Trump is responsible for the economy over Biden, survey shows
Recent economic data presents a mixed picture, showing job growth and rising consumer sentiment alongside a significant drop in private sector hiring.
The Trump administration's 90-day tariff freeze with international trading partners is set to expire on July 9, creating considerable economic uncertainty.
A JPMorgan Chase Institute study estimates these tariffs could cost midsize American firms at least $82 billion through price hikes, layoffs, and reduced margins.
The recently passed 'Big, Beautiful Bill' is projected to add $3.3 trillion to the deficit and leave 11.8 million more people without health coverage over the next decade.
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Reuters
33 minutes ago
- Reuters
Japan tariff negotiator held "in-depth" talks with Lutnick, Japan government says
TOKYO, July 5 (Reuters) - Japan's tariff negotiator Ryosei Akazawa held "in-depth exchanges" over the phone with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Thursday and Saturday, the Japanese government said. A pause on a 24% reciprocal tariff on imports from Japan expires next week. The Japanese government also said in a statement that it intends to continue actively coordinating with the U.S. side on the matter.
The Guardian
35 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Diddy's trial is more proof the legal system can't handle domestic violence
Wouldn't it be nice if, just now and again, bad things happened to bad people? Wouldn't it be refreshing if violence against women was taken seriously instead of being treated like one big joke? Yes, but alas, that is not the world we live in. Over here in reality, we've got an adjudicated sexual predator as president, a defense secretary who has been accused of sexual assault and aggressive behaviour towards his second wife, and a supreme court where a third of the male justices who get a final say on legal issues have been accused of sexual misconduct. And we've got Sean 'Diddy' Combs: the disgraced entertainer who escaped this week with what many people consider to be a slap on the wrist after a New York jury delivered a mixed verdict in his seven-week federal sex-trafficking trial. The trial was focused on allegations that Combs had coerced two women, including his ex-girlfriend Casandra 'Cassie' Ventura, to take part in 'freak offs': drug-fueled sexual encounters involving hired male prostitutes and humiliating acts. I don't want to downplay the Diddy verdict. While Combs was acquitted on the most serious federal charges, of racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking, he was still found guilty of the lesser charges of transporting the male prostitutes he allegedly forced women to have sex with across state lines. The disgraced musician was also denied bail and is facing a barrage of new civil cases alleging abuse and assault. While we still don't know how much time (if any) Combs will be sentenced to, he did not get off scot-free. I also don't want to boil the results of a complex trial down to 'misogyny'. It would be overly simplistic to say that the jury of eight men and four women in the Diddy trial simply didn't believe women. The fact is Diddy was not on trial for being an abuser, or a bad person, or for his highly publicized battery of Cassie, one horrifying instance of which was caught on camera and the subject of a previous civil case. He was on trial for a specific set of charges, the most serious of which the prosecution did not have enough evidence to prove. But this is not to say that justice was done. Far from it. The trial is yet another demonstration that the legal system is ill-equipped to deal with the complexities of intimate partner violence, the ways in which survivors deal with trauma, and the uneven power dynamics weaponized by abusers. If we had better legal frameworks for domestic violence and coercive control, perhaps prosecutors would not have turned to trafficking charges to try to secure justice. 'Trafficking cases come with longer statutes of limitations, more severe penalties and more public support,' notes the human-trafficking expert Kimberly Mehlman-Orozco in USA Today. 'And existing domestic violence statutes are often outdated or ill-equipped to address coercive control, especially when the abuser is wealthy, powerful and legally savvy.' It's not just the law that is ill-equipped to address coercive control – this complex issue is still minimized by some factions of the media. A Washington Post piece (written by two women), for example, described Combs as a 'music producer turned modern-day Gatsby', a framing which casts the 'freak offs' as hedonism rather than something more sinister. The writer Sarah Kendzior notes that allusions to F Scott Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby have been used to soften the image of high-level sexual predators like Jeffrey Epstein for decades. In the courts of public opinion, men like Combs are also far too often seen as playboys rather than predators. After the verdict on Wednesday, CNN reported that several spectators could be seen pouring baby oil on themselves, along with wearing T-shirts reading: A Freako is not a RICO (RICO is a reference to the racketeering charges). Perhaps what is most depressing about the Diddy verdict is that it is all too easy to imagine a path in which Combs finds his way back to prominence in public life. Donald Trump hasn't ruled out pardoning Diddy and it is not inconceivable that he might; birds of a feather stick together, after all. Chris Brown still has a music career despite being charged with felony assault following a domestic violence incident when he beat up Rihanna in 2009. Brett Ratner is directing the very expensive Prime Video documentary about Melania Trump despite being accused of sexual misconduct by six women (he has denied the claims). With enough money, good lawyers and the right connections, you can get away with almost anything. The indictment against Diddy is titled United States of America v Sean Combs, AKA 'Puff Daddy', AKA ' AKA 'Diddy', AKA 'PD', AKA 'Love'. And yet some people think that calling someone by their preferred pronouns is too complicated. 'Tigray is often described as a forgotten war,' Tess McClure writes in an incredibly disturbing but essential read. 