Morning Bid: Now the ball is in Iran's court
As if there wasn't enough uncertainty in the world already, President Trump has to get the United States embroiled in another Middle East conflict. It's not often a president announces an attack on another country via social media, or that the word "bombs" is used in all caps.
The U.S. administration says it's not at war and it will not escalate if Iran makes peace. Then again, it also said it was not aiming at regime change in Iran, until Trump posted on social media about that very prospect.
For now the ball is in Tehran's court and it has not yet struck at any U.S. site, although its parliament was reported to have approved an attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian media said such a move would need approval by the Supreme National Security Council.
Polymarket even makes a book on the chance of Iran managing to close the Strait, and that's currently at 47%. So, suddenly every market commentator is an expert on how to close shipping lanes, the efficacy of bunker busting bombs and the intricacies of enriching uranium.
The market position is to hope this U.S. intervention will not escalate, and perhaps might even make the region safer should Iran's nuclear ambitions really be set back by years.
Oil is up almost 2%, but well off early five-month peaks as analysts note OPEC has plenty of extra supply to add if they want.
Wall St share futures are down 0.3%, having started with losses of 1%, while European futures are off 0.4% or so. The dollar is marginally firmer on the euro and yen, reflecting the reliance of the EU and Japan on imported oil and LNG, and the U.S. status as a net exporter.
Treasury yields are up slightly, so not many safe-haven bids there, while Fed fund futures are down a tick, likely on the risk a sustained rise in energy costs could add to inflationary pressure just as tariffs are being felt in prices.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell is set for a grilling on all this when he faces Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday, along with queries on Trump's threats to fire him. It will also be interesting to see how Powell responds to Fed Governor Waller's sudden embrace of a July rate cut, when it seemed the FOMC choir had all been singing from the same cautious hymn sheet.
Markets imply still only a 16% chance of a July easing, preferring a 70% wager on a September move.
Key developments that could influence markets on Monday:
- EU and UK PMIs for June
- Introductory remarks by ECB President Christine Lagarde
- Appearances by Fed members Waller, Bowman, Goolsbee and Kugler
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The Guardian
34 minutes ago
- The Guardian
If the US president threatens to take away freedoms, are we no longer free?
Threats of retribution from Donald Trump are hardly a novelty, but even by his standards, the US president's warnings of wrathful vengeance in recent days have represented a dramatic escalation. In the past week, Trump has threatened deportation, loss of US citizenship or arrest against, respectively, the world's richest person, the prospective future mayor of New York and Joe Biden's former homeland security secretary. The head-spinning catalogue of warnings may have been aimed at distracting from the increasing unpopularity, according to opinion surveys, of Trump's agenda, some analysts say. But they also served as further alarm bells for the state of US democracy five-and-a-half months into a presidency that has seen a relentless assault on constitutional norms, institutions and freedom of speech. On Tuesday, Trump turned his sights on none other than Elon Musk, the tech billionaire who, before a recent spectacular fallout, had been his closest ally in ramming through a radical agenda of upending and remaking the US government. But when the Tesla and SpaceX founder vowed to form a new party if Congress passed Trump's signature 'one big beautiful bill' into law, Trump swung into the retribution mode that is now familiar to his Democratic opponents. 'Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,' Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, menacing both the billions of dollars in federal subsidies received by Musk's companies, and – it seemed – his US citizenship, which the entrepreneur received in 2002 but which supporters like Steve Bannon have questioned. 'No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE.' Trump twisted the knife further the following morning talking to reporters before boarding a flight to Florida. 'We might have to put Doge on Elon,' he said, referring to the unofficial 'department of government efficiency' that has gutted several government agencies and which Musk spearheaded before stepping back from his ad hoc role in late May. 'Doge is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn't that be terrible.' Musk's many critics may have found sympathy hard to come by given his earlier job-slashing endeavors on Trump's behalf and the $275m he spent last year in helping to elect him. But the wider political implications are worrying, say US democracy campaigners. 'Trump is making clear that if he can do that to the world's richest man, he could certainly do it to you,' said Ian Bassin, co-founder and executive director of Protect Democracy. 