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      How Trump’s second term might affect the market and your finances

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      Ever since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, stock market expectations have been volatile – driven in part by a healthy dose of motivated reasoning.

      At first, markets surged on hopes of lower taxes and deregulation. But this enthusiasm soon faded as announcements about tariffs and stricter immigration policies dampened sentiment. Underscoring that point, on March 3, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 600 points after Trump said that tariffs he had been threatening for weeks would indeed be imposed on Canada and Mexico the following day.

      In all of these cases, investors weren’t just reacting to economic fundamentals. They were projecting their own assumptions onto them, helping shape market reality.

      Financial forecasting is notoriously tricky, and it’s not easy to separate meaningful data from mere “noise.” But it’s still worth asking: Are American investors ready for a new period of economic and financial turbulence? Will Trump fuel another Wall Street rally? Or will uncertainty drag markets down?

      As an economics expert with two decades of experience studying politics and finance, I believe that presidential rhetoric and policies can create uncertainty – and that uncertainty affects the market. Specifically, stock prices tend to rise when companies expect higher profitability and fall when uncertainty outweighs the gains.

      Trump’s dramatic policy shifts are already sending mixed signals to the markets. And what happens in the next four years could reshape America’s financial future. Today, more than 60% of Americans are tied to the stock market through retirement and investment accounts, which means the repercussions will go far beyond Wall Street.

      How do presidents affect the stock market?

      Presidential elections have a well-documented impact on financial markets.

      Stocks tend to rally in the weeks leading up to the vote, but risk jumps by about 15% as investors brace for uncertainty. This uncertainty hits some companies harder than others, especially those in politically sensitive industries. Businesses that spend big on lobbying and companies affected by trade or climate policies suffer the most.

      Many analysts, particularly those in business or finance, may assume that stock markets would do better under Republican administrations, as their purportedly pro-business, market-friendly policies are bound to improve returns. But history suggests otherwise: Over the past 70 years, markets have delivered 9% higher returns under Democratic than Republican presidencies.

      Does that mean Democrats are better at managing the economy? Not necessarily. Research suggests that timing is key. Democrats tend to take office during economic downturns, inheriting markets that are primed for recovery – essentially, to use the parlance of markets, they “buy low.” Following the 2008 financial crisis, for instance, the stock market saw significant gains as the economy gradually recovered under the Obama administration.

      Republicans, on the other hand, often inherit strong economies with limited upside, as they tend to assume office during periods of economic growth. This leaves less room for gains, especially when the market is already stable.

      Trump, uncertainty and the markets

      Markets love stability and predictability. Yet when political shifts introduce volatility, investor confidence – and ultimately stock valuations – can be shaken. Fewer privately held businesses are willing to go public during election years, for example. This suggests that political uncertainty constrains business decisions. Companies that rely heavily on government contracts and international trade are especially susceptible to this effect.

      Trump’s policies have already created significant uncertainty, which directly impacts market stability and performance. The recent announcements of tariffs on goods from Canada, Mexico and China led to big market swings, particularly in industries reliant on global supply chains such as tech and manufacturing. Trump temporarily postponed the new tariffs on Mexico and Canada, but the new tariffs on China went into effect as planned – an inconsistency that itself worsened uncertainty. If Trump continues down this path, U.S. companies relying on international trade will be faced with greater uncertainty in an already volatile market.

      Immigration is another area in which Trump’s policies could cause uncertainty. Any moves that target illegal immigration or limit foreign workers are likely to hurt industries such as agriculture and tech that rely heavily on workers from abroad. Though some sectors may see benefits from reduced competition, the overall impact on the economy could be to increase market unpredictability.

      Besides the president’s policy agenda, another big factor influencing the stock market is the unpredictability of Trump’s statements and actions. A single social media post can send shock waves through industries such as tech, pharma and defense. Similarly, unexpected shifts in policy can lead to rapid stock price declines.

      With the beginning of the second Trump term, many Americans – especially those nearing retirement age – are watching closely as the president’s policy agenda takes shape. What it all means for their lives, and how it will affect investments, market stability and broader economic trends, is an open question.