'If it has been forgotten, it is not by those who endured it, but by the global powers that looked away from one of the most brutal conflicts of this century.' That brutality includes reported wartime sexual abuse by Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers against tens of thousands of Tigrayan women. More brilliant reporting from ProPublica on the devastating effects of abortion bans. There's a longstanding idea that women are fine-tuned to hear babies crying in a way that men aren't. A new study has debunked this. Turns out there's no excuse for the fact mothers are still performing three times more night-time care than fathers. Sign up to The Week in Patriarchy Get Arwa Mahdawi's weekly recap of the most important stories on feminism and sexism and those fighting for equality after newsletter promotion Wired invited a bunch of people in serious relationships with AI partners to a romantic weekend getaway at a remote Airbnb. Agatha Christie would have had a field day with this. Denmark colonized Greenland in the 18th century, then turned it into an autonomous territory. The 'Danization' of Indigenous Greenlanders continues, however. Countless Greenlandic mothers living in Denmark have been separated from their children after failing highly controversial 'parenting competency' tests. These tests 'have been criticised by campaigners and human rights bodies that say they are culturally unsuitable for people from Inuit backgrounds, and therefore discriminatory', the Guardian reports. Médecins Sans Frontières calls for the immediate dismantling of 'the Israeli-US proxy operating under the name the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation'. There is nothing humanitarian about a system where 'over 500 people have been killed and nearly 4,000 have been wounded while trying to get food'. Shame on everyone trying to rebrand and obfuscate Israel's use of starvation as a weapon of war, including all the media companies trying to censor documentaries coming out about the horrors in Gaza and the media personalities and politicians who are more appalled by musicians at Glastonbury than babies dying from engineered starvation. Moira Donegan analyzes the Trump administration and the supreme court's attacks on Planned Parenthood, which mean nearly a third of their clinics may have to close: 'The result is a de facto ban not just on abortion, but on any healthcare provision by pro-choice providers for vast swaths of American women.' Forget snakes on a plane, Santa Barbara has been dealing with sheep on the street. More than 300 sheep caused a traffic jam after escaping from their pens in California. They were eventually returned to safety but for a little while the traffic situation was very baaaaaad. Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
The Guardian
40 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Lost Jefferson letter on arms and democracy resurfaces for Fourth of July sale
A rare, handwritten letter by Thomas Jefferson, in which the founding father and third president expounds the right of citizens to bear arms in a revolutionary cause, has been uncovered in New England and offered for sale to mark the Fourth of July holiday. The holiday also marks the 199th anniversary of his death. Jefferson penned the letter to Virginia's then governor Benjamin Harrison on 31 December 1783, shortly after the conclusion of the revolutionary war that ended British opposition to the US declaration of independence seven years earlier. Written from Annapolis, the temporary capital of the fledgling country, the letter is notable for Jefferson's observation of a rising tide of revolutionary fervor in Europe, and his citing of the insistence of citizens there to be able to take up arms against their rulers, as residents of the 13 colonies had done against the British crown. He tells Harrison that 'citizens of the Dutch states are all in commotion' against the stadtholder regime of William V, the prince of Orange. He goes on to say that 'of 80,000 men able to bear arms among them it is believed scarcely any will refuse to sign this demand'. The original was in the hands of a private collector for more than half a century, dealer Nathan Raab of the Pennsylvania-based Raab Collection said. It was considered missing by custodians of the Jefferson papers at the University of Virginia. 'We are not aware of any letter having reached the market from a signer, let alone author of the declaration of independence on the right of democratic citizens to bear arms and oppose autocracy,' said Raab, who values the document at about $90,000. 'To see Jefferson, whose declaration of independence lit the spark of … western hemisphere liberty, rejoicing that these independence movements are gaining steam, and the people are making demands … it's about as evocative an expression of the democratic right to bear arms of the people as you can get. 'He's basically saying the momentum is toward democracy, not royalty.' While the letter showcases Jefferson's thoughts on justice overseas, his life in the US was much darker and less stable. He was the owner of more than 600 slaves – more than any other person who became president. Another letter uncovered by Raab last year highlighted Jefferson's financial misadventures that left him also penniless immediately before, and during, his time in the White House from 1801 to 1809. The letter to Harrison, Raab said, also reflects Jefferson's growing anxiety over ratification of the Treaty of Paris, which was signed in France in September 1783 by Britain, the US and others, to end the revolutionary war. The agreement required at least nine of the 13 new states to sign the document at a congressional summit in Annapolis called for November, and send it back to London – a two-month voyage away – by March 1784. But bad weather prevented several delegations from reaching the summit, and in his 31 December letter Jefferson wrote: 'We have yet but seven states, and no more certain prospects of nine than at any time heretofore. We hope that the letters sent to the absent states will bring them forward'. Raab said: 'It's like you're at the finish line and waiting to cross it. This is not a situation where you send it over by email; it had to cross the Atlantic twice. It's also the 1700s. You're not hopping on transatlantic flights, these people are coming from distant destinations on horseback.' Representatives from Connecticut and South Carolina eventually arrived days later, and the treaty was ratified on 14 January and dispatched urgently to London. The letter, Raab said, provides an intriguing snapshot of a crucial time in American history, with a brand new nation beginning to find its feet and in turn inspiring others to challenge centuries of established rules of governance overseas. 'It speaks to us today on many levels,' he said. 'We can see the power and inspiration of Jefferson's pen as he can begin to reflect on the success of his work and the American revolution, and witness democratic ideals spreading worldwide.'
