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      Wall Street strategists’ bull and bear scenarios for 2024.

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      Wall Street’s forecasts mostly missed this year’s bull market rally. Here’s what strategists are saying about 2024.Last November and December, veteran stock market watchers forecast that 2023 would be a year to forget. They saw high inflation, a looming global recession and rising interest rates as sapping households’ buying power and denting corporate profits. For investors, they penciled in paltry gains and one of the worst performances for the S&P 500 in the past 15 years.But the market pros got the story only partly right. While interest rates did climb to a near two-decade peak, the S&P 500 has surprisingly soared to a near record high. Fueled partly by a rally in the so-called Magnificent Seven megacap tech stocks, it’s risen nearly 25 percent this year, as of Thursday’s close, shaking off a banking crisis, wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, and slowing growth in China’s economy.Crypto managed to do even better. Bitcoin bulls have swept aside a legal crackdown against the industry’s biggest players to fuel an impressive rally. The digital token has gained more than 150 percent this year, making it one of the best performing risky assets.“Twenty twenty-three was a great year for the contrarians,” David Bahnsen, the founder and chief investment officer of the Bahnsen Group, a wealth management firm, told DealBook. “You had macroeconomic concerns a year ago that didn’t come to bear, and you had valuation and financial concerns that didn’t come to bear. And it’s particularly ironic that it didn’t, because actually everything investors feared a year ago got worse.”Wall Street’s outlook for 2024 is rosier. Analysts see lower borrowing costs, a soft landing (that is, an economic slowdown that avoids a recession) and a pretty good year for investors.But if 2023 taught the market pros anything, it’s that forecasts can look out of date pretty fast. A slew of things could disrupt the markets in the year ahead — inflation creeping up again, or not, is one big factor to watch. And there are wild cards, too, with voters expected to head to the polls in over 50 countries next year, including the U.S.Here’s how Wall Street sees 2024 playing out:The bull caseThe median year-end 2024 forecast for the S&P 500 is 5,068, according to FactSet. Such a level would imply an annualized gain of roughly 6 percent for 2024.Bank of America’s equity strategists, led by Savita Subramanian, are among those in the bullish camp. In their annual forecast, they said that the S&P 500 would be likely to close out next year at 5,000, helped by a kind of “goldilocks” scenario of falling prices and rising corporate profits.Goldman Sachs is even more upbeat. Its analysts upgraded their year-end 2024 call on the S&P 500 to 5,100. They made the change after the Fed’s surprise statement on Dec. 13 that the equivalent of three interest-rate cuts were on the table for next year. Lower borrowing costs tend to give consumers and businesses more spending power, which could help Corporate America’s bottom line.Another catalyst: Investors this year put far more money into safe interest-rate sensitive assets, like money market funds, than they did into stocks. That logic could be flipped on its head in 2024. “As rates begin to fall, investors may rotate some of their cash holdings toward stocks,” David Kostin, the chief U.S. equity strategist at Goldman Sachs, said in a recent investor note.The bear caseOn the more pessimistic side is JPMorgan Chase, which carries a 2024 year-end target of 4,200. Its analysts team, led by Marko Kolanovic, the bank’s chief global market strategist, sees a struggling consumer with depleted savings, a potential recession and geopolitical uncertainty that could push up commodity prices, like oil, and push down global growth.The year ahead will be “another challenging year for market participants,” Kolanovic said. (Most strategists are even more downbeat on Europe, where recession fears are more acute. On the flip side, equities in Asia could show another year of solid growth, especially in India and Japan, Wall Street analysts say.)Lee Ferridge, the head of multi-asset strategy for North America at State Street Global Markets, is more optimistic about the American consumer, but points to a different challenge for investors. “If I’m right, the economy stays stronger. But then that’s a double-edged sword for equities,” he said. The prospect of robust consumer and business spending poses an inflation risk that could force the Fed to hold rates higher for longer, and even pause cuts, he said. “That’s going to be a headwind for equities.”“I wouldn’t be surprised to see a fairly flat year next year,” he added. “If we are up, it’s going to be the Magnificent Seven that are the drivers again.”The wild card: politics and the electionsPresidential elections are not rally killers, according to market analysis by LPL Financial that looks at the past 71 years. In that period, the S&P has risen, on average, by 7 percent during U.S. presidential election years. (The market tends to do even better in a re-election year, the financial advice firm notes.)Even with some uncommon questions swirling over next year’s contest — Will a mountain of legal troubles derail the Republican front-runner, Donald Trump? Will President Biden’s sagging polling ratings open the door for a strong third-party challenger? Will the election result be disputed, causing a constitutional crisis? — that’s unlikely to add much volatility to the markets, Wall Street pros say.“The election will not be a story in the stock market, up until November 2024, for the simple reason that the stock market will not know who’s going to win the election until November 2024,” Bahnsen said.His advice: Don’t even try to game out the election’s impact on the markets. More

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      Donald Trump Still Wants to Kill Obamacare. Why?

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      Donald Trump hasn’t talked much about policy in this election cycle, except for vague assertions that he’ll somehow bring back low unemployment and low inflation — which, by the way, has already happened. (Unemployment has been at or below 4 percent for almost two years. Thursday’s report on consumer spending showed the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of underlying inflation getting close to its 2 percent target.) Most of his energy seems to be devoted to the prospect of wreaking revenge on his political opponents, whom he promises to “root out” like “vermin.”Nonetheless, over the past few days, Trump has declared that if he returns to the White House, he’ll once again seek to do away with the Affordable Care Act, the reform that has produced a significant decline in the number of Americans without health insurance.Why this renewed assault? “Obamacare Sucks!!!” declared the former and possibly future president. For those offended by the language, these are Trump’s own words, and I think I owe it to my readers to report what he actually said, not sanitize it. Trump also promised to provide “MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE” without offering any specifics.So let’s discuss substance here. Does Obamacare, in fact, suck? And can we believe Trump’s promise to offer something much better?On the latter question, remember that Trump and his allies came very close to killing the A.C.A. in 2017 and replacing it with their own plan — and the Congressional Budget Office did a detailed analysis of the legislation that almost passed. The budget office predicted that by 2026, the Republican bill would cause 32 million people to lose health insurance, and that the premiums paid by individuals buying their own insurance (as opposed to getting it through their employers) would double.There is, as far as I can tell, no reason to believe that Trump has come up with a better plan since then, or that a new analysis of his plan would be any less dismal.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      The Fed’s Decisions Now Could Alter the 2024 Elections

