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Russia’s multibillion-dollar revenue stream may soon grind to a halt, thanks to Ukraine. Its ripple effects could hit Europe

Fortune

Russia’s multibillion-dollar revenue stream may soon grind to a halt, thanks to Ukraine. Its ripple effects could hit Europe

Prarthana Prakash – December 24, 2024

While Russia has lost its gas market share in Europe to the likes of Qatar and Norway since it invaded Ukraine, some countries like Slovakia and Austria still rely heavily on the supplies. (Olga Rolenko—Getty Images)

Russia’s wartime economy has been sustained, in part, by oil and gas revenues as Europe has relied on it for several decades. Key to that arrangement is Ukraine, the country Russia is at war with, as the countries have a deal in place to allow Russian gas to transit via Ukraine and reach Europe.

The deal is nearing expiry when the year ends, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has resisted renewing the contract on the same terms even if the Kremlin wants it to. This could create a worry for Russia amid the plunging value of the ruble and a protracted war.

Russia’s gas revenues from supply sent via Ukraine to Europe will be worth $5 billion this year, according to Reuters estimates. In 2023, Russia shipped about 15 billion cubic meters of gas—only a fraction of the supply to Europe pre-pandemic.

Meanwhile, Ukraine makes just $800 million from facilitating the transit of gas to Europe, the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) said last week.

“Despite reams of evidence that Russia uses gas exports to inflict harm on Europe, buyers in Moscow-friendly countries are now pressuring Ukraine to continue the transit from 2025,” CEPA experts wrote.

The dependence on Russian oil and gas supplies has built up over time. In 2022, much of that reliance needed to be rethought following the invasion, forcing gas prices to shoot up. However, governments slowly began decoupling from Russia’s gas supplies, which had a direct impact on Gazprom’s revenues as a state-owned energy supplier.

While Russia has lost its gas market share in Europe to the likes of Qatar and Norway since it invaded Ukraine, some countries like Slovakia and Austria still rely heavily on the supplies. Moreover, because of sanctions, Russia has already taken a big hit on energy-related revenues, which still account for a fifth of its GDP.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov admitted to the impending fallout on the gas transit contract as being “very difficult, requiring greater attention,” on Monday.

A sharp energy-price spike because of the gas transit contract is unlikely. Still, given that transit fees are much higher in other European countries, it could add to uncertainties, ruling them out as viable options for countries such as Hungary.

Russia’s economy has shown some cracks owing to inflation and overexposure by military-adjacent industries. But in sum, it has remained resilient despite the war being dragged on for three years.

For instance, Russia has built trade relationships with allies elsewhere in the world, such as China and India. “The Russian economy has adapted, and key industries have found ways to get the goods and components they need from alternative suppliers or via more circuitous trade routes,” Sergey Vakulenko, a senior fellow at Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, wrote earlier this year.

Russia calls gas sales to Europe ‘complicated’ as deal with Ukraine nears end

Reuters

Russia calls gas sales to Europe ‘complicated’ as deal with Ukraine nears end

Reuters – December 23, 2024

Illustration shows natural gas pipeline, Russian Rouble banknote and flag

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia said on Monday the situation with European countries that buy its gas through a transit deal via Ukraine was very complicated and needs more attention, a day after talks between President Vladimir Putin and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico.

Ukraine has said it will not be renewing a five-year deal to pipe Russian gas to Europe, which is due to expire at the end of the year, as it does not want to aid Moscow’s military effort.

The flow accounts for around half of Russia’s total pipeline gas exports to Europe, with Slovakia, Italy, Austria and Czech Republic set to be most affected if it ends.

Kremlin-controlled Gazprom also exports gas to Europe via the TurkStream pipeline on the bed of the Black Sea.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he could not give more details about Sunday’s talks between Putin and Fico, which also touched on bilateral relations and the Ukraine conflict.

Fico said that Putin had confirmed Russia’s willingness to continue to supply gas to Slovakia, although this was “practically impossible” once the Ukraine transit deal expires.

It was not clear what potential solution the two leaders might have discussed.

Slovakia has said the loss of supplies from the east would not hit its consumption and it has diversified supply contracts. However, it would drive up its costs and the country sought to preserve the Ukraine route to keep its own transit capacity.

Slovakia’s main gas buyer SPP has contracts for the purchase of gas from a non-Russian source with BP, ExxonMobil, Shell, Eni and RWE.

The benchmark front-month contract at the Dutch TTF gas hub rose by 1.52 euros to 45.33 euros per megawatt hour (euros/MWh) by 1443 GMT, LSEG data showed.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Monday criticised what he said was Fico’s lack of desire to end his country’s dependency on Russian natural resources as a “big security issue” for Europe and Slovakia.

Hungary has also been keen to keep the Ukrainian route, although it will continue to receive Russian gas from the south, via the TurkStream pipeline.

Zelenskiy said last week it might be possible to renew the transit deal, but only if Russia was not paid for the gas until after the war is over, a condition Moscow is unlikely to accept.

“You heard the statement from the Ukrainian side, and you know about the positions of those European countries that continue to buy Russian gas and that consider this necessary for the normal operation of their economies,” Peskov told reporters.

“Therefore, there is now a very complicated situation here that requires increased attention,” Peskov added.

Putin said last week it was clear there would be no new deal with Kyiv to send Russian gas through Ukraine to Europe.

(Reporting by Gleb Stolyarov, additional reporting by Jason Hovet; writing by Mark Trevelyan and Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Alexander Smith)

Norovirus is rampant. Blame oysters, cruise ships and holiday travel

South Florida Sun Sentinel

Norovirus is rampant. Blame oysters, cruise ships and holiday travel

Cindy Krischer Goodman – December 23, 2024

Tis the season to wash your hands and watch what you eat.

Norovirus, a vomit- and diarrhea-inducing stomach bug, is sickening Floridians through tainted surfaces and contaminated shellfish.

