Fareed's take: Trump's immigration woes give Democrats an opportunity
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Yahoo
10 minutes ago
- Yahoo
What has been proposed at the Texas special legislative session on flooding crisis
What has been proposed at the Texas special legislative session on flooding crisis Texas lawmakers gathered this week for a special legislative session to discuss emergency procedures and early warning systems following the deadly July 4 flash floods. Gov. Greg Abbott called the special session in the wake of the flooding, which killed more than 130 people in Hill Country. "We must ensure better preparation in the future," Abbott said in a statement. Eric Gay/AP - PHOTO: Texas State Rep. Rep. Tony Tinderholt pins a green ribbon to his lapel in support on flood victims as the House calls a Special Session, July 21, 2025, in Austin, Texas. House Bill 165, filed on Tuesday, aims to create a model guide for local officials to follow regarding disaster response and recovery. Aspects of response such as contracting for debris removal; obtaining federal disaster funding; determining availability and construction of short-term and long-term housing and obtaining assistance from volunteer organizations were addressed in the bill. ADVERTISEMENT The session began Monday with a call to order, followed by a prayer led by Texas Department of Public Safety Major Ron Joy, in which he asked for "grace and mercy" for the victims of the devastating flooding. "Give comfort for those grieving and mourning the loss," Joy said. "Provide strength for those families still waiting on an answer. Restore those who have lost so much your hand of protection for the first responders and volunteers conducting the search and recovery missions and give wisdom to our leaders to help prepare for future disasters." MORE: Texas flooding: Gov. Greg Abbott calls special legislative session for flood emergency planning The special session is intended to address preparedness and recovery in the event of future flooding, Abbott said on Sunday. It will look at flood warning systems, flood emergency communications, relief funding and natural disaster preparations and recovery. Eric Gay/AP - PHOTO: Texas State Rep. Cecil Bell, Jr., (C), and other house member stand for the pledge as the House calls a Special Session, July 21, 2025, in Austin, Texas. In addition, legislation to provide relief funding to those recovering from the storms will be discussed, according to a proclamation by Abbott, which was read by a clerk during the legislative session. ADVERTISEMENT The deadly flooding over the Fourth of July weekend killed at least 135 people, including dozens of girls at Camp Mystic, along the Guadalupe River, according to officials. Several people are still missing. MORE: These are the factors that contributed to the extreme Texas flooding The special legislative session is scheduled to reconvene on Wednesday and expected to last for 30 days. The session will also address a congressional redistricting plan, which could create more seats for Republicans, as well as a second attempt at regulating THC, the psychoactive compound found marijuana.
Yahoo
10 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Commentary: CEOs have a new boss — Trump
If you're an American CEO, you might wake up one day to discover that President Trump has helped himself to a seat on your board of directors. Since first running for president in 2015, Trump has fashioned himself as a businessman-politician who knows what's best for American companies. Many CEOs appreciate his focus on deregulation and lowering taxes. But there's a catch: Trump has strong views on how managers should run their businesses and no compunctions about using the power of the presidency to bully bosses into doing it his way. Many CEOs are learning how to accommodate the micromanager in chief, some through lip service and others through actual business decisions. Some of Trump's interventions are remarkably mundane. He wants Coca-Cola to use real cane sugar in its soda instead of corn syrup. Coke says it will actually do what Trump wants, even though sugar is more expensive and Trumpa-Cola will probably cost more. Other demands are far more problematic. He wants the Washington Commanders football team and the Cleveland Guardians baseball team to revert to their former names, the racially insensitive Redskins and Indians, respectively. That's Trump using professional sports franchises to push his anti-woke agenda to the extreme, which may not hurt Trump, but it puts the two teams in a lose-lose position by reigniting controversies they thought they had finally put behind them. Trump's most meddlesome gambit is his trade policy, which is meant to literally force thousands of US companies to reorganize the way they do business by buying less abroad and more domestically. He directly threatened Apple with a 25% tax if it doesn't start making iPhones in the United States. After Mattel said it would have to raise prices because of Trump's tariffs, Trump threatened a 100% tax on products the toymaker imports and threatened that Mattel "won't sell one toy in the