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      The state of the economy will affect voting next November, and the Federal Reserve may find itself in a delicate position, our columnist says.What’s happening in the economy now will have a big effect — perhaps, a decisive one — on the presidential election and control of Congress in 2024.To a remarkable extent, the economy is what matters to voters, so much so that one long-running election model relies on economic data to produce accurate predictions without even considering the identities, personalities, popularity or policies of candidates, or the strategies, messaging or dirty tricks of their campaigns.Right now, that model, created and run by Ray Fair, a Yale economist, shows that the 2024 national elections are very much up for grabs.The economy is strong enough for the incumbent Democrats to win the popular vote for the presidency and Congress next year, Professor Fair’s projections find. But it’s not a slam dunk. Persistent — though declining — inflation also gives the Republicans a reasonable chance of victory, the model shows. Both outcomes are within the model’s margin for error.It means small shifts in the economy could have an outsize influence on the next elections. That could put the Federal Reserve in a hot spot, even if the central bank tries to avoid it.The Fed strives to be independent. But policymakers’ decisions over the next 12 months could conceivably decide the elections.The Fair ModelProfessor Fair’s pioneering U.S. elections model does something that was fairly radical when he created it in the 1970s.It analyzes politics without really considering politics.Instead, Professor Fair focuses on economic growth, inflation and unemployment. With a few tweaks through the years, he has used economics to analyze elections since 1978, based on data for elections going back to 1916.What he’s found is that the economy sets the climate for national elections. The candidates and the political parties must live within it.Professor Fair makes his econometric models available on his website as teaching tools.“I encourage people to plug in their own assumptions and see how that will change the outcome,” he said.Professor Fair doesn’t even try to predict final election results. Just for a start, he doesn’t do state-by-state tallies or electoral college projections, or examine the potential impact of third-or fourth-party candidacies.But what his model does extremely well is provide a standard, historically based framework for understanding economic effects on the popular vote for the two main American political parties.What the model is showing is that the economy’s surprisingly strong growth and low unemployment since the start of the Biden presidency have already helped the incumbents considerably, while the uncomfortably high inflation levels during the period have helped the Republicans. Based on the history embedded in the model, if these critical economic factors shift, there’s room for a decisive change in the popular vote. But probably not much room.The Inflation EffectThere was jubilation on Wall Street over the past week over the positive news about inflation. The overall Consumer Price Index for October dropped to 3.2 percent annually from 3.7 percent the previous month — and from a peak, in this business cycle, of 9.1 percent in June 2022. At the same time, core inflation, which excludes fuel and food prices, fell to 4 percent in October, the smallest increase since September 2021.Inflation is still running well above the Fed’s target of 2 percent, but it’s declining, and traders are assuming that, at the very least, Fed officials won’t need to raise interest rates at their next meeting, in December. And there’s more.The Wall Street consensus, which is captured by the futures market, is that further encouraging inflation news will be coming, and that the Fed will start lowering rates by the spring. The sooner the Fed acts, this thinking goes, the more likely it is that a significant increase in unemployment — and a full-blown recession — can be avoided.There are political implications.Because interest rate cuts have lagged effects on the economy, the sooner such cuts occurred, the more likely it would be that the economy surged before next year’s election. An increase in economic growth in the first nine months of an election year — without a spike in unemployment — would help the presidential incumbent’s party, Professor Fair’s model shows. (If Republicans controlled the White House now, strong economic growth would help them more than it does the Democrats, history and the Fair model suggest.)On the other hand, a decline in inflation won’t help the Democrats much at this stage, Professor Fair said, because high inflation has already been baked into the vote prediction — and, presumably, into voters’ consciousness. The model averages the first 15 quarters — or 45 months — of a presidential administration, and we are already in the 11th quarter of the Biden presidency.For the overall inflation effect to diminish considerably, the basic math requires actual sustained deflation — a continuing fall in prices — in the months ahead. Historically, that has only happened during major economic declines, accompanied by soaring unemployment, as was the case in the Great Depression. A major recession would probably mean a Democratic debacle next year.A Looming NightmareBut a major recession in the next 12 months is not the consensus view among economists or in financial markets.Instead, a more benign prospect beckons. The probability of a “soft landing” — a decline in inflation without a recession — has grown in most forecasters’ estimations.But for the political outlook and for the Fed, the timing is tricky.A growth surge that is not accompanied by a big increase in unemployment would help the incumbent party, and large rate cuts by the Fed might well set off more economic growth. But the Fed will be reluctant to start reducing interest rates while inflation is still above 3 percent. Instead, as long as inflation is high, the Fed has vowed to keep interest rates “higher for longer,” and, in effect, it already has.Since July, short-term rates have stayed above 5.25 percent, mortgage rates are still above 7.5 percent and consumer borrowing is straitened. The longer this goes on, the greater the chances of a calamity in the financial system. Yet if the Fed eases interest rates too soon, and sets off another wave of inflation, the damage to its already tarnished reputation as an effective inflation-fighter would be severe.So the Fed is in a difficult spot. If the central bank doesn’t start to lower interest rates by the summer, it could be reluctant to do so at all in the autumn, because it would inevitably be seen as taking a partisan stance.As Ian Shepherdson, chief economist of the research firm Pantheon Macroeconomics, said in an online discussion, “there’s a lot hanging on the timing” of the inflation data in the weeks ahead. If the inflation issue isn’t resolved soon, he said, we will have to deal with “the nightmare of whether the Fed wants to be starting a shift in the policy cycle as the election approaches.”Incumbent presidents always want the economy to look great on Election Day. The one case in which it is well documented that a president put pressure on a Federal Reserve chairman to cut rates — and the central bank did so — involved President Richard M. Nixon and Arthur F. Burns in late 1971 and 1972. Mr. Nixon didn’t limit his improper actions to browbeating the Fed. There was also the Watergate break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, and the subsequent cover up. An investigation revealed the secret White House taping system — which recorded Mr. Nixon’s rough treatment of Mr. Burns.But there is substantial evidence of other instances of presidents and their emissaries trying to influence the Fed, without success. President Donald J. Trump repeatedly berated the current Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, for not lowering rates sufficiently. President Lyndon B. Johnson bullied William McChesney Martin to the point of physically manhandling him. And Paul Volcker revealed that, in President Ronald Reagan’s presence, James Baker, the chief of staff, told Mr. Volcker that the president “wants to give you an order”: Don’t raise rates as the 1984 election approaches. Mr. Volcker said Mr. Reagan looked on silently.In an oral history, Mr. Volcker said the meeting occurred in the White House library, not the Oval Office, probably to protect the president. “Whatever taping machines they had were probably not in the library,” Mr. Volcker said. “I didn’t want to say that we were going to raise rates,” Mr. Volcker recalled, “because we weren’t so as near as I can recall, I said nothing.”Mr. Powell has said he considers Mr. Volcker to be a role model. Generous and forthcoming in private conversations, Mr. Volcker was sometimes taciturn in public. It will be wise to emulate that reticence at critical moments in the months ahead.The Fed needs to be seen as independent and tough, and to squelch inflation, as Mr. Volcker did. Then, quite likely, it will need to cut rates aggressively to help the economy.The calendar may not cooperate. The tougher the Fed is now, the more delicate its position will become as the election approaches. More

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      Trump Plans to Expand Presidential Power Over Agencies in 2025

