Crude Oil: Uptrend May Extend on Cautious Trade Deal Optimism, Supply Risks
Tensions with Iran and weak nuclear talks raise the risk of regional conflict and price spikes.
OPEC+ supply shortfalls and falling US inventories point to a possible crude shortage.
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Oil prices jumped by as much as 5% yesterday, bringing WTI crude close to $70 per barrel. The main reason for the rise is positive news about a possible trade deal between China and the US, though no final agreement has been reached yet.
At the same time, talks with Iran over its nuclear program have not made much progress. If the negotiations fail completely, there is a risk of military conflict, which often pushes oil prices higher.
Adding to the upward pressure, US oil inventories fell more than expected for the third month in a row.
Looking at the different parts of the ongoing tariff war, the situation with China seems to have the biggest impact on financial markets, including oil. The latest statement says that the deal is almost complete, but both Donald Trump and Xi Jinping still need to sign it. Given how quickly things can change, nothing is certain yet.
Still, the market is already hoping for a return to normal trade, especially for semiconductors and rare earth metals, which appear to be the key negotiating points for both countries. A revival in trade and a stable long-term deal would help GDP growth, which would also increase demand for oil.
Yesterday's decision to withdraw some staff from the US embassy in Baghdad is a bad sign for the US-Iran talks on stopping Iran's nuclear program in exchange for easing Western sanctions. People involved in the talks say that Iran is demanding more, and although negotiations are still ongoing, the chances of a deal look slim.
In the worst case, the US could launch strikes on Iran's nuclear sites. If that happens, Iran may retaliate, and the conflict could spread across the region, pushing oil prices much higher.
Last month, OPEC+ announced a production increase of 310,000 barrels per day but managed to raise output by only 180,000 barrels. Key producers, led by Saudi Arabia, were unable to boost production as planned.
Combined with falling US oil inventories, this points to a possible, at least short-term, shortage of crude on the global market, especially if trade activity and GDP growth in the US pick up.
WTI crude oil has broken through the resistance level around $65 per barrel, opening the way for further gains. The next target for buyers is the supply zone near $72 per barrel, which is where a strong downward move started in early April.
Any possible pullbacks are likely to face support near the intersection of the rising trend line and the previously broken resistance, which now acts as support. In a very bullish scenario, if prices break above $72 per barrel, they could even move toward this year's highs just below $80 per barrel.
***
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Yahoo
a few seconds ago
- Yahoo
Texas' proposed congressional map dismantles districts flagged by DOJ
In early July, as President Donald Trump was pushing Texas to redraw its congressional map to better favor Republicans, the Department of Justice sent state leaders a letter. Four of Texas' congressional districts were unconstitutional, the department warned. Three, the 9th, 18th and 33rd, were unconstitutional 'coalition districts,' where Black and Hispanic voters combine to form a majority. The 29th, while majority Hispanic, was also unconstitutional, the letter said, because it was created by its two neighbors being coalition districts. 'It is well-established that so-called 'coalition districts' run afoul of the Voting Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment,' assistant attorney general Harmeet Dhillon wrote, threatening legal action if Texas didn't bring the districts into compliance. On Wednesday, Texas House Republicans released their first draft of a redrawn map designed to give the GOP five new seats in next year's midterms. As for the four districts that troubled Dhillon? In the Houston area, the 9th and the 18th districts, where no one race currently constitutes a majority of eligible voters, would be redrawn as just over half Hispanic and half Black, respectively. But as a result, the nearby 29th District — a fixture of east Houston's Latino community — would lose its Hispanic majority, becoming 43% Hispanic, 33% Black and 18% white. The 33rd District in North Texas, although entirely redrawn, would still have no single racial or ethnic group that constitutes a majority. Texas has long maintained that it drew these maps without an eye toward race. But tinkering with the lines now that these racial concerns have been raised risks triggering a Voting Rights Act complaint, legal experts said. States generally cannot redraw districts based on race without a compelling argument that it's necessary to protect voters' ability to elect their candidates of choice, said Justin Levitt, a redistricting expert at Loyola Law School. 