Local congressman's first bill passes House
The House of Representatives earlier this week passed McDowell's House Resolution 2351 to strengthen the U.S. Coast Guard's authority to combat drug trafficking and respond to fentanyl overdoses. The bill is McDowell's first sponsored legislation to pass on the House floor.
'Our Coast Guard is taking the fight straight to fentanyl traffickers off our coast, stopping dangerous drugs before they poison our communities,' said McDowell, who took office after winning in last November's general election. 'This bill gives them the muscle and authority they need to secure our maritime borders, prosecute traffickers hiding behind unmanned vessels, and save lives with immediate access to naloxone.'
The legislation expands the Coast Guard's authority to prosecute cases involving unmanned vessels or drugs smuggled aboard without the crew's knowledge. The bill also requires naloxone and other lifesaving overdose treatments to be available wherever Coast Guard personnel serve to allow for quick response saving lives during overdoses.
'This bill gives our Coast Guard the tools they need to save lives and stop traffickers,' McDowell said.
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In the Market-How the ghost of ‘transitory' inflation is haunting the rate debate
By Paritosh Bansal (Reuters) -Joseph Lavorgna, counselor to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, believes tariffs are not inflationary and says economists who have been predicting that prices would rise due to President Donald Trump's import duties are wrong. Where many such economists saw effects of tariffs in consumer price inflation data last week, Lavorgna was not persuaded. Economists had been predicting tariffs would show up in numbers month after month, but the data in aggregate has remained muted, he said. 'Almost every economist has gotten it wrong,' Lavorgna told me, and added that he and his colleagues in the administration felt that mainstream economists' analyses had been clouded by political bias. At any rate, he said, inflation is a perpetual rise in prices, rather than a one-time increase in price levels. 'To the extent there is a negative effect -- which we have yet to see -- it would be a one-off price level adjustment,' he said. Lavorgna's comments underscore how a debate over inflation is once again turning on the question of whether any price rise from Trump's tariffs would be fleeting or not. It's an echo of what happened after the COVID-19 pandemic, when the Fed thought inflation was transitory – and it turned out not to be. Now, while some administration officials and Fed governors expect any impact from tariffs to be temporary, other economists and market participants remain convinced that the president's conventional wisdom-defying policy could lead to bad outcomes, like slower growth and inflation. These people want to see more data as they argue that there are still many unknowns around inflation – it could rise in the coming months as much uncertainty remains around what the final tariffs would be; price increases could spill to other areas; and tariffs could cause inflation expectations to rise. 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Unhappiness with high prices was as one of the reasons behind Trump winning the presidential elections. Trump has directed his ire over the disagreement on rates most intensely against Jay Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, leading some investors to worry about the independence of the central bank. With Trump calling for the central bank to cut rates by as much as 3 percentage points while the economy is still holding up, the risk, some economists and investors say, is that such a stimulus would bring a repeat of what happened after the pandemic. 'It makes sense for the Federal Reserve to wait and see before they make a big decision,' Cavallo said. CONTRADICTORY FINDINGS Cavallo's research, which is updated frequently to account for the changes in Trump's tariff levels, analyzes pricing on the websites of four large U.S. retailers. 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Exclusive-Trump's Golden Dome looks for alternatives to Musk's SpaceX
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After Reuters reported initially that SpaceX was a frontrunner to build parts of Golden Dome, Musk said on X that the company had "not tried to bid for any contract in this regard. Our strong preference would be to stay focused on taking humanity to Mars." Due to its size, track record of launching more than 9,000 of its own Starlink satellites, and experience in government procurement, SpaceX still has the inside track to assist with major portions of the Golden Dome, especially launch contracts, sources say. Project Kuiper, which has launched just 78 of a planned constellation of 3,000 low-earth orbit satellites, has been approached by the Pentagon to join the effort, signaling the administration's openness to integrating commercial tech firms into national defense infrastructure and going beyond traditional defense players. 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Trump Media stock tests the limits of bitcoin accumulation: Morning Brief
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