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Category: Politics

The risk of a dollar crisis: A currency is only as good as the government that backs it

The risk of a dollar crisis: A currency is only as good as the government that backs it

In a lead editorial, The Economist says: The dollar is meant to be a source of safety. Lately, however, it has been a cause of fear. Since its peak in mid-January the greenback has fallen by over 9% against a basket of major currencies. Two-fifths of that fall has happened since April 1st, even as the yield on ten-year Treasuries has crept up by 0.2 percentage points. That mix of rising yields and a falling currency is a warning sign:…

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DOGE is making the IRS little more than a tip jar for public services

DOGE is making the IRS little more than a tip jar for public services

Donald Moynihan writes: The Internal Revenue Service may be America’s least-loved government agency, but it is one of the most important. Without the taxes the IRS collects, the United States would essentially have no funds for key services and no creditworthiness, and the nation would rapidly grind to a halt. Ensuring that everyone pays their fair share is also a key component of the social contract: If the wealthiest can skip their obligations, that weakens any shared commitment to the…

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This case is not just about one man; it’s about protecting the constitutional rights of everybody

This case is not just about one man; it’s about protecting the constitutional rights of everybody

I went to El Salvador hoping to meet with Kilmar & check on his well-being, and I had the chance to do that last night. Our courts have been clear: this was an ILLEGAL abduction. I’m speaking now about my meeting with Kilmar & our work to bring him home: https://t.co/0tZjVonkUF — Senator Chris Van Hollen (@ChrisVanHollen) April 18, 2025 Politico reports: Chris Van Hollen has spent nearly a decade as an under-the-radar lawmaker. But the Maryland Democrat, who gave…

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Trump shifted on tariffs after bond holders, including himself, got jittery

Trump shifted on tariffs after bond holders, including himself, got jittery

The New York Times reports: When President Trump paused a punishing round of global tariffs last week, he attributed his change of heart to one main thing. “I was watching the bond market,” he said. “The bond market is very tricky.” Mr. Trump should know — he had a big personal stake in it. A New York Times analysis of Mr. Trump’s financial holdings shows that he had roughly $125 million to about $443 million invested in bonds as of…

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Immigrants prove they are alive, forcing Social Security to undo death label

Immigrants prove they are alive, forcing Social Security to undo death label

The Washington Post reports: Immigrants falsely labeled dead by the Social Security Administration are showing up at field offices with documents proving they are alive, leading staff to reinstate nearly three dozen people over the past week, according to records obtained by The Washington Post. The immigrants who have requested a reversal and been reinstated in Social Security databases include a Haitian asylum seeker and a child, the records show. Some immigrants have shown up with driver’s licenses and work…

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Court says White House, if it values the rule of law, must play more active role in freeing Abrego Garcia

Court says White House, if it values the rule of law, must play more active role in freeing Abrego Garcia

The New York Times reports: A federal appeals court in Virginia reaffirmed on Thursday that the White House needed to play a more active role in seeking the release of a Maryland man who was deported last month to a prison in El Salvador, despite a court order expressly forbidding that he be sent there. In a sternly worded ruling, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit expressed exasperation at the Trump administration’s continued…

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ICE director, Todd Lyons, wants Amazon-like mass deportation system: ‘Prime, but with human beings’

ICE director, Todd Lyons, wants Amazon-like mass deportation system: ‘Prime, but with human beings’

Nick Miroff writes: The Trump administration is working hard to convince the public that its mass-deportation campaign is fully under way. Over the past several weeks, federal agents have seized foreign students off the streets, raided worksites, and shipped detainees to a supermax prison in El Salvador using wartime powers adopted under the John Adams administration. The tactics have spread fear and created a showreel of social-media-ready highlights for the White House. But they have not brought U.S. Immigration and…

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Bessent privately urges caution as Trump attacks Federal Reserve Chair Powell

Bessent privately urges caution as Trump attacks Federal Reserve Chair Powell

Politico reports: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has repeatedly cautioned White House officials that any attempt to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell would risk destabilizing financial markets, according to two people close to the White House granted anonymity to share details of private discussions. Bessent’s private message reinforces what President Donald Trump already knows but comes as the president’s anger with the Fed chair is growing because Powell hasn’t shown signs that he will cut interest rates soon. It also…