      But for investors weighing risk and reward, understanding the interplay between uncertainty, economic policy and market dynamics is essential. A second Trump term has the potential for significant shifts – not just for Wall Street but for the economy as a whole. More

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      Federal layoffs hit the deep-red, rural US west: ‘Our public lands are under threat’

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      Republican representative McKay Erickson walked through the halls of the Wyoming capitol with a Trump 2024 pin on the front of his suit jacket. Much of Erickson’s home district in Lincoln county falls under the jurisdiction of the Bridger-Teton national forest and Grand Teton national park.With that federal land, comes federal workers. While it appears districts in Wyoming crucial to US energy dominance have been spared the brunt of the layoffs, McKay said his forest-heavy district has not been so fortunate. He’s hearing from his constituents about the layoffs, and he’s troubled about the implications for his district’s future.“These people have a face to me,” Erickson said. “They have a face and a place in either Star Valley or Jackson that I know quite well.”Erickson is a small-government conservative, laments bureaucracy and stands by his belief that there’s a need to “cut the fat” at the federal level. But in his district, he foresees a lack of trail maintenance hurting local outfitting companies and understaffed parks with closed gates.“This way is so indiscriminate, and it doesn’t really drill down on the real issue as to where those cuts need to be,” Erickson said. “I’m afraid that probably all we’re going to lose is services.”Erickson’s district is in a bind that’s playing out across the American west.Wyoming, for the third presidential election in a row, voted for Donald Trump by a wider margin than any other state in the country. Neighboring states Idaho and Montana also swung red with mile-wide margins. All three have high proportions of federal land (Idaho – 62%, Wyoming – 48%, Montana – 29%), and thriving outdoor recreation industries dependent on public lands.Erickson, while watching cuts with apprehension, said that he is still supportive of the president, who won more than 81% of presidential votes cast in Lincoln county in 2024.“It hasn’t really shaken me. It’s concerned me, but not shaken me in my support,” Erickson said.As layoffs under Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) bleed out of the Beltway and across the country, local business owners, politicians and federal employees in the rural Mountain West told the Guardian that they feared devastating consequences for their communities.The Guardian reached out to US senators from Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, some of whom have publicly praised Doge’s work, about their constituents’ concerns. None responded to a request for comment.Few towns represent the ties between small town economies and public lands better than Salmon, Idaho. With a population of just over 3,000, Salmon is cradled by a nest of federal lands, including the Salmon-Challis national forest, the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness and a smattering of Bureau of Land Management holdings.Dustin Aherin calls Salmon home, and is the president of Middle Fork Outfitters Association, which represents 27 local businesses. He said that the day-to-day duties of forestry service employees, from river patrol to permitting to conservation, keep businesses like his alive. Recent layoffs put their future in jeopardy.“The team in the field that manages the Middle Fork and Main Salmon river, all but two were terminated. And the two that were left have been reassigned,” Aherin said. “We have no on-the-ground management as of right now.”The urgency caused by the layoffs sent Aherin to Capitol Hill, where he spoke with the Guardian between meetings with federal officials. He held cautious optimism that Idaho’s federal delegation would be able to help craft a solution.A hundred miles south-west of Salmon, in Stanley, Idaho, Hannah, a terminated employee from the Sawtooth national forest who requested anonymity, has a grim outlook for the future of the small mountain town. She said that about 40% of staff was cut, including the entire wilderness and trail crew. She wonders who will handle the public-facing jobs, from cleaning toilets and campgrounds to providing visitor information, and worries about the effects on Stanley, which took a major hit in the 2024 wildfire season.“In a small town like this where you only have a couple good months of a summer season, one hard year and another hard-ish year could be really bad for some local businesses,” Hannah said.Hannah said the termination cost her her health insurance just weeks before a costly surgery, and she expects to have to relocate. In the early stages of her career, she said the experience will likely sour her, and other young civil servants, on public service.“We’re losing the next generation of public land stewards,” Hannah said. “And our public lands are under threat.”Similar anxiety is creeping into communities surrounding the Mountain West’s marquee national parks, which are economic engines for the region. A 2023 report estimated that National Parks generated more than $55bn in economic impact off of a budget of $3.6bn. Many of these dollars went to gateway towns in red states, such as those framing the entrances to Grand Teton national park or Yellowstone national park.Dale Sexton, owner of Dan Bailey’s fly shop in Livingston, Montana, is helping push the revival of the Yellowstone Business Coalition, whose 400-plus members are lobbying Montana’s federal delegation to work to address the effects of federal layoffs. Sexton is pragmatic about the national political climate and is betting that an economics-based argument will move the needle.“I’m envisioning that our delegation currently doesn’t want to abandon the Doge ship,” Sexton said. “But I’m also hopeful that outcry becomes so loud that it garners their attention and affects change.”Livingston city commissioner Karrie Kahle envisions a trickle-down effect from the layoffs.“As we lose federal workers first, if one of them is lost, we’re potentially losing a whole family from our community,” Kahle said. “If that federal worker has a partner, is that partner a teacher or doing other work in our community? Are we going to lose kids out of our school systems?”Andrea Shiverdecker, an archaeologist in Montana’s Custer-Gallatin national forest, lost her job on Valentine’s Day. Along with the impact on her personal life and community, Shiverdecker dwells on potential consequences for Yellowstone.“I don’t think people understand the sheer volume and amount of people that come through our ecosystem every year and the amount of manpower it takes to keep cleaned up,” Shiverdecker said. “This is what we fear with our public lands … We need to be stewards and foster them for future generations.”Shiverdecker said the layoff process has been disorienting. She said she was terminated 25 days before the end of her probationary period, while paperwork was being run for her promotion. She said she believes in “good people” and hopes to somehow return to her job, but right now, she has a lot of frustration.“How am I getting laid off for performance issues when you were processing my promotion?” Shiverdecker said. “It’s heartbreaking as a dedicated public servant, as a disabled veteran, as somebody who loves the fact that they’ve served. That’s the biggest honor you can give.” More

