• Join Puck

    Directly Supporting Authors

    A new economic model in which writers are also partners in the business.

    Personalized Subscriptions

    Customize your settings to receive the newsletters you want from the authors you follow.

    Stay in the Know

    Connect directly with Puck talent through email and exclusive events.

  • What is puck? Newsletters Authors Podcasts Events Gift Puck Careers

Unliberation Day

Inside the White House’s white-knuckle pressure campaign to force Hill Republicans not to break with Trump’s tariff policy, no matter the cost… only for Trump himself to blink.

stephen miller
When cracks started to show last week, the White House dispatched Stephen Miller to clamp down the dissent. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Leigh Ann Caldwell
April 9, 2025

Senate Republicans were enjoying a closed-door luncheon, as they usually do on Wednesdays, when Donald Trump wrote on social media that he was pausing most of the “reciprocal” tariffs he announced last week in the Rose Garden. Over the past few days, equity markets had been pulverized, losing trillions of dollars; Wall Street had been in an uproar, frantically trying to get a hearing in Washington; and lawmakers had been getting an earful from nervous voters back home. At 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday, the administration imposed even higher retaliatory tariffs on 50 countries.