Politics
Biden to Withdraw Nomination for Fed’s Top Bank Cop

Saule Omarova, a Cornell Regulation College professor whom critics painted as a communist after Mr. Biden picked her to guide the Workplace of the Comptroller of the Forex, withdrew her candidacy late final yr.
Opponents to Ms. Raskin’s affirmation focused extra than simply her local weather views. Additionally they took subject with work she did within the non-public sector — and the best way she answered questions on that work.
Republicans had particularly cited considerations about Ms. Raskin’s time on the board of administrators of a monetary expertise agency. The corporate, Reserve Belief, secured a coveted account with the Fed — giving it entry to companies that it now prominently advertises — after Ms. Raskin reportedly known as a central financial institution official to intervene on its behalf.
It’s unclear how a lot Ms. Raskin’s involvement truly helped. However the episode raised questions as a result of she beforehand labored on the Fed and since she made about $1.5 million from the inventory she earned for her Reserve Belief work. Democrats frequently denounce the revolving door between regulators and monetary corporations.
Republicans had demanded that Ms. Raskin present extra particulars about what occurred whereas she was on the corporate’s board, however she had largely stated she couldn’t bear in mind. Senator Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, the highest Republican on the committee, led his colleagues in refusing to indicate as much as vote on Ms. Raskin and the opposite Fed nominees till she supplied extra solutions.
Mr. Toomey signaled on Monday that he would favor permitting the opposite Fed nominees to proceed.
Sherrod Brown, Democrat from Ohio and the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, stated in an announcement on Tuesday that he would maintain a markup for the opposite nominees, and later informed reporters that he would possibly transfer them as quickly as this week.
“Sadly, the American individuals shall be denied a considerate, skilled public servant who was able to battle inflation, stand as much as Wall Avenue and company particular pursuits, and shield our financial system from international cyberattacks and local weather change,” Mr. Brown stated in his assertion.
A number of extra progressive Democrats expressed disappointment that Ms. Raskin wouldn’t be confirmed.
“The lobbyists have energy on Capitol Hill, and once they see their energy threatened, they battle again laborious — Sarah Bloom Raskin is simply the newest casualty,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, stated in response to the information.
Michael D. Shear contributed reporting.

Politics
The Hitchhiker's Guide to House Republicans releasing their tax and spending cut plan

House Republican leaders spent nearly five hours at the White House on Thursday – some of it with President Donald Trump – as they tried to finalize the outline of their tax and spending cut package.
The plan is to release a framework with some numbers in the coming days.
Fox is told to expect north of $1 trillion in spending cuts. The bill would make permanent the 2017 Trump tax cuts. It is also likely the bill includes a provision to bar taxes on tips.
‘POWER GRAB’: JEFFRIES UNVEILS DATA PROTECTION BILL AMID DOGE CRACKDOWN
Congress is racing to be ready to execute the recommendations of President Donald Trump’s new DOGE commission. (Getty Images)
House Republicans hoped to have a bill ready to go before the Budget Committee this week after their retreat at Mar-a-Lago.
But no dice.
Republicans hope to prep this bill before the House Budget Committee next week.
DOGE TARGETS MEDICARE AGENCY, LOOKING FOR FRAUD

House Speaker Mike Johnson, right, discusses President Donald Trump’s agenda during an appearance on “Sunday Morning Futures.” (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | Photo by Mustafa Yalcin/Anadolu via Getty Images/ Fox News Channel)
When asked if a plan would be unveiled Friday, Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News, “nothing today” on paper or details of a budget package.
He said the committee markup may come Tuesday, but that there are a couple of details to “work out.”
Republicans need a budget framework adopted on the floor so they can use the budget reconciliation tool to bypass a Senate filibuster. No budget? No reconciliation option.
House GOPers are feeling pressure from Senate Republicans who are pressing ahead with their own plan. Senate Republicans dine at Mar-a-Lago tonight with President Trump.
House Republicans are worried if they stumble at moving first, they could get jammed by the Senate.
Politics
Opinion: Trump's Gaza plan echoes decades-old Israeli calls to expel Palestianians