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      How Texas’s bankruptcy courts are used to shield a prison healthcare provider

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      When late last year the largest provider of healthcare to inmates in jails and prisons in the US found itself facing an avalanche of medical malpractice lawsuits, its path forward was seemingly obvious.By filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Texas’s increasingly popular bankruptcy courts, Wellpath Holdings could restructure itself, in the process staying the 1,500 lawsuits it had been facing and limiting its exposure to more than $100m in potential liabilities.Last month, a bankruptcy judge for the southern district of Texas in Houston extended those stays to give Wellpath additional time to propose how it might exit bankruptcy and continue operating.But critics say that the move is a cynical attempt to avoid paying out to the families of people devastated by the company’s actions in a state increasingly seen as a safe haven for big corporations looking to avoid paying out to people and families their actions have harmed.Among the cases stayed for Wellpath was one brought by Teesha Graham of Albuquerque. Her father Frankie died in 2022 after spending almost a week slumped in his San Juan county jail cell, covered in vomit and excrement as medical staff and prison guards refused his requests for help, an inmate in the jail told the Guardian.Also stayed was a claim brought by Nicole Poppell of Colorado Springs. Her daughter Savannah died aged 24 just three days after she was booked into El Paso county jail in Colorado. Incessant vomiting caused by opiate withdrawal tore her esophagus and she bled to death in her cell.“Now they’re filing bankruptcy the chances are I could get next to nothing but really I don’t even give a shit about the money,” said Nicole. “I just want to be heard.”Poppell and Graham are just two grieving family members wanting the bankruptcy court to consider their claims against Wellpath but as “unsecured creditors”, they are at the bottom of the hierarchy when it comes to who gets paid from the limited funds that remain.Last week they enjoyed a small victory as Wellpath dropped its request that the court approve some $5m in bonuses for 12 of its executives. “I’ll never understand it,” said Graham.Attorneys representing claimants against Wellpath say its bankruptcy was a long time coming, and part of a cynical strategy that would see it minimize costs with reduced staff and improper insurance coverage. Malpractice lawsuits would inevitably accumulate but using the Texas courts it could largely shed itself of those liabilities and exit from it all relatively unscathed.“These companies keep their costs as low as possible and then rely on the bankruptcy courts in Houston to bail them out once they hit a critical mass of lawsuits,” said Adam Flores, a New Mexico attorney representing Graham.Wellpath is a for-profit business headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, and owned by the private equity firm HIG Capital. It operates in jails and prisons across almost 40 states and is responsible for the care of hundreds of thousands of inmates.Although bankruptcy is governed by federal code, jurisdictions will enforce it with varying lenience, and typically if a company has enough assets in a given state they can make use of its courts.In recent years, the southern district of Texas has become a go-to bankruptcy venue, displacing the southern district of New York as the second most popular in the country behind Delaware.“The southern district of Texas really blew up four or five years ago,” said RJ Shannon, a bankruptcy attorney in Houston who is representing almost 100 claimants in the Wellpath case. “It’s a debtor-friendly court, so it’s where all the big cases will be filed.”Last year, the southern district of Texas saw 31 filings for bankruptcy by companies with assets greater than $100m, whereas the southern district of New York saw just 11, according to figures from Bankruptcy Data.Wellpath’s filing in November made it the second prison contractor to have used the court’s Houston division in just two years after the prison healthcare firm Corizon filed for Chapter 11 in early 2023. The maneuver it attempted has been referred to as “the Texas Two-Step” and sees a company split itself into two, placing valuable assets in one and its liabilities in the other.Although Wellpath is pursuing a simpler and more traditional Chapter 11 restructuring, its critics say the move is intended to have precisely the same effect.