'It's important, if we believe in the rule of law, that we believe in it whether it is being weaponized against someone that we have sympathy for or someone that we have lost sympathy for.' Musk was not the only target of Trump's capricious vengeance. He also threatened to investigate the US citizenship of Zohran Mamdani, the Democrats' prospective candidate for mayor of New York who triumphed in a multicandidate primary election, and publicly called on officials to explore the possibility of arresting Alejandro Mayorkas, the former head of homeland security in the Biden administration. Both scenarios were raised during a highly stage-managed visit to 'Alligator Alcatraz', a forbidding new facility built to house undocumented people rounded up as part of Trump's flagship mass-deportation policy. After gleefully conjuring images of imprisoned immigrants being forced to flee from alligators and snakes presumed to reside in the neighbouring marshlands, Trump seized on obliging questions from friendly journalists working for rightwing fringe outlets that have been accredited by the administration for White House news events, often at the expense of established media. 'Why hasn't he been arrested yet?' asked Julio Rosas from Blaze Media, referring to Mayorkas, who was widely vilified – and subsequently impeached – by Republicans who blamed him for a record number of immigrant crossings at the southern US border. 'Was he given a pardon, Mayorkas?' Trump replied. On being told no, he continued: 'I'll take a look at that one because what he did is beyond incompetence … Somebody told Mayorkas to do that and he followed orders, but that doesn't necessarily hold him harmless.' Asked by Benny Johnson, a rightwing social media influencer, for his message to 'communist' Mamdani – a self-proclaimed democratic socialist – over his pledge not to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) roundups of undocumented people if he is elected mayor, Trump said: 'Then we will have to arrest him. We don't need a communist in this country. I'm going to be watching over him very carefully on behalf of the nation.' He also falsely suggested that Mamdani, 33 – who became a naturalized US citizen in 2018 after emigrating from Uganda with his ethnic Indian parents when he was a child – was in the country 'illegally', an assertion stemming from a demand by a Republican representative for a justice department investigation into his citizenship application. The representative, Andy Ogles of Tennessee, alleged that Mamdani, who has vocally campaigned for Palestinian rights, gained it through 'willful misrepresentation or concealment of material support for terrorism'. The threat to Mamdani echoed a threat Trump's border 'czar' Tom Homan made to arrest Gavin Newsom, the California governor, last month amid a row over Trump's deployment of national guard forces in Los Angeles to confront demonstrators protesting against Ice's arrests of immigrants. Omar Noureldin, senior vice-president with Common Cause, a pro-democracy watchdog, said the animus against Mamdani, who is Muslim, was partly fueled by Islamophobia and racism. 'Part of the rhetoric we've heard around Mamdani, whether from the president or other political leaders, goes toward his religion, his national origin, race, ethnicity,' he said. 'Mamdani has called himself a democratic socialist. There are others, including Bernie Sanders, who call themselves that, but folks aren't questioning whether or not Bernie Sanders should be a citizen.' Retribution promised to be a theme of Trump's second presidency even before he returned to the Oval Office in January. On the campaign trail last year, he branded some political opponents – including Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, and Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House of Representatives – as 'the enemy within'. Since his inauguration in January, he has made petty acts of revenge against both Democrats and Republicans who have crossed him. Biden; Kamala Harris, the former vice-president and last year's defeated Democratic presidential nominee; and Hillary Clinton, Trump's 2016 opponent, have all had their security clearances revoked. Secret Service protection details have been removed from Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, who served in Trump's first administration, despite both being the subject of death threats from Iran because of the 2020 assassination of Qassem Suleimani, a senior Revolutionary Guards commander. Similar fates have befallen Anthony Fauci, the infectious diseases specialist who angered Trump over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as Biden's adult children, Hunter and Ashley. Trump has also targeted law firms whose lawyers previously acted against him, prompting some to strike deals that will see them perform pro bono services for the administration. For now, widely anticipated acts of retribution against figures like Gen Mark Milley, the former chair of the joint chiefs of staff of the armed forces – whom Trump previously suggested deserved to be executed for 'treason' and who expressed fears of being recalled to active duty and then court-martialed – have not materialised. 'I [and] people in my world expected that Trump would come up with investigations of any number of people, whether they were involved in the Russia investigation way back when, or the election investigation, or the January 6 insurrection, but by and large he hasn't done that,' said one veteran Washington insider, who requested anonymity, citing his proximity to people previously identified as potential Trump targets. 