On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza, was received warmly by President Trump at the White House.
Netanyahu, a longtime backer of Trump, beamed with satisfaction as the two men met with reporters and Trump declared that Palestinians, driven from their homes by Israel’s brutal war in Gaza, should be “resettled” in third countries. This declaration is effectively an endorsement of calls from the Israeli right (including senior government officials) to expel Palestinians that go back decades and have accelerated since Oct. 7, 2023. Trump even said that the U.S. would “take over” Gaza.
The president’s remarks should not be taken lightly. They’re just the latest in a series he’s made recently about moving Palestinians out of Gaza, chillingly speaking of the need to “clean out” the territory and asking the leaders of Egypt, Jordan and even Indonesia to take them in. If implemented, such a plan would result in massive upheaval and even more bloodshed and destabilization in the region, and it would involve American troops occupying and colonizing Palestinian land in violation of international law.
If anyone doubts the seriousness of Trump’s statements. have no doubt that Netanyahu could consider them a green light to finish what is at the least the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, whether it’s carried out by Israeli or American soldiers. Indeed, on Thursday, the Israeli military was ordered to prepare plans for the “voluntary departure” of Palestinians out of Gaza.
Trump was careful to couch his plan in humanitarian terms, as do Israeli officials when they speak of expelling Palestinians, employing euphemisms like voluntary departure or voluntary migration, but make no mistake: It would involve the forced displacement of some 2 million people. Forced displacement and resettlement are war crimes, even when done under the pretext of humanitarian intent.
Meanwhile, on the ground in Gaza, Israel’s military has continued to kill and injure Palestinians since the cease-fire came into effect last month, and according to an Israeli media report, Netanyahu wants Trump’s support for the “eradication” of Hamas. On Sunday, Israel failed to meet a deadline to send a negotiating team to discuss Phase 2 of the ceasefire. Netanyahu appears to view the cease-fire as merely a tactical pause and has little or no intention of making it permanent.
At the heart of Trump’s Middle East policy is a delusion that was shared by President Biden and fueled by Netanyahu: Israel can get the benefits of peace while still occupying and dispossessing Palestinians. In reality, Netanyahu’s fantasies of integrating Israel into the Middle East by normalizing its relations with regional governments such as Saudi Arabia are nothing more than a mirage born of arrogance and ignorance.
Even if Trump were to broker a deal between the two countries, it wouldn’t mean Israel was truly accepted by its neighbors and ordinary people in the region. Efforts by Trump and Biden to integrate Israel into the Middle East under the Abraham Accords without addressing Israel’s oppression of Palestinians have been followed by the deadliest period in recent history in Palestine/Israel.
Any illusion of peace created by the cease-fire in Gaza or the Abraham Accords is just that: an illusion. The underlying cause of the violence in the region — 77 years of unrelenting Israeli oppression and dispossession of Palestinians — remains. Unless or until it is addressed, there will never be genuine or lasting peace between Palestinians and Israelis.
We as Palestinians, especially the people of Gaza, have suffered too much and endured horrors that no people should endure. But it must be clear to the Israelis, Americans and the whole world that we will never surrender to injustice, and we will never stop struggling for our freedom.
Trump’s and Netanyahu’s plans for Gaza and the Palestinian people must be categorically rejected by the international community and all people of conscience.
Mustafa Barghouti is leader and co-founder of the Palestinian National Initiative headquartered in the West Bank.
Politics
Trump Trade Nominee Defends Plan to Reorder International Trade