The Sunshine State is one of 12 in the U.S. with a high number of confirmed outbreaks of the virus. Anyone suffering from a bout of the nasty, extremely contagious virus, beware: it has no specific treatment and typically has to run its course.

Also of note: On average, one infected person will infect two to seven other people.

“It only takes a few virus particles to cause infections, so it doesn’t take much exposure to get sick from norovirus,” said Margaret Gorensek, an infectious disease doctor at Holy Cross Health in Fort Lauderdale.

Norovirus can spread through food, touch, and air particles.

Earlier this week, the Food and Drug Administration issued two separate seafood recalls in states over potential norovirus contamination.

On Monday, the FDA warned restaurants, food retailers, and consumers in seven states, including Florida, not to eat or sell oysters and Manila clams from Rudy’s Shellfish in Washington. Two days later, the agency issued another recall in 15 states, including Florida, for oysters sold as Fanny Bay, Buckley Bay, and Royal Miyagi Oysters from British Columbia, Canada. Both recalls cited potential contamination with norovirus. The recall did not mention any reported illnesses connected to the oysters and clams.

Shellfish can absorb untreated human sewage containing norovirus; when humans eat the contaminated shellfish, they can become infected.

Most people experience symptoms 12 to 48 hours after eating contaminated food. The common symptoms are nausea, stomach pain, fever, headaches, and body aches.

When norovirus spreads through direct contact, it tends to be from shaking hands or touching contaminated surfaces and then putting your hand in your mouth. That type of spread often happens in restaurants, schools, and on cruise ships.

This month, the norovirus has been wreaking havoc on cruise ships. So far, in December, four ships have reported outbreaks, with one ship reporting more than 100 passengers falling ill, according to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.

There have been 13 reported norovirus outbreaks on cruise ships this year, but this is the first time the virus has been confirmed on three ships within a single month, and suspected on a fourth. Those ships include Holland America’s Zuiderdam and Rotterdam and Princess Cruise’s Ruby Princess. The most recent outbreak was on Cunard’s Queen Mary 2, and while passengers experienced norovirus-like symptoms the exact gastrointestinal illness has not been confirmed.

In all cases, the cruise lines isolated ill passengers and crew and increased cleaning and disinfection procedures.

Gorensek at Holy Cross said norovirus is seasonal and often spreads more in the winter. “We usually see it more whenever people are spending time together.”

She said that anyone handling food for holiday meals without thoroughly washing their hands can quickly spread it.

Unlike other viruses, norovirus is hard to kill on surfaces or hands.

“A quick dose of hand sanitizer doesn’t work, only soap and water,” she said. “On surfaces, bleach-based products are best.”

Noroviruses also are relatively resistant to heat and can survive temperatures as high as 145 degrees Fahrenheit.

Inhaling airborne norovirus particles can happen — potentially in an airplane’s bathroom — but that method of spread is less common than contact with contaminated surfaces or food.

Anyone who gets norovirus needs to be careful with staying hydrated. Gorensek recommends Pedialyte, Gatorade or broth. “Water isn’t good because it doesn’t give you the necessary electrolytes,” she said.

Young children and anyone with an underlying condition need to be particularly cautious, she said, because “they are susceptible to dehydration and are most at risk.”

Hey, MAGA voters: You’ve been had. Trump’s plans for the economy may ruin you.

USA Today – Opinion

Hey, MAGA voters: You’ve been had. Trump’s plans for the economy may ruin you.

Rex Huppke – December 10, 2024

President-elect Donald Trump cares deeply about the forgotten men and women of the MAGA movement, the regular folks who believe wealthy elites have made America decidedly NOT GREAT.

So I’m sure those forgotten men and women are thrilled to know Trump has stocked his upcoming administration with enough billionaires and multimillionaires to, as The Guardian put it recently, “form a soccer team.”

That’s right. Axios reported last week that, including Trump himself, the administration-to-be is already staffed with 14 billionaires. The list includes Linda McMahon as Education secretary, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as government efficiency overseers, Howard Lutnick as Commerce secretary and billionaire hedge-fund manager Scott Bessent as Treasury secretary.

I’m sure these down-to-earth billionaires care deeply about the forgotten men and women who put Trump in office. Surely they are in no way “elite,” aside from perhaps owning an island, or maybe occasionally hunting poor people for sport on said island.

Trump is surrounding himself with non-elite billionaires who care

Forbes reported in 2021 that President Joe Biden’s Cabinet had a net worth of about $188 million.

The Guardian puts the net worth of Trump’s gang thus far at more than $300 billion. If you believe in math, it’s a staggering sum, about 2,000 times the wealth of those in the Biden administration.

Elon Musk, holding his son, and Vivek Ramaswamy, in blue tie, visit Capitol Hill to meet with members of Congress on Dec. 5, 2024.

So, you know … regular folks, the kind who undoubtedly can relate to the day-to-day needs of Americans. The sort who regularly go to grocery stores, which they refer to as “commoner slop-distribution centers.” The kind who would never want to harvest the blood of young people in a narcissistic quest for eternal life.

Musk, Ramaswamy may come after VA health care, but it’s fine

There’s no way billionaire businessmen like Musk and Ramaswamy would do anything that helps the rich at the expense of hardworking Americans. They wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal that they will be “taking aim at the $500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress.”

And yes, that could include things like the Department of Veterans Affairs medical services, billions of dollars in funding for education and housing, and the Head Start program.

But I’m 100% sure we can trust these billionaires because they’re with Trump, and Trump is clearly anti-elite. As the conservative Heritage Foundation trumpeted after the election: “With Trump’s Win, ‘Ordinary’ Americans Declared Independence from the Elites.”

And Fox Business host Stuart Varney said after Trump won: “The elites have been living in a bubble. Trump just burst it.”

