How Trump's 100% Tariff on Overseas Films May Play Out
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Yahoo
4 minutes ago
- Yahoo
US business inventories unchanged in May
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. business inventories were unchanged for a second straight month in May, suggesting that inventories could subtract from gross domestic product in the second quarter. The flat reading in inventories reported by the Commerce Department's Census Bureau on Thursday was in line with economists' expectations. Inventories are a key component of GDP. They increased 1.7% year on year. Inventories are also the most volatile component of GDP. They surged at a $160.5 billion annualized rate in the first quarter as businesses stocked up ahead of President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs on imported goods, adding 2.59 percentage points to GDP, the most since the fourth quarter of 2021. But that was insufficient to offset a record 4.61-percentage-point drag from a sharp widening in the trade deficit that resulted from the imports deluge. The economy contracted at a 0.5% pace in the January-March quarter. Retail inventories gained 0.3% in May as estimated in an advance report published last month. They were unchanged in April. Motor vehicle inventories increased 0.6% as previously reported. They fell 0.7% in April. Retail inventories excluding autos, which go into the calculation of GDP, rose 0.2% as initially reported. Wholesale inventories fell 0.3% in May, while stocks at manufacturers rose 0.1%. Business sales dropped 0.4% in May after declining 0.2% in April. At May's sales pace, it would take 1.39 months for businesses to clear shelves, up from 1.38 months in April. 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
Gizmodo
5 minutes ago
- Gizmodo
Trump Moves to Kill California's Dreams of High-Speed Rail
President Donald Trump's feud with California Governor Gavin Newsom is hitting the Golden State's long-awaited high-speed train project with yet another setback. The U.S. The Transportation Department announced Wednesday that it is rescinding $4 billion in funding for a bullet train project that aims to connect Los Angeles with San Francisco. 'Governor Newsom and the complicit Democrats have enabled this waste for years,' said U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy — a former cast member of MTV's The Real World: Boston and ex–Fox Business co-host — in a press release. 'Federal dollars are not a blank check; they come with a promise to deliver results.' The California High-Speed Rail project, approved by voters in 2008, was pitched as an 800-mile rail system linking Northern and Southern California, with trains traveling at speeds up to 220 miles per hour. A planned second phase would extend the line further, reaching Sacramento in the north and San Diego in the south. The project was initially projected to cost $33 billion and be completed by 2020. But after years of delays and escalating construction costs, the estimated price tag has now surged past $100 billion. Governor Newsom and other California officials are not happy with the news and have signaled that they could take legal action. 'Trump wants to hand China the future and abandon the Central Valley. We won't let him. With projects like the Texas high-speed rail failing to take off, we are miles ahead of others,' Newsom said in a statement. 'We're now in the track-laying phase and building America's only high-speed rail. California is putting all options on the table to fight this illegal action.' California High-Speed Rail Authority CEO Ian Choudri, who is spearheading the project, also called the move 'illegal,' stating that the grants are legally binding and the Authority has met all its obligations. For his part, Trump posted on social media that he has 'freed' the citizens of America from 'California's disastrously overpriced, 'HIGH SPEED TRAIN TO NOWHERE.' 'The Railroad we were promised still does not exist, and never will,' Trump wrote on Truth Social. 'This project was Severely Overpriced, Overregulated, and NEVER DELIVERED.' This marks the latest clash between the Trump administration and Governor Gavin Newsom, who have sparred over everything from the state's transgender rights laws to the deployment of National Guard troops in Los Angeles. Newsom also fired back at Duffy after the Transportation Secretary posted a video on X criticizing the high-speed rail project. 'Won't be taking advice from the guy who can't keep planes in the sky,' Newsom wrote in response.
Time Magazine
7 minutes ago
- Time Magazine
The Dark History That Predates Trump's 'Alligator Alcatraz'
The Florida immigrant detention center dubbed 'Alligator Alcatraz' is less than a month old, but it is raising serious moral questions about our nation's treatment of immigrants. President Donald Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and their supporters are celebrating the brutality of the 3,000-bed detention facility that was hastily built in the Florida Everglades, one of the harshest natural environments in the United States. Trump joked about the dangers of the swamp, the Florida GOP is selling hats and t-shirts bearing the facility's name, and one of the president's advisors implied that all U.S. Latinos should be fed to alligators. Sources have reported instances of overflowing toilets, lack of medical care or sufficient food, and worms in the meals to the Associated Press. Such conditions have led detainees to stage a hunger strike. Congressman Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) toured the facility and reported seeing 32 people crowded into single cages in the Everglades' heat and humidity. After he toured the facility, Frost said he was troubled by the presence of private security. 'The whole thing is run by private companies,' he said. As alarming as this situation is, the toxic brew of brutal incarceration, migrant abuse, and private interests has a deep, dark history in Florida. A century ago, in the 1920s, news of the violent death of a young man in a Florida swamp revealed a brutal convict labor system in the state. Law enforcement officers would arrest young men, usually Black but also white, on spurious charges and lease them to private companies for profit. When this system was revealed, the scandal shocked the nation. In the words of one reformer, Amos Pinchot, the story put the 'state on trial before American public opinion.' This controversy began in 1921, when Martin Tabert of North Dakota was arrested on a Florida train for not having a ticket. The 21-year-old was a vagrant traveler with little money. When he couldn't afford to pay the $25 fine, he was taken into custody by the county sheriff. Tabert was one of thousands of new arrivals during Florida's land boom. In the late 19th century, developers such as Henry Flagler began draining swampland to construct railroads, towns, and hotels to draw tourists and settlers to the state. Miami, which had just over 500 registered voters when it was founded in 1896, grew to 30,000 residents by 1920. Fifty to 75 train