When Donald Trump offered some financial advice Wednesday morning, stocks were wavering between gains and losses.

But that was about to change.

“THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT,” he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social at 9:37 a.m.

Less than four hours later, Trump announced a 90-day pause on nearly all his tariffs. Stocks soared on the news, closing up 9.5% by the end of trading. The market, measured by the S&P 500, gained back about $4 trillion, or 70%, of the value it had lost over the previous four trading days.

It was a prescient call by the President. Maybe too prescient.

“He’s loving this, this control over markets, but he better be careful,” said Trump critic and former White House ethics lawyer, Richard Painter, noting that securities law prohibits trading on insider information or helping others do so. “The people who bought when they saw that post made a lot of money.”

The question is, Was Trump already contemplating the tariff pause when he made that post?

Asked about when he arrived at his decision, Trump gave a muddled answer.

“I would say this morning,” he said. “Over the last few days, I’ve been thinking about it.”

He then added, “Fairly early this morning.”

Asked for clarification on the timing in an email to the White House later, a spokesperson didn’t answer directly but defended Trump’s post as part of his job.

“It is the responsibility of the President of the United States to reassure the markets and Americans about their economic security in the face of nonstop media fearmongering,” wrote White House spokesman Kush Desai.

Another curiosity of the posting was Trump’s signoff with his initials.

DJT is also the stock symbol for Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of the president’s social media platform Truth Social.

It’s not clear if Trump was saying buying stocks in general, or Trump Media in particular. The White House was asked, but didn’t address that either. Trump includes “DJT” on his posts intermittently, typically to emphasize that he has personally written the message.

The ambiguity about what Trump meant didn’t stop people from pouring money into that stock.

Trump Media closed up 22.67%, soaring twice as much as the broader market, a stunning performance by a company that lost $400 million last year and is seemingly unaffected by whether tariffs would be imposed or paused.

Trump’s 53% ownership stake in the company, now in a trust controlled by his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., rose by $415 million on the day.

Trump Media was bested, albeit by only two-hundreds of a percentage point, by another Trump administration stock pick — Elon Musk’s Tesla.

Last month, Trump held an extraordinary news conference outside the White House praising the company and its cars. That was followed by a Fox TV appearance by his Commerce Secretary urging viewers to buy the stock.

Tesla’s surge Wednesday added $20 billion to Musk’s fortunes.

Kathleen Clark, a government ethics law expert at Washington University School of Law, says Trump’s post in other administrations would have been investigated, but is not likely not to trigger any reaction, save for maybe more Truth Social viewers.

“He’s sending the message that he can effectively and with impunity manipulate the market,” she said, “As in: Watch this space for future stock tips.”

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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.

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Democrats shared their personal fertility stories and quoted “The Handmaid’s Tale” on the House floor Wednesday but that wasn’t enough to sway Republicans from voting against a bill to allow wrongful death lawsuits to be filed for fetuses.

“It is devastating to lose a pregnancy. I know because I’ve lost three,” said Rep. Allison Tant, a Tallahassee Democrat, who feared frozen embryos could become the subject of civil suits. “We are going to see lawsuits like we’ve never seen. They’re going to go through the roof.”

HB 1517 passed with a 79-32 vote following more than an hourlong emotional debate.

Republicans argued the bill would fix a glaring hole in the law in circumstances where parents are in an accident and can’t collect damages for losing their unborn child.

“This is about a loss that is so hard to understand,” said bill sponsor Rep. Sam Greco, a St. Augustine Republican. “This bill allows grieving parents to recover in the tragic circumstance in which they wrongfully lose their unborn child.”

The ACLU of Florida spoke out against the bill following the House’s passage.

“Let’s be clear: this bill is part of a broader, deceptive strategy to intimidate abortion providers, patients, and even their loved ones through the threat of civil litigation,” ACLU legislative director Kara Gross said. “The sponsor purports that this bill is simply about providing compensation to pregnant couples who lose their pregnancy, but this type of compensation is already allowed under existing Florida law. What Florida law doesn’t cover – and what this bill would do – is allow any person who impregnates another to bring a cause of action against health care providers, friends, and family who support a woman’s efforts to access abortion care.”

If the bill passed, it wouldn’t matter at what stage of pregnancy the unborn child’s death occurred since viability isn’t considered. A fetus would be regarded as “any member of the species, Homo sapiens, at any stage of development,” Greco said.

An unborn child’s own mother could not be subject to those lawsuits, nor would medical providers giving “lawful medical care,” including for IVF and other assisted reproductive technology, according to staff analysis of the bill. The study could not determine the bill’s potential financial impact on the government, private companies, or individual people.

Greco added that wrongful death suits must involve negligence, breach of contract, or other factors at play for the law to apply.

Tant, who underwent IVF and went through multiple heartbreaks to finally become a mother of three, said she believed her frozen embryos could be subject to lawsuits under the bill.

“The science of IVF may be protected under this bill, but the embryos once viable and transferred are not — meaning that providers are exposed,” Tant said. “The liability in this bill goes further than current malpractice standards. It imperils both IVF practice and high-risk pregnancy treatments.”

Added Rep. Anna Eskamani, an Orlando Democrat, “I’m very, very, very concerned this bill opens up the floodgates to cause chaos in Florida … This could be a back door abortion ban.”

Florida already has one of the strictest abortion bans in the country, with most abortions not allowed after six weeks.

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