Huzzah! Take that, elites! Now please stand back while regular-guy-billionaire Donald Trump installs a phalanx of other billionaires who will, in a totally non-elite way, lower their own taxes while taking away government services that many forgotten men and women rely on for little things like continuing to live.

Opinion: It’s the bitcoin boom, baby! I’m bailing on Beanie Babies and investing bigly!

Trump can’t guarantee tariffs won’t lead to higher prices. Cool!

Consider this: Trump has repeatedly talked about how much he likes tariffs and how, as soon as he takes office, he’s going to tariff the daylights out of other countries like China and Mexico.

Economists ‒ probably elites ‒ say the cost of tariffs will get passed along to American consumers. They say that because it’s exactly what will happen. But Trump, the everyman, has long denied that reality, convincing the forgotten men and women of the middle class he’s an economic wizard and this will all work out great for them.

Fruit could be impacted by Trump’s proposed tariffs, particularly avocados, melons and citrus fruits.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, Trump was asked if he can “guarantee American families won’t pay more” under his tariff plan.

Trump, the billionaire, said: “I can’t guarantee anything. I can’t guarantee tomorrow.”

Put your future in the hands of Trump’s caring billionaires

You see? Trump cares about American families to not guarantee anything.

So don’t worry, forgotten men and women. Be confident that Trump and Musk and Ramaswamy and McMahon and Lutnick and all the other totally trustworthy and altruistic non-elite billionaires know what’s good for you.

Because you’re about to get it, regardless.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk

I lived in Florida for a decade. The downsides just kept adding up, and now I’m back in the Midwest.

Business Insider

I lived in Florida for a decade. The downsides just kept adding up, and now I’m back in the Midwest.

Debra Pamplin – December 9, 2024

I love many things about Florida, but after 11 years, I left to move back to the Midwest.
My insurance costs in Florida were high, and driving in our county felt dangerous and intense.
I often let the state’s heat, humidity, and many mosquitos deter me from going outside.

We first fell in love with Florida after visiting it on a family vacation in 1997.

After many more pleasant family vacations to the state, we left our hometown in Missouri and moved to Florida in early 2013.

We thought Jacksonville would be a good place to settle, as it was close to many Florida hot spots and great vacation cities in neighboring states.

It turns out, I’m much happier visiting Florida than living there full time. Here are a few things that led me to move back home to the Midwest after 11 years.

I didn’t like driving in our county, and I often worried about my family’s safety on the roads

Cars in traffic on highway in Jacksonville — I didn’t really enjoy driving in Jacksonville.peeterv/Getty Images

Witnessing high-speed chases on the interstate, cars failing to yield, and trucks running red lights were part of our daily life in Jax.

Our county, in particular, has some of the deadliest roads in Florida.

I worried about my young daughter daily as she commuted to work on I-95. Though I trusted her as a driver, I was concerned about everyone else on the interstates and roads.

She’d often tell me about cars going well over the already-high speed limit and how drivers would regularly speed up instead of letting her over for her exit or lane merge.

A few months ago, she moved to a much smaller city in the Midwest, and I stopped worrying so much about her daily commute. I figured if she could manage in a place like Jax, she could drive anywhere.

Insurance felt like a huge part of my budget in Florida

No one likes to pay a monthly insurance premium, but the cost felt especially tough to stomach while I lived in Florida.

A MarketWatch analysis found that the average full-coverage car insurance cost in Florida was 42% higher than the national average.

The big kicker was finding out that I’d moved into a no-fault state. This means that no matter who’s at fault in a collision, each driver has to rely on their own insurance to cover medical expenses and other financial losses.

Florida is also dealing with a home-insurance crisis. Homeowners in many parts of the state struggle to keep up with sky-high premiums, especially after the recent hurricanes.

I’d often have to cut spending in other parts of my life just to cover my high monthly insurance costs. Now that I’m out of Florida, my monthly insurance expenses are lower, giving me breathing room to spend my money on more fun stuff.

I didn’t love the high temperatures and humidity during the day

Wooden boardwalk to beach in Florida — Many love Florida’s seemingly endless sunshine, but I found I got tired of it.Laura Sliva Collier/Getty Images

With sunlight beaming down most of the year, it’s clear why Florida is known as the Sunshine State. During some summer months, Florida’s average highs were above 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

I struggled to deal with the heat. Some may love it, but I found it could feel draining. With high humidity, the heat felt even worse. Jacksonville’s average annual percentage of humidity can be a sweaty 72% or higher.

Unfortunately, the heat and humidity kept me from fully enjoying all the beautiful outdoor activities and attractions throughout Florida.

My naturally curly hair turned into a pile of frizz each time I stepped out of the front door — sometimes, I’d feel so self-conscious about it I’d just stay home.

Instead of participating in outdoor adventures throughout the area, I often chose to stay home in the air conditioning.

Lastly, I missed experiencing the variety of the seasons and the temperature drops that come with some of them. The Midwest’s changing weather is a much better fit for me.

Mosquitoes were a huge nuisance to me at night

I also struggled to deal with mosquitoes when I lived in the Sunshine State. Though the pesky insects can be found in every state, Florida has more than most and over 80 species of them.

I seemed to be allergic to their bites, which would stay swollen on my body for days. Because of this, I didn’t journey outside too much without first coating myself in bug repellent.

The repellent wasn’t always super effective, so I eventually stopped going outside in the evenings to avoid getting bit.

Overall, I’m happier in the Midwest

I get why so many spring breakers and snowbirds are drawn to Florida. It has a lot of sunshine, natural beauty, and fun outdoor activities.

Still, for many reasons, I found it tough to fully enjoy the state and its beauty.

The Midwest is a better fit for me, and I’m glad I moved back. These days, I enjoy my slower-paced life in a state where I can feel the seasons change — and I no longer mind going outside so much.