Jamieson Greer, President Trump’s nominee to be the next U.S. trade representative, defended the president’s plan to impose tariffs on all imported products and told senators he would work to restructure international trading relationships during his confirmation hearing on Thursday.
Mr. Greer, a trade lawyer and former Trump administration official, told the Senate Finance Committee that he believed the United States “should be a country of producers” as well as consumers, and that he would work to open international markets for U.S. farmers and try to “reverse” the deindustrialization of the nation.
Mr. Greer said Mr. Trump’s idea of imposing a universal tariff on all imports should be studied to see if it would reduce the U.S. trade deficit. He also said he would review whether China, along with Mexico and Canada, were complying trade deals they reached with the United States during Mr. Trump’s first term.
“I am convinced that we have a relatively short window of time to restructure the international trading system to better serve U.S. interests,” Mr. Greer said.
Mr. Greer is the former deputy of Robert E. Lighthizer, the trade representative in Mr. Trump’s first term. Mr. Greer negotiated with China, Canada, Mexico and other countries in that role, and supporters say he has an extensive knowledge of trade law.
His position could be an important one, given Mr. Trump’s proposals to upend global trading relationships with sweeping tariffs. The trade representative will likely help carry out Mr. Trump’s tariff wars, and potentially renegotiate the trade agreement the United States has signed with Canada and Mexico.
But it is unclear exactly how much autonomy the position will have in the current administration, given that Mr. Trump has said he will put Howard Lutnick, his pick for commerce secretary, in charge of his trade policy. Mr. Trump himself also has strong views on trade and once remarked that if elected, he would be his own U.S.T.R.
On Thursday, Senate Democrats questioned that arrangement and denounced Mr. Trump’s trade moves over the past week, in which the president came within hours of imposing a 25 percent tariff on goods from America’s largest trading partners, Canada and Mexico, as he sought concessions related to the border and drugs.
Mr. Trump ultimately chose to pause tariffs on Canada and Mexico, but put an additional 10 percent tariff on all imports from China — more than $400 billion of products — on Tuesday.
Senate Democrats said they would work with the Trump administration to combat unfair trade and open foreign markets, but called the actions against Canada and Mexico “reckless” and “erratic.”
Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, said he was concerned about other Trump officials using trade policy to pursue goals that had nothing to do with trade.
“International trade policy is just too important to American families, workers, small businesses, manufacturers and farmers to sacrifice to make headlines on unrelated issues,” he said.
Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat of Nevada, said a small business in her state had a Canadian customercancel a project because of the uncertain trade relationship, costing them tens of thousands of dollars.
“There’s got to be answers for so many businesses that are actually being, unfortunately, victims of this trade war,” Ms. Cortez Masto said.
Republican senators expressed support for Mr. Greer and the president’s actions. But some expressed concern about tariffs increasing input prices for farmers, and retaliation from other countries affecting U.S. exporters.
Clete Willems, a partner at Akin Gump who worked on trade policy in the first Trump White House, said that Mr. Greer had similar views on trade as those of his former boss, Mr. Lighthizer: that the global trading system had evolved in a way that has not been beneficial or fair to the United States.
Mr. Lighthizer tried “to upend that order and remake a lot of the international trading rules in a way that was more equitable to the United States,” Mr. Willems said. “And I think Jamieson will continue that.”
Mr. Willems said that Mr. Greer would bring to the role years of practical experience and an intimate knowledge of what actions trade laws allow.
“He is going to be at the center of this because they need him,” Mr. Willems said.
The U.S. trade representative leads a small agency of more than 200 people that has offices in Washington, Geneva and Brussels. The office is charged with carrying out trade negotiations and resolving economic disputes with other countries, as well as working with lawmakers, farmers and business owners to shape trade policy.
“Jamieson will focus the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative on reining in the Country’s massive Trade Deficit, defending American Manufacturing, Agriculture, and Services, and opening up Export Markets everywhere,” Mr. Trump said in a statement on social media in November.
In contrast to some of Mr. Trump’s other nominees, who have a more antagonistic relationship with their own bureaucracy, Mr. Greer is liked by many of the staff he will be in charge of, current and former U.S.T.R. employees say.
Before his work at the trade representative’s office, Mr. Greer was a lawyer for the Air Force and was deployed to Iraq. Mr. Greer said Thursday that he had grown up in a mobile home with parents who regularly worked several jobs, and that he was “mindful of the struggles that Americans face when they’re cut out of economic growth.”
After the first Trump term, Mr. Greer became a partner in international trade at the law firm King & Spalding.
His financial disclosures showed that he worked for clients including steel firm Cleveland-Cliffs, agricultural organizations like the J.R. Simplot Company and the National Milk Producers Federation, oil and gas company Talos Energy, and a variety of chemical companies, including BASF. He has promised to resign his position at King & Spalding if confirmed.
-
Technology1 week ago
Mark Zuckerberg says Meta isn’t worried about DeepSeek
-
Business1 week ago
Tulsi Gabbard Defended Russia and Syria. Now She Must Defend Those Views.
-
News6 days ago
Hamas frees more Israeli hostages in Gaza as fragile ceasefire holds
-
Health6 days ago
New bird flu strain detected on poultry farm as experts monitor mutations
-
Technology1 week ago
OpenAI has evidence that its models helped train China’s DeepSeek
-
World1 week ago
Meta agrees to pay $25 million to settle lawsuit from Trump after Jan. 6 suspension
-
Politics1 week ago
Trump tells senior FBI ranks to resign or be fired
-
Politics1 week ago
Trump administration offers buyouts to remote employees who don’t return to the office