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    Trump’s Tariffs Hit Stock Markets

    Global leaders are retaliating and investors have sold off stocks in Asia and Europe.Nowhere to hide as a new wave of U.S. tariffs sinks global stock markets.Franck Robichon/EPA, via ShutterstockNot just tough talk President Trump wasn’t bluffing, after all.Global markets plunged on Tuesday after U.S. tariffs went into effect on roughly $1.5 trillion worth of imports from Canada, Mexico and China, with another, and even broader, wave set to kick in as soon as next week.China and Canada have already responded, with Beijing targeting the American heartland with sweeping levies on imported food and halting log and soybean shipments from select U.S. companies. Mexico is expected to retaliate, too.The escalation has global business leaders increasingly worried about what will come next, as economists warn that consumers and companies will soon see higher prices. Warren Buffett offered a reminder of what the global economy is facing. “Tariffs,” the billionaire investor said this week, “are an act of war, to some degree.”Here’s the latest:Stocks in much of Asia and Europe fell on Tuesday, after the S&P 500 yesterday suffered its worst one-day decline this year. U.S. stock futures were down slightly on Tuesday.Hit especially hard on Tuesday were the shares of European automakers, including Volkswagen, BMW, and Daimler Truck. Levies could slam the sector, which is highly dependent on a complex cross-border supply chain.The CBOE volatility index, Wall Street’s so-called fear gauge popularly known as the VIX, jumped, posting its biggest one-day spike this year, according to Deutsche Bank.The sell-off also extended to cryptocurrencies (more on that below), and, in a new twist, the dollar.If global investors weren’t spooked before, they seem to be now. “The market finally took the Trump administration at its word, and the realization that the tariff talk wasn’t just a negotiating tactic is starting to sink in,” Chris Zaccarelli, an investment strategist for Northlight Asset Management, said in a research note yesterday evening.How long will the trade battle last? Analysts see reason for cautious optimism — at least on China. “We view Beijing’s responses as still strategic and restrained,” Xiangrong Yu, Citigroup’s chief China economist, said in a research note on Tuesday. He said a trade deal was still “plausible.”The Shanghai composite index closed slightly higher on Tuesday.Market watchers warn of deep repercussions should the trade war drag on. Trump seems to be digging in, telling reporters yesterday that there is “no room left for Mexico or for Canada.” A protracted fight could dent global growth and accelerate inflation, all of which could “hamstring the Fed,” Mark Haefele, the chief investment officer at UBS Global Wealth Management, told Bloomberg Television on Tuesday.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Justice Dept. to Review Election Tampering Conviction of Pro-Trump Clerk

    The decision, revealed in a filing in a Colorado clerk’s bid to overturn her conviction, marks another example of President Trump’s Justice Department intervening to aid supporters or go after foes.The Justice Department said on Monday that it would review the conviction of the former clerk of Mesa County, Colo., who was found guilty of state charges last summer of tampering with voting machines under her control in a failed attempt to prove that they had been used to rig the 2020 election against President Trump.The decision was the latest example of the Justice Department under Mr. Trump’s control seeking to use its powers to support those who have acted on his behalf and to go after those who have criticized or opposed him. It also played into the president’s effort to rewrite the history of his efforts to overturn the results of the election.Three weeks ago, the former clerk, Tina Peters, who was sentenced to nine years in prison on the state election tampering charges, filed a long-shot motion in Federal District Court in Denver effectively challenging the guilty verdict she received in August at the end of a trial in Grand Junction.But, in a surprise move, Yaakov M. Roth, the acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil division, filed a court brief known as a statement of interest on Monday, declaring that “reasonable concerns have been raised about various aspects of Ms. Peters’s case.” In the filing, Mr. Roth said the federal judge who received Ms. Peters’s petition this month should give it “prompt and careful consideration.”Mr. Roth said that the Justice Department was concerned, among other things, about “the exceptionally lengthy sentence” imposed on Ms. Peters by the judge in Grand Junction. He also questioned a decision by state prosecutors to deny her bail as she appeals her conviction as “arbitrary or unreasonable.”The review of Ms. Peters’s case was part of a larger examination of cases “across the nation for abuses of the criminal justice process,” Mr. Roth wrote. The scrutiny of Peters case, he added, was being conducted under the aegis of an executive order that Mr. Trump issued seeking to end the “weaponization of the federal government.”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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump Administration Said to Drop Lawsuit Over Toxic Chemical