Well, Well, Well: Trump Gives up the Game on Project 2025

The New Republic

Well, Well, Well: Trump Gives up the Game on Project 2025

Edith Olmsted – November 22, 2024

Donald Trump is taking yet another page out of the authoritarian playbook Project 2025—and it’s the one with a list of MAGA loyalists for hire.

After trying desperately, often unconvincingly, to distance his campaign from Project 2025’s unpopular, extremist policies, Trump’s transition team has been using the right-wing playbook’s staffing database to make appointments within the new administration, a source familiar told NBC News.

“There’s a lot of positions to fill and we continue to send names over, including ones from the database as they are conservative, qualified and vetted,” the source, who had worked on Project 2025, told NBC News. “Hard to find 4,000 solid people, so we are happy to help.”

Paul Dans, the former director of Project 2025, once described his plans to make a “conservative Linkedin” containing information on thousands of potential hires for the Trump administration. He envisioned it as a personnel machine for rooting out the “deep state” and replacing federal employees with devoted MAGA loyalists.

Dans hoped his system would allow Trump to make big changes fast. “If a person can’t get in and fire people right away, what good is political management?” Dans said in December.

Earlier this week, Trump nominated Russ Vought, a Christian nationalist with ties to Project 2025, to lead the Office of Management and Budget. He also nominated Brendan Carr, who wrote the Project 2025 chapter on the Federal Communications Commission, to head that government agency.

Last week, Trump nominated John Ratcliffe, another Project 2025 author, to head the Central Intelligence Agency.

Trump doubles down on provocative Cabinet picks as their fates hang in the balance

CNN

Trump doubles down on provocative Cabinet picks as their fates hang in the balance

Analysis by Stephen Collinson – November 18, 2024

Smerconish: Trump is inviting confrontation with cabinet picks

Donald Trump is refusing to back down over his Cabinet picks in the first clash in an epic battle he will wage against Washington when he takes office next year.

The coming days will show whether Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have staying power for confirmation fights in the new Republican Senate over their assignments to safeguard the rule of law, the US intelligence community, the military, and the health and well-being of all Americans.

Each of the most provocative selections is facing criticism that they lack the expertise and experience to run the vast, specialized bureaucracies that would be under their control.

And debate over their prospects is intensifying following fresh revelations and allegations about their pasts, which will set up a test for Trump’s intention to wield what he regards as almost uncheckable power from the Oval Office.

CNN reported this weekend that Hegseth, Trump’s pick for defense secretary, paid a woman who accused him of sexual assault in a settlement agreement that included a confidentiality clause, according to Hegseth’s attorney. The Fox News anchor has denied assaulting the woman, according to the attorney, and was not charged in any criminal case or named as a defendant in any civil lawsuit in connection with the 2017 incident. The initial sexual assault allegation against Hegseth had caught Trump’s team off guard last week, after the president-elect had already picked him.

Intrigue also deepened over a House Ethics Committee investigation into Gaetz, the potential attorney general, after a lawyer who represents two of the witnesses in the probe said Friday that one of his clients saw the Florida Republican, who resigned from Congress last week, having sex with a minor. Gaetz denies any wrongdoing, including ever having sex with a minor or paying for sex. He was not charged after a Department of Justice investigation.

There is also growing scrutiny over Gabbard’s suitability for the job of director of national intelligence because of her positions that sometimes amplified the propaganda of one of the covert community’s top adversaries — Russia.

And some senior medical experts are raising concerns over the qualifications of Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, to safeguard generations of medical advances as the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, even though his outspokenness against processed food has found support among many top physicians.

Not all of Trump’s picks are causing uproar. The selection of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio to serve as secretary of state has won praise on both sides of the aisle. But in a conventional administration, controversies raging around at least four key Cabinet picks would be seen as a disaster.

Trump is adamant he’s not going to give in as he seeks people who will fulfill his goals of tearing down the Washington establishment in a second term he pledged to devote to retribution. A source told CNN over the weekend that Trump sees Gaetz as his most important pick. The president-elect wants the former Florida congressman confirmed “100%,” the source said. “He is not going to back off. He’s all in.”

Johnson tells CNN that releasing Gaetz ethics report would open a Pandora’s box’

Trump has called on the Senate to, if necessary, cooperate with him to make recess appointments if the picks cannot be confirmed. Using such a move as a first resort rather than a final one, as has happened in the past, would be a sign that Trump, with a compliant GOP, plans to bypass the constitutional checks and balances of Congress and act with sweeping, unrestrained authority as president.

The outcome of the coming showdown will depend on whether Republican senators are willing to abrogate their own power to vet nominees and will cave under the furious political pressure that is certain to be trained on them by the “Make America Great Again” movement. The issue represents the first political crisis to confront South Dakota Sen. John Thune, who will take over as Republican Senate majority leader next year. And even if senators take a stand over one or two nominees they view as unqualified, it’s unlikely they will deal a defeat to the new president by throwing out all of the most provocative picks, meaning that some of them are almost certain to take jobs atop key government departments.

The storm over Trump’s picks is deepening as the president-elect is working to complete his future governing team with positions such as treasury secretary and US trade representative — who will be critical to carrying out his populist trade and economic policies — still outstanding.

Gaetz — a pyrotechnical politician who made his name with his outspoken support for Trump and a series of political stunts — is attracting the most attention in part because of his decision to quit the House just days before the Ethics Committee was expected to release its report. Without him being a sitting member of Congress, the investigation will end with the report still under wraps, despite some GOP senators requesting to see what is in it.

House Speaker Mike Johnson told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” on Sunday that releasing the report would open a “Pandora’s box” since Gaetz had left Congress, even though such action would not be unprecedented. “The Senate has a role, the advise-and-consent role, under the Constitution, and they will perform it,” the Louisiana Republican said. “They will have a rigorous review and vetting process in the Senate, but they don’t need to rely upon a report, or a draft report, a rough draft report, that was prepared by the Ethics Committee for its very limited purposes.” Johnson also said he had not discussed the matter with Trump.