“I think the reason Wellpath filed here [in Texas] is that they saw Corizon do it and they saw good things came of it,” said Shannon. He said that not only was the Houston court friendly to debtors, it was also “user-friendly”, meaning proceedings can take place fast.Anna Holland Edwards, a civil rights attorney in Denver who has brought a handful of cases against Wellpath over her career, said she saw its bankruptcy coming from a mile away. In early November her office asked a state court to issue sanctions on the company ahead of its expected bankruptcy.Holland Edwards and other critics of Wellpath paint its use of Chapter 11 as a “business model” – both inevitable and symptomatic of the increasing extent to which America’s corporate assets have come under the ownership of private equity funds.They argue that Wellpath, under private equity ownership, borrowed money to buy up regional facilities across the country and then underbid rivals and county services in order to win taxpayer-funded government contracts. Underbidding meant cost-cutting.“If they don’t have enough money, maybe instead of having 10 nurses working in jail they’d only get five,” said Shannon.According to Graham, it was a lack of staff in San Juan county jail that led to her father’s death: “They feel like they can send two people in there to care for over 500 humans?”Another cost-cutting measure that may have brought Wellpath to its knees was its purchase of liability insurance policies that appeared to meet state and local government requirements but failed to establish any “true risk transfer”. As revealed in the ongoing bankruptcy proceedings, these policies only pay out if Wellpath covers a share of the damages, otherwise, no insurance kicks in.And so tight were Wellpath’s purse strings that at the time of its bankruptcy it had left about 15 EMS providers in Michigan with more than $6m worth of unpaid bills, according to the Michigan Association of Ambulance Services.Where the chips will now land remains uncertain, according to Shannon. As it stands, the ball is in Wellpath’s court, as it prepares to issue a revised plan for how it will restructure and emerge out of Chapter 11 operational.A recent ruling by the bankruptcy judge Alfredo R Perez of the southern district of Texas extended the stay on the pending lawsuits until at least 30 April.In the meantime, unsecured creditors will fight to have as much money as possible set aside for their settlements. In many cases, especially those involving personal injury, once the stays are lifted plaintiffs’ right to seek damages will be restored, but the pool of funds from which to collect will be limited.For Wellpath, the plan after Chapter 11 is to continue business as usual, and with Trump in office, there has never been a better climate for it to emerge from bankruptcy, according to Andy McNulty, another civil rights attorney based in Colorado.“We saw when Donald Trump was elected that private prison company stocks soared to all-time highs so there’s no reason to believe that if Wellpath is allowed to continue operating it will not continue to profit off the suffering of inmates across the country,” he said.A spokesperson for Wellpath said in a statement to the Guardian that it had filed for Chapter 11 in order to “strengthen our financial foundation without compromising our ability to deliver high-quality patient care”.“We remain committed to providing vital healthcare services to underserved populations and are confident this process will allow us to continue to do so for years to come,” they added.The company declined to say why it chose to file in the southern district of Texas or to answer questions about its liability insurance.Savannah’s mother Nicole said she wanted to see Wellpath dissolved for good. “For three days she was in there and she was begging for help, she was crying for help, and she was alone,” she said. “I want these people shut down.” More

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      Yes, Trump is a hypocrite. But is pointing that out an effective attack? | Jan-Werner Mueller

