United States | News & Politics

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market’s sell-off cut deeper on Monday as Wall Street questioned how much pain President Donald Trump will let the economy endure through tariffs and other policies in order to get what he wants.

The S&P 500 dropped 2.7% to drag it close to 9% below its all-time high, which was set just last month. At one point, the S&P 500 was down 3.6% and on track for its worst day since 2022. That’s when the highest inflation in generations was shredding budgets and raising worries about a possible recession that ultimately never came.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 890 points, or 2.1%, after paring an earlier loss of more than 1,100, while the Nasdaq composite skidded by 4%.

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Mr. Wright has argued that there is a moral case for fossil fuels, saying they are crucial for alleviating global poverty and that moving too quickly to cut emissions risks driving up energy prices around the world. He has denounced efforts by countries to stop adding greenhouse gas to the atmosphere by 2050, calling that a “sinister goal.”

"Has there ever been an organization in human history that is dedicated, with such commitment, to the destruction of organised human life on Earth?" -- Noam Chomsky, 2017

Nowhere is this discrepancy more apparent than at the Washington Post, a newspaper famed for opposing a prior Republican president with an expansive view of executive power. These days, however, even as Post reporters like Jeff Stein are busy breaking stories (e.g., 1/28/25, 2/8/25) about the Trump power grab, the paper’s higher-ups are careful not to offend the president or Musk. The Post is even, incredibly, calling on the Constitution-defying billionaire duo to push further.

At first blush, the story might seem to convey concern, but look closer: We see Musk matter-of-factly described as a “special government employee, which subjects him to less stringent rules on ethics and financial disclosures than other workers.”

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The Democratic Party is once again in the wilderness. Donald Trump won not only the presidential election but the popular vote. The scale of short-term and long-term harm that is about to be unleashed on our communities, our country, and our planet is genuinely difficult to comprehend. To work our way out of this hell, it should be clear that Democrats need to chart a new path.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/26969442

from The Forward [Jewish publication from #USA]

By Andrew Silverstein
March 7, 2025

“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” states a fact sheet published on the White House website along with President Donald Trump’s January executive order on antisemitism, “I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”

“The sign of a decaying democracy is that when the forces of plutocracy, oligarchy, multinational corporations increase their power, in all sectors of our society, the resistance gets weaker.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/26958484

As we watch the Trump administration’s foreign policy take shape, I am reminded of former President Barack Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech. That was the one where he promised that the US was seeking “a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect.” It was only six months into his presidency when we could still lie to ourselves that the Bush years were a just particularly abhorrent aberration.

There were shifts underway back in 2009 although they certainly didn’t have anything to do with mutual interest and respect. As Obama delivered his lies in Cairo, Obamaians were just gassing up the drones.

And the US shifted from invasion and occupation to more clandestine operations of destabilization, targeted killings, “leading from behind,” and humanitarian regime change operations. They helped craft the international liberal order often utilizing the human rights tools like LGTBQ+ rights, feminism and of course democracy to pursue the same goals as Bush the Younger. but in a more “woke” manner.

Yet this mode of empire had outlived its usefulness. A growing number of states are following Russia’s lead and cracking down on foreign funding of NGOs. There is the inability to bludgeon European voters upset over deteriorating living standards into submission using moralistic certitude. And the dam broke in the US where Trump — with the backing of the majority of plutocrats — is now dismantling this machinery. What will take its place?

Now there are actual shifts taking place under Trump (attempting to get out of Ukraine and dump it on the hapless Europeans, actualizing the long-planned pivot to Asia, a renewed emphasis on shipping lanes, cracking down on DEI and elements of the Blob that hounded him during first term and beyond), but all signs are that the underlying goals of empire remain: that US capital controls the world and can extract rent from every corner of the globe. This isn’t changing based on an election despite Obama’s repeated assurances that “the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice.”

A week ago I wrote about the repackaging of the empire sales pitch to the American working class. Here I’d like to focus on how the Trump rebrand is playing out across the world.

People find way to slow orphan-crushing-machine slightly. Lawmakers debate adding additional orphan chute. More at seven.

https://archive.ph/LiM2q

US House Republicans unveiled a spending bill Saturday that would keep federal agencies funded through 30 September, pushing ahead with a go-it-alone strategy that seems certain to spark a major confrontation with Democrats over the contours of government spending.

The 99-page bill would provide a slight boost to defense programs while trimming non-defense programs below 2024 budget year levels. That approach is likely to be a non-starter for most Democrats who have long insisted that defense and non-defense spending move in the same direction.

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