    The Trump administration plans to drop a federal lawsuit against a chemical manufacturer accused of releasing high levels of a likely carcinogen from its Louisiana plant, according to two people familiar with the plans.The government filed the lawsuit during the Biden administration after regulators determined that chloroprene emissions from the Denka Performance Elastomer plant were contributing to health concerns in an area with the highest cancer risk of any place in the United States.The 2023 lawsuit was among several enforcement actions taken by the Environmental Protection Agency on behalf of poor and minority communities that have disproportionately borne the brunt of toxic pollution.The Denka plant is located in the predominantly Black community of LaPlace, La., in a region so dense with industrial facilities that it is known as “Cancer Alley.” Chloroprene is used to produce neoprene, a synthetic rubber that is found in automotive parts, hoses, beer cozies, orthopedic braces and electric cables.The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment. The agency intends to ask the United States District Court Eastern District of Louisiana this week to dismiss the lawsuit, according to the two people familiar with the decision, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the case.The lawsuit had given the neighboring community a measure of hope that pollution levels might finally come down, said Robert Taylor, a founder of Concerned Citizens of St John Parish, a community group.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    In Speech to Congress, Trump Is Expected to Boast About DOGE Cuts and Ukraine

    President Trump is expected to boast about his assault on the federal bureaucracy and his efforts to upend global relationships during an address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, even as his administration faces lawsuits over his domestic agenda and Europe rebukes him over his treatment of Ukraine.Addressing his largest television audience since his return to power, Mr. Trump is expected to speak about the speed with which he has pushed through reductions in border crossings, cuts to government through the Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, and a slew of executive orders. He is also expected to emphasize the need to pass his legislative agenda, which includes some $4 trillion in tax cuts.“He’s going to talk about the great things he’s done: The border’s secure, the waste he’s finding with DOGE,” said Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who speaks frequently with Mr. Trump. “He’s going to keep laying out his vision, where he wants the country to go.”For Mr. Trump, it will be a remarkable return to a chamber — and a prime-time, nationwide audience — he last addressed five years ago, before voters ousted him from office and replaced him with Joseph R. Biden Jr. Mr. Trump’s return has set in motion a rapid-fire series of actions designed to overturn decades of policy and diplomacy.During his first term, the president delivered an annual speech to Congress that included a mix of exaggerations and grievance-filled attacks on his enemies. He is poised to do the same again on Tuesday night, using one of the largest platforms that any modern president gets during his time in the Oval Office.Mr. Trump hinted on Monday that he might use the speech to extend his public feud with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine after the Oval Office blowup between the two leaders last week. Asked by a reporter whether a deal to share rare-earth minerals was still possible after the shouting, Mr. Trump said that “I’ll let you know,” adding: “We’re making a speech, you probably heard.”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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    He’s the Face of a White House Press Corps Under Attack by Trump

    Eugene Daniels, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, is pushing back on the administration’s hostility to reporters as he navigates a move to MSNBC from Politico.Eugene Daniels didn’t plan on being the face of the White House press corps in the dawn of a new administration hostile to the news media.But because of a clause in the bylaws of the White House Correspondents’ Association, an 800-strong group of journalists who report on the president, he was next in line after Kaitlan Collins, the CNN star who was elected 2024-25 president of the association, had to step aside because of a move to New York.Mr. Daniels, 36, a co-author of Politico’s Playbook newsletter, has now emerged as a key figure in an escalating fight between the Trump White House and the news media over press access and freedom. And he’s balancing his role at the association, which is unpaid volunteer work, with his career, moving this month to a new on-air job at MSNBC.“We’re all competitors, fierce competitors, and the White House beat is tough, but at the same time, when it’s time to stand together, folks actually do that,” Mr. Daniels said of the correspondents’ association in an interview. “It’s unfortunate that this is where we are.”The Trump administration has made no secret of its contempt for reporters, but its actions in recent weeks have shocked many news outlets.President Trump first directed his communications team to bar The Associated Press from the press pool, a rotating group of reporters that travels with the president, and from spaces like the Oval Office and Air Force One. That was in retaliation for The A.P.’s continued use of “Gulf of Mexico” after Mr. Trump’s executive order to change the geographical name to Gulf of America. (Dozens of media outlets, including CNN, The New York Times and Fox News, protested the decision, and The A.P. has filed a First Amendment lawsuit.)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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    On Mexico’s Once-Packed Border, Few Migrants Remain