The president-elect’s son explains the plan

Gaetz and several other Trump picks have caused consternation in some circles given the questions about their qualifications and past behavior.

“I think the whole point with these nominees, several of them, is their un-qualification, is their affirmative disqualification,” Sen.-elect Adam Schiff said on “State of the Union” on Sunday. “That’s Trump’s point, because what he wants to do with these nominees is establish that the Congress of the United States will not stand up to him with anything,” the California Democrat said. “If they will confirm Matt Gaetz, they will do anything he wants.”

Rep. Jim Himes, a Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, warned Sunday that Republican senators should look to their legacies and not to Trump. “These people are manifestly unqualified, and they’re not prepared to run the very complicated organizations they have been asked to run,” the Connecticut Democrat said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” He added: “A Republican senator who takes a vote to consent to the appointment of Matt Gaetz — a chaos agent, a performative social media, no-respect-for-the-rule-of-law individual — the Republican senator who votes to confirm Matt Gaetz or Robert Kennedy or Tulsi Gabbard will be remembered by history as somebody who completely gave up their responsibility to Donald Trump.”

Trump on the campaign trail made no secret of his plans if he won a second term. Many of his most committed supporters regard the federal government as a liberal deep state that has failed to respond to their needs. Trump, moreover, is still seething over the establishment’s attempts to rein him in during his first White House term. So selecting Cabinet picks who are seen as unqualified to lead their departments may be an attempt to deal a blow against the credibility of government in itself.

The strategy was explained by the president-elect’s son Donald Trump Jr. on “Sunday Morning Futures” on Fox Business. “The reality this time is, we actually know what we’re doing. We actually know who the good guys and the bad guys are. We know who the guys who are fake,” he said. “It’s about surrounding my father with people who are both competent and loyal. They will deliver on his promises. They will deliver on his message. They are not people who think they know better, as unelected bureaucrats.”

Trump Jr. also suggested that the uproar surrounding some of Trump’s picks was exactly why he chose them and that it proves their authenticity. “A lot of them are going to face pushback, for the same reasons. Again, they are going to be actual disrupters. That’s what the American people want.”

It would take a handful of Republican senators to block the most provocative Trump nominees early next year, given that Democrats are likely to vote en masse against them. But several GOP senators made clear Sunday they had no problems with the people Trump has picked to staff the government.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin has a long-standing personal feud with Gaetz and has in the past held his behavior in contempt. But the Oklahoma Republican said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he would give Gaetz a “fair shot.” He added: “I’ve got a tough situation. … I’ve got to set my personal situation with Matt to the side and look at the facts. If he’s qualified, he’s qualified.”

Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt said he believed Trump’s nominees would get confirmed. “You have to have people you trust to go into these agencies and have a real reform agenda. And that’s why I think there’s real momentum, real momentum to get these nominations confirmed,” he said on “Sunday Morning Futures.”

On the same show, however, another Trump ally, Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, warned there was “hard work” ahead in the confirmation process but praised Gaetz as a “fighter” who was loyal to the president-elect. “We have got the numbers. Let’s step to the plate, do our job, because we have to get this country back going in the right direction. President Trump only has a short period of time. Four years is not long.”

Across the aisle, Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman looked ahead to those four years and urged Democrats to acknowledge the big picture rather than playing into Trump’s hands over every controversy. He said on “State of the Union” that the picks of Gaetz and some others were “just absolute trolls” that fit Trump’s purposes. “He gets the kind of thing that he wanted, like the freak-out. … If we’re having meltdowns every tweet or every appointment or all those things, I mean, it’s going to be four years.”

Trump’s worst Cabinet picks aren’t just unqualified, they’re part of a bigger power grab

Los Angeles Times

Column: Trump’s worst Cabinet picks aren’t just unqualified, they’re part of a bigger power grab

Doyle McManus – November 18, 2024

Former President Donald Trump, center, walks by Rep. Matt Gaetz, left, R-Fla., outside the courtroom after the day's proceedings in his trial Thursday, May 16, 2024, in New York. Trump's adviser Boris Epshteyn, and attorney Emil Bove, right, follow behind him. (Mike Segar/Pool Photo via AP) — Donald Trump walks by Matt Gaetz, left, after a day in court during his criminal trial in New York this spring. Former Rep. Gaetz, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, has vowed to purge the Justice Department and FBI of anyone who might get in the president-elect’s way. (Mike Segar / Pool photo via Associated Press)More

Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what’s in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.Generate Key Takeaways

At first glance, President-elect Donald Trump’s most controversial Cabinet nominees — Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — are an odd list of ideologues and eccentrics chosen for political loyalty more than any substantive qualifications.

But there’s a more important and potentially more dangerous factor that ties their nominations together: They are foot soldiers in a power grab that, if it succeeds, would weaken the institutional guardrails that limit the president’s powers and concentrate more authority in Trump’s hands.

Former Rep. Gaetz, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, has promised to purge the Justice Department and FBI of anyone who might get in the president’s way. Trump “is going to hit the Department of Justice with a blowtorch — and that torch is Matt Gaetz,” former Trump aide Stephen K. Bannon said last week.

Hegseth, the Fox News host who could become Defense secretary, has proposed purging military officers he sees as too committed to diversity, including Gen. C.Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “The Pentagon likes to say our diversity is our strength,” Hegseth said on Fox News in June. “What a bunch of garbage.” (“Pete’s a leader,” Bannon said. “He’s kind of a madman — but hey, you need that.”)

Former Rep. Gabbard, who as director of National Intelligence would oversee the CIA and 17 other agencies, has criticized the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine so fervently that a Russian state television host once called her “our girlfriend.”