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      Historians and psychologists will study when exactly the meeting between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy started to descend into political disaster. A plausible contender for an answer is the – in itself trivial – moment when Brian Glenn, representative of the far-right outlet Real America’s Voice (newly admitted to the press pool) asked the Ukrainian president why he was not wearing a suit.That framing – the wartime president was somehow “disrespecting” America – was then picked up in the vile attack on Zelenskyy by JD Vance and repeated by a chorus of sycophants in the Republican party (including Glenn’s girlfriend Marjorie Taylor Greene). Critics immediately pointed out the hypocrisy: if Elon Musk can appear in a T-shirt and a baseball cap at a cabinet meeting, what is wrong with someone wearing fatigues? That gotcha might provide momentary psychological satisfaction – but it’s important to understand why the charges of hypocrisy achieve little with the Maga-world and why, as a matter of political psychology, something different is needed.According to a much-repeated maxim from a 17th-century French moralist, hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue. According to this logic, hypocrisy actually contributes to moral standards being upheld, as no one wants to be seen flaunting them openly. Wearing a suit is obviously not an important “norm” – part of the problem with the whole debate about aspiring authoritarians breaking norms and crashing through guardrails has been that those diagnosing violations of norms have not always distinguished between different kinds of norms. They have also not made it clear why some norms matter for democracy much more than others (Trump was criticized for breaking the “norm” of having a pet in the White House).The larger issue, though, is that charges of hypocrisy do not land if the supposed hypocrite is not committed to any kind of consistency in the first place. They can simply assert that that the inconsistency happens to be justified: Musk de facto presiding over the cabinet meeting is OK because, hey, he’s a genius who can see more clearly than the rest of us why stopping cancer research and making hurricanes more deadly are actually making America greater in the long run. Zelenskyy, by contrast, is a Democrat in disguise who just does “propaganda”, according to Vance.An even better option for seeming hypocrites is to assert their superiority over those making the charge: Viktor Orbán is frequently accused of having betrayed his original liberal convictions; after all, he had been financed by George Soros to spend time at Oxford, his political party had a liberal, even outright anti-clerical, and pro-European program – before Orbán transformed himself into a cheerleader for the international far right. The response easily available to the authoritarian prime minister is that he has actually learnt something over the course of his career – to wit, that liberalism doesn’t work in his country – whereas the liberal critics, contrary to their self-image as sophisticated thinkers, cling to dogmas. Vance has kept pulling the same trick: he has learnt to stop worrying about Trump being Hitler and simply come to love the good felon, always emphasizing that he was able to see something in Trump that lesser mortals fail to get.A final reason why the accusation of hypocrisy is hardly a knock-down argument – and the one most applicable to Maga – is that those always ready to lie can hardly be caught out by claims about inconsistency. It is now clear that the Trump campaign was based on deceptions – starting with strident denials of any association with the Project 2025 Christian nationalists-cum-authoritarians. By the same token, Trump’s nominees were not exactly truthful in their confirmation hearings; and the entire Republican party is now evidently lying about their intended spending cuts.Pointing out the inconsistencies between what Maga Republicans – it’s not clear at this point whether there are any others – say one day and do the next will not be seen as a cause for moral introspection; rather, the inconsistency is proof of Maga’s power. What observers call performative lying is part of authoritarianism – think of Vladimir Putin lying to his interlocutor’s’ face, smiling, knowing that they know that he is lying, but cannot do anything about it.What about broader audiences? Do they not care about hypocrisy? True, some might; but, given the self-enclosed rightwing media ecosphere which has been created in the United States over decades – and the attention deficit of the public more broadly, to put it bluntly – it is unlikely that finer points about inconsistencies will get much of a hearing.The challenge is to devise rhetoric – and powerful gestures – that do not rely on complicated comparisons but stress how Trump and Musk are sabotaging the country. Democrats might simply boycott the Trump address to Congress next week and instead hold rallies and town halls establishing meaningful connections with citizens who Republicans are now refusing to listen to – and, yes, on those occasions, also slip in a point about hypocrisy: that the party that blathers about “giving power to the people” is afraid of any contact with the people.

      Jan-Werner Müller is a professor of politics at Princeton University and is a Guardian US columnist More

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      China and Canada retaliate after Trump trade tariffs come into effect