'It sure seems like they have actually done what the DOJ, without any basis, accused them of,' Levitt said, noting that he had not done sufficient analysis to say for sure. Legal experts say the DOJ's interpretation of the law around coalition districts, and thus its legal threats to Texas, are based on faulty logic that could be backing the state into a discrimination lawsuit. 'Nothing in this decision suggests, much less holds, that the VRA prohibits the very existence of coalition districts,' Ellen Katz, a redistricting expert at the University of Michigan Law School, told the House redistricting committee at its first hearing last week. 'There are hundreds of these districts nationwide in which jurisdictions relying on traditional principles create these districts.' Coalition districts Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 says states cannot engage in election or voting practices that dilute the electoral power of voters of color, including by packing them into a single district or diffusing them throughout multiple. For decades, courts held that states can satisfy the requirements of Section 2 by creating districts where multiple politically cohesive racial voting groups constitute a majority. Currently, Texas has nine districts where no one racial or ethnic group has a majority; in eight of them, Black, Hispanic and Asian voters combined create a majority. In 2024, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears Texas-based cases, reversed a prior ruling and said coalitions of different racial or ethnic groups within one district cannot claim their rights have been violated under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Citing this ruling, Dhillon told Texas that its coalition districts were 'nothing more than vestiges of an unconstitutionally racially based gerrymandering past, which must be abandoned, and must now be corrected by Texas.' But this reflects a misunderstanding of this case, legal experts say. Under this ruling, the Voting Rights Act can't require states to create coalition districts, but that doesn't mean coalition districts are inherently unconstitutional. 'All it says is that you don't have the affirmative obligation to purposely create [a coalition district] at the outset,' said Mark Gaber, a lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center who is representing a group of plaintiffs in an ongoing lawsuit against the current maps. 'It certainly doesn't say, go through the map and eliminate all of the ones you drew.' Texas leaders have contradicted themselves and each other on the question of whether the state has coalition districts and what should be done about them. Gov. Greg Abbott, days after receiving Dhillon's letter, included redistricting on his agenda for the Legislature's special session, citing 'constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice.' He later told Dallas' Fox 4 News that redistricting was necessary because of the 5th Circuit's ruling. 'We want to make sure that we have maps that don't impose coalition districts while at the very same time ensuring that we will maximize the ability of Texans to be able to vote for the candidate of their choice,' he said. At a House committee hearing Friday, GOP Rep. David Spiller of Jacksboro asked Rep. Todd Hunter, who carried the 2021 maps in the lower chamber, whether Texas currently has coalition districts. Hunter said 'the law was different then.' 'You had coalition districts being interpreted differently,' he said. 'Today, you have a 2024 5th Circuit case absolutely changing the law.' But in court, Texas has long argued it has not drawn coalition districts to address racial disparities, because it draws 'race blind' maps. Attorney General Ken Paxton doubled down on this argument in response to the Dhillon letter. 'The Texas Legislature has led the Nation in rejecting race-based decision-making in its redistricting process — it has drawn its current maps in conformance with traditional, non-racial redistricting criteria to ensure Texas continues to adopt policies that will truly Make America Great Again,' Paxton wrote. At the request of Democrats, the House and Senate redistricting committees have invited Dhillon to testify on the letter and her allegations against Texas, but neither she nor any representative from the DOJ has responded to the request. The Senate panel this week voted not to subpoena her. What happened to the Houston DOJ districts Three of the districts Dhillon cited in her letter are neighbors in the Houston area. All three would be radically redrawn by the House's proposed map. The 9th Congressional District is a multiracial district made up of 45% Black voters, 25% Hispanic voters, 18% white voters and 9% Asian voters. The district, which covers parts of southwest Houston and outlying suburbs, voted for Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 by 44 points, and has reliably reelected Democratic Rep. Al Green since 2004. Under the