And Kennedy, the anti-vaccine activist who is Trump’s nominee for Health and Human Services, has said he wants to fire hundreds of senior officials in the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health on “day one.” Trump has encouraged him to “go wild.”

Their pledges are all in keeping with Trump’s broader promise to dismantle much of the federal bureaucracy and bring what remains under his personal control.

“We will demolish the deep state,” the president-elect often said at his campaign rallies, “We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.”

During his first term, Trump often expressed frustration at the legal and political limits on what he could do as president.

In 2018, he expressed an expansive view of his powers under the Constitution: “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want.”

But in practice, he found himself hemmed in by experienced Cabinet officials, White House lawyers and military officers, some of whom dubbed themselves “the adults in the room.”

His attorneys general, Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr, quietly sidelined his demands that they prosecute Hillary Clinton and other top Democrats.

His last Defense secretary, Mark Esper, and his appointee as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Mark A. Milley, resisted his proposal in 2020 to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy active duty troops against demonstrators in Washington and other cities.

Trump also denounced the CIA and other intelligence agencies for their finding that Russia interfered in the 2016 election campaign to help him defeat Clinton — a judgment he seemed to consider partisan, rather than based on the evidence.

So it’s no surprise that he wants to bring those national security agencies to heel.

But Trump’s plans to expand his personal authority extend much further.

He has vowed to weaken civil service rules that protect federal bureaucrats from being fired if they disagree with their bosses’ decisions. “We will pass critical reforms making every executive branch employee fireable by the president,” he said last year, adding: “I will wield that power very aggressively.”

Robert Shea, a former top official in the George W. Bush administration, explained the real world impact. “If you told your boss that what he or she was proposing was illegal, impractical [or] unwise, they could brand you as disloyal and terminate you,” he said.

The result would be what one expert called “transformation by intimidation.”

Trump has also proposed weakening Congress’ power to direct federal spending — one of the legislative branch’s core functions.

He plans to revive the practice of “impounding” funds — blocking agencies from spending money that Congress has appropriated for programs he doesn’t like.

That tactic could enable him, for example, to stop parts of President Biden’s clean energy program from being implemented, even though Congress has already approved the expenditures.

A 1974 law made impoundment illegal, but Trump has suggested that he will ignore the prohibition and challenge it in court.

And, of course, Trump warned the Senate last week that if it refuses to confirm any of his Cabinet nominees, he may put them in office anyway — by using “recess appointments,” which allow a president to fill top jobs when Congress isn’t in session.

And if the Congress doesn’t recess, Trump may have another norm-shattering gambit in reserve. In his first term, he threatened to adjourn both chambers under a presidential power laid out in the Constitution for “extraordinary occasions.”

That wouldn’t just test the guardrails on a president’s powers, it would “crash through them,” wrote Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice.

That makes it all the more important that Republicans in the Senate, to preserve their constitutional powers, subject Trump’s nominees to searching scrutiny and reject any that are unqualified, dangerous or both.

Those controversial nominations will decide more than the future of the Justice Department, the Defense Department, the intelligence community and the vast Department of Health and Human Services — although those stakes are high enough.

They will help determine whether Trump can undo the checks and balances the founders wrote into the Constitution, and turn the executive branch into an instrument of a would-be autocrat’s will.

Democratic AGs rush to form line of defense against Trump

The Hill

Democratic AGs rush to form line of defense against Trump

Julia Mueller – November 17, 2024

Democratic attorneys general across the country are readying their legal defenses against the incoming Trump administration, preparing to pounce on potential violations and even take the president-elect to court if he implements controversial policies.

During his first term, state attorneys general brought a wave of lawsuits against the Trump administration as they worked to block moves like his travel ban and family separations at the border. Four years after he left office, as President-elect Trump touts plans for mass deportations and a rollback of environmental regulations, the top prosecutors are on high alert.

They join Democratic governors, some of whom are already in the spotlight as possible 2028 contenders, as a critical line of defense for the party, with the GOP set to take a trifecta of control over the White House and Congress.

“This time, not just with the trifecta, but also a more conservative judiciary, the number of venues for Democrats to advance their policies has shrunk on the federal level,” said Paul Nolette, a Marquette University political scientist and the director of a database on state litigation and attorney general activity.

“Whenever that happens, what we’ve seen is that parties then really use the states as a way to advance their own policy. And when Democrats are still in control of states like California, New York, Illinois … the actions of governors, the actions of state AGs, they really can make a difference not only in their own states, but across the country, on national policy,” he said.

The days since Trump’s win have seen a surge of Democratic attorneys general stepping up to signal they’re ready to counterbalance the GOP when it takes power in Washington next year.

“I don’t wake up every morning dying to sue the president of the United States or his administration,” New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin (D) told The Hill.

“If he’s operating lawfully, we’re not going to challenge it. But when he violates the law, we’re not going to hesitate to protect our residents,” Platkin said.

Trump has said his Day 1 agenda would launch “the largest deportation program in American history,” roll back Biden orders on equity and “drill, baby, drill.”

“It’s not like the Democrats made it up or something,” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, of the prospective threats posed by a second Trump term. “It comes from the mouth, and social media, of Trump himself.”

The president-elect has also stoked concerns with his picks for Cabinet positions, including Trump ally former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) for U.S. attorney general. Gaetz, who is being investigated by the House Ethics Committee, resigned from Congress after getting the nod.

Platkin blasted the nomination on the social platform X as a sign that Trump “would use the DOJ to punish political opponents and undermine the rule of law.”

Attorneys general from coast to coast have been preparing for months amid the competitive White House race, California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) told The Hill. They’ve monitored comments from Trump and his inner circle and scrutinized Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a second Trump term.

The prep is as specific as prewriting briefs so officials “just need to cross the Ts, dot the Is and press print and file it,” Bonta said. California alone reportedly brought more than a hundred lawsuits against Trump in his first term.