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      Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.He wants to revive the practice of “impounding” funds, refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president doesn’t like — a tactic that lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon.He intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda. And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country.”Mr. Trump and his advisers are openly discussing their plans to reshape the federal government if he wins the election in 2024.Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times“The president’s plan should be to fundamentally reorient the federal government in a way that hasn’t been done since F.D.R.’s New Deal,” said John McEntee, a former White House personnel chief who began Mr. Trump’s systematic attempt to sweep out officials deemed to be disloyal in 2020 and who is now involved in mapping out the new approach.“Our current executive branch,” Mr. McEntee added, “was conceived of by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. There is no way to make the existing structure function in a conservative manner. It’s not enough to get the personnel right. What’s necessary is a complete system overhaul.”Mr. Trump and his advisers are making no secret of their intentions — proclaiming them in rallies and on his campaign website, describing them in white papers and openly discussing them.“What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” said Russell T. Vought, who ran the Office of Management and Budget in the Trump White House and now runs a policy organization, the Center for Renewing America.The strategy in talking openly about such “paradigm-shifting ideas” before the election, Mr. Vought said, is to “plant a flag” — both to shift the debate and to later be able to claim a mandate. He said he was delighted to see few of Mr. Trump’s Republican primary rivals defend the norm of Justice Department independence after the former president openly attacked it.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign, said in a statement that the former president has “laid out a bold and transparent agenda for his second term, something no other candidate has done.” He added, “Voters will know exactly how President Trump will supercharge the economy, bring down inflation, secure the border, protect communities and eradicate the deep state that works against Americans once and for all.”The agenda being pursued by Mr. Trump and his associates has deep roots in a longstanding effort by conservative legal thinkers to undercut the so-called administrative state.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe two driving forces of this effort to reshape the executive branch are Mr. Trump’s own campaign policy shop and a well-funded network of conservative groups, many of which are populated by former senior Trump administration officials who would most likely play key roles in any second term.Mr. Vought and Mr. McEntee are involved in Project 2025, a $22 million presidential transition operation that is preparing policies, personnel lists and transition plans to recommend to any Republican who may win the 2024 election. The transition project, the scale of which is unprecedented in conservative politics, is led by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has shaped the personnel and policies of Republican administrations since the Reagan presidency.That work at Heritage dovetails with plans on the Trump campaign website to expand presidential power that were drafted primarily by two of Mr. Trump’s advisers, Vincent Haley and Ross Worthington, with input from other advisers, including Stephen Miller, the architect of the former president’s hard-line immigration agenda.Some elements of the plans had been floated when Mr. Trump was in office but were impeded by internal concerns that they would be unworkable and could lead to setbacks. And for some veterans of Mr. Trump’s turbulent White House who came to question his fitness for leadership, the prospect of removing guardrails and centralizing even greater power over government directly in his hands sounded like a recipe for mayhem.“It would be chaotic,” said John F. Kelly, Mr. Trump’s second White House chief of staff. “It just simply would be chaotic, because he’d continually be trying to exceed his authority but the sycophants would go along with it. It would be a nonstop gunfight with the Congress and the courts.”The agenda being pursued has deep roots in the decades-long effort by conservative legal thinkers to undercut what has become known as the administrative state — agencies that enact regulations aimed at keeping the air and water clean and food, drugs and consumer products safe, but that cut into business profits.Its legal underpinning is a maximalist version of the so-called unitary executive theory.The legal theory rejects the idea that the government is composed of three separate branches with overlapping powers to check and balance each other. Instead, the theory’s adherents argue that Article 2 of the Constitution gives the president complete control of the executive branch, so Congress cannot empower agency heads to make decisions or restrict the president’s ability to fire them. Reagan administration lawyers developed the theory as they sought to advance a deregulatory agenda.Mr. Trump and his allies have been laying out an expansive vision of power for a potential second term.Christopher Lee for The New York Times“The notion of independent federal agencies or federal employees who don’t answer to the president violates the very foundation of our democratic republic,” said Kevin D. Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, adding that the contributors to Project 2025 are committed to “dismantling this rogue administrative state.”Personal power has always been a driving force for Mr. Trump. He often gestures toward it in a more simplistic manner, such as in 2019, when he declared to a cheering crowd, “I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”Mr. Trump made the remark in reference to his claimed ability to directly fire Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel in the Russia inquiry, which primed his hostility toward law enforcement and intelligence agencies. He also tried to get a subordinate to have Mr. Mueller ousted, but was defied.Early in Mr. Trump’s presidency, his chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, promised a “deconstruction of the administrative state.” But Mr. Trump installed people in other key roles who ended up telling him that more radical ideas were unworkable or illegal. In the final year of his presidency, he told aides he was fed up with being constrained by subordinates.Now, Mr. Trump is laying out a far more expansive vision of power in any second term. And, in contrast with his disorganized transition after his surprise 2016 victory, he now benefits from a well-funded policymaking infrastructure, led by former officials who did not break with him after his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.One idea the people around Mr. Trump have developed centers on bringing independent agencies under his thumb.Congress created these specialized technocratic agencies inside the executive branch and delegated to them some of its power to make rules for society. But it did so on the condition that it was not simply handing off that power to presidents to wield like kings — putting commissioners atop them whom presidents appoint but generally cannot fire before their terms end, while using its control of their budgets to keep them partly accountable to lawmakers as well. (Agency actions are also subject to court review.)Presidents of both parties have chafed at the agencies’ independence. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal created many of them, endorsed a proposal in 1937 to fold them all into cabinet departments under his control, but Congress did not enact it.Later presidents sought to impose greater control over nonindependent agencies Congress created, like the Environmental Protection Agency, which is run by an administrator whom a president can remove at will. For example, President Ronald Reagan issued executive orders requiring nonindependent agencies to submit proposed regulations to the White House for review. But overall, presidents have largely left the independent agencies alone.Mr. Trump’s allies are preparing to change that, drafting an executive order requiring independent agencies to submit actions to the White House for review. Mr. Trump endorsed the idea on his campaign website, vowing to bring them “under presidential authority.”Such an order was drafted in Mr. Trump’s first term — and blessed by the Justice Department — but never issued amid internal concerns. Some of the concerns were over how to carry out reviews for agencies that are headed by multiple commissioners and subject to administrative procedures and open-meetings laws, as well as over how the market would react if the order chipped away at the Federal Reserve’s independence, people familiar with the matter said.The former president views the civil service as a den of “deep staters” who were trying to thwart him at every turn in the White House.John Tully for The New York TimesThe Federal Reserve was ultimately exempted in the draft executive order, but Mr. Trump did not sign it before his presidency ended. If Mr. Trump and his allies get another shot at power, the independence of the Federal Reserve — an institution Mr. Trump publicly railed at as president — could be up for debate. Notably, the Trump campaign website’s discussion of bringing independent agencies under presidential control is silent on whether that includes the Fed.Asked whether presidents should be able to order interest rates lowered before elections, even if experts think that would hurt the long-term health of the economy, Mr. Vought said that would have to be worked out with Congress. But “at the bare minimum,” he said, the Federal Reserve’s regulatory functions should be subject to White House review.