'There are all kinds of lists floating around … with names of people that might be under investigation, but you'll never know you're under investigation until police turn up on your doorstep – and these people are just getting on with their lives.' Yet pro-democracy campaigners say Trump's latest threats should be taken seriously – especially after several recent detentions of several elected Democratic officials at protests near immigration jails or courts. In the most notorious episode, Alex Padilla, a senator from California, was forced to the floor and handcuffed after trying to question Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, at a press conference. 'When the president of the United States, the most powerful person in the world, threatens to arrest you, that's as serious as it gets,' said Bassin, a former White House counsel in Barack Obama's administration. 'Whether the DoJ [Department of Justice] opens an investigation or seeks an indictment, either tomorrow, next year or never is beside the point. The threat itself is the attack on our freedoms, because it's designed to make us all fear that if any one of us opposes or even just criticises the president, we risk being prosecuted.' While some doubt the legal basis of Trump's threats to Musk, Mayorkas and Mamdani, Noureldin cautioned that they should be taken literally. 'Trump is verbose and grandiose, but I think he also backs up his promises with action,' he said. 'When the president of the United States says something, we have to take it as serious and literal. I wouldn't be surprised if at the justice department, there is a group of folks who are trying to figure out a way to [open prosecutions].' But the bigger danger was to the time-honored American notion of freedom, Bassin warned. 'One definition of freedom is that you are able to speak your mind, associate with who you want, lead the life that you choose to lead, and that so long as you conduct yourself in accordance with the law, the government will not retaliate against you or punish you for doing those things,' he said. 'When the president of the United States makes clear that actually that is not the case, that if you say things he doesn't like, you will be singled out, and the full force of the state could be brought down on your head, then you're no longer free. 'And if he's making clear that that's true for people who have the resources of Elon Musk or the political capital of a Mayorkas or a Mamdani, imagine what it means for people who lack those positions or resources.'
The Guardian
43 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Trump is waging war against the media
Bernie Sanders, the venerable democratic socialist senator from Vermont, was not in a mood to pull punches. 'Trump is undermining our democracy and rapidly moving us towards authoritarianism, and the billionaires who care more about their stock portfolios than our democracy are helping him do it,' he fumed in a statement last week. Such outbursts have been common in recent months as Sanders has taken up a leading position opposing Donald Trump's second term, and flagging his concern that the president is waging a war against the media – and winning. The reason for his ire last week was highly specific: a deal struck by Paramount, the corporate parent of CBS News, to pay Trump $16m in a donation to his presidential library, the archival centers that many presidents set up after they leave office. The settlement puts an end to the US president's lawsuit over the network's editing of an interview on 60 Minutes, the flagship CBS news magazine show, with then vice-president Kamala Harris during the 2024 election. Trump claimed – without any serious evidence – that the edit of the interview betrayed bias against him. 60 Minutes journalists countered – and nearly all other observers agreed – that it was just standard editing, common to all major interview segments. So then why settle? The key may lie with the fact that the super-wealthy Redstone family, which owns Paramount, is seeking to gain approval from Trump administration regulators for an $8bn deal to sell Paramount to the movie studio Skydance – a deal in which they stand to profit with a $2.4bn payday. 'Paramount may have closed this case, but it opened the door to the idea that the government should be the media's editor-in-chief,' said lawyer Bob Corn-Revere of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. No wonder Sanders was mad. He has warned that the Paramount deal 'will only embolden' Trump to continue attacking, suing and intimidating the media which the US president has repeatedly labeled 'the enemy of the people'. It was, Sanders said, a 'dark day for independent journalism and freedom of the press'. Many would agree. For as Trump's second presidency has unfolded amid chaos, vast cuts to government spending and a rollback of civil liberties, his repeated and blistering attacks on the press have been one of the things most worrying those who fear for America's democratic health. The US media is now in a deep crisis of the sort that observers of creeping autocracy in places such as Hungary might find familiar. For the Paramount deal is not alone. The settlement follows another, six months ago, when Disney – which owns ABC News – put to bed a legal claim over how George Stephanopoulos, one of its top news anchors, described the president's sexual assault of the magazine writer E Jean Carroll. Again, the payment was $16m. He is even pursuing a legal claim against a relatively tiny newspaper for printing a poll he didn't like: Trump's lawsuit against the Iowa pollster Ann Selzer accuses her and the Des Moines Register of fraud, after she conducted a poll right before the 2024 election that showed Kamala Harris leading in Iowa, a state which she did not ultimately win. Last week the Trump administration also threatened legal action against no less a news giant than CNN, over its reporting on an app that warns users of nearby immigration enforcement agents. As the administration continues its mass deportation efforts, the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, said her department and the Department of Justice are now examining the idea of prosecuting the network. 