“What we learned from the first Trump administration is that he can’t help but break the law. It’s part of his brand. It’s part of what he does,” Bonta said.

During Trump’s first term, Democratic attorneys general led more than 130 multistate lawsuits against the administration, according to Nolette’s database, and boasted an 83 percent win rate. That was more than twice as many as Republican attorneys general led against the Obama administration, with a 63.5 percent win rate. Against President Biden’s administration so far, Republican AGs have seen a win rate of around 76 percent.

The first Trump administration ushered in a “world of heightened AG activism,” Nolette said, making the latest crop of state legal officers “much more proactive in getting ready for challenges that currently don’t even exist.”

The attorneys general are connecting with each other through the Democratic Attorneys General Association (DAGA), as well as coordinating with their governors, who are also gearing up to resist Republican policies.

“Nothing unites Democrats more than Donald Trump,” said James Tierney, a Harvard Law School lecturer, the director of StateAG.org and a former Democratic attorney general of Maine.

After Trump’s win, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) called a special session of the state legislature to protect progressive policies, vowing the Golden State is “ready to fight.”

New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), who brought a major lawsuit against Trump in 2022, joined with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) to announce their offices would be convening regularly to “coordinate legal actions” and develop responses to the incoming administration, according to a release.

In Massachusetts, Gov. Maura Healey (D) — herself a former state AG — has promised her state’s law enforcement would “absolutely not” assist if the Trump administration asked for help with mass deportation plans.

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell (D) said she’s on alert for threats to reproductive health care, gun safety, consumer protections and other issues, and told The Hill that she has “real concerns about the president-elect’s position when it comes to the rule of law.”

“The role of the Democratic AG is the most critical, I think, in this moment in time,” Campbell said, arguing they’re “on the front line.”

Several Democratic governors were in the running for the veepstakes to join Vice President Harris’s 2024 presidential bid, and they’re also making early lists of possible 2028 contenders. Some state AGs, too, may have higher political aspirations, adding a political subtext to their public defense of their party ideals.

“The old joke, of course, is that AGs are ‘aspiring governors.’ And I think at this point we’ve seen, certainly, plenty of evidence that AGs have leveraged their roles to become good candidates for higher office,” Nolette said.

Harris herself is a prime example: She served as California AG before jumping to the Senate and then to the vice presidency. Along the 2024 campaign trail, she touted her work in the role.

Washington state’s Attorney General Bob Ferguson (D) won his gubernatorial bid on Election Day. He told reporters after the results that his office feels “prepared to defend” progressive policies in his state as both the White House and his seat changes hands.

And that defense doesn’t always look like lawsuits, experts noted. State attorneys general often write letters to congressional leaders, participate in the notice-and-comment rule-making stage and speak out about certain policies.

“The wise attorney general understands that they’re more than just a lawsuit machine,” Tierney said.

DAGA president Sean Rankin told The Hill that state AGs will continue their work in the courtroom during a second Trump term, but also work to “do a better job” of explaining the work of attorneys general to the public.

Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach (R), the chair of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), argued in a statement to The Hill that the Democratic AGs are “making an empty gesture” with their responses to Trump’s win, “given that regulatory overreach has been a hallmark of the Biden Administration.”

“Unlike President Biden who lost dozens of times to Republican AGs for promulgating illegal and unconstitutional rules and regulations, President Trump will be focused on reducing excessive overreach,” Kobach said.

A Trump White House 2.0. will also likely have a “more sophisticated approach” both to reverse Biden-era regulations and advance their own policies, Nolette said. And Democrats are set to face new hurdles in the increasingly conservative court system — including at the U.S. Supreme Court level, thanks to Trump’s appointments.

“It’s like the filibuster in the Senate. Both sides use it when it’s to their advantage. Republicans had a huge amount of litigation against the Biden administration in these past four years, and there’s more to come. And so this isn’t specific about Trump,” Nolette said of using litigation to combat the administration.

“It’s something that I think AGs of both parties have realized is a very good strategy to delay and to stop policies that they disagree with,” he said. “This is part of the process that’s now entrenched.”

The Lesson of This Election: We Must Stop Inflation Before It Starts

The New York Times – Guest Opinion

The Lesson of This Election: We Must Stop Inflation Before It Starts

By Isabella Weber – November 12, 2024

Dr. Weber is an associate professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Four illustrations, done in an Old World etching style. On the upper left, furniture crowds the streets while nearby gutted buildings burn; on the upper right, a volcano erupts; on the lower left, tornadic waterspouts roil an ocean; and on the lower left, George Washington is smiling and holding a beer aloft. — Credit…Guillem Casasús

Unemployment weakens governments. Inflation kills them. That’s what a government official from Brazil once told me. But in rich countries including the United States, the politically destructive power of inflation had been forgotten. Standard policy tools left us unprepared and the Biden administration was slow to fight back. The re-election of Donald Trump should serve as a warning to democratic governments.

In this age of overlapping emergencies — hurricanes, an Avian flu outbreak, two regional wars — threats to supply chains are becoming commonplace. Each threat brings the risk of inflation and its power to destabilize governments, including our own. With such emergencies being the new normal, if we learned anything from last week’s earthquake election result, it’s that we need new means of protecting our society and democracy.

Among the biggest problems that need fixing: Many business sectors today are dominated by large corporations that can profit from these one-time events.

Using A.I. and natural language processing in an upcoming paper, several co-authors and I analyzed more than 130,000 earnings calls of publicly listed U.S. companies and found that businesses can coordinate price hikes around cost shocks. This enabled companies, by and large, to pass on or amplify the impact of the initial cost increase in response to shocks in the wake of Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine.

In other words, the sudden news of cost shocks, like the onset of a pandemic and war, grants companies more freedom to coordinate price hikes across sectors because they realize that their rivals are very likely going to do the same.