“It’s very hard to square the Fed’s independence with the Constitution,” Mr. Vought said.Other former Trump administration officials involved in the planning said there would also probably be a legal challenge to the limits on a president’s power to fire heads of independent agencies. Mr. Trump could remove an agency head, teeing up the question for the Supreme Court.The Supreme Court in 1935 and 1988 upheld the power of Congress to shield some executive branch officials from being fired without cause. But after justices appointed by Republicans since Reagan took control, it has started to erode those precedents.Peter L. Strauss, professor emeritus of law at Columbia University and a critic of the strong version of the unitary executive theory, argued that it is constitutional and desirable for Congress, in creating and empowering an agency to perform some task, to also include some checks on the president’s control over officials “because we don’t want autocracy” and to prevent abuses.“The regrettable fact is that the judiciary at the moment seems inclined to recognize that the president does have this kind of authority,” he said. “They are clawing away agency independence in ways that I find quite unfortunate and disrespectful of congressional choice.”Mr. Trump has also vowed to impound funds, or refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress. After Nixon used the practice to aggressively block agency spending he was opposed to, on water pollution control, housing construction and other issues, Congress banned the tactic.On his campaign website, Mr. Trump declared that presidents have a constitutional right to impound funds and said he would restore the practice — though he acknowledged it could result in a legal battle.Mr. Trump and his allies also want to transform the civil service — government employees who are supposed to be nonpartisan professionals and experts with protections against being fired for political reasons.The former president views the civil service as a den of “deep staters” who were trying to thwart him at every turn, including by raising legal or pragmatic objections to his immigration policies, among many other examples. Toward the end of his term, his aides drafted an executive order, “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,” that removed employment protections from career officials whose jobs were deemed linked to policymaking.Mr. Trump signed the order, which became known as Schedule F, near the end of his presidency, but President Biden rescinded it. Mr. Trump has vowed to immediately reinstitute it in a second term.Critics say he could use it for a partisan purge. But James Sherk, a former Trump administration official who came up with the idea and now works at the America First Policy Institute — a think tank stocked heavily with former Trump officials — argued it would only be used against poor performers and people who actively impeded the elected president’s agenda.“Schedule F expressly forbids hiring or firing based on political loyalty,” Mr. Sherk said. “Schedule F employees would keep their jobs if they served effectively and impartially.”Mr. Trump himself has characterized his intentions rather differently — promising on his campaign website to “find and remove the radicals who have infiltrated the federal Department of Education” and listing a litany of targets at a rally last month.“We will demolish the deep state,” Mr. Trump said at the rally in Michigan. “We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. And we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.” More

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      Can Bidenomics Revive Biden’s 2024 Presidential Bid?

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      The president plans to extol his economic achievements in a big campaign-style speech. But inflation and recession fears could overshadow the message.President Biden heads to Chicago tomorrow to hail his economic record.John Minchillo/Associated PressBidenomics gets a reboot President Biden plans to double down on his economic record in a big campaign-style speech on Wednesday. He will hail the country’s record job growth, along with the administration’s signature policy wins aimed at expanding manufacturing, reinvesting in aging infrastructure and reorienting the economy for a clean-energy future.Yet despite the good news, Mr. Biden hasn’t seen a big jump in his popularity, and he trails his Republican rivals, according to some polls. High inflation and recession fears are dragging down his approval ratings, and the Biden administration is rethinking its messaging to try to convince Americans they should vote for him next November.“Bidenomics” will be at the heart of the president’s message. In a memo shared with journalists this week, two top Biden advisers, Anita Dunn and Mike Donilon, use the term repeatedly to frame the president’s accomplishments. They credit Bidenomics with helping the country bounce back from the pandemic “more quickly than most experts thought possible.” But as The Times’ Michael D. Shear reports, voters appear skeptical.What is Bidenomics? The president himself joked that the messaging is a work in progress. “I don’t know what the hell that is,” he told a rally this month. “But it’s working.” The Donilon-Dunn memo tries to give the messaging around Bidenomics a reboot. They point to how, for example, the CHIPS Act, the Inflation Reduction Act and the infrastructure law are creating jobs in the high-tech, manufacturing and green sectors.The numbers behind Bidenomics look impressive. Employers have added 13 million jobs during his presidency. And the unemployment rates of Black and Hispanic Americans are at or near a historic low. The White House also averted a potentially disastrous debt-default standoff with the Republican-controlled House, a victory that largely registered as a nonevent with voters.Those successes aren’t translating into an uptick in support. According to a Pew Research Center survey, Biden’s approval ratings fell to the lowest level of his presidency this month.Mr. Biden’s reboot will compete with a contrasting message from the Fed. Hours before the president steps to the microphone in Chicago, the Fed chair Jay Powell will engage with other central bankers in a panel discussion in Portugal on a topic that’s been weighing on the markets: how further interest rate increases are probably needed to bring down stubbornly high inflation.At the same gathering in Portugal yesterday, Gita Gopinath, the International Monetary Fund’s deputy managing director, warned central banks not to ease up in their inflation fight. “Monetary policy should continue to tighten and then remain in restrictive territory until core inflation is on a clear downward path,” she said.For now, the boosterism of Bidenomics may get overshadowed a by a hawkish Fed.HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING Goldman Sachs plans to add an ally of David Solomon to the board. Tom Montag, who led trading at the firm before joining Bank of America as a senior executive, is set to return as a director. DealBook hears that the move is seen by some internally as a message from the board that Mr. Solomon, Goldman’s embattled C.E.O., isn’t going anywhere soon.KPMG plans to lay off 5 percent of its U.S. employees. The accounting giant, which had 39,000 workers in the United States last year, cited “economic headwinds” in announcing the move. It’s the latest sign of how a slowing economy is battering a wider array of businesses, including white-collar industries.Janet Yellen reportedly plans to travel to China next month. The Treasury secretary is arranging a meeting with her new Chinese counterpart, according to Bloomberg, in another effort to lower tensions between Washington and Beijing. But China’s premier, Li Qiang, chastised Western countries today for trying to limit ties to Chinese businesses.Could Saudi money disrupt tennis’s pay-equity goals?The WTA, the women’s pro tennis tour, will commit on Tuesday to bringing prize money for its tournaments in line with that of men’s competitions, in what’s meant to be a major step toward pay equity in the sport.But the question looms: How will Saudi Arabia greet the effort? The kingdom has poured billions into pro sports as part of a global campaign to expand its soft power, and is keen to bring its deep pockets to the ATP men’s tour, potentially aggravating the sport’s already sizable pay divide.The WTA’s effort is set to ramp up over the course of a decade, to allow the tour to raise the revenue necessary to bring its payouts in line with those of men’s competitions. (While men and women receive equal prize money for Grand Slam tournaments, the campaign is focused on the two tiers of competitions below that.)Saudi Arabia’s plans for tennis complicate the matter. As the kingdom has dug into sports like soccer and golf, its playbook has involved flooding competitions with cash to attract top-flight players. It may now do so for tennis, where