Communists test Trump’s latest threat with immediate threat of their own

Beijing is threatening to retaliate against the United States as President Donald Trump’s 10% tariffs on China are expected to take effect Tuesday. 

The White House announced on Saturday that the Trump administration is implementing a 25% additional tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico and a 10% additional tariff on imports from China, in a move intended to hold the three countries “accountable to their promises of halting illegal immigration and stopping poisonous fentanyl and other drugs from flowing into our country.” 

Namely with Beijing, the White House said Chinese officials “have failed to take the actions necessary to stem the flow of precursor chemicals to known criminal cartels and shut down money laundering by transnational criminal organizations.” 

A spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Sunday that the 10% tariffs were being levied “under the pretext of the fentanyl issue.” 

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“China firmly deplores and opposes this move and will take necessary countermeasures to defend its legitimate rights and interests,” the Foreign Ministry said. “China’s position is firm and consistent. Trade and tariff wars have no winners.” 

The spokesperson argued that the United States’ unilateral tariff hikes “severely violate” World Trade Organization rules and “cannot solve the U.S.’s problems at home and more importantly, does not benefit either side, still less the world.” 

“China is one of the world’s toughest countries on counternarcotics both in terms of policy and its implementation. Fentanyl is an issue for the U.S.,” the Foreign Ministry claimed in its statement released in English. 

Reuters reported the statement as having been translated to convey, “Fentanyl is America’s problem.” 

“In the spirit of humanity and goodwill, China has given support to the U.S.’s response to this issue. At the U.S.’s request, China announced back in 2019 the decision to officially schedule fentanyl-related substances as a class. We are the first country in the world to do so,” the spokesperson went on, adding that China has “conducted counternarcotics cooperation with the U.S. side in a broad-based way” and that the “U.S. needs to view and solve its own fentanyl issue in an objective and rational way instead of threatening other countries with arbitrary tariff hikes.” Beijing argued that “additional tariffs are not constructive and bound to affect and harm the counternarcotics cooperation between the two sides in the future.” 

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“China calls on the U.S. to correct its wrongdoings, maintain the hard-won positive dynamics in the counternarcotics cooperation, and promote the steady, sound and sustainable development of China-U.S. relationship,” the spokesperson added. 

A spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Public Security released a similar statement denouncing the 10% additional tariffs, arguing that the “the root cause of the fentanyl crisis in the United States lies in itself” and that “shifting blame onto other nations not only fails to resolve the issue but also erodes the foundation of trust and cooperation in the field of drug control between China and the United States,” according to the Chinese state-run Xinhua News Agency. 

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce also said Trump’s decision “seriously violates” international trade rules and implored the U.S. to “engage in frank dialogue and strengthen cooperation,” according to Reuters. 

The United States has tracked some 70,000 people dying from fentanyl annually. 

Trump has often lamented China’s large trade deficit with the U.S., which reached nearly $1 trillion last year. 

Crucial evidence in chopper and American Airlines crash hits tech glitch

Preliminary flight data from the deadly plane crash in Washington, D.C., shows conflicting readings about the altitudes of a passenger jet and Army helicopter that collided near Reagan National Airport and killed everyone on board the two aircraft, investigators said over the weekend.

Data from the American Airlines flight recorder showed an altitude of 325 feet, plus or minus 25 feet, when the collision happened Wednesday night, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) officials told reporters on Saturday. Data in the control tower, though, showed the Black Hawk helicopter at 200 feet, the maximum allowed altitude for helicopters in the area.

The roughly 100-foot altitude discrepancy in the data has yet to be explained.

Investigators are working to retrieve data from the helicopter’s back box, which is taking more time because it became waterlogged after submerging into the Potomac River, in hopes of reconciling the difference. They also said they plan to refine the tower data, which could be less reliable. 

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“This is a complex investigation,” said Brice Banning, NTSB investigator in charge. “There are a lot of pieces here. Our team is working hard to gather this data.”

Banning detailed the last moments from the jet’s two black boxes, which captured sound in the cockpit and flight data just before what became the deadliest U.S. aviation accident since 2001.

“The crew had a verbal reaction,” Banning said, with the data recorder showing “the airplane beginning to increase its pitch. Sounds of impact were audible about one second later, followed by the end of the recording.”

Investigators did not say whether that change in angle meant that pilots were trying to perform an evasive maneuver to avoid the crash.

The collision happened around 9 p.m. EST while the regional jet was preparing to land at the airport. The jet from Wichita, Kansas, was carrying 64 people onboard, while three soldiers were on board the helicopter, which apparently flew into the jet’s path. No one survived the crash.

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NTSB member Todd Inman expressed frustration to reporters, noting that the board has made “several hundred” recommendations to improve aviation safety that have not been acted upon.

“You want to do something about it? Adopt the recommendation of the NTSB. You’ll save lives,” he said, adding that he has spent hours with victims’ families since the crash. “I don’t want to have to meet with those parents like that again.”

Families of victims visited the crash site on Sunday and divers scoured the submerged wreckage for more remains after authorities said they’ve recovered and identified 55 of the 67 people killed.

