Trump really did order the Army Corps of Engineers to release water in California. It did not flow down to Los Angeles and end the southern California drought. The release did no good whatever. It went to farms in the San Joaquin Valley, not to Los Angeles. It was not wanted by farmers, who need to irrigate their crops in the summer, not the winter. The lack of notice even threatened farm equipment and homeless encampments by the river banks.
I am going to give Trump the benefit of the doubt and accept that he had California's best interests in mind and really did intend to end the drought in the south by releasing water into the San Joaquin Valley. Nonetheless, he has now learned that poorly managed releases can harm California. Look to him to keep this tool in reserve next time he has a showdown.
And then there is the matter of tariffs. Donald Trump has a lot of certifiably flaky ideas about tariffs, such as that the costs are not paid by US consumers, that tariffs are an unlimited cash cow that can replace income tax, and (quite possibly) that the US should not import anything at all. But there is at least one rational reason he might like tariffs so much. A President's authority (granted by statute) to raise tariffs unilaterally is a great way to circumvent Congress' power of the purse strings.
Might that be his real motive?
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