it already hosts a lucrative men’s exhibition event, is bidding to host the ATP Next Gen Finals and has plans to launch a similar women’s event.But the WTA hasn’t committed to that plan — or to holding any competitions in Saudi Arabia, which only recently gave women the right to drive, and which faces criticism over its human rights record. The WTA has taken stances on human rights before, notably by suspending operations in China for 18 months over the country’s treatment of the former player Peng Shuai.Things could change, given that the WTA has held talks with Saudi officials. But it’s unclear how the kingdom’s plans for tennis will affect the effort by the women’s tour to more tightly integrate with the ATP.In other Saudi sports news, a five-page pact between the PGA Tour and Saudi-sponsored LIV Golf shows the two sides have agreed on ending their litigation — but it lacks details of their planned alliance.A new shield for pregnant workersA new federal law will go into effect on Tuesday that provides protections for pregnant workers. More than a decade in the making and passed in December with bipartisan support, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act is meant to help close loopholes in existing rules that left millions of women subject to discrimination, The Times’s Alisha Gupta writes for DealBook.What the act requires: Companies with more than 15 employees, including hourly workers, must provide “reasonable accommodations” for pregnancy, childbirth and related medical events like fertility treatments, abortion and pregnancy loss.Left intentionally undefined, reasonable accommodations can include a stool to sit on during long shifts, a flexible schedule to accommodate morning sickness or time off to recover from childbirth complications. But companies aren’t expected to suffer “undue hardship” in their business.It’s an effort to stop pregnancy discrimination. Advocates say that the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 was riddled with ambiguity. That has had disastrous consequences for many women:Twenty-three percent of mothers have considered leaving their jobs because of a lack of accommodations or fear of discrimination, according to a poll last year by the Bipartisan Policy Center.At least a third of the more than 2,000 pregnancy discrimination complaints that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received last year were about companies that failed to accommodate pregnant workers.The law signals growing recognition of pregnancy discrimination’s economic toll. The Fairness Act helps ensure that women no longer have to choose between “maintaining a healthy pregnancy or a safe recovery from childbirth and a paycheck,” said Dina Bakst, the co-president of the advocacy group A Better Balance, which helped Congress draft the new law.$377 million — The medical costs associated with pickleball injuries in the United States this year, according to a new research report by UBS analysts.Remembering Jim CrownJames Crown, the billionaire financier who was a longtime board member of JPMorgan Chase and General Dynamics, died on Sunday, The Times’s Emily Flitter writes for DealBook. He was 70.The scion of a Chicago industrialist family, Mr. Crown became a major figure in business, philanthropy and political giving. He died on his birthday in Aspen, Colo., when a vehicle he was driving crashed into a barrier on a racetrack, according to the Pitkin County coroner’s office.Mr. Crown was C.E.O. of Henry Crown and Company, which managed the fortune built up by his grandfather Henry by investing in an array of real estate and corporate investments. He joined the firm after working for Salomon Brothers.Mr. Crown was also a prominent corporate director. He had served on the board of what became JPMorgan Chase since 1991: His family had owned a major stake in Chicago’s Bank One, where he was a director and helped recruit Jamie Dimon as C.E.O. In 2004, Bank One merged with J.P. Morgan.“He has been a trusted adviser to me for nearly 20 years, playing a key role in helping our company navigate numerous business and economic challenges,” Mr. Dimon wrote to employees on Monday.Mr. Crown was also the lead director of General Dynamics, the aerospace giant that bought his grandfather’s Material Service Corporation in 1959.He also played a role beyond corporate America. Mr. Crown split his time between Chicago and Aspen, where he once served as chair of the Aspen Institute, which is holding its annual Ideas Festival now. As managing director of the Aspen Skiing Company, he played a big role in the American skiing industry.Mr. Crown was also a major Democratic donor, and he attended last week’s state dinner for Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India. “Jim represented America at its best — industrious, big-hearted and always looking out for each other,” President Biden said in a statement.THE SPEED READ DealsLordstown Motors, the embattled electric truck maker, filed for bankruptcy protection and sued the electronics giant Foxconn over its failure to invest in the company. (Reuters)Group Black, a Black-owned media investment firm, is reportedly in talks to buy control of the publisher of Sports Illustrated. (WSJ)Despite companies’ concerns about universal proxy, which makes it easier for investors to vote for board candidates from different slates, the policy had a muted impact in proxy fights this year. (Kirkland & Ellis)PolicyPresident Biden announced a $42 billion initiative to expand access to high-speed internet to all American households by 2030. (CNBC)Federal efforts to help develop next-generation vaccines are running into bureaucratic hurdles that may hamper efforts to fight future pandemics. (NYT)The wife of Justice Samuel Alito leased a 160-acre plot of land in Oklahoma to an oil company, as the Supreme Court justice weighed in on cases involving the E.P.A. (The Intercept)Best of the restHow the North Sea, long one of Europe’s biggest hubs for oil and gas production, may pivot to wind power. (NYT)“Will Taylor Swift’s ‘Eras Tour’ Become the First $1 Billion Tour?” (WSJ)Richard Ravitch, the developer and public servant who helped rescue New York City from financial collapse in the 1970s, died on Sunday. He was 89. (NYT)The New York Mets may have the biggest payroll in the major leagues and a deep-pocketed owner in Steve Cohen — but that hasn’t translated into success on the field. (NYT)We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. More

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      Donald Trump’s Latest Indictment May Reshape the 2024 Race

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      The former president, who faces seven criminal charges for mishandling classified documents, is expected to surrender to authorities next week.“I’m an innocent man,” Donald Trump told his supporters on Thursday night.Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTrump indicted: what to expect next For the second time in two months, Donald Trump will surrender to the authorities to face legal charges, dropping another bomb into the 2024 presidential race. Within minutes, he was fund-raising on the back of the news.The indictment hasn’t yet been unsealed, but some details are known. The former president and front-runner for the Republican nomination faces seven criminal charges that he mishandled classified documents from his time in the White House and obstructed the government’s efforts to reclaim them. He is expected to turn himself in to the authorities on Tuesday.Mr. Trump himself broke the news last night, a sign his inner circle had been bracing for the indictment for weeks.On his Truth Social platform, Mr. Trump called the charges “election interference at the highest level,” adding, “I’m an innocent man.” Mr. Trump’s legal troubles keep piling up. But this indictment holds greater “legal gravity and political peril,” writes The Times’s Peter Baker. It’s not just a first in American history for a former president, but also involves the nation’s secrets.Here’s a recap of the other legal matters he faces:A federal grand jury last month ordered Mr. Trump to pay $5 million to the journalist E. Jean Carroll in a civil case that he sexually abused and then defamed her; Carroll’s legal team has sued Mr. Trump again over subsequent comments he made about her.In April, the New York authorities charged Mr. Trump with falsifying business documents in connection with hush-money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.Mr. Trump is also under investigation in Georgia for possible election tampering in the state; a decision is expected later this summer.Mr. Trump’s Republican challengers came to his defense. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, his nearest rival in the polls, accused the Biden administration of weaponizing the Justice Department to take on a political rival. And Vivek Ramaswamy, the anti-woke financier, said he would pardon Mr. Trump if elected president.Mr. Trump gained in the polls the last time he was charged. It is unclear if the public will be so supportive this time. A Yahoo-YouGov poll showed nearly two-thirds of Americans view the charges of removing classified documents and obstructing the investigation as a serious criminal matter; a similar percentage feel that he should not serve as president if convicted.So far, big-money conservative donors have stayed mum on the latest charges. Many have deserted Mr. Trump after backing him in previous election cycles.HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING The wildfire haze is moving on from the Northeast. Cities including New York and Philadelphia have seen air conditions improve, though the noxious smoke is spreading south and west; the F.A.A. has lifted ground stops at LaGuardia and Newark airports. But scientists confirmed that the El Niño weather phenomenon has started, portending hotter temperatures through next year.China suffers from a lack of inflation. New monthly data shows that producer prices fell 4.6 percent in May, the sharpest year-on-year drop in seven years, while consumer prices rose just 0.2 percent. Though a contrast from Western countries grappling with rapid inflation, the trend suggests China’s faltering economy may soon suffer from deflation.The White House reportedly braces for the death of its student loan forgiveness program. Biden administration officials are privately worrying that the Supreme Court may strike down its proposal, which would eliminate up to $20,000 in education debt per person for millions of Americans, according to The Wall Street Journal. The White House is preparing less legally risky alternatives to help borrowers.G.M. electric vehicles will gain access to Tesla’s charging network. The move, which follows a similar announcement by Ford, will vastly expand charger accessibility for G.M. But some in the industry fear that wider adoption of Tesla’s plugs, which are now likely to become the industry standard, will give Elon Musk’s company even greater power over the E.V. market.The bull market rally is already being testedInvestors shrugged off lousy labor market data and a new round of inflation warnings to push the S&P 500 into bull market territory on Thursday. But that enthusiasm seems to be waning on Friday morning as stock futures suggest markets will open lower.The bear market lasted 248 trading days, the longest such run since 1948. Since its October low, the S&P 500 has gained 20.04 percent, just enough to tip into a bull market. The benchmark index is still roughly 10 percent away from a record high; some market observers say, therefore, that it’s premature to call this a true bull market.Investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence has underpinned this rally. According to Deutsche Bank analysts, the FANG+ Index — a collection of big cap tech stocks, many of which are expanding into A.I. — is up nearly 80 percent since ChatGPT debuted in November.Now to the bad news … A growing number of economists believe that next week’s Consumer Price Index report will show an uptick in core inflation. That could pressure the Fed to raise interest rates further — if not next week, in July.And there are signs of economic weakness. The Labor Department on Thursday reported 261,000 new jobless claims, the highest number since October 2021.Expect a prolonged period of economic uncertainty. That was the message from Mario Draghi, the former Italian prime minister and president of the E.C.B., in a speech on Thursday at M.I.T.The economist, who once famously vowed to do “whatever it takes” to save the euro, has a bearish view of the future. He warned that industrialized economies face a “volatile cocktail” of persistent inflation, high budget deficits, high interest rates and low potential growth as central banks grapple with a climate crisis, the reshoring of supply chains and the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine.Crypto’s protagonists lay out their casesRegulators and crypto executives are making their cases in the court of public opinion after the S.E.C. sued Binance and Coinbase, two of the sector’s biggest exchanges, this week in an intensifying crackdown on the industry.“We’ve seen this story before,” the S.E.C. chairman Gary Gensler said on Thursday at a fintech conference, likening widespread noncompliance in crypto to the era of “hucksters” and fraud a century ago. He rejected claims that digital asset businesses cannot comply with the existing rules or do not realize that they apply: “When crypto asset market participants go on Twitter or TV and say they lacked ‘fair notice’ that their conduct could be illegal, don’t believe it.”Coinbase’s boss says that new regulations are needed. Its C.E.O., Brian Armstrong, addressed the event on Wednesday, saying the rules are opaque and need to be updated. The S.E.C. case is certainly a drag on his company: Moody’s, the ratings agency, downgraded Coinbase on Thursday to negative from stable because of the charges.Binance is regrouping. The company’s American division said on Thursday that it would no longer allow customers to trade in U.S. dollars, after banks stopped working with it. At the same time, the S.E.C. says it is trying to find “alternative means” to serve legal papers to Binance and Changpeng Zhao, the company’s C.E.O., telling a federal court that it was difficult to determine where he was.Who’s judging? The S.E.C.’s case against Coinbase in New York was assigned to District Judge Jennifer Rearden. Her nomination last year angered some Democratic lawmakers because she represented Chevron as a lawyer at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. She’s also handling the government’s appeal of the sale of the failed crypto broker Voyager to Binance’s U.S. arm and put the deal on hold in March. Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the Federal District Court for D.C. is presiding over the Binance case, and is best known for overseeing the criminal proceedings against two Mr. Trump advisers, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone. Next week, she will hold a hearing on an S.E.C. request to freeze Binance’s assets.“I did not comprehend that ChatGPT could fabricate cases.” — Steven Schwartz, a lawyer who has practiced in New York for 30 years. He told a federal judge that he regrets using the chatbot to write a legal brief that was found to be filled with fake judicial opinions and legal citations.Buzzphrase of the week: “spatial computing” Apple unveiled its first headset for augmented/virtual/mixed reality this week, but none of those words appears in a nine-minute video on its website about the $3,500 Vision Pro goggles. Instead, the company preferred a more obscure term: “spatial computing.”Apple is trying to put its own stamp on the category. When it comes to spatial computing, “no one knows what that is — and that provides Apple the opportunity to define it,” Marcus Collins, the author of “For the Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do and Who We Want to Be,” told DealBook.Apple has successfully done this in the past. Before the App Store, people didn’t talk about apps; they talked about “software programs.”And the iPhone and AirPods were neither the first mobile phone nor the first earbuds, but they became runaway hits (despite being priced at a premium to the competition). Jim Posner, a communications consultant who has led teams at Twitter and Google, said that the intended audience may be investors and the media rather than consumers. “They are pitching a product to people,” he said. “For the tech press, industry analysts and investors, they’re pitching a concept.”Elsewhere, Mark Zuckerberg gave his thoughts on Apple’s Vision Pro goggles. “I was really curious to see what they’d ship,” the Meta C.E.O. told employees on Thursday, “and it’s a good sign for our own development that they don’t have any magical solutions to the laws of physics that we haven’t already explored.”THE SPEED READ DealsThe agricultural commodities giant Bunge is said to be finalizing a deal to buy Viterra, a grain trader, that could value the combined firm at $30 billion. (Reuters)UBS has secured a government backstop for losses tied to its takeover of Credit Suisse, clearing the last hurdle for combining Switzerland’s top two banks. (FT)Permira is reportedly weighing a sale or public listing for Golden Goose, a footwear brand favored by Taylor Swift, at a $2.7 billion valuation. (Bloomberg)PolicyLouisiana passed a bill that would block online services — including Instagram, TikTok and Fortnite — for children under 18 without their parents’ permission. (NYT)The Supreme Court unanimously ruled against a dog-toy maker whose product closely resembles a bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey. (NYT)Best of the restSam Altman of OpenAI, Bob Iger of Disney, Jay Monahan of the PGA Tour, Rupert Murdoch of Fox and Sundar Pichai of Alphabet are all on the guest list for this year’s Allen & Company gathering in Sun Valley, Idaho. (Variety)How Taylor Swift is a godsend for Chicago’s hotel industry. (Bloomberg)“What All the Single Ladies (and Men) Say About the Economy” (NYT)We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. More

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      Why Ron DeSantis Is Taking Aim at the Federal Reserve