Officials said they are confident all the victims will be recovered from the chilly Potomac River.

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NTSB investigators hope to have a preliminary report within 30 days, though a full investigation could take at least a year.

Trump admin locks out staffers as Musk vows to shut down DOGE target

U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) staffers said that they tracked over 600 workers who reported getting locked out of the USAID computer systems overnight, according to the Associated Press. People who remained in the system got emails stating that “at the direction of Agency leadership” the headquarters facility “will be closed to Agency personnel on Monday, Feb. 3.”

Elon Musk, who is spearheading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effort, had said during an X spaces conversation that President Donald Trump agreed that the USAID should be shut down.

Musk indicated that the shut-down process is underway. 

He said that unlike an apple contaminated by a worm, the agency is “a bowl of worms.”

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“There is no apple,” he said. “It’s beyond repair.”

Musk noted that the more he has gotten to know Trump, the more he likes the president.

“Frankly, I love the guy. He’s great,” the business tycoon said of the commander in chief.

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Musk has been excoriating USAID in posts on X.

“USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die,” he tweeted.

“USAID was a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America,” he asserted.

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“We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could [have] gone to some great parties. Did that instead,” Musk noted.

Former Costco boss sugarcoats ‘woke’ fine print as scandal heats up

A former Costco executive is fed up with attacks on the grocery club’s DEI policies, saying that critics don’t understand the company’s culture. 

“The term DEI didn’t even exist to us, it was the way we ran our business… it’s who we are,” former Costco International Division Senior Vice President Roger Campbell told Fox News Digital.

Campbell, 82, who retired from the company in 2015, began his career at Costco as a store manager trainee in 1986 and worked his way up the executive ranks. He spent 29 years at Costco and is fiercely defensive of it as the grocery chain faces an onslaught of attacks for its refusal to jettison its DEI initiatives. 

The former executive claims that Costco has always valued the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion, even before the term “DEI” existed. Costco executives see the company’s culture as a key factor in its success and that, to his ears, DEI is synonymous with the way the company has always done business. 

While Campbell emphasized he does not speak for the company or any current executive or board member, he feels the reason Costco has been stalwart in defense of its DEI policies is because the board sees attacks on them as attacks on the business itself.

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“Our whole idea was taking care of the employee. Our whole idea was a very simple thing — if you hire good people, pay them good wages and give them good benefits, then likely good things are going to happen,” Campbell said.

Costco board members recently shot down a shareholder proposal to analyze the risks of its DEI policies. In response, 19 states’ attorneys general issued a letter to Costco CEO Ron Vachris demanding the company drop their DEI programs to conform with President Trump’s recent executive order banning DEI from the federal government. 

Trump’s executive order comes in the wake of numerous companies announcing that they’re terminating their DEI initiatives following intense public backlash, with Facebook, McDonald’s, Boeing, Harley-Davidson and others all rolling back or outright nixing the programs. 

But Costco, unlike other companies, has the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion hardwired into its DNA, Campbell claims, and feels no need to drop the programs despite the fact that they are no longer politically fashionable.

“It was the rules at some point in time. Somebody said ‘okay everybody has to get into DEI’ and you saw all these companies get into it and then get out of it because they never had one to start with,” Campbell claims, “Call it what you want to call it, but we had something that worked.”

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Campbell said that when it came to hiring, Costco always sought to ensure the employees at their warehouses and stores reflected the communities they were located in demographically. He says that Costco had no trouble achieving this goal, and never had to consciously alter its hiring practices to meet a certain quota.

“Diversity was a word that was used, but it was never ‘My gosh, we need to get a program. We need to train diversity.’”

Costco based its promotions on merit, not race or gender, Campbell claimed, adding that he had never heard anyone complaining they lost an opportunity because they were a White man. However, he conceded that when he decided on promotions he would take race into account if both candidates were “equally qualified” for the job.

“If I absolutely was looking at a promotion, and there were two people where either one of those two could do this job, I think, internally, there could be a couple times where I said, ‘you know what, I need to give this diverse person an opportunity instead of holding them back,’” Campbell admitted.

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Costco introduced its formal DEI initiatives as Campbell was leaving the company, but in practice he had not observed nor heard of any changes to the company’s core values.

“[The board is] associating DEI with the history of our company,” he said. “If it’s in our books or its in our program it’s just because it existed. We just never called it DEI, we just always thought of it as our culture.”

Costco, which is facing a potential strike from unionized employees in some of its stores, has always had a pro-worker image. The grocery chain lays claim to an 8% turnover rate according to Harvard Business Review, and its average hourly rate is reportedly $31.

The grocery club’s Chairman of the Board, Hamilton E. James, donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic-aligned PACs in the last election cycle, with several other board members following suit. 

Campbell, who identifies as a conservative, rejects the idea that the board forces its politics on the business.

Though Campbell maintains that Costco’s commitment to diversity has been longstanding, it has not seemed to translate to the highest ranks within the company. Of its top managers, 72% are men and 81% White, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“We need more diversity at the top levels,” Campbell conceded. 

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