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      China and Canada unveiled retaliatory measures against the US after Donald Trump imposed his sweeping tariffs plan at midnight US time, despite warnings it could spark an escalating trade war.US tariffs have come into force of 25% against goods from Canada and Mexico, the US’s two biggest trading partners, and 20% tariffs against China – doubling the levy on China from last month.The duties will affect more than $918bn-worth (£722bn) of US imports from Canada and Mexico.China on Tuesday said it would impose fresh tariffs on a range of agricultural imports from the US next week. Its finance ministry said additional 15% tariffs would be imposed on chicken, wheat, corn and cotton, with further 10% tariffs on sorghum, soya beans, pork, beef, aquatic products, fruits, vegetables and dairy products.The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said Ottawa would respond with immediate 25% tariffs on C$30bn-worth ($20.7bn) of US imports. He said previously that Canada would target US beer, wine, bourbon, home appliances and Florida orange juice.Tariffs will be placed on another C$125bn ($86.2bn) of US goods if Trump’s tariffs were still in place in 21 days.“Tariffs will disrupt an incredibly successful trading relationship,” Trudeau said, adding that they would violate the US-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement signed by Trump during his first term.Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, was expected to announce her response on Tuesday morning, the country’s economy ministry said.Asian markets were down – after sharp falls in US markets on Monday – as Japan’s Nikkei fell 1.6%, Taiwan’s benchmark TWII index was off 0.5% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was down 0.$%.The Canadian dollar and the Mexican peso fell to their lowest levels in a month on Tuesday.In Europe, the FTSE 100 dropped by 57 points, or 0.65%, at the start of trading to 8,813 points, a day after rising more than 8,900 points for the first time. France’s CAC 40 fell 0.9% and Spain’s Ibex was down 0.8%.Trump and his allies claim that higher tariffs on US imports from across the world will help make America great again by enabling it to obtain political and economic concessions from allies and rivals on the global stage.Businesses, inside the US and worldwide, have warned of widespread disruption if the Trump administration pushes ahead with this strategy.Since winning November’s presidential election, the president has focused on China, Canada and Mexico, threatening the three markets with steep duties on their exports unless they reduced the “unacceptable” levels of illegal drugs crossing into the US.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile he slapped a 10% tariff on China last month, Trump has repeatedly delayed the imposition of tariffs on Canada and Mexico. The president has pledged to bring down prices in the US, but economists have warned that consumers in the country could be aversely affected by his trade plans.A 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico and a 10% levy on China would amount to “the largest tax increase in at least a generation”, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a thinktank, which estimated such a move would cost the typical US household more than $1,200 each year.Trump has vowed to go further, threatening to introduce “reciprocal” tariffs on countries that have their own duties on goods made in the US. He has said these will come into effect as soon as next month.China’s finance ministry said in a statement: “The US’s unilateral tariff increase damages the multilateral trading system, increases the burden on US companies and consumers, and undermines the foundation of economic and trade cooperation between China and the US.”The ministry said products shipped from the US to China that departed before 10 March and arrived before 12 April would not be subject to the tariffs.Trump has said the tariffs on China are because the government has failed to stop illicit fentanyl entering the US, which Beijing says is a “pretext” to threaten China.“China opposes this move and will do what is necessary to firmly safeguard its legitimate interests,” a foreign ministry spokesperson, Lin Jian, said.Chris Weston, an analyst at the brokerage Pepperstone, said: “Market anxiety levels have been dialled up, and we see traders having to react aggressively and dynamically to the deluge of headlines and social posts confirming that tariffs on China, Mexico and Canada are to be implemented in full and as threatened.” More

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      JD Vance says US economic interests in Ukraine the best way to guarantee its security

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      US vice-president JD Vance said that the best way to protect Ukraine from another Russian invasion is to guarantee the US has a financial interest in Ukraine’s future.“If you want real security guarantees, if you want to actually ensure that Vladimir Putin does not invade Ukraine again, the very best security guarantee is to give Americans economic upside in the future of Ukraine,” Vance said in the interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity which aired Monday night.“That is a way better security guarantee than 20,000 troops from some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years,” he said.The interview aired the same day the White House reportedly announced it was pausing military aid to Ukraine and days after US President Donald Trump clashed with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office.“What is the actual plan here? You can’t just fund the war forever. The American people won’t stand for that,” Vance said. This interview was recorded in advance, so it is unclear whether Vance was aware that the US would have paused aid by the time it aired.Vance and Hannity spoke about Friday’s contentious meeting, which Vance said he tried to diffuse. He said that the doors were still open for negotiations.“There was a lack of respect. There was a certain sense of entitlement,” Vance said about Zelenskyy. “They showed a clear unwillingness to discuss the peaceful settlement that President Trump has tried to bring to this situation.”Before Friday’s meeting, a minerals deal was meant to establish a joint fund between the US and Ukraine that would receive revenues from the mining of rare earth metals and other precious minerals in Ukraine, as well as some oil and gas revenues.Later in Monday’s interview, Vance doubled down on his criticism on European leaders over
free speech and democracy. The vice-president claimed that the Biden administration promoted censorship.“These ideas are going to destroy western civilization,” Vance said. “They’re going to destroy Europe, and they would destroy the United States of America if we allowed them to fester.”He went on to repeat anti-immigrant rhetoric, claiming mass migration poses a major threat to Europe. By the end of the interview, the conversation had turned to anti-trans topics, just days after Trump signed an executive order barring transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports. More