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      Florida’s governor has been blasting Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, while spreading misinformation about central bank digital currency.WASHINGTON — Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is preparing to take a widely anticipated leap into a 2024 presidential campaign, appears to have discovered something that populists throughout history have found to be true: Bashing the Federal Reserve is good politics.Mr. DeSantis has begun to criticize Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, in speeches and news conferences. He has alleged without evidence that the Biden administration is about to introduce a central bank digital currency — which neither the White House nor the politically independent Fed has decided to do — in a bid to surveil Americans and control their spending on gas. He has quoted the Fed’s Twitter posts disparagingly.His critiques echo a familiar playbook from the Trump administration. Former President Donald J. Trump often blasted the central bank during the 2016 campaign and while he was in office, as policymakers lifted interest rates and slowed economic growth. Mr. Trump at one point called Mr. Powell — his own pick for Fed chair — an “enemy,” comparing him to President Xi Jinping of China.Because the central bank is responsible for controlling inflation, it is often blamed both for periods of rapid price increases and for the economic damage it inflicts when it raises rates to bring that inflation under control. That can make it an easy political target.And populist skepticism of government control of money dates back centuries in America. The nation’s first and second attempts at creating a central bank failed partly because of such concerns. The Fed, set up in 1913, was designed as a decentralized institution with quasi-private branches dotted around the country in part to avoid concentrating too much power in one place. It has been the subject of conspiracy theories and political attacks ever since.“In many ways, it is not surprising at all,” said Sarah Binder, a political scientist at George Washington University who has studied politics and the Fed. Mr. DeSantis is placing himself to Mr. Trump’s right, she said, “and it sounds like many populist right-side critiques of the Fed, of monetary control, that we’ve heard throughout history.”Mr. Powell has stated that the Fed “would not proceed” on a digital currency “without support from Congress.”T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesWhile Mr. DeSantis’s Fed-bashing is not new, some of his remarks have strayed into misinformation, said Peter Conti-Brown, a lawyer and Fed historian at the University of Pennsylvania.“The Fed can and should take this seriously,” Mr. Conti-Brown said.While the Fed is independent of and largely insulated from the White House, it does ultimately answer to Congress. And a lack of popular support could curb the Fed’s room to maneuver: If the government decided that pursuing a digital currency was a good idea, for instance, the backlash could make it more difficult to do so.Mr. DeSantis’s tone could also offer hints about the future. Starting from the early 1990s, presidential administrations have largely respected the Fed’s independence, avoiding commenting on monetary policy. Mr. Trump upended that tradition. President Biden has returned to a hands-off approach, but the recent criticism offers an early hint that the détente may not last if a Republican wins in 2024.Mr. DeSantis has faulted Mr. Powell’s policies for failing to control inflation, recently calling the Fed chair a “complete disaster.”In Mr. Powell, the potential presidential candidate has a rare opportunity to criticize Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden simultaneously: The Fed leader was first nominated to the central bank by President Barack Obama, then made chair by Mr. Trump and renominated as chair by Mr. Biden.Mr. DeSantis has focused much of his attention on a central bank digital currency, or C.B.D.C., which would operate like electronic cash but with backing from the federal government. The Fed has been researching both the potential uses and technical feasibility of a digital currency, but has not yet decided to issue one. Mr. Powell has made clear that the Fed “would not proceed with this without support from Congress.”The digital money that Americans use today — whether they are swiping a credit card or completing a Venmo transaction — is issued by banks. Physical cash, by contrast, comes directly from the Fed. A central bank digital currency would effectively be the digital version of a dollar bill.Many people who think the Fed should seriously consider issuing a central bank digital currency suggest that it could help improve access to banking services. Some have argued that it is important to develop the technology: America’s global competitors, including China, are researching and issuing digital money, so there is a risk of falling behind.Yet critics have worried about the privacy concerns of a centralized digital dollar. And the dollar is the most important reserve currency in the world, so any technological issues with a digital offering could be catastrophic. That is why the Fed has pledged to proceed carefully — and why the idea of issuing a digital currency in America is only in its formative research stages.Though there is no plan to issue a digital currency, Mr. DeSantis on March 20 proposed state legislation to “protect Floridians from the Biden administration’s weaponization of the financial sector through a central bank digital currency.”He then warned during an April 1 speech, with no factual basis, that Democrats wanted to use a digital currency to “impose an E.S.G. agenda,” referring to environmental and social goals like curbing consumption of fossil fuels or tightening gun control.Mr. DeSantis “is heading off any attempt to control people’s behavior through centralized digital currency,” his press secretary, Bryan Griffin, said in response to a request for comment.Mr. DeSantis’s claims echo those on right-wing social media, and they are in line with the interests of important Republican donors: Many banks and cryptocurrency firms are adamantly opposed to the idea of a central bank digital currency, worried that it would take away business.Florida, in particular, has been friendly to the digital currency industry, with lawmakers passing favorable legislation.And people with stakes in cryptocurrency are among Mr. DeSantis’s top political donors. Kenneth Griffin, the billionaire hedge fund executive and crypto skeptic turned investor, gave $5 million to a political action committee that supported Mr. DeSantis’s 2022 re-election. Paul Tudor Jones, a billionaire investor who had significant shares in the now-bankrupt crypto trading platform FTX, contributed $850,000 to the group, according to campaign finance filings.Nor is it just Mr. DeSantis who is expressing opposition to the idea of a central bank digital currency: Prominent Republicans like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia have joined in.Mr. Cruz and Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the Republican whip, have introduced legislation to block the Fed from creating such a currency. Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, another potential Republican presidential contender in 2024, recently vetoed a state bill that she claimed would have opened the door for a C.B.D.C.Some political figures are also incorrectly conflating a possible central bank digital currency with the central bank’s FedNow initiative, a separate effort to modernize America’s payment system to make transactions quicker and more efficient. A Fed spokesperson underlined that FedNow and the research into a possible digital currency were entirely different.Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent figure in the anti-vaccine movement who recently announced his intention to run for president as a Democrat in 2024, wrongly conflated FedNow and the digital currency, claiming that it would “grease the slippery slope to financial slavery and political tyranny.”Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic presidential candidate and representative from Hawaii who is now independent, echoed warnings that a digital currency would undermine freedom, incorrectly stating that the government “has just begun implementing” such a currency.Incorrect statements about FedNow and digital currency have proliferated on social media, spread by influential political figures as well as conspiracy theorists.The Fed has tried to push back on the swirling misinformation.“The FedNow Service is neither a form of currency nor a step toward eliminating any form of payment, including cash,” the central bank posted on Twitter on Friday. Its six-tweet F.A.Q. made no mention of politics, but nevertheless read like a rare public rebuke from an institution that diligently avoids wading into political commentary.“The Federal Reserve has made no decision on issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) & would not do so without clear support from Congress and executive branch, ideally in the form of a specific authorizing law,” the Fed said — in a tweet that Mr. DeSantis quoted.“It is not merely ‘ideal’ that major changes in policy receive specific authorization from Congress,” Mr. DeSantis said in a reply.By Tuesday afternoon, the Fed had updated its F.A.Q. online to be even more explicit: The central bank “would only proceed with the issuance of a CBDC with an authorizing law.” More

