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      Trump announces more than $200bn of deals between US and UAE

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      Donald Trump has announced deals totaling more than $200bn between the United States and the United Arab Emirates, including a $14.5bn commitment among Boeing, GE Aerospace and Etihad Airways, as he pledged to strengthen ties between the US and the Gulf state during a multiday trip to the Middle East.The White House said on Thursday that Boeing and GE had received a commitment from Etihad Airways to invest $14.5bn to buy 28 US-made Boeing 787 and 777X aircraft powered by GE engines.“With the inclusion of the next-generation 777X in its fleet plan, the investment deepens the longstanding commercial aviation partnership between the UAE and the United States, fueling American manufacturing, driving exports,” the White House said.Antonoaldo Neves, the CEO of Etihad, said last month that the airline planned to add 20 to 22 new planes to its fleet of roughly 100 aircraft this year, as it aims to expand to more than 170 planes by 2030 and boost Abu Dhabi’s economic diversification strategy.Etihad, which is owned by Abu Dhabi’s $225bn wealth fund ADQ, has been through a multiyear restructuring and management shake-up, but has expanded under Neves.He said that 10 of the new aircraft this year would be Airbus A321LRs, which the carrier launched on Monday and will start operating in August. The remainder include six Airbus A350s and four Boeing 787s.The news follows a Wednesday announcement that Boeing had landed its largest-ever deal for wide-body airplanes, after securing an order for $96bn worth of Boeing jets from Qatar.The deal-making comes as the US president nears the ends of his multiday tour in the Middle East. Controversy has dogged the visit after the president announced earlier this week that he planned to accept a $400m luxury jumbo jet from the government of Qatar, raising numerous ethical concerns.Trump has since doubled down on his plans to accept the airplane as the new Air Force One, and eventually transfer it to his presidential library. “We’re the United States of America. I believe we should have the most impressive plane,” he said on Wednesday. More

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      ‘So many are devastated’: Trump’s federal firings and their ripple effect