'We're working with the Department of Justice to see if we can prosecute them,' Noem said of CNN, 'because what they're doing is actively encouraging people to avoid law enforcement activities and operations. We're going to actually go after them and prosecute them. What they're doing is illegal.' Trump then added, seemingly for good measure, that he believed the network's reporting on the success – or lack thereof – of the US bombing on Iran could also be examined. 'Our people have to be celebrated, [and] not come home to 'What do you mean we didn't hit the targets?'' Then he crystallised his entire approach: 'You have scum. CNN is scum. MSDNC [his insult for MSNBC] is scum. The New York Times is scum. They're bad people. They're sick.' But if Trump is determined to wage a fierce crackdown on the press in the US, in some high-profile quarters it has been met with a distinct lack of resistance – especially from news organizations whose owners are billionaires or large corporations, keenly aware of Trump's control of the nation's regulators and their power to make or break a company's fortunes. Indeed, while the legal settlements with Trump represent a compromise of press freedoms, they may also represent an economic reality: that news outlets are more of a curse than a blessing to the multibillion-dollar media corporations that own them. The billionaire owners of both the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post – the biotech mogul Patrick Soon-Shiong and Amazon's Jeff Bezos, respectively – have conspicuously moved their once-powerful newspapers closer to Trump and his Maga movement. Their opinion sections, both once fierce havens for Trump critics, have been the subject of particular attention by their owners – and the outraged resignation letters of staff have appeared to make little impact. 'A generation ago this would have seemed an outrageous story in the history of journalism,' said Bob Thompson, a media professor at Syracuse University. Not now in Trump's America. It is a two-pronged spear: even as Trump and his administration have launched an unprecedented attack, at the same time significant parts of the US media have seen its owners and power brokers often fold their hands. The head of Reporters Without Borders, Clayton Weimers, said: 'A line is being drawn between the owners of American news media who are willing to stand up for press freedom, and those who capitulate to the demands of the president.' Jameel Jaffer, the director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said: 'Calling these 'settlements' doesn't quite capture what's happening. It's more like surrender – or even payoff.' The Trump administration has even signaled precisely that. Brendan Carr, Trump's handpicked chair for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – which holds the reins over whether the Redstone family gets its $2.4bn payday – said in an interview last year that 'the news distortion complaint over the 60 Minutes transcript is something that is likely to arise in the context of the FCC review of that transaction', referring to the Paramount-Skydance deal. The Democratic party, without power and shouting from the sidelines, is furious. The leftwing Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday called for an investigation into the Paramount settlement. 'With Paramount folding to Donald Trump at the same time the company needs his administration's approval for its billion-dollar merger, this could be bribery in plain sight,' Warren said in a statement. The settlement, she said, exposed 'a glaring need for rules to restrict donations to sitting presidents' libraries' – referring to the Trump entities that both ABC and CBS said their settlement payments would be directed – and added that 'the Trump administration's level of sheer corruption is appalling, and Paramount should be ashamed of putting its profits over independent journalism'. In May, Warren, Sanders and their fellow senator Ron Wyden sent a letter to the Paramount CEO, Shari Redstone, cautioning her that 'under the federal bribery statute, it is illegal to corruptly give anything of value to public officials to influence an official act'. But prosecutors in the state of Delaware, where Paramount is incorporated, appear unlikely to open an investigation. Perhaps most chilling has been Trump's ongoing attack on the Associated Press, the news agency that is generally relied on to announce the winners and losers of individual elections, up to and including the presidency. When Trump ordered the Gulf of Mexico renamed to 'Gulf of America', and the AP continued to use both names – noting that the rest of the world still uses the original – Trump jumped on it as a pretext to ban AP reporters from the White House. The AP has sued, but whatever the result, Trump's attempt to undermine the impartiality credentials of an organisation that is crucial to letting the American people know who their next president is may prove even more dangerous in the long run. And while AP remains banned, official coverage of White House activities has been opened to various new media individuals and groups with no history of impartial