House's proposed map, the 9th District has been redrawn around an entirely new part of Houston, retaining just 2% of Green's current district and scooping up conservative swaths of east Harris County. The Hispanic population would climb to just over 50% and the white population would almost double to 34%. Black voters would drop to 12% and Asian voters to 2%. In 2024, this new district would have voted for Trump by 15 points. Green, who is essentially drawn out of his district, condemned the proposal as racist, saying 'the DOJ demanded that the race card be played, and the governor dealt the people of Texas a racist hand.' Republicans pointed to the changing preferences of Latino voters, who swung sharply for Trump and other GOP candidates in 2024, to defend these new lines. 'Each of these newly-drawn districts now trend Republican in political performance,' Hunter said. 'it does allow Republican candidates the opportunity to compete in these districts.' Some of Green's existing district has been pushed into the newly drawn 18th Congressional District. While this was previously a seat with no single racial majority, its electorate would become 50.8% Black, while cutting the Hispanic and white populations. It would also tilt even further to the left; Harris carried the district by 40 percentage points in 2024 and would have won it by a 54-point spread under the new lines. Next door, Rep. Sylvia Garcia's 29th Congressional District would also be reconfigured, with Hispanic residents making up 43% of its new eligible voting population — down 20 percentage points from the current makeup. The district's Black and white populations would increase to create a district without a single racial group dominating. It would become more strongly Democratic. In challenging Texas' maps, plaintiffs have contended that Houston's population justifies two majority Hispanic districts. Instead, the one strong majority Hispanic district has been eliminated, and replaced with a district that is almost exactly half Hispanic, alongside one that is almost exactly half Black. '50.5% is unlikely to perform for Latino preferred candidates, or Black preferred candidates,' Gaber said. 'And they know that. It's a mirage.' What happened to the North Texas DOJ district In her letter, Dhillon also said the 33rd Congressional District ran afoul of the Constitution through its coalition status. The district is currently anchored in Fort Worth, with an electorate that is 44% Hispanic, 25% Black, 23% white and 6% Asian. The district went for Harris by 34 percentage points and has consistently reelected Rep. Marc Veasey, a Black Democrat. A decade ago, Texas, and the federal courts, asserted that the 33rd was not a coalition district. 'District 33 is not a 'minority coalition opportunity district' in which two different minority groups 'band together' to form an electoral majority,' the state and plaintiffs said in a joint advisory to the court. A district court judge agreed, saying it was 'not intentionally drawn as a minority coalition district.' The revised 33rd Congressional District maintains about a third of Veasey's old district, moving out of his Fort Worth base. The proposed new lines would reduce the Hispanic and Black population and increase the white population, while maintaining about the same Democratic lean. Just like in the current map, the proposed 33rd district does not have a single racial group that dominates. Legal experts say that is not inherently a problem, despite what the DOJ letter alleged, as long as voters of color have sufficient power to elect their candidate of choice. At a House committee hearing last week, Nina Perales, the vice president of litigation at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, one of the groups suing over Texas' current maps, testified that the Dallas-Fort Worth area, like Houston, should have an additional Hispanic-majority district on top of Veasey's Hispanic-plurality seat. 'In light of the growth of the population over the past two decades, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act does require the creation of additional districts,' Perales said. 'If the committee and the legislature decides to take up redistricting, it is certainly true that you cannot subtract from the current level of representation that we have.' Few districts in the Dallas-Fort Worth area went without major changes in the new draft map. In the reshaped downtown Dallas district of Rep. Jasmine Crockett, 50.2% of the voting population would be Black, not unlike the two new Houston districts to inch just past the majority threshold. If Hispanic or Black voters were electing their candidate of choice, there is no legal reason to move more voters of one group into the district to hit a perfunctory benchmark of 50%, Levitt said. 'It tells me you're trying really hard to hit a particular target, such that the target itself was the predominant reason for moving people in or out of the district,' Levitt said. 'That's exactly what the courts have said you can't do.' The lineup for The Texas Tribune Festival continues to grow! Be there when all-star leaders, innovators and newsmakers take the stage in downtown Austin, Nov. 13–15. The newest additions include comedian, actor and writer John Mulaney; Dallas mayor Eric Johnson; U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota; New York Media Editor-at-Large Kara Swisher; and U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso. Get your tickets today! TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase. Solve the daily Crossword