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      Naomi Anderson was on leave looking after her young baby when she was told her US Department of Agriculture job helping farmers in developing countries was being cut. A former volunteer with the Peace Corps, which sends young Americans overseas to projects in emerging economies, Anderson had expected to spend her whole career in international development.“I had taken this job two years ago expecting to stay here for at least 10 years, and you know, we had started to make a community and build up our life here. In January, we had started looking at buying a home,” she says.Now Anderson is having to consider giving up the apartment in the Washington DC commuter town of Reston, Virginia, that she shares with her husband and their four-month-old baby and almost two-year-old toddler.“Financially, it’s a little bit precarious, and honestly we’re not sure what we’re going to do,” says Anderson, who is also an activist with the local branch of the AFSCME union and dabbles in selling political merchandise. “We’re thinking about moving back to Ohio, where I’m from, where my family is. You know, it’s a lot cheaper there.”Anderson is far from alone. “In our apartment complex, there’s been lots of yard sales, people selling things and moving away. It really does seem like people are just picking up and leaving, because it’s too expensive to live here without a job,” she says.Tough life-decisions like these have been forced on hundreds of thousands of former federal employees in the past couple of months, as the so-called department of government efficiency (Doge), which is headed up by Donald Trump’s favourite tech billionaire, Elon Musk, has slashed jobs in a cost-cutting spree.Data from the latest monthly Challenger jobs report suggests Doge has been responsible for 281,452 job cuts so far – almost eight times the number of workers the government let go in the entire year to April 2024.Brendan Demich is among those to be dismissed, losing his job as an engineer at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. All his colleagues working on mine safety, as well as those in their sister laboratory testing equipment such as respirators, are also leaving – more than 200 in total – as part of a wave of cuts initiated by Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.“So many people are devastated,” says Demich, chief steward of the local AFGE union branch. He says so many workers have been removed at once that their colleagues have barely been able to give them any kind of send-off. “It’s just unceremoniously leaving, because they had their package processed and they had to walk out the door.”Each of these cuts has its own human impact, but experts are warning of a growing risk that they combine to trigger an economic retrenchment – particularly in areas with a heavy concentration of government jobs.View image in fullscreenLiz Shuler, the president of the AFL-CIO federation of 63 trade unions, which together represent more than 15 million US workers, is trying to build a nationwide campaign to highlight the devastating impact.“The trick is connecting the dots because there’s already a national narrative around what’s happening but it’s not quite being felt yet,” Shuler says. “Elon [Musk] has his ‘department of government efficiency’. We established the ‘department of people who work for a living’. That’s kind of cheeky, but it’s kind of serious, because we’re saying we’re the ones working on the frontlines. We know what’s efficient and what’s not.“Obviously as the labour federation we’re worried about jobs and people’s livelihoods, but it’s also connected to community, and the fact the economy is being impacted in such a stark way, that ripples out across all of the industries that we represent,” she adds.These ripples are being felt especially strongly in the towns and counties around Washington DC, where job losses and government cuts crop up constantly in conversation.Kate Bates is the president of the chamber of commerce in affluent Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River from the US capital. She compares the current uncertainty to the pandemic, “but during Covid, the federal government was the backstop, whereas right now it’s the federal government that’s causing a lot of this,” she says.Bates reports that her members are warning of a slowdown across real estate and hospitality, as well as among government contractors, with several reporting they have already had to make job cuts.“What we hear from a lot of people is that if they could plan for the cuts, they would be in an OK position, right? But because things are changing, going back and forth, that’s causing a lot of stress,” she says.View image in fullscreenBusinesses that rely on government workers for custom are also feeling the chill. Saamir Nizam, the general manager of Arlington’s Barley Mac restaurant, which is part of a small family-owned chain, has noticed trade declining in just about every one of their usual customer groups.The nearby hotels are less occupied; bookings for “happy hour parties” by the accountants and consultants who serve the federal government are down by two-thirds; and many older local residents have been spooked by market volatility.“We can only do so much to turn things around: we can’t pull people to Washington, or convince companies to go out and do things,” Nizam says. “Barley Mac serves great food, it gives great service, but it exists, like many restaurants, on the financial margin. And if the whole year is on the margin then restaurants like ours will go under, because we’re not part of a huge national chain which has deep pockets.”View image in fullscreenJess Miller, who set up Rock Spring Real Estate Solutions a couple of years ago, has been hosting a breakfast roundtable for clients, on the top floor of an as yet unoccupied new office block in Arlington.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionShe has noticed clients responding to the shifting climate, pulling out of deals and hoping to negotiate unusually short leases. The owners of this building are splitting the floors instead of looking for one anchor tenant.“Just how they’re making decisions is different – the cutbacks we’re seeing,” Miller says. “It hit the NGOs first and then it hit, you know, the corporations and the contractors, and it’s a lot of the senior management.”Katherine D’Zmura Friedman is a co-founder and the chief executive of Thumbprint, an Arlington-based startup offering an artificial intelligence platform for designing office layouts.View image in fullscreen“There’s no universe in which something like the last few months happens and there’s not serious consequences,” she says. “We’ve had family friends, we’ve had neighbours lose their jobs, and these are not people who would normally be subject to layoffs. These are people who are at the peak of their career, and hyper-specialised.”As far as the business effects are concerned, D’Zmura Friedman says: “Certainly on the commercial side, there’s been hesitancy about launching into things.”At her office nearby, Renata Briggman, a residential estate agent, plays down the idea that the housing market in Arlington could be hit, pointing to the many local employers broadly unaffected by federal spending – such as Amazon, which is headquartered here.However, she does acknowledge signs of change. “It’s definitely shifting. We’re not seeing any fire sales, it’s too soon for that. It’s very, very slow, and we’re just going to start seeing it, it’s just on the cusp … end of June, we’ll have a better idea.”View image in fullscreenSuch challenges are being replicated across the region. Jimmy Olevson, the president and chief executive of National Capital Bank, which serves Washington DC and the surrounding areas, says the bank is not yet seeing signs of financial distress, such as rising arrears, but the mood is “uneasy”. Many customers who have had a recent mortgage application approved seem to have put house-hunting on hold.Some experts fear this widespread mood of unease bodes badly for the coming months. Analysis by Dr João Ferreira, an expert in regional economics at the University of Virginia, suggests more than 320,000 people in the state are employed directly by the federal government – and another 441,000 jobs depend on taxpayer-funded contracts, of the kind that are being cut.In some sectors – construction, for example – the same firms fretting about whether their contract will be cut are also contending with the rising price of materials, as a result of tariffs. Although some of the border taxes have been paused or reduced, those restrictions that remain mean costs are still far higher than at the start of the year.In theory, the Trump administration could lift the gloom by drawing a line under budget cuts as Musk heads back to his day job running the electric carmaker Tesla. But key members of the cabinet, including Kennedy and the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, have boasted of how much they plan to slash from their budgets – and White House trade policy continues to see-saw.Ferreira says: “I think, as an economist, I’ve never seen so many things happening at the same time. But they all lead to the same direction, and that’s a recession.”He says Virginia has often been cushioned from economic downturns in the past by federal funding, but in this cycle he expects the state to lead the way. “We definitely might see that Virginia, and other regions like Maryland, will be the frontrunners in this recession period,” Ferreira says.Meanwhile, for many of the affected individuals, the future looks highly uncertain – despite the US treasury secretary Scott Bessent’s suggestion they should go work in manufacturing. “For us on our team, we work in international development,” says Anderson. “We have a background in humanitarian work, and the Trump administration is trying to cut international foreign aid. So where do you go from there?” More

