Happy Friday! Today marks the 81st anniversary of D-Day—or the beginning of the allies’ invasion of Normandy during World War II. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower told his men of the Allied Expeditionary Force in the famous Order of the Day of June 6, 1944, that the “free men of the world are marching together to Victory!” Let’s not forget what they did to secure that victory.
Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
- President Donald Trump spoke with Chinese leader Xi Jinping over the phone Thursday to discuss trade negotiations, their first call of Trump’s second term. The phone conversation, which China says was initiated by the White House, was “very positive,” according to Trump, who also said that a meeting between negotiators from both countries would happen soon. Trade talks between the two nations have been at an impasse since both China and the U.S. agreed to temporarily lower tariff rates last month in order to facilitate negotiations.
- Trump on Wednesday ordered an investigation into the extent of the Biden administration’s cover-up of the former president’s mental decline, along with the president’s use of an autopen to sign executive orders. “Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations,” said Biden in a statement released on Wednesday. Trump had previously asserted that the use of an autopen by White House staffers was illegal, alleging that Biden was not mentally competent to make those decisions. But members of the previous administration have stated that they only used the autopen after a presidential decision, following established legal precedent.
- Data released by the Commerce Department on Thursday showed the U.S. trade deficit in April narrowing by a record amount, caused by a steep drop-off in imports. The decline came after March saw a sharp increase in imports, as many companies sought to stockpile inventory in advance of tariffs going into effect. The goods and services deficit was $61.6 billion, a 55 percent decrease from the previous month and the smallest since September 2023.
- Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s public break widened Thursday, as Trump threatened to cancel federal contracts with Musk’s companies following Musk’s criticism of the spending bill currently making its way through Congress. “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Go ahead, make my day,” replied Musk, later writing on X that he would begin decommissioning the Dragon spacecraft, used by NASA for flights to the International Space Station. Musk, who spent hundreds of millions of dollars on Trump’s 2024 reelection campaign, also threatened to use his money in the next midterm elections to challenge Republicans who vote for the bill.
- The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that there was no legal difference between majority and minority groups when deciding discrimination cases, siding with a plaintiff who said she had been passed over for a job and then demoted because she was straight. “Congress left no room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs alone,” wrote Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson for a unanimous court. The decision will affect lawsuits in 20 states and the District of Columbia, where courts had set a higher evidentiary standard for members of a majority group, like white or straight people, to prove workplace discrimination.
- German Chancellor Freidrich Merz met with Trump in the Oval Office on Thursday, where Trump said that the U.S. might have to let Russia and Ukraine “fight for a while” before re-engaging with the peace process. Trump’s remarks, which he said he also made to Russian President Vladimir Putin during a phone call earlier this week, came as Merz urged the U.S. to support Ukraine in its efforts to repel Russia’s invasion. Asked about a Russian sanctions bill currently making its way through the Senate, Trump said that any sanctions on Russia would be “guided by me.”
‘The Interest Will Bury Us’
Back in 2023, economists at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania tried to model the long-term U.S. economy under our current debt trends. Their findings? When trying to show a functioning economy long-term, the models “effectively crash.”
“The reason is that current fiscal policy is not sustainable, and forward-looking financial markets know it, leading to the economy ‘unraveling,’’’ the study said. Just to make functional economic projections, the models have to assume that major steps are taken to reduce the debt.
Fast forward to today, and Republicans are working on a reconciliation bill that adds ...
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Today’s Must-Read
After the electoral disaster of the Barry Goldwater candidacy in 1964, William F. Buckley Jr. acquiesced to backing Richard Nixon for president over a more ideologically aligned alternative Republican. Buckley justified his stance by articulating what would become known as the Buckley rule, saying he had to “be for the most right, viable candidate who could win it.” For much of his time on the political scene, Donald Trump (who has more in common with Nixon than with any other modern-era president) has modified the Buckley rule for Republican primaries in two ways: replacing “most right” with “most pro-Trump,” and chopping off the final four words.
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