United States." Trump said he'd hit Harley-Davidson with a "big tax" if it went through with a plan to move some motorcycle production overseas. When Walmart said it would likely pass along the cost of Trump's tariffs to its own customers, Trump told Walmart it should "eat the tariffs" — pay the cost and accept lower profits — and warned, "I'll be watching." Read more: The latest news and updates on Trump's tariffs Trump's manhandling of corporate America is hitting the bottom line. General Motors (GM) said on July 22 that Trump's tariffs shaved $1.1 billion off its second quarter profits and will likely cost the company as much as $5 billion this year. The day before, Jeep maker Stellantis (STLA) said the Trump tariffs contributed to a $2.7 billion loss in the first half of 2025. The second quarter earnings season is just getting started, so that may just be a taste of the losses related to Trump's rewiring of global supply chains. There's another category of Trump strong-arming: revenge. Trump has punished a dozen or so prominent law firms for working with Democrats or contributing to lawsuits or prosecutions targeting Trump himself. Trump typically issues an order limiting those firms' ability to work with the federal government, and in some cases makes deals in which those firms agree to do pro bono work for Trump's pet causes. Trump becomes the de facto chair of the firm's pro bono there's Trump's anti-woke crusade targeting Harvard, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Virginia, and dozens of other universities for policies Trump considers too liberal. Trump has canceled billions of dollars' worth of federal grants to those schools, in some cases securing his desired policy changes as part of a settlement. Many companies have tried to preempt a Trump anti-woke crusade by rolling back diversity policies, including Google, (GOOG), Deloitte, Goldman Sachs (GS), Bank of America (BAC), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Paramount (PARA), UnitedHealth (UNH), and IBM (IBM). Trump, in these instances, runs the HR department for a stint. Trump's micromanaging is a stark departure from the free-market capitalism the Republican Party has espoused for decades. University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers likens Trump's interventionism to Soviet-style central planning. "There is not a single institution this guy doesn't want to call to tell them how to do their jobs," Wolfers said recently. There are at least three lessons for CEOs. One is to hide for as long as Trump is president and hope he never notices your company or any of its products. Trump seems to have targeted Coke for his new beverage formula because he's a famous fan of its products. He hasn't said anything about Pepsi using a similar formula. Pepsi probably hopes he never does, though CEO Ramon Laguarta is clearly hedging his bets. Another lesson is that it's OK to blame Trump's intervention for losing money, but not for raising prices. Trump hasn't publicly criticized any company for saying his tariffs have cost them money, as GM and Stellantis have done and many more are sure to do. Eating the cost of his policies causes Trump no heartburn. But if you publicly blame him for any pain that afflicts voters, he blows his stack and sometimes seeks revenge. Lose money loudly, raise prices quietly. A third lesson is to pal up with Trump — and watch your back. Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang has become Trump's new business BFF, accompanying him on a high-visibility Mideast trip in May and counseling him behind the scenes on technology and trade policy. Nvidia benefited earlier this month when Trump reversed a prior position and once again allowed the sale of advanced Nvidia chips to China. The company's stock popped more than 5% on the news. Other corporate titans have courted Trump — and then fallen out of favor. Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook, once considered Trump's "tech whisperer," seems to have offended Trump by declining to join his Mideast trip in May. That's when Trump threatened a 25% tax specifically on imported iPhones. Trump's most spectacular business breakup has been with Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, who contributed millions to Trump's 2024 presidential campaign and became head of the DOGE commission. But Musk grew disillusioned with some of Trump's policies, criticized them publicly, and broke ties with the Trump administration. Trump retaliated by threatening to deport Musk to his home country of South Africa and cancel contracts or subsidies involving Tesla and another Musk company, SpaceX. Crony capitalism only works if the cronyship lasts. Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Bluesky and X: @rickjnewman. Click here for political news related to business and money policies that will shape tomorrow's stock prices. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Fox News
10 minutes ago
- Fox News
Beto O'Rourke drops f-bomb as he urges Dems to 'meet fire with fire' against GOP redistricting plans in Texas