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      China and US agree 90-day pause to trade war initiated by Donald Trump

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      China and the US have agreed a 90-day pause to the deepening trade war that has threatened to upend the global economy, with reciprocal tariffs to be lowered by 115%.Speaking to the media after talks in Geneva, the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said both sides had shown “great respect” in the negotiations.Bessent said: “The consensus from both delegations this weekend was neither side wants a decoupling.”The 90-day lowering of tariffs applies to the duties announced by Donald Trump on 2 April, which ultimately escalated to 125% on Chinese imports, with Beijing responding with equivalent measures.China also imposed non-tariff measures, such as restricting the export of critical minerals that are essential to US manufacturing of hi-tech goods.The US trade representative, Jamieson Greer, said China’s retaliation had been disproportionate and amounted to an effective embargo on trade between the world’s two biggest economies.With the 115% deduction, Chinese duties on US goods will be lowered to 10%, while the US tax on Chinese goods will be lowered to 30%. That is because the US tariffs include a 20% rate imposed by Trump before the latest trade war, which the president said was related to China’s role in the US’s fentanyl crisis. The fentanyl-related tariff will still apply.A spokesperson for China’s ministry of commerce said: “This move meets the expectations of producers and consumers in both countries, as well as the interests of both nations and the common interest of the world.“We hope that the US side will, based on this meeting, continue to move forward in the same direction with China, completely correct the erroneous practice of unilateral tariff hikes, and continually strengthen mutually beneficial cooperation.”China’s yuan jumped to a six-month high on the signal that the trade war would be paused. Up to 16m jobs were at risk in China, according to some estimates, while the US faced rising inflation and empty shelves thanks to dizzying tariffs on the biggest supplier of US goods.Bessent said he was impressed by the level of Chinese engagement on the fentanyl issue during the talks in Switzerland. “For the first time the Chinese side understood the magnitude of what is happening in the US,” Bessent said.A joint statement published by the US and China on Monday said that both sides would “continue to advance related work in a spirit of mutual openness, continuous communication, cooperation and mutual respect”.William Xin, the chair of the hedge fund Spring Mountain Pu Jiang Investment Management, told Reuters: “The result far exceeds market expectations. Previously, the hope was just that the two sides can sit down to talk, and the market had been very fragile. Now, there’s more certainty. Both China stocks and the yuan will be in an upswing for a while.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHu Xijin, the former editor of the nationalist Chinese tabloid the Global Times, said on social media the agreement was a “great victory for China in upholding the principles of equality and mutual respect”. Hu noted on Weibo that the recently agreed UK-US trade deal maintained the US’s 10% tariff on UK imports, “while the UK did not implement reciprocal measures”.Wang Wen, the head of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University in Beijing, said: “This is an unexpected achievement in Sino-US tariff negotiations.”However, Wang also urged caution, as he said the agreement “does not represent the resolution of the structural contradictions between China and the United States, nor does it mean that there will be no friction and serious differences between China and the United States in the future”.Stock markets across Europe rose in the aftermath of the US-China announcement. Germany’s DAX index jumped by 1.5%, with Mercedes-Benz, Daimler Trucks and BMW among the biggest risers. France’s CAC index rose by 1.2%.Additional research by Lillian Yang More