journalism at all, and who appear to be selected entirely for their willingness to ask Trump sycophantic questions. The political and legal assault could hardly have come at a worse time for American journalism, either, which is assailed by economic headwinds that would be challenging even under a more friendly administration. Scores of once healthy and powerful regional newspapers and television stations have declined or closed. News deserts have appeared all over the country. Big TV names – such as CNN and its rival MSNBC – are being jettisoned by the owners that once provided a safe haven for them, and few expect the good economic times to return as the rise of social media giants and artificial intelligence chokes off advertising and revenue streams for a public increasingly sceptical of mainstream media. Meanwhile, some of the fresh new digital startups that were meant to take their place have either shrunk themselves or been axed. Names such as BuzzFeed, HuffPost and Vice News that were once darlings of the digital media world are pale shadows of their former selves, unlikely to provide any sort of bulwark against Trump while mired in economic difficulties. One of the few booming parts of the US media landscape? Fox News, the Trump-boosting conservative channel owned by Rupert Murdoch and his family. 'Part of the various crises in journalism, from the business model to the interference of an aggressive presidential administration, is that so much of journalism are in fact little compartments in huge corporate entities for whom the standards of American journalism, the first amendment, the obligation to inform the citizenry in a republic, are not at the top of their priorities,' Thompson said. 'It's no surprise that we would have constant conflicts of interest when news organisations are owned by enormous, multivalent corporations that have got a lot of other interests besides telling the truth in journalism.' In this world, the Trump administration's role in the crisis of US journalism is not as singular villain, but as just one more factor in an area of American civic life that was already deeply ailing and standing near the edge of a cliff. Trump and his allies have just started pushing it closer. 'As it collapses before our very eyes, we might be surprised that it didn't happen a long time ago,' Thompson said.
Scottish Sun
an hour ago
- Scottish Sun
Trump rages Putin ‘just wants to keep killing people' in Ukraine & says he is ‘very unhappy' after 60min call with Vlad
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) DONALD Trump issued a bleak warning that Putin wants to "keep killing people" after Russia launched its largest-yet barrage of drones and missiles at Ukraine. In a middle finger to the US, the onslaught hit just hours after Putin and Trump had a fruitless 60-minute phone call - which touched on the possibility of fresh American sanctions. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 5 Trump said he was 'very unhappy' with Putin Credit: AFP 5 Dozens were injured when Russia pounded Ukraine's capital Kyiv Credit: East2West 5 Putin launched an onslaught against Ukraine hours after putting the phone down to Trump Credit: AP Trump fumed on Friday that he was "very unhappy" about the phone call with Putin and ensuing strikes. He said: "[Putin] wants to go all the way, just keep killing people, it's no good." Trump revealed the two leaders had spoken "a lot" about sanctions, adding: "He understands that it may be coming." The Kremlin said on Friday it was "preferable" to reach its goals of its invasion through political and diplomatic means - despite having just blitzed Ukraine with masses of explosives. Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov continued: "But as long as that is not possible, we are continuing the special operation." Hours after hanging up on Thursday night, Vlad green-lighted the largest volley of missiles and drones since the start of the war. Fires broke out in multiple locations as almost every district in the capital city was struck, according to Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv's military administration. Dozens of Ukrainians were injured as toxic smoke engulfed the city. The Svyatoshynskyi and Solomanskyi districts were among the hardest hit, with blazes on rooftops and in courtyards. Short on air defence systems, Ukraine could only down two of 11 missiles. Russia pounds Kyiv with ballistic missile and drone attack in 'terror and murder' blitz hours after Trump said he made 'no progress' on Putin call Another nine missiles - one Kinzhal [Dagger], two Iskander-K, and six Iskander-M - wreaked havoc in the city. Trump also spoke to Ukraine's President Zelensky on Friday - and their chat was much more productive. The President said: "We talked about different things [...] I think it was a very, very strategic call." Asked about resuming supplying Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine, he said: "Yeah, we might. "They're going to need something because they're being hit pretty hard." Zelensky said: "We spoke about opportunities in air defence and agreed that we will work together to strengthen protection of our skies." The US Defense Department earlier this week paused deliveries of several critical weapons systems - including Patriot missiles and precision-guided munitions. Trump has insisted he wants to help Ukraine, but has has not imposed any new sanctions on Russia since taking office. He also has not approved additional aid packages. 5 Firefighters battle a blaze in Kharkiv after Russia's all-out onslaught Credit: EPA
