, the group debated whether or not to launch airstrikes against Houthi terrorists in Yemen who’ve been attacking ships in the Suez Canal for years.
Goldberg published a number of those messages — in one, VP Vance weighs the potential risks of airstrikes, writing, “3 percent of US trade runs through the suez. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary. The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message.” Later, Vance said he “hate[s] bailing Europe out again” but would support the strikes if the team was in agreement. Ultimately, the group, led by Hegseth, opted to push for the strikes, which were carried out on March 15.
“This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” said National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes.
While no incriminating messages were published, it’s certainly an embarrassing mishap for the administration, and there could be consequences. A number of prominent Democrats on the Hill have called for heads to roll and vowed to investigate why sensitive national security conversations were being held in such a manner. The White House confirmed the legitimacy of the group chat, telling our own Mary Margaret Olohan, “We are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” while adding, “The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials.”
Immigration Court Case Continues
(Photo by Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Topline: The Trump administration has been blocked again from deporting aliens under a 1798 invasion law.
On Monday, federal district court Judge James Boasberg decided not to lift a temporary restraining order he placed on the Trump administration to block its use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. The administration used it to move illegal aliens with alleged Venezuelan gang ties to El Salvador — the United States struck a deal with El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, earlier this year to hold illegal aliens in its modern prison system. The judge said the administration misapplied the law and violated the due process rights of dozens of the illegal aliens flown to El Salvador.
Boasberg believes that shipping the aliens to El Salvador without a court hearing violated their due process rights. He also said that the administration’s use of the act to move the alleged gang members is likely an abuse of the law because, in his interpretation, it’s only applicable in wartime. The administration’s interpretation is a bit different. Trump’s team points out that the text of the law says that it can be used in wartime or when “any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated … against the territory of the United States.”
Critics of Boasberg and other lower court judges who have blocked elements of the president’s agenda have accused them of judicial activism and say their decisions are clearly politically biased rather than reflecting an impartial reading of the Constitution.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) observed on Fox News over the weekend that “62% of the federal injunctions, for example, that have been handed down in the last century have been handed down against President Trump, and 92% of those were done by partisan Democrat-appointed judges.”
Republicans in Congress are currently exploring options for reigning in the power of the lower courts to issue nationwide injunctions.
“Magic Mirror on the Wall, What’s the Biggest Flop of All?”
(Photo by MDBrockmann via Getty Images)
Topline: After a year of delays, Disney’s latest live-action remake, “Snow White,” tanked at the box office on its opening weekend. The film, once poised to be a crown jewel in Disney’s lineup, has instead become a cautionary tale.
“Snow White” opened to a dismal $43 million domestically and $87 million worldwide against a reported $270 million budget. While the exact numbers are still being finalized, that means the reimagining of the beloved 1937 classic had one of the worst openings for a Disney live-action remake ever.
Many critics attribute the cool reception of the film to its deliberate inversion of the source material: Disney took a classic tale of romance and true love and turned it into one of self-empowerment.
Rachel Zegler, a Hispanic actress who played the titular character, has been a lightning rod for controversy – initially because she wasn’t a physical match for the princess whose “skin was white as snow” and later because of her caustic comments about the quality of the original film.
“The original cartoon came out in 1937 and very evidently so,” Zegler said in 2023. “There is a big focus on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her — weird, weird. So we didn’t do that this time.”
Other political controversies also grabbed headlines in the lead-up to the film’s release, including dueling stances from Zegler and co-star Gal Gadot on the war between Israel and Hamas. Zegler is a vocal supporter of the Palestinians, while Gadot is an Israeli Jew who served in the IDF and has spoken out in defense of her country’s ongoing war effort, leading to backlash from people on both sides of the issue. Zegler also made waves when she told Trump voters she “didn’t need their business” in the lead-up to the election, and then afterward stated that she hopes Trump supporters never know peace — she would later attempt to walk that statement back.
But politics may not have been the driving force behind the film’s disappointing returns — it performed about as well in red counties as it did in blue counties, and the consensus among those who have seen the film is that it isn’t very good: even critics were generally sour on it, and the film is certified rotten on rating website Rotten Tomatoes, with a 43% critic score and a 22% approval rating by all audiences. Perhaps there’s general fatigue with the Disney remakes, which have generally been soulless, shallow, cynical cash-grab simulacra of some of the most beloved films of all time.
International receipts and a second life on Disney+ could help “Snow White” break even, but the reputational damage of a domestic flop could have a major impact on Disney’s brand.
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