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      Pharmaceutical stocks slide as Trump vows to cut US prescription drug prices ‘by 30-80%’

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      Donald Trump has promised to use his executive powers to cut the price of prescription drugs in the US in an attempt to bring them more in line with other countries, triggering a sharp fall in drugmakers’ share prices.The US president has said he will sign an order on Monday that will reduce prescription drug and pharmaceutical prices “almost immediately” by “30% to 80%”.Writing on Truth Social, his social media platform, Trump said on Sunday it was “difficult to explain and very embarrassing” why drug prices in the US were higher compared with many other countries.“The Pharmaceutical/Drug Companies would say, for years, that it was Research and Development Costs, and that all of these costs were, and would be, for no reason whatsoever, borne by the ‘suckers’ of America, ALONE,” he wrote.He said he would introduce a “most favoured nation” policy whereby the US pays “the same price as the nation that pays the lowest price anywhere in the World”.The comments triggered a sell-off in pharmaceutical stocks on Monday amid worries profits could be hit if firms have to cut prices in the US.In London, shares in the pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca and GSK fell in early trading by as much as 5% and 3.2% respectively. Shares in Denmark’s Novo Nordisk which makes the weight loss and anti-diabetes drugs Wegovy and Ozempic, dropped by 7.5% in Copenhagen, while the Swiss group Roche Holdings fell by 3.6%.In South Korea, shares in SK Biopharmaceuticals and Samsung Biologics fell by 2.1% and 4.7% respectively. In Hong Kong, the cancer drug maker BeiGene dropped by nearly 9% and Innovent Biologics fell by 5.7%.In Japan, the pharmaceutical sector index fell by more than 4%, while Indian pharma stocks also dropped.Alex Schriver, a senior vice-president at Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said: “Government price-setting in any form is bad for American patients. At a time when we are facing growing competition from China, policymakers should focus on fixing the flaws in the US system, not importing failed policies from abroad.”European drugmakers have been urging the EU to allow higher medicine prices, warning that without stronger investment incentives, Europe would fall further behind the US.Threats of US tariffs on pharmaceutical products have prompted a number of firms to announce manufacturing investments in the country, including Switzerland’s Novartis and Roche, and the US firms Johnson & Johnson and Gilead Sciences. Trump has hinted at a reprieve for companies, saying they would be given “a lot of time” to shift operations to the US before facing levies.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump targeted high drug costs during his first administration, which aimed to cap prices for certain medicines under Medicare. However, the move was struck down in federal court after a challenge from drug companies.The American government already negotiates prices for some of the most expensive medicines used in Medicare, a federal health insurance programme, under Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Medicare covers 66 million Americans, mostly aged 65 or over.Trump did not specify on Sunday whether his executive order would apply to Medicare, Medicaid or other government health programmes.He suggested that industry lobbyists had been unsuccessful in the White House despite the fact that big pharmaceutical companies and industry bodies had made donations to his inauguration.“Campaign Contributions can do wonders, but not with me, and not with the Republican party. We are going to do the right thing, something that the Democrats have fought for many years,” he said. More

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      White House claims China trade deal reached after ‘productive’ Geneva talks