Geek Wire
a minute ago
- Geek Wire
Space entrepreneurs see defense projects as a future frontier for funding and innovation
The Golden Dome is envisioned as a network of satellite sensors and interceptors that could protect America from incoming missiles. (Lockheed Martin Illustration) Will the Golden Dome be a golden opportunity for commercial space ventures? That may be a bit of an exaggeration. But at a Seattle Tech Week presentation on the space industry, a panel of entrepreneurs agreed that military projects — including a plan to create a missile defense shield along the lines of Israel's Iron Dome by as early as 2028 — seem to be the most promising vehicles for getting commercial space ventures off the ground. Part of the reason for that has to do with the uncertainty that's currently surrounding America's civilian space program. At the same time that the White House is pushing plans for the $175 billion Golden Dome project, it's seeking to trim billions of dollars from NASA's budget. 'It's so interesting right now, because I think there's more uncertainty around civil space funding than there's ever been before, and more bullishness on defense space funding than there's ever been before,' said Erika Wagner, who left Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin space venture last year to lead The Exploration Company's U.S. business development team. Seattle-area space companies have been among the beneficiaries of the Pentagon's surge of support — ranging from the $25 million in Space Force funding granted to Seattle-based Integrate in June to the $2.4 billion in Space Force launch contracts set aside for Kent-based Blue Origin earlier this year. Gravitics, Starfish Space and Portal Space Systems are among other Seattle-area space ventures benefiting from recent Pentagon contracts. AE Industrial Partners' Eugene Kim, Starcloud's Philip Johnston, The Exploration Company's Erika Wagner, Portal Space Systems' Jeff Thornburg and Perkins Coie's Ben Straughan participate in a Seattle Tech Week panel on the space industry. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle) The typical route for defense-oriented space startups is to win a series of grants issued through the Pentagon's Small Business Innovation Research program, or SBIR. But SBIR grants can take you only so far, said Jeff Thornburg, Bothell-based Portal Space Systems' founder and CEO. 'If it's just cool tech for cool tech's sake, you'll only get through about Phase 1 or Phase 2 SBIRs, and it'll never cross the 'Valley of Death,'' Thornburg said at Thursday afternoon's session. 'The Valley of Death is basically when you've taken the idea as far as you can, you don't have any other customer pull, and it costs so much money to develop that you have no way to get there, and the company kind of folds.' Portal and Gravitics managed to avoid the Valley of Death by winning support from SpaceWERX's STRATFI program, which can unlock tens of millions of dollars in public and private funding. Portal is using its funding to develop a sun-powered orbital transport vehicle called Supernova, while Gravitics is working on an orbital carrier for space vehicles. Thornburg said that the U.S. military can be 'the world's most difficult and demanding customer,' and cautioned that it's not easy to build relationships with the Pentagon officials who make the decisions on funding. 'If you're going to take on the defense customer, and you should probably consider it if you're an entrepreneur out there, you really have to do the homework,' he said. 'Are you answering a warfighter need?' The AI connection Artificial intelligence may well be one of those needs. At a Seattle Tech Week session held earlier in the day, a different set of space entrepreneurs suggested that there was a significant intersection between the AI frontier and the space frontier. For example, Planetary Systems AI is focused on using AI tools to help the Pentagon make sense of the flood of data streaming down from space sensors. 'We help with some of the automation and decision making, from pre-launch all the way to in-orbit … in a battle management perspective as well as for space operations,' said Cindy Chin, the New York-based company's founder and CEO. Such tools are expected to play an increasing role in space traffic management as more and more satellites are launched into low Earth orbit. Over the course of just six years, the Seattle area has become the world's most prolific producer of such satellites, primarily due to the rise of SpaceX's Starlink constellation and preparations for Amazon's Project Kuiper constellation. Starfish Space co-founder Austin Link said AI tools are already built into his company's satellite navigation systems. 