NEW You can now listen to Fox News articles! As Texas Republicans attempt to redraw their congressional districts to widen their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives ahead of competitive midterm elections expected in 2026, former Rep. Beto O'Rourke, D-Texas, said Democrats should "meet fire with fire." The 2020 Democratic presidential candidate told former Biden advisor Neera Tanden at the Center for American Progress (CAP) on Tuesday that he supports California Gov. Gavin Newsom's own attempt at redistricting the blue state to deepen Democrats' own congressional control. O'Rourke rationalized California's redistricting because "we already have an authoritarian president." And while he acknowledged the irony of his party following suit on something Democrats "don't like Republicans doing," O'Rourke said, "This is for the very future and fate of the republic. We lose it, you will never, ever get it back." "Not only do I think [Newsom] should do this, I don't think he should wait for Texas," O'Rourke said. "In other words, why the f--k are we responding and reacting to the other side instead of taking the offense on these things?" COURT SHUTS DOWN REDISTRICTING FIGHT IN KEY SWING STATE — HERE'S WHAT IT MEANS O'Rourke criticized the Democratic Party for caring "more about being right" than about "being in power." He said Democrats, who are grappling with losing control of the White House and Congress in 2024, "have to be ruthlessly focused on winning power." DEMOCRAT BETO O'ROURKE SAYS HE'LL RUN FOR SENATE IF TEXANS WANT HIM TO If Democrats don't fight back, O'Rourke said, "a state that was already something less than democracy is about to descend even further." The GOP-controlled state legislature in Texas began a special session on Monday, and one of the key items on their agenda is the push by Republicans in the red state to redraw the current congressional maps to reduce the number of districts controlled by already marginalized Democrats. It's part of a broader effort by the GOP across the country to keep control of the chamber, and cushion losses elsewhere in the country, as the party in power traditionally faces political headwinds and loses seats. And President Donald Trump is aiming to prevent what happened during his first term, when Democrats grabbed a majority in the House in the 2018 midterms. "Texas will be the biggest one," the president told reporters last week, as he predicted the number of GOP-friendly seats that could be added through redistricting in the Lone Star State. "Just a simple redrawing, we pick up five seats." Hours earlier, Trump held a call with Texas' Republican congressional delegation, and sources confirmed to Fox News that the president told the lawmakers that he was aiming to redraw the maps to create five new winnable seats. Democrats control just 12 of the state's 38 congressional districts, with a blue-leaning seat vacant after the death in March of Rep. Sylvester Turner. The idea is to relocate Democratic voters from competitive seats into nearby GOP-leaning districts, and move Republican voters into neighboring districts the Democrats currently control. Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, both conservative Republicans and Trump allies, said they needed to redistrict because of constitutional concerns raised by the Justice Department over a handful of minority-dominated districts. "Coincidentally or not, each of those seats is held by a Democrat who is either Black or Mexican-American," O'Rourke said Tuesday. "That's what they're doing. It's members of Congress choosing their own voters, literally." Redistricting typically takes place at the start of each decade, based on the latest U.S. Census data. Mid-decade redistricting is uncommon – but not without precedent. Democrats are slamming Trump and Texas Republicans for what they describe as a power grab, and vowing to take legal action to prevent any shift in the current congressional maps, as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said, "Democrats are going to push back aggressively because it's the right thing to do." "Two can play this game," California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on social media last week. The next day, after a meeting, Democrats in California's congressional delegation said they were on board with an ambitious plan to try and gain at least five seats through redistricting. Democrats currently control 43 of the Golden State's 52 congressional districts. But it won't be easy to enact the change, because in California, congressional maps are drawn by an independent commission that is not supposed to let partisanship influence their work. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Newsom this week suggested that the state's Democratic-controlled legislature should move forward with a mid-decade redrawing of the maps, arguing that it might not be forbidden by the 17-year-old ballot initiative that created the independent commission. The governor also proposed quickly holding a special election to repeal the commission ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Both plans are considered long shots, as they would face plenty of legislative, legal and financial hurdles.