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      The White House has announced that a trade deal with China has been struck after two days of talks in Geneva.The announcement on Sunday came after the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, told reporters that there had been “substantial progress” in talks between his team and that of the Chinese vice-premier, He Lifeng, in Geneva on defusing the trade war between the world’s two largest economies sparked by Donald Trump’s 145% tariffs.At a news conference later on Sunday, He, the top Chinese trade official, called the talks “candid” and said substantive progress had been made to reach an “important consensus”, according to China’s state-run media. The two sides will issue a joint statement agreed during the talks, the vice-premier said.In televised remarks that were posted on social media by the White House, Bessent said he would give more details on Monday, “but I can tell you that the talks were productive”.“I’m happy to report that we’ve made substantial progress between the United States and China in the very important trade talks,” Bessent told reporters.The US trade representative, Jamieson Greer, who spoke alongside Bessent, suggested more strongly that a deal had been reached.“It’s important to understand how quickly we were able to come to agreement, which reflects that perhaps the differences were not so large as maybe thought,” Greer said.“Just remember why we’re here in the first place,” he added. “The United States has a massive $1.2tn trade deficit, so the president declared a national emergency and imposed tariffs, and we’re confident that the deal we struck with our Chinese partners will help us to resolve, work toward resolving that national emergency.”Bessent said he had informed Trump of the progress of the talks.The meeting was the first face-to-face interaction between Bessent, Greer and He since the world’s two largest economies imposed tariffs well above 100% on each other’s goods.Although Bessent has said the bilateral tariffs were too high and needed to come down in a de-escalation move, he did not offer any details of reductions agreed and took no questions from reporters.On Saturday night, Trump wrote on his social media platform that the two sides were working on “a total reset … in a friendly, but constructive, manner.”“Many things discussed, much agreed to,” Trump posted. “We want to see, for the good of both China and the U.S., an opening up of China to American business. GREAT PROGRESS MADE!!!,” Trump added. Trump’s rhetoric, that China needs to be “opened” to US business seemed to ignore a half century of trade between the two nations since one of his political heroes, Richard Nixon, visited China in 1972.The US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, confirmed to CNN that the US will continue to keep “a 10% baseline tariff to be in place for the foreseeable future” even on imports from nations the US strikes new trade deals with.On Sunday, Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, said: “What’s going to happen in all likelihood is that relationships are going to be rebooted. It looks like the Chinese are very very eager to play ball and renormalise things … they really want to rebuild a relationship that’s great for both of us.”Last week, Trump and the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, announced a limited bilateral trade deal.Hassett said the UK agreement provided a “really exciting blueprint” and that he had been briefed on 24 deals with other countries that are in the works. “They all look a little bit like the UK deal but each one is bespoke,” he said.Meanwhile, Lutnick dismissed reports of dock workers and truckers losing their jobs as a result of the tariffs.“This is just a China problem right now,” Lutnick said. “The rest of the world is 10% [tariffs]. So don’t overdo it.”“Prices are going to stay stable once this policy is done,” Lutnick added.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      ‘Really a mess’: US’s air traffic control system suffering from years of neglect