    On the eve of President Trump’s deadline to impose tariffs on Mexico, one thing is hard to miss on the Mexican side of the border: The migrants are gone.In what were once some of the busiest sections along the border — Ciudad Juárez, Tijuana, Matamoros — shelters that used to overflow now hold just a few families. The parks, hotels and vacant buildings that once teemed with people from all over the world stand empty.And on the border itself, where migrants once slept in camps within feet of the 30-foot wall, only dust-caked clothes and shoes, rolled-up toothpaste tubes and water bottles remain.“All that is over,” said the Rev. William Morton, a missionary at a Ciudad Juárez cathedral that serves migrants free meals. “Nobody can cross.”Last week, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, announced that Customs and Border Protection had apprehended only 200 people at the southern border the Saturday before — the lowest single-day number in over 15 years.Mr. Trump has credited his crackdown on illegal immigration for the plunging numbers, even as he has also announced he will send thousands more combat forces to the border to stop what he calls an invasion.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Europe Races to Repair a Split Between the U.S. and Ukraine

    European leaders raced on Sunday to salvage Ukraine’s relationship with the United States, after a bitter rupture last week between President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Trump. They pledged to assemble a European “coalition of the willing” to develop a plan for ending Ukraine’s war with Russia, which they hope could win the backing of a skeptical Mr. Trump.Gathering in London at the invitation of Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, the leaders vowed to bolster support for Ukraine. But they also expressed hope that Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Trump could repair their breach, underscoring Europe’s reluctance to cast off a trans-Atlantic alliance that has kept the peace for 80 years.“We have to bridge this,” Mr. Starmer said on Sunday to the BBC before the leaders began arriving at Lancaster House, near Buckingham Palace. “We have to find a way where we can all work together.”Mr. Starmer said he believed that despite Mr. Trump’s anger toward Mr. Zelensky in the Oval Office on Friday, the president was committed to a lasting peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia. He said Britain and France, working with other European countries, would develop their own plan with Mr. Zelensky.Details of the plan were sketchy, but Mr. Starmer suggested that the Europeans could use it as a basis to persuade Mr. Trump to commit to American security guarantees. Britain and France have already pledged to contribute troops to a peacekeeping force and are trying to enlist other countries across Europe.“I think we’ve got a step in the right direction,” Mr. Starmer said, though he added that “this is a moment of real fragility in Europe.”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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Transgender Rights Are Human Rights

    More from our inbox:‘I Am So Sorry’Lying to ChildrenThe Education Department said it would investigate two colleges that have been caught up in disputes regarding transgender athletes.Demetrius Freeman/ReutersTo the Editor:Re “Pain Is the Point of Trump’s Transgender Policy,” by Jennifer Finney Boylan (Opinion guest essay, Feb. 18):For most of my life I feared what would happen if anyone knew that I experienced a full spectrum of both feminine and masculine expressions. The shame began when I was a small child and followed me throughout much of my life. Even so I did not grow up with a fear of my government. America was a work in progress.I have seen rights gradually extended to women, racial minorities and sexual minorities, including trans and nonbinary people. However, today I find myself joining the rapidly growing ranks of innocent Americans who get up each morning fearing their own government.By targeting trans and nonbinary people, our president seeks to secure unchecked power at the expense of the vulnerable and innocent. Scapegoating minorities is a tried and true model for dictators throughout history. Here President Trump joins the likes of Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban by manufacturing a perceived threat from an innocent minority, which will eventually justify restrictions on civil rights for everyone.I have listened to his calls for a return to a time when there were only two genders. That was also a time when America freely and openly discriminated against women, people of color, Jews and others. The fact is there have never been just two genders. Many societies accepted us, and even those that tried to ban us recognized our existence in those very bans.We will not disappear again into the shadows. We will resist, those who love us will resist, and those who are decent will resist. As long as we do so, the ideal that all Americans are created equal will not fade, that this country might endure and grow once again.Mark PetersenPark City, UtahTo the Editor:Re “Trump’s Shameful Campaign Against Transgender Americans” (editorial, Feb. 16):The Trump administration’s attacks on transgender and nonbinary individuals compromise our safety and attempt to strip us of our rights and our humanity. These policies aren’t just cruel — they are also deeply un-American.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More