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The Ivy League resistance against the Trump regime is just getting started

The Ivy League resistance against the Trump regime is just getting started

Politico reports: Leaders who once helmed the nation’s most prestigious universities are homing in on a message for their successors: resist, defend and litigate. That formula, they argue, is the only way to survive an administration eager to extract fundamental concessions from schools that go far beyond addressing stated concerns about antisemitism. In the three months since returning to the White House, President Donald Trump has demanded that some of these private institutions end diversity programming, change admissions requirements, toughen…

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A Columbia peace activist trod the Middle Way on Gaza. Then he got snatched by ICE

A Columbia peace activist trod the Middle Way on Gaza. Then he got snatched by ICE

The New York Times reports: As Columbia University’s student protest movement careened toward the center of the nation’s political discourse last year, one of its most ardent leaders suddenly fell quiet. Mohsen Mahdawi had been a key organizer of pro-Palestinian demonstrations, but he said he walked away from that role in March 2024 — well before the rallies reached a fever pitch as students set up encampments and broke into a campus building. A fissure had been growing. By the…

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The manipulative tactics Elon Musk uses to manage his ‘legion’ of babies and their mothers

The manipulative tactics Elon Musk uses to manage his ‘legion’ of babies and their mothers

The Wall Street Journal reports: Ashley St. Clair wanted to prove that Elon Musk was the father of her newborn baby. But to ask the billionaire to take a paternity test, the right-wing social-media influencer had to go through Musk’s longtime fixer, Jared Birchall. “I don’t want my son to feel like he’s a secret,” St. Clair told Birchall in a two-hour phone call in December. Birchall offered St. Clair some advice. His boss was a “very big-hearted, kind and…

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Wajahat Ali and Norman Ornstein: The contempt of a fascist regime

Wajahat Ali and Norman Ornstein: The contempt of a fascist regime

  Norman Ornstein: “Every student of history — of the history of the growth of tyranny — said over and over again: you need immediate resistance. And the strongest resistance from every entity in the society — from the business community, from the education community, the intellectual community, the scientific community, the press community, the elected officials — have to resist. And if you don’t do it right from the start, they will gobble up more territory until it’s too…

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How Harvard ended up leading the university fight against Trump

How Harvard ended up leading the university fight against Trump

The Wall Street Journal reports: Harvard University has drawn a line in the sand against the Trump administration and its sweeping demands for cultural change. Now it is counting on its peer institutions for backup. In Washington, Republicans say the nation’s wealthiest and oldest university has just made a serious error in judgment and is about to learn the cost of crossing Trump. The collision between the president and America’s most iconic university had barely begun when it immediately escalated….

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The U.S. is in a weak position in the China trade war

The U.S. is in a weak position in the China trade war

Politico reports: The White House says it has the upper hand in its trade war with China. Its actions suggest otherwise. Top administration officials spent the weekend trying to defend a carve-out of consumer electronics from the astronomical 145 percent tariffs it levied on China last week. The carve-out was neither an exemption nor a policy rollback, the White House argued, because those electronics are still subject to a separate 20 percent tariff on China and some electronic components could…

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Trump’s D.C. U.S. attorney pick, Ed Martin, appeared on Russian state media over 150 times

Trump’s D.C. U.S. attorney pick, Ed Martin, appeared on Russian state media over 150 times

The Washington Post reports: Hours before President Donald Trump announced U.S. missile strikes on Syria in response to a chemical attack that killed 90 civilians in April 2017, Ed Martin said on the Russian state television network RT America that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad might not be to blame. Instead, Martin told viewers, the situation was “engineered” in Washington “by the people that want war in Syria.” In early 2022, Martin told an interviewer on the same arm of RT’s…

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Members of leading British Jewish body condemn Israel’s latest actions in Gaza

Members of leading British Jewish body condemn Israel’s latest actions in Gaza

The Guardian reports: Members of the Board of Deputies, the largest body representing British Jews, have said they can no longer “turn a blind eye or remain silent” over the war in Gaza. In a significant break with the board’s customary support for the Israeli government, the 36 signatories to an open letter published in the FT say “Israel’s soul is being ripped out”. Since the war began after the terrorist atrocities committed by Hamas against Israelis on 7 October…

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