cars full of eager visitors rolled into the city daily. In the first few years of the 1920s, 13 new counties sprang up. Read More: Florida's 'Alligator Alcatraz' Detention Center Sparks Major Concern as Construction Begins: 'An Obscene Human Rights Violation' Real estate agents reaped handsome profits from the skyrocketing value of Florida real estate. Tabert, however, was pulled into the grim underside of Florida's rapid expansion. After his arrest, the sheriff ordered Tabert to the Putnam Lumber Company to serve 90 days of hard labor. Soon, young Tabert was working waist-deep in swamp water alongside other convicts. A few weeks later, his family in North Dakota received a letter from the Putnam Lumber Company. It informed them of his illness and subsequent death. Initially, the family believed the letter. But the next year, a man who had witnessed Tabert die came forward and wrote to the family, explaining that all was not as it seemed. Tabert's family enlisted North Dakota's attorney general, who traveled to Florida to investigate. What he found was shocking. According to numerous eye-witnesses, the convicts' working conditions were hot, dirty, and brutal. Tabert and the other men were overseen by a 'whipping boss' who brandished a seven-pound strap. The men explained that bosses would often drag the whip through syrup or sand between lashes to enhance its effectiveness. During his sentence, Tabert struggled to keep up with the harsh demands of convict labor. He fell ill, his feet swollen from standing in swamp water. He worked too slowly for the tastes of his whipping boss, Walter Higginbotham. So, in front of some 80 other men, Higginbotham forced Tabert to lie down with his shirt lifted, and beat Tabert dozens of times with a strap. When Tabert resisted, the overseer stood on his neck and continued whipping. Tragically, historians have shown that violent labor prisons like this one were not unique to Florida. Across the South, men arrested for minor offenses were shuttled into convict workforces made up of mostly-African Americans as well as whites such as Tabert. These labor gangs helped build the New South's industrial infrastructure across the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In some cases, these practices lasted until World War II. When Tabert died soon after the beating, the Putnam Lumber Company physician examined his body and declared the causes of death as pneumonia and malaria. The North Dakota attorney general concluded that Putnam was covering up a crime. He determined that the company profited from 'the labor of unfortunate men, picked up and forced into their custody through trivial violations.' North Dakota legislators took up Tabert's cause and pushed Florida to evaluate its entire convict leasing system. Florida's investigative committee learned that similar abuses occurred in camps across the state, including some owned by legislators themselves. The committee also found that, after entering into a deal with Putnam Lumber, the sheriff who arrested Tabert detained nearly eight times more men than he had previously. The arrangement netted him thousands of dollars. Progressive Florida reformers, particularly women's clubs and civic organizations, called on the state to abolish the convict labor system. Dozens of local newspapers attacked the practice of renting convicts to private companies. Tabert's story appeared on the front pages of numerous newspapers from California to Massachusetts. In 1923, a young journalist named Marjory Stoneman Douglas published a poem titled 'Martin Tabert of North Dakota' in her regular column in the Miami Herald. The poem became an anthem for abolishing convict labor in Florida. The tide turned. The whipping boss Higginbotham was convicted of murder. The Florida legislature recommended the camp physician be removed for lying about Tabert's death. Putnam Lumber was forced to pay restitution to Tabert's family. And finally, in 1923, the Florida legislature voted to end the convict leasing system once and for all. Douglas's poem was read in the legislative chambers as the vote came to a close. For Douglas, ending the convict labor system was the first victory in her nearly 80-year activist career. During the Tabert campaign, she called for the creation of a Florida 'public welfare board' to monitor government actions and ensure that, in Douglas's words, 'never again shall the name of the state be blotted as it is now.' The public welfare board created a few years after Tabert's death became the precursor to several state-level public health and family services departments that still exist today. Read More: America Turned Against Migrant Detention Before. We Can Do It Again After helping abolish convict leasing, Douglas used her Miami Herald column to share her unconventional belief that South Florida's Everglades were more than a dismal swamp and that they were instead a natural treasure that needed to be protected. In 1947, she published The Everglades: River of Grass, a book credited with forever changing America's relationship with Florida's wetlands. That same year, Douglas was invited to sit on the platform behind President Harry Truman as he designated the Everglades National Park. In 1969, she founded Friends of the Everglades at the age of 79. Five years later, she helped establish the Big Cypress National Preserve, the largest National Park Service acquisition of private land in U.S. history. The media loved her. Douglas spoke with a powerful moral authority, and she was assigned an endless list of nicknames: Our Lady of the Glades, Guardian of the Glades' Spirit, the Mother Teresa of the Swamp. She continued her environmental and human rights activism until her death at age 108. Today, Trump's detention camp sits inside the Big Cypress National Preserve that Douglas, along with the Seminole and Miccosukee tribes and other conservationists, helped establish as the first of its kind in the United States. But just as the history of violence in Florida's swamps echoes today, so does the creative and bold activism of those like Douglas, who brought down a cruel system in the 1920s. In fact, Friends of the Everglades is currently a plaintiff in a lawsuit against 'Alligator Alcatraz.' Douglas's 1923 poem lamented how the 'black strap cracked' on Tabert's body and 'they nailed his coffin boards together' in the Florida swamps. But she also wrote that 'Florida's rising now,' and encouraged readers to end the poem by shouting Tabert's name. 'From Key West to Pensacola,' Douglas wrote, she could hear 'the angry voice of Florida crying.' Just as 'Alligator Alcatraz' echoes the dark history of Tabert and his abusers, let's also be inspired by the angry, rising voices from a century ago that won justice in Florida's swamps. Antonio Ramirez is Associate Professor of History at Elgin Community College, where he directs the Chicagolandia Oral History Project and the Center for Civic Engagement. He wrote the National Historic Landmark nomination for the Marjory Stoneman Douglas House. Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.