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      Trump administration briefing: Vance defends US position on Ukraine; tariffs hit Canada, Mexico and China

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      Donald Trump has paused military aid to Ukraine following his clash with the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, last week, according to US media reports.Vance told Fox News in an interview recorded before the announcement on Monday that giving Washington an economic interest in the future of Ukraine will serve as a security guarantee for the country that Russia invaded in February 2022.“If you want real security guarantees, if you want to actually ensure that Vladimir Putin does not invade Ukraine again, the very best security guarantee is to give Americans economic upside in the future of Ukraine,” Vance said in the interview.“That is a way better security guarantee than 20,000 troops from some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years,” he added.US suspends all military aid to Ukraine, reports say, in wake of Trump-Zelenskyy rowThe Trump administration has suspended delivery of all US military aid to Ukraine, according to US media reports, blocking billions in crucial shipments as the White House piles pressure on Ukraine to sue for peace with Vladimir Putin.It comes after a dramatic blow-up in the White House on Friday during which Donald Trump told Volodymyr Zelenskyy that he was “gambling with” a third world war. The Ukrainian president was told to come back “when he is ready for peace”.Read the full storyChina and Canada retaliate after Trump trade tariffs come into effectChina and Canada unveiled retaliatory measures against the US after Donald Trump imposed his sweeping tariffs plan at midnight US time, despite warnings it could spark an escalating trade war.Read the full storyUS health department offers early retirement in latest round of Musk-led cutsThe US health department told employees on Monday they could apply for early retirement over the next 10 days and should respond to a request for information on their accomplishments of the past week, according to emails seen by Reuters.Read the full storyTrump outraged at Zelenskyy – againThe rift between Washington and Kyiv over a potential ceasefire in the war with Russia grew larger on Monday as Donald Trump expressed new outrage at Volodymyr Zelenskyy for saying that the end of the war could be “very, very far away”.Read the full storyLinda McMahon, wrestling industry billionaire, confirmed as US education secretaryThe US Senate has confirmed Linda McMahon as the nation’s next education secretary, entrusting the former wrestling executive with a department marked for dismantling by Donald Trump.The 76-year-old billionaire businesswoman and longtime Trump ally was approved 51-45, reflecting deep divisions over her qualifications and the administration’s education agenda. McMahon, who previously led the small business administration during Trump’s first term, now faces the paradoxical task of running an agency while simultaneously working toward its potential elimination.McMahon’s ascension comes amid reports that Trump is preparing an executive order instructing her to slash the department’s operations to the legal minimum while pushing Congress for its complete closure.Read the full storyHealth official quits after reported clashes with RFK JrA top spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services has abruptly resigned from the department, just two weeks after starting the job and as the country grapples with an escalating measles outbreak.Read the full storyDemocrats invite fired federal workers to Trump’s addressWorkers fired in Donald Trump’s mass purge of the federal government will attend his address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday at the invitation of Democrats seeking to display the human costs of the president’s radical policies.Read the full storySchumer: pause on cyber operations gives Putin ‘free pass’A senior US Democrat has hit out at Donald Trump’s attempt to reset relations with Russia following revelations that the president’s administration is retreating from the fight against Russian cyberthreats, calling the reported move “a critical strategic mistake”.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      A natalist conference featuring speakers including self-described eugenicists and promoters of race science will be held at a hotel and conference venue operated by the public University of Texas, Austin.

      Republicans in red states across the US have been pushing a slew of anti-LGBTQ+ measures targeting same-sex marriages with an aim of ultimately securing a supreme court ban on the federally protected right.

      The CEO of a giant in the semiconductor chip industry joined Trump to announce the Taiwanese company’s new $100bn investment in production in the United States. CC Wei, the chief executive of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) said the new investment brings TSMC’s total investment in chip manufacturing in the US to $165bn.

      US stocks plunged Monday afternoon as selling intensified after Trump said there was “no room left” for tariff negotiations with Canada and Mexico. The ISM survey showed manufacturing PMI slipped to 50.3 last month from 50.9 in January. More