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      Your Wednesday Briefing: Xi Accuses the U.S. of ‘Suppression’

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      Also, the U.S. central bank may raise interest rates higher than expected.China’s national legislature is meeting this week. Ng Han Guan/Associated PressChina accuses U.S. of ‘suppression’China’s leader, Xi Jinping, used unusually blunt language this week to criticize the U.S. and its allies for what he described as a campaign to block China’s rise. The comments reflected how Xi is bracing for more confrontation and competition with the U.S. as he prepares for an expected third term as president.“Western countries led by the United States have implemented all-around containment, encirclement and suppression of China, which has brought unprecedented severe challenges to our country’s development,” Xi said in a speech he delivered on Monday.China’s new foreign minister reinforced Xi’s comments. “The United States actually wants China not to fight back when hit or cursed, but this is impossible,” Qin Gang, said yesterday.Qin also called for the U.S. to take a less confrontational stance toward his country. “If the U.S. doesn’t step on the brakes but continues to speed up, no guardrail can stop the derailment,” he said.Context: Tensions have recently escalated over U.S. support of Taiwan and U.S. accusations that China operates a fleet of spy balloons. China’s close alignment with Russia, which the West is seeking to isolate over its war in Ukraine, has intensified concerns about a new type of cold war.Related: The Times Magazine reports on the downfall of a Chinese intelligence agent that reveals the astonishing depth of Chinese industrial espionage.“The process of getting inflation back down to 2 percent has a long way to go and is likely to be bumpy,” Jerome Powell said.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesAn effort to cool the U.S. economyThe American economy seems to be on stable footing — hiring remains strong, the country has its lowest unemployment rate since 1969 and consumer spending picked up at the start of the year.But for the Federal Reserve, there are risks: Higher pay means higher consumer spending, which can drive up inflation. And despite the Fed’s repeated rate raises last year, reports have suggested that inflation did not weaken as much as expected, and remained faster than expected in January.To slow its pace, Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, said the central bank was likely to raise interest rates higher than expected, and that the Fed’s fight was “very likely” to come at some cost to the labor market. He even opened the door to a faster pace of rate increases if Friday’s jobs report and other incoming data remained hot.Explanation: The Fed raises interest rates to slow consumer spending and dissuade businesses from expanding using borrowed money. As demand for products and workers cools, wage growth eases and unemployment may rise. That can further slow consumption and moderate the economy.Debt ceiling: The U.S. also faces a looming risk this summer. A top economist warned lawmakers yesterday that if House Republicans refused to join Democrats in raising the borrowing limit, seven million people could be out of work and the economy could fall into a 2008-style financial crisis. From Biden: In an essay for The Times, President Biden committed to fully funding Medicare beyond 2050 without cutting benefits, and outlined his plan.Marchers flooded the streets of Paris yesterday.Aurelien Morissard/Associated PressFrance’s fight over pensionsFor the sixth time in the past two months, unions across France went on strike, disrupting trains and flights and closing classrooms. They are trying to sway public opinion in their favor and against President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to raise the legal retirement age to 64 from 62.The unions vowed yesterday to bring France “to a standstill.” Public opinion polls have repeatedly shown that a majority of  French people oppose Macron’s proposal. He says it is necessary to balance the pension system’s finances as more baby boomers retire and live longer.Neither side has shown any sign of backing down. The unions want to start continuous, disruptive strikes, while Macron hopes to get the bill — a cornerstone of his re-election campaign — passed by the end of this month. “There is no room for negotiation anymore,” a professor said.Data: France has one of the lowest rates in Europe of pensioners at risk of poverty.THE LATEST NEWSAsia PacificThe Rohingya refugees were already some of the most dispossessed people on earth.Mahmud Hossain Opu/Associated PressA fire at a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh has displaced more than 12,000 people.President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea will make a state visit to the U.S. next month as tensions with China and North Korea rise.Japan’s newest rocket, intended to be the county’s flagship vehicle for sending satellites into orbit, failed minutes into its first test flight.U.S. NewsThe U.S. may revive the practice of detaining migrant families who cross the border illegally, two years after shutting down the policy.Five women sued Texas over its abortion ban. They say they were denied the procedure despite grave risks.Around the WorldThe Mexican military used Pegasus to spy on Raymundo Ramos, a rights advocate in Mexico City.Marian Carrasquero for The New York TimesDocuments show that Mexico’s military illegally spied on journalists and a rights advocate who were investigating allegations that soldiers had killed innocent people.An Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank spiraled into violence that left six Palestinians dead.Britain unveiled a plan to remove most asylum seekers who cross the English Channel in small boats.The War in UkraineA pro-Ukrainian group sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines last year, new intelligence reviewed by the U.S. suggests.Ukraine said that the Wagner private military company is running out of prisoner recruits to send to Bakhmut.A Morning ReadMeena Kotwal is a Dalit herself.Saumya Khandelwal for The New York TimesTwo years ago, the Indian journalist Meena Kotwal started a news outlet focused on Dalits, once deemed untouchable by India’s caste system, and other marginalized groups. The Mooknayak, or “the leader of the voiceless,” has a growing audience and influence, but her rising public profile has brought rape and death threats.Lives lived: Duong Tuong translated a wide range of Western literature into Vietnamese. He died at 90. SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICAAn ATM provided some of the only light in the city center of Meyerton, South Africa, last month.Ilan Godfrey for The New York TimesThe cheeky app for South Africa’s power crisisSouth Africa has declared a “state of disaster” over an electricity crisis that has caused nationwide power outages of up to 10 hours a day, and millions are turning to a smartphone app to help them navigate the blackouts.The app, known as EskomSePush, plays on the name of South Africa’s state power utility, Eskom, and some vulgar Afrikaans slang that definitely can’t be written here. Recently rebranded as just ESP, it sends out alerts 55 minutes before the power is scheduled to go off. Two South African software developers, Dan Southwood-Wells and Herman Maritz, created ESP in 2014 when scheduled power outages were beginning to be more widespread and disruptive.But over the past year, the app has taken off. Since September, there have been nearly two million downloads for a total of seven million users. Southwood-Wells and Maritz know they’re tapping into national frustration, and so they try to inject some humor into the app’s outage notices, like including an image of a braai, the South African equivalent of a barbecue, to let users know they won’t be using their stoves for several hours.“We try to make light of a dark situation,” Maritz said. — Lynsey Chutel, Briefing writer, Johannesburg.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookJohnny Miller for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Rebecca JurkevichUse store-bought puff pastry to make an easy zucchini and egg tart. What to ReadIn “The Curator,” a historical fantasy, a woman searches for answers about her brother’s death.HealthCan cannabis help you sleep?RomanceWould you date a podcast bro?Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Foreboding sign (four letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. Thomas Gibbons-Neff, a former Marine who covered the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, will cover Ukraine full-time.“The Daily” is on Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a rising Republican star.I’d welcome your feedback! Please write to us at briefing@nytimes.com.Lynsey Chutel More