Skeptics of this idea often counter that corporate concentration was already high before the pandemic, yet those same powerful businesses kept prices stable for many years, despite close-to-zero interest rates. That’s because under normal circumstances, a company that decides to increase prices without knowing that its competitors would follow suit risks losing business to rivals. This was the world we were living in before the pandemic. Globalization had created the most efficient, just-in-time production networks the world has seen and, for the most part, even giant companies kept prices stable under the pressure of competition.

But when supply bottlenecks occur, the clockwork stops. Every producer is naturally limited in how many products it can produce. This means that even if a company increases prices, competitors cannot easily ramp up their supply to take its business. Plus, everyone in the business sector understands the natural reaction to a shock is to raise prices. Jacking up prices is now a safe choice and has become the rational thing to do for profit-maximizing businesses.

In the wake of Covid, most companies managed to pass on their higher costs to the consumer and defend their margins, while some even increased them. But even if they simply keep their profit margins in response to a cost shock, their profits increase. Think of how the broker’s fee is higher for a more expensive house even if the percentage terms are the same. Corporate leaders know this to be the case. That’s why we found that when cost shocks are large and hit the whole economy, executives sound quite upbeat about them.

Massive shocks can be even better news for the sectors directly hit. Take oil. When demand collapsed overnight because people stayed home during the shutdowns, fossil fuel companies, suddenly faced with an unprecedented collapse in demand, closed some of their highest-cost oil fields and refineries. When demand recovered, the result was a shortage that led to record-high margins. In another forthcoming paper, my co-authors and I estimate that in 2022, U.S. shareholders in publicly listed oil and gas companies had claims on $301 billion in net income, a more than sixfold increase compared to the average of the four years before the pandemic. Oil and gas profits also exceeded the U.S. investments of $267 billion in the low-carbon economy that year.

Oil is inherently a boom-bust sector, but we cannot afford such extraordinary profit spikes in times of emergency. They prop up a sector that needs to be phased out to mitigate climate change. They also exacerbate inequality. As our new research shows, at the peak of the fossil fuel price spike in 2022, the wealthiest 1 percent claimed through shareholdings and private company ownership 51 percent of oil and gas profits. The less affluent faced higher inflation and only got a small slice of the oversized oil and gas profits pie.

Working people suffer through no fault of their own. Even if their wages eventually catch up, they are squeezed and feel cheated in the first place. This is why sellers’ inflation deepens economic inequality and political polarization, which are already threatening democracy.

President Biden mobilized a few unconventional measures to fight inflation, including an antitrust renewal to address outsize corporate power and increasing oil supply by drawing down the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. These actions were an important departure from old orthodoxies, but were ad hoc and retroactive. The main policy tool remained increasing interest rates. Sharp rate increases deepened the housing crisis, exacerbated the debt crisis for developing countries and increased the costs of investments urgently needed to address the climate crisis.

Economic stabilization used to be part of the disaster preparedness toolbox. It is time we add it back in. Just as it was recognized that some banks were too big to fail after the global financial crisis, we have to recognize that some other sectors are “too essential to fail.” In essential sectors, we need to move from a pure efficiency logic to strategic redundancies. This requires policy interventions.

Ports and other critical infrastructure should have spare capacity and a well-paid work force large enough to ramp up activity when needed. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a publicly owned buffer stock of oil, should be employed systematically to buy when prices collapse and sell when prices explode to avoid price extremes. It should buy oil on the open market when demand is falling short, thus preventing prices from collapsing, and sell oil when there is a threat of short supply, thus preventing prices from exploding. Such countercyclical purchases and sales by buffer stocks in commodity markets operate on the same logic as central banks’ open market operations in money markets.

It is not enough to release oil when prices spiral upward. As we have learned during the pandemic, a collapse in prices can create a sudden reduction in production capacity that breeds price spikes when demand picks back up.

Another lesson is that where markets are global, it is a good idea to coordinate stabilizing measures internationally — as the International Energy Agency did for its member states. And where futures markets exist, buffer stocks can buy futures when prices fall and sell when they rise for stabilization.

Countercyclical price stabilization through buffer stocks is important beyond oil. We also need it for critical minerals to encourage investments in the green supply chain and for food staples like grains, to avoid violent commodity price fluctuations in the wake of extreme weather events.

In addition to buffering essentials, we need policies that align public and private interests with resilience. As long as corporations see profits go up thanks to threats of shortages in times of disaster, we cannot assume that they prepare for emergencies in the best interest of the public. Price-gouging laws and windfall-profit taxes are relevant policy tools here.

Of course, the main task remains tackling the root causes of the emergencies. But this is a momentous task, especially in our climate change era, and in the interim a systemic set of buffers, regulations and emergency legislation is necessary. Without this economic disaster preparedness, people’s livelihoods and the outcome of elections remain at the whim of the next shock.

Isabella Weber is an associate professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

A changing climate, a changing world

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Climate change around the world: In “Postcards From a World on Fire,” 193 stories from individual countries show how climate change is reshaping reality everywhere, from dying coral reefs in Fiji to disappearing oases in Morocco and far, far beyond.

The role of our leaders: Writing at the end of 2020, Al Gore, the 45th vice president of the United States, found reasons for optimism in the Biden presidency, a feeling perhaps borne out by the passing of major climate legislation. That doesn’t mean there haven’t been criticisms. For example, Charles Harvey and Kurt House argue that subsidies for climate capture technology will ultimately be a waste.

The worst climate risks, mapped: In this feature, select a country, and we’ll break down the climate hazards it faces. In the case of America, our maps, developed with experts, show where extreme heat is causing the most deaths.

What people can do: Justin Gillis and Hal Harvey describe the types of local activism that might be needed, while Saul Griffith points to how Australia shows the way on rooftop solar. Meanwhile, small changes at the office might be one good way to cut significant emissions, writes Carlos Gamarra.