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      Twice in the past two weeks, communications between air traffic controllers and airplanes at Newark Liberty, one of the US’s busiest airports, have failed – leaving controllers unable to communicate with pilots.The outages have, thankfully, only led to massive delays, not disaster. But they have also once again focused a harsh light on the persistent safety problems at US airports, which handle over 50,000 flights a day.As a result of that estimated 90-second communications breakdown on 28 April, many air traffic controllers said they felt traumatized, and thousands of passengers suffered from the hundreds of canceled and delayed flights. A brief radar outage on Friday morning left radar screens black for another 90 seconds – underlining a growing crisis.Political leaders were quick to criticize the rickety state of the air traffic system. Senator Charles Schumer of New York said the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was “really a mess”, while New Jersey’s governor, Phil Murphy, decried “decades of underinvestment” in air traffic control infrastructure, “delays” in modernizing technology, and “inadequate air traffic control staffing”.The transport department’s inspector general has found that at 20 of the nation’s 26 most critical airports, air traffic control staffing falls below the 85% minimum level, with many controllers forced to work 10-hour days and six-day weeks. After the communications breakdown in Newark, several air traffic controllers there was so shaken that they went on “trauma leave”, leaving that airport even more understaffed.The Trump administration moved swiftly to respond after the alarming episode at Newark. On Thursday, Sean Duffy, the secretary of transportation, unveiled a plan to build a new state-of-the-art system that would overhaul the technology used by the nation’s air traffic controllers. Duffy said his plan would replace “antiquated telecommunications, with new fiber, wireless and satellite technologies at over 4,600 sites”.“A lot of people have said: this problem is too complicated, too expensive, too hard,” Duffy said on Thursday. “But we are blessed to have a president who actually loves to build and knows how to build.”Airlines and the air traffic controllers’ union applauded Duffy’s proposal, but several airline industry experts voiced fears that it would fall short, as have many past plans to fix the system. In a statement, the Modern Skies Coalition, a group of industry associations and experts, said: “We are pleased that the secretary has identified the priorities of what must be done to maintain safety and remain a leader in air navigation services.”The air traffic control system has been through some tough months. In January, a commercial jet collided with an army helicopter near Reagan Washington National airport, killing 67 people in the deadliest aviation disaster in the US since 2001. Trump upset many aviation industry experts and outraged many Americans when he, even before an investigation was begun, rushed to blame the crash on diversity, equity and inclusion.On 1 May, another army helicopter forced two flights to abort their landings at Reagan airport. Newark airport has suffered at least two other similar communications breakdowns since last August. A New York Times investigation in 2023 found that close calls involving commercial airlines occurred, on average, several times each week – with 503 air traffic control lapses occurring in the 12 months before 30 September 2023.For some these latests issues are part of a much older story. “The system’s staffing problems started when Ronald Reagan fired over 10,000 air traffic controllers,” after they went on strike in 1981, said Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants.“And those problems were worsened by his pushing the hatred of government and the dismantling of government. That’s what’s put us on the track to where we are today. There were budget cuts and tax cuts for the rich, and all that stopped us from doing the infrastructure projects and hiring and training that we needed to have a stable system.”The nation’s air navigation system has just under 10,800 certified controllers, but their union, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, says there needs to be more than 14,300, the number recommended by an arm of the FAA, called the Collaborative Resource Workgroup. There are over 2,000 controllers in training, and the union has urged the Trump administration to increase the number in the pipeline. Training usually takes 18 to 24 months, and getting up to speed to work at the most demanding airports such as JFK and Newark can take more than three years.“There is a shortage of controllers nationwide, but not to the degree it’s occurring at Newark,” said Jeff Guzzetti, an industry consultant who was an investigator for the FAA and National Transportation Safety Board.“There’s been a shortage of controllers for years, if not decades. That shortage was exaggerated by Covid; they couldn’t conduct training for new controllers. Beyond that, they’ve always had a problem finding the right people with the right skills to control traffic and to get people to pass the course work at the training academy and then to get them up to speed.”Many trainees drop out and don’t pass their exams, and many controllers don’t stay in the job because it is so stressful. In recent years, the number of controllers has been relatively flat. The total has declined by 10% since 2012 due to retirements and trainees failing to finish their requirements.“It’s not only the shortage of air traffic controllers. It’s antiquated facilities and equipment and software,” Guzzetti said. Many facilities still rely on floppy disks and copper wire.He said: “It’s all coming to a head now in New York and Newark. Newark has always been the worst in terms of air traffic staffing and modernizing its equipment.”Last September, the Government Accountability Office said the FAA needed to take “urgent action” to deal with its antiquated air traffic control systems. It said 51 of the FAA’s 138 air traffic control systems were unsustainable.On Thursday, Duffy did not say what his modernization plan would cost. The House transportation and infrastructure committee says it would cost $12.5bn to overhaul the air traffic control system, but Duffy says his plan would cost more than that. “Decades of neglect have left us with an outdated system that is showing its age,” he said. “Building this new system is an economic and national security necessity.”On May 1, Duffy announced a related plan filled with incentives that he said would “supercharge the air traffic controller work force.” It includes $5,000 bonuses to new hires who successfully finish the initial training.Joseph McCartin, a labor historian at Georgetown University who wrote a book about the 1981 air traffic controllers’ strike, said that ever since Reagan fired 11,345 striking controllers, “the system has been out of sync”.“The natural rhythm of the system broke down and we never fully recovered,” he said. “We’ve improved over time, but the FAA still has grave difficulty staffing facilities.”McCartin added: “[Elon Musk’s] Doge has made things only worse. The entire system that federal employees operate under has been terribly destabilized. The FAA exists in a world where this entire project of the federal government is teetering.”Robert W Mann Jr, an aviation industry analyst, said that for 40 years there have been FAA reauthorizations approved by Congress, but they haven’t fixed the problems. “Unless you do it right, it doesn’t make a difference what you spend,” he said. “You won’t have solved the root causes.”Nonetheless, Mann said he remained confident about airline safety. He said: “There’s a primacy in this business. Whether you’re working at airlines or the FAA, safety is the first thing.”Mann said that days when an airport faces severe understaffing of air traffic controllers or a crush of airplanes eager to take off as bad weather lifts, there will often be delays to ensure safety. “I’m not worried about safety,” Mann said, “but I might be worried that my flight will be four hours’ late.”Nelson, the flight attendants’ president, said that the US should be thankful to air traffic controllers because their job is so hard, stressful and important. “They should be commended for working in a system that’s crumbling,” she said. “They’re the ones we all need to applaud right now. They’re like the nurses during Covid, when everyone came out at 6 o’clock to bang pots and pans.”A big question now is whether Congress will approve the money for Duffy’s ambitious modernization plan. Nelson said: “I hate to say we’re a canary in the coalmine, but those of us in the airline industry have known for a long time that a lot of this [the air traffic control equipment] has been a problem. What happened in Newark is a sign of what will come in other airports if we don’t get the budget we need.” More