'It's not like we're going and asking ChatGPT, 'Hey, should we burn the thrusters now?' At least, not yet,' he said. 'But there are a lot of autonomous decision making and a lot of complex algorithms that are flying the vehicle. That is effectively AI, at least in certain definitions.' Starfish Space's Austin Link, Planetary Systems AI's Cindy Chin, Radian Aerospace's Livingston Holder and Wilson Sonsini's Curt Blake discuss the state of the space industry at a Seattle Tech Week event. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle) Space infrastructure could also ease the pressure that power-hungry AI data centers are putting on earthly resources. Two companies that have a significant presence in the Seattle area, Starcloud and Sophia Space, are developing systems that could open the way for solar-powered satellites to operate as orbital data centers. Starcloud CEO and co-founder Philip Johnston said his company initially set up shop in Southern California but relocated to Redmond, Wash., after a month. 'If you want somebody who knows about building a satellite … 90% of them are specifically in Redmond, because you have Kuiper and Starlink,' he said. Shifts in the market for space services — due to the AI angle as well as America's evolving national security needs — could well lead to long-term tectonic shifts in the space industry, Thornburg said. 'I'm kind of excited to see what happens with these 'neo-prime' relationships, Anduril and Palantir, and their partnerships with up-and-coming entrepreneurs to offer a different solution space for defense, and then how that can get applied to commercial [space applications]. Because I think that might be an X factor here that maybe everyone's not always contemplating,' he said. Other space shots from Seattle Tech Week Mining on the final frontier: It's been seven years since the Redmond-based asteroid mining venture known as Planetary Resources fizzled out, but Johnston said that space mining might be a market niche whose time has finally come. For examples, he pointed to Seattle-based Interlune, which aims to harvest helium-3 and other resources from the moon; and California-based AstroForge, which is setting the stage for extracting resources from asteroids. 'That is going to be an absolutely enormous business. It's very dependent on low-cost launch, though. Whether that happens in the next five years or the next 10 years is up for debate,' he said. It's been seven years since the Redmond-based asteroid mining venture known as Planetary Resources fizzled out, but Johnston said that space mining might be a market niche whose time has finally come. For examples, he pointed to Seattle-based Interlune, which aims to harvest helium-3 and other resources from the moon; and California-based AstroForge, which is setting the stage for extracting resources from asteroids. 'That is going to be an absolutely enormous business. It's very dependent on low-cost launch, though. Whether that happens in the next five years or the next 10 years is up for debate,' he said. What about an orbital smash-up? The afternoon session's panel was split on whether a catastrophic satellite collision event known as the Kessler syndrome would occur in the next five years, but the panelists agreed that international efforts would be made in the next five years to try to head off such an event. The afternoon session's panel was split on whether a catastrophic satellite collision event known as the Kessler syndrome would occur in the next five years, but the panelists agreed that international efforts would be made in the next five years to try to head off such an event. When will we put people on the moon? When the panelists were asked to project when astronauts would once again land on the moon, they guessed dates ranging from 2030 to 2035. For what it's worth, NASA's current timetable calls for the Artemis 3 mission to put a crew on the lunar surface in 2027. When the panelists were asked to project when astronauts would once again land on the moon, they guessed dates ranging from 2030 to 2035. For what it's worth, NASA's current timetable calls for the Artemis 3 mission to put a crew on the lunar surface in 2027. What about Mars? The panelists' projections for the first crewed landing on the Red Planet ranged from 2040 (or earlier) to 2060 — which is much later than Elon Musk's current goal of putting humans on Mars in 2028 or so. Johnston said he made a bet with someone that billionaire techie Jared Isaacman would 'be the first person on Mars before 2040.' Thursday morning's Seattle Tech Week session about the space industry was presented by Silicon Valley Bank and Wilson Sonsini, while the afternoon session was presented by Perkins Coie and Space Happy Hour.
