Welcome to the Beat. I'm Ari Melbert, and we are reporting on the ongoing fallout in these clashes over what are ongoing Trump efforts to gut key parts of the federal government. He's also facing rebukes in the United States court system, as well as from some foreign governments pushing back on a range of issues. So we have a lot of those stories in the broadcast tonight. I do want to tell you up top

later in the hour. We also have a veteran DOJ, Jan 6 prosecutor. So that's going to be instructive

on, frankly, more than one issue when you think about all of these legal challenges. There's also

coming up our breakdown of Elon Musk's attempted self-interested reforms to some key

aspects of the United States government.

And we start the week with Nobel winning economist, Paul Krugman, to give us really some of the most coveted

expertise you could get at a time like this on this potential Donald Trump inflicted trade war.

So there are many key developments going on. Some of

Trump's showy attacks on governments can be stopped in court. That's something I've told you about.

And so some of what he does reflects perhaps a larger interest in immediate headlines, even a

sense of chaos, which Nicole and others have been reporting on today, then the substantive

enduring accomplishments that we associate with other presidential administrations in their goals,

in what they're doing. But our top story right now is President Trump's threats of this trade war,

which he then quickly backed off of because it has real world consequences for you, for people in this

country, for people in other countries, even though it is also, as we begin the week, a kind

of sputtering opening failure of his efforts. The same Americans who were very concerned about

prices and inflation back in November, that was a key issue we were told by

voters could be impacted by what we can only see so far as Donald Trump's sort of shaky or

inconsistent tariff threats. And this is the very start of his tenure. This is his January,

February priority based on a November victory. He's in office less than a month, and now we can report,

as you may have heard, but we're going to get into the details. Trump is blinking today after

threatening what could have been this trade war over the weekend. Now, there are many countries

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