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      Protecting democracy is not enough: five things Americans must fight for | Huck Gutman

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      A recent dinner was peaceable until it was just about over, when a friend’s son spoke up in praise of a middle-of-the-road columnist and how his opposition to Donald Trump’s attack on democracy revealed that we were all on the progressive left now.“Not true,” I responded with more vehemence than I expected. “Wanting democratic norms is not sufficient; it is merely a precondition for meaningful change.” Making sure the US’s plumbing was secure did not mean that anything of importance would pass through the pipes.There has been a great outcry about the erosion of democratic practices during these first hundred days of the second Trump presidency. Many Americans, probably a solid majority, are appalled at the attack on our courts and judges, at the willful ignoring of habeas corpus, at the intrusion of unelected figures – not just Elon Musk, but his whole “department of government efficiency” (Doge) team – into the privacy of American lives, at the undoing of the independence of agencies intended to protect the public.But protecting democracy is not enough. It is a rearguard action, one that fights against incursions that would transform the United States into an oligarchic state serving special interests. It does not address the needs of the larger public. Fighting for procedures and not substance is insufficient.Those who fight for the future of our nation need to fight not just against threats, but for a just and equitable future. Too often the well-deserved plaudits for those who fight against do not extend to articulating a program of what the American nation needs, in addition to democratic institutions.Here are five specific suggestions for what we should be fighting for. Without these reforms, defenses of democracy ring hollow, elevating a defense of form while denying any attention to substance.First, the nation needs a new minimum wage, a living wage, not the residue of 1938 legislation called the Fair Labor Standards Act. No one can live on $7.25 an hour, which translates to about $15,000 a year.Second, Americans deserve healthcare as a right. A Medicare for All system would extend healthcare to every person. Its cost would be more than offset by eliminating the 25% of healthcare spending that goes for overhead in our private-insurance-dominated system. Cutting $1tn of needless bureaucratic expenses and bill-keeping would ensure that we have the money to provide healthcare to everyone.Third, Americans should find it easy to join unions if they wish. The decline in unionization is a major reason why, as the wealthy get ever wealthier, wages have been flat or declining for almost 50 years. As it stands, the table is tilted toward management. Corporations regulate all employee concerns, from wages to healthcare to retirement benefits, leaving workers little to no chance to say what they actually want. We must level that playing field so that workers together can fight for their needs.Fourth, we need to increase taxes on the wealthy. There is no reason that Warren Buffett, as he has said, should pay a lower tax rate than his secretary. Increasing the marginal tax rate for the highest earners, limiting the exorbitant pass-throughs of the inheritance tax, and ending the unhealthy practice of taxing paper gains in wealth, or capital gains, less than the money earned by workers would diminish the federal deficit and at the same time fund many needed services to Americans. Removing the cap on income subject to social security taxes would ensure the solvency of the nation’s pension program for generations.Fifth, we should reverse the deeply damaging Citizens United decision, which enabled the wealthy and their special interests to buy elections. Currently, money and not votes determines the priorities of the United States. If the supreme court does not reverse this decision, a constitutional amendment limiting contributions – one person, one vote, with a low limit on individual contributions and no contributions by corporations – would fix this loophole, which has corrupted all of American politics.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThere is, rightly, much concern about the undemocratic moves made by the Trump administration. But unless we demand changes in what the United States does, unless we do more than just defending the practices of democracy, our society will remain dysfunctional. Those who focus only on the process of maintaining the pipes required for quenching our thirst, without giving us actual water to drink, are fighting only a small part of the battle.What’s giving me hope nowWe need to fight for democracy, but we also need to fight for the achievable goals democracy can bring us, particularly economic justice for all Americans. Raising wages, providing healthcare to all, fostering unions, taxing the wealthy and corporations, preventing big money from buying elections: these are the things the renewal of democracy can and should bring us.

      Huck Gutman is a former chief of staff to Senator Bernie Sanders and an emeritus professor at the University of Vermont More