Politico
2 minutes ago
- Politico
Why Trump's newly announced tariffs aren't a done deal
THE LAW ON LIBERATION DAY — On Thursday, Donald Trump announced sweeping new tariffs against U.S. trading partners that will go into effect next week. The announcement came on the same day that an appeals court grappled with the question of whether Trump's tariffs are even legal. Indeed, there is a strong argument that the tariffs are illegal and unconstitutional. The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, which on Thursday held oral argument on two major tariff challenges — one from a group of small businesses and the other from a coalition of twelve states led by Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield — seems like it may ultimately agree. Rayfield was pleased with how it went. 'If you were an outside observer watching the hearing and you had to pick a party to stay in the shoes of, I think you would prefer to be in the state's shoes after Thursday's hearing,' Rayfield said in an interview with POLITICO this afternoon. That seems to be the consensus among close observers. 'Federal appeals court judges on Thursday sharply questioned President Donald Trump's authority,' POLITICO's Kyle Cheney and Doug Palmer wrote. Reuters put it similarly, while the Associated Press reported that the judges 'expressed broad skepticism' toward the government's arguments. The New York Times' account said that Brett Shumate, the lawyer arguing for the government, 'at times faced an icy reception.' This is not that surprising if you have been following this legal saga closely. The Constitution explicitly gives the power to impose tariffs to Congress. Congress has passed several trade laws that provide the president with the power to impose tariffs in certain circumstances, but they do not grant the sweeping and unreviewable power that the Trump administration has claimed — and indeed requires in order to support Trump's tariffs as a legal matter. Meanwhile, the statute that has actually been invoked by the Trump administration — the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — has never been used to impose tariffs over the course of the nearly half-century that it has been on the books, and it makes no mention of tariffs in the text. It was in fact passed to limit the president's emergency economic powers. On top of that, the key case cited by the government in its favor does not actually support their position (usually a bad thing). Thus far, two lower courts have ruled against the administration on this issue — a unanimous three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of International Trade and a federal district court judge in Washington, D.C. Both rulings have been stayed pending appeal. Thursday's argument concerned the first of those rulings and was conducted in the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. If the government loses in the Federal Circuit, it is still possible that the Supreme Court's conservative justices could agree to hear the case and ultimately rule in Trump's favor. On the merits, that outcome would be hard to square with the conservative majority's stated commitment to textualism as a mode of statutory interpretation, as well as the major questions doctrine that was developed in recent years by the conservative justices, who used it in 2023 to strike down much of the Biden administration's student-loan forgiveness effort. In the student-loan forgiveness case, the conservative justices relied crucially on the fact that the program was estimated to cost taxpayers roughly $500 billion, according to a budget model from the University of Pennsylvania. They concluded that this warranted a particularly rigorous and stringent mode of statutory interpretation. The estimated cost to taxpayers in that case pales in comparison to the estimated cost for Americans resulting from Trump's tariffs, according to a model at Yale University. That model currently estimates that Trump's latest tariff framework will result in an average per household income loss of $2,400 this year alone, that it will result in a 0.5 percentage loss in real GDP this year and next year, and that the economy will lose nearly half a million jobs by the end of 2025. None of this has stopped the administration from plowing forward. At this point, the administration may be hoping for a victory at the Supreme Court (assuming they lose at the Federal Circuit) or, perhaps, simply planning to do as much as they can to advance their tariff policy before a day comes when it is definitively thrown out by the courts. They have already been aided in this regard by the Supreme Court, intentionally or otherwise. In mid-June, the two businesses that prevailed in federal district court in Washington asked the Supreme Court to short-circuit the appeals process and take the case up immediately for review. 'In light of the tariffs' massive impact on virtually every business and consumer across the Nation, and the unremitting whiplash caused by the unfettered tariffing power the President claims, challenges to the IEEPA tariffs cannot await the normal appellate process (even on an expedited timeline),' the companies' lawyers wrote. The companies' request was far from crazy, particularly given the fact that the conservative justices have moved quickly in a variety of major court challenges to the Trump administration's actions since Trump's inauguration. Three days later, however, the Supreme Court denied their request, with no explanation. Perhaps not coincidentally, those expedited rulings have favored the Trump administration, while in the case of Trump's tariffs, a critical mass of conservative justices may ultimately be compelled to rule against Trump — if, that is, they actually adhere to the interpretive and constitutional principles that they claim to follow. In the meantime — and as the administration has been struggling in the courts to defend its policy — the Trump administration is evidently moving forward undeterred. