Jerome Powell during a House Financial Services Committee hearing on February 12, 2025. Photo: Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg/Getty Images At the start of his second term, Donald Trump has been leaning into two of his favorite negotiation tactics: hurling threats and bestowing dumb nicknames on his adversaries. The effectiveness of these strategies is debatable. While plenty of…
Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images After President Trump announced sweeping tariffs this week the financial markets saw their steepest one-day declines since 2020, Americans started panic buying everything from TVs to soy sauce, and financial analysts warned that we’re facing “economic Armageddon.” Like many people, I was feeling pretty jittery about the collapse of the post-World…
Officers with U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Photo: Patrick Fallon/Reuters American tourists planning trips overseas are probably familiar with U.S. State Department “travel advisories,” which warn about the risks of visits to war-torn or totalitarian countries as well as those experiencing high crime or suffering from poor infrastructure. These up-to-date looks at local conditions abroad…
Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photo: Getty Images Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has been a highly visible opponent of the Trump agenda. He was a central antagonist to Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr. at their confirmation hearings. He has repeatedly highlighted the chaotic fallout from the president’s attempted federal spending freeze. A longtime advocate for privacy…
Graphic: Intelligencer; Photo: Getty Who: Matt Gaetz was a U.S. representative from Florida who served from 2017 until he resigned from Congress on November 13, 2024, hours after Trump announced his nomination for AG. Qualifications, According to Trump: In a pair of Truth Social posts, Trump called Gaetz a “deeply gifted and tenacious attorney.” He…
Elon Musk in Lancaster, Pennsylvania last Saturday. Photo: Samuel Corum/Getty Images This past weekend, some 1,500 people packed into a Marriott ballroom in downtown Lancaster, Pennsylvania, seeking advice. Many of them wore red MAGA hats, but this wasn’t purely a campaign event. Though the world’s richest man had come as a surrogate for Donald Trump,…
Photo: Christopher Pike/Bloomberg/Getty Images When Joe Biden’s top political aides started setting up his campaign early last year, Jim Messina was one of their first calls. Messina, who managed Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, had plenty of thoughts on building a machine to get a second term for an unpopular president with a bad economy. For…