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@ Or contact tonight's author at akhardori@ What'd I Miss? — Trump demands firing of BLS chief after soft jobs report: President Donald Trump called for the ouster of the head of the Labor Department's statistical arm this afternoon after the latest monthly jobs report came in well under expectations. 'I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY,' Trump wrote in a social media post. 'She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified.' Trump reprised prior accusations that the Bureau of Labor Statistics under Commissioner Erika McEntarfer surreptitiously put out overly rosy jobs numbers at the tail end of the Biden administration that were subsequently revised in order to influence the election. Economists have roundly dismissed these claims as a misunderstanding of the agency's revision processes. — Huckabee, Witkoff visit US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation amid global outcry: Senior U.S. officials visited a distribution center for the American-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation today, pledging to report back to President Donald Trump about the foundation's operations and devise a plan to address starvation in the strip amid growing global outcry over the humanitarian crisis. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and special envoy Steve Witkoff made a rare trip to Gaza today amid heightened pressure — including from within MAGA circles — to reconsider the administration's support for Israel's war on Hamas and intervene in Gaza's hunger crisis. — Corporation for Public Broadcasting shutting down: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced today it was shutting down its operations after President Donald Trump rescinded funding for the nonprofit, which it used to support public radio and TV stations around the country. The CPB — which was established by Congress decades ago as an independent nonprofit — said it will begin 'an orderly wind-down' after Trump signed a measure last month to claw back $1.1 billion in grants appropriated to CPB over the next two fiscal years. — Ghislaine Maxwell transferred to less restrictive prison after DOJ meeting: Days after sitting down with one of the highest-ranking members of the Justice Department, Ghislaine Maxwell has been transferred to a less restrictive minimum security federal prison camp in Texas, her attorney said. Maxwell's attorney David Oscar Markus said today she had been moved to Federal Prison Camp Bryan, a facility for female inmates in Southeast Texas. He declined further comment. Until this week, Maxwell, the onetime girlfriend of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, had been serving a 20-year sentence for her 2021 conviction for sex trafficking crimes in Florida, at FCI Tallahassee, a low-security prison. — Trump, escalating war of words with Russia's Medvedev, mobilizes two nuclear submarines: President Donald Trump said today he mobilized two nuclear submarines 'to be positioned in the appropriate regions' in response to threatening comments by Russia's former president Dmitry Medvedev. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said he was taking that action 'just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that. Words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences, I hope this will not be one of those instances.' Medvedev on Thursday referenced Russia's nuclear capabilities amid an escalating battle on social media sparked by Trump's latest efforts to increase economic pressure on the Kremlin in hopes of reviving diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine. AROUND THE WORLD RAISING THE BAR — Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni reacted with fury today as the EU's top court raised the threshold for member countries to reject asylum-seekers. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) said EU nations may only create national lists of safe countries outside the bloc if they fully justify their assessments with public sources. According to the court, a country can only be considered 'safe' for repatriation if 'the entire population' is protected across all regions. Meloni called the court's decision 'surprising' and a power grab by EU judges. 'Once again, the judiciary, this time at the European level, claims spaces that do not belong to it, in the face of responsibilities that are political,' she said. SLOVENIA STEPS OUT— Slovenia became the first EU country to ban all weapons trade with Israel, citing the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The government also prohibited the transit of weapons to or from Israel through Slovenia, the administration in Ljubljana said in a statement Thursday. Slovenia said that it decided to act independently from the EU, as 'due to internal disagreements and disunity,' the bloc is unable to take action against Israel. Though the European Commission proposed partially suspending Israel's association agreement with the EU this week, member countries have yet to agree on it. Nightly Number RADAR SWEEP WEEKEND WARRIORS — Under the threat of Chinese invasion, more and more Taiwanese civilians are signing up for civil defense classes. US intelligence predicts that China will be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027 as China builds up its aircrafts and warships. Armed with airsoft guns that fire plastic pellets, men and women train on the weekends in converted garages and empty warehouses to prepare a civil resilience. Beyond armed defense, officials and private organizations have amped up drills for attacks on critical infrastructure and cyberattacks. Yian Lee reports on the 'soft militarization' of Taiwanese civilians for Bloomberg. Parting Image Jacqueline Munis contributed to this newsletter. Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.
