
Dimon's delusional Powell support and more: Letters to the Editor — July 20, 2025
Gee, what a surprise: A big-time banking CEO like Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan is supporting the under-siege Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell in keeping interest rates high for Americans ('Dimon: Get off Fed boss' back,' July 16).
The American people just came off four torturous years of an administration that made every decision against our best interests. The only way we survived this was with the hope of President Trump getting back in the White House to restore peace and prosperity.
But Dimon says: Hold your horses, people. Despite surviving the worst administration of all time, you still can't get prosperous terms because it would hurt my bottom line. How does he sleep at night?
Dimon clearly benefits from Americans continuing to suffer from high interest rates, claiming, 'Playing around with the Fed can often have adverse consequences.'
Eugene Dunn, Medford
PBS' public good
PBS and NPR are not about politics or handouts ('Big Bird's Big Bucks,' Rich Lowry, July 15).
They are trusted public services that reach millions of Americans with high-quality educational programming, fact-based journalism and cultural content.
In rural areas, including much of upstate New York, local public media stations are often the only consistent sources of news and learning. That is not a luxury — it's a civic need.
Lowry's article claims public media should survive like any other private business. But PBS and NPR are not built to maximize profit — they are designed to serve the public interest.
Federal support — though modest, with around 15% for PBS and 1% for NPR — is essential for keeping these services accessible.
Ask any parent or teacher what PBS means to childhood education; ask any listener in a news desert what NPR means to staying informed.
Bo Hershey, Watertown
A dud of a ruling
I cannot understand how a judge could overturn Michael Bossett's conviction for throwing a grenade at the police officers who were arresting him for his role in the murder of Gabriel Vitale ('Judge's helping 'hand' to killer,' July 14).
The most ironic thing about this affair is that Bossett's lawyer, Ron Kuby, called the conviction 'wrongful.'
However, Bossett really did throw a grenade at the officers. When the grenade fortunately did not go off, he later pretended that he thought it was a 'dud.' There is nothing false about that.
John Francis Fox, Sunnyside
Halt bird-hawking
A new local bill would ban pet stores from hawking birds ('NYC pet shops squawk,' July 15).
Thank you to Voters for Animal Rights and Councilwoman Diana Ayala for attempting to right society's wrongs.
Over 200 years ago, William Blake nailed it when he wrote, 'A robin redbreast in a cage puts all heaven in a rage.' For far too long, humanity has ignored that wisdom.
Karen Dawn, Santa Barbara Calif.
Defend ICE agents
Left-wing radicals claim they are protesting ICE raids, but throwing rocks at agents is anarchy — not protest ('Begging for Civil War,' Editorial, July 14).
These acts endanger officers' lives and can cause death.
The head of ICE should issue a shoot-to-kill order when attacked by radicals whose acts constitute deadly physical force against law officers in the lawful performance of their duties.
The rights of these people end when public safety is endangered.
Gary Acerra, Staten Island
Want to weigh in on today's stories? Send your thoughts (along with your full name and city of residence) to letters@nypost.com. Letters are subject to editing for clarity, length, accuracy, and style.
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USA Today
24 minutes ago
- USA Today
Men don't like how Trump treats the economy. Democrats must cash in on that.
Democrats are being given an opportunity to fix their messaging with Americans who are quickly turning on President Donald Trump. According to new polling, American men are beginning to lose faith in President Donald Trump. It took them long enough, but I'm glad they're here with the rest of us. A CBS News/YouGov poll showed that the president's approval rating among men had dropped to 47%, while 53% disapproved of the job he was doing. It's a stark contrast from the November election, when Trump won male voters by 55%. It's a troubling sign for Republicans, but an opportunity for Democrats to gain ground with male voters before 2026. While men tend to go for the GOP, there is a possibility that Trump continues to alienate them by continuing to torpedo the economy and making irrational decisions when it comes to foreign policy and immigration. Can Democrats fix their messaging? The big issue for men? How Trump handles the economy. Men are particularly upset by Trump's handling of the economy. According to the CBS News/YouGov poll, 49% of men say the economy is getting worse, and 59% disapprove of how he's handling inflation. Sixty percent of men think he's focusing too much on tariffs, while 65% say he isn't doing enough to lower the cost of goods and services. Opinion: MAGA, I feel bad Trump lied to you about the Epstein list. Who saw this coming? Democrats, who tend to have weaker messaging on the economy, should take these criticisms and run with them. The cost of tariffs is likely to be passed on to the consumer. The nation's gross domestic product just declined for the first time in three years. Inflation may be cooling, but prices aren't falling. By putting the blame on Trump for the economic strife Americans are feeling, the Democratic Party could potentially show men that Republican lawmakers may not be the ones to rely on when it comes to their finances. 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They could also combine immigration with economic issues, and stress how Trump's deportation agenda could negatively affect the GDP and increase the cost of food. Opinion: Trump keeps brutalizing immigrants because he's failing at everything else Gen Z is particularly unhappy Generation Z, born between 1997 to 2012, also seems to have woken up to Trump's failures. The CBS News/YouGov poll found that his approval rating among 18- to 29-year-olds plummeted to 28% in July. Seventy-one percent of those under 30 disapprove of Trump's handling of the economy, and 73% disapprove of how he's handling inflation. As with men, it's a far cry from how Gen Z felt about Trump in the 2024 election, when voters ages 18-29 supported Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris by a much smaller margin than they supported former President Joe Biden in 2020. Among this age group, 56% of males voted for Trump, 1 percentage point more than among all male voters. Opinion: Trump is unpopular, polls show, and he's building an America most Americans hate It's telling that the generation whose perception of the Republican Party is entirely shaped by the rise of Trump is suddenly souring on him. Perhaps people around my age are finally realizing that targeting marginalized communities won't actually improve their quality of life, or that Trump made promises he couldn't keep. They might also be realizing that the positive emotions they felt during the first Trump administration can be chalked up to childhood nostalgia. For those of us in the generation who were old enough to vote in 2016, the negatives of Trump's first presidency were unavoidable. Opinion alerts: Get columns from your favorite columnists + expert analysis on top issues, delivered straight to your device through the USA TODAY app. Don't have the app? Download it for free from your app store. If the Democrats are clever, they'll consider this polling and begin brainstorming ways to further drive a wedge between Trump and male voters, particularly those in Gen Z. Yet I'm not sure Democrats are prepared to pick up the young voters Republicans are siphoning off. Their solution now seems to be doing nothing – Democratic leadership essentially disappeared after the 2024 election, and no one seems to know how to get the party back on track. Ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, they need to focus on more than podcasts and memes. They need to be working on crafting a populist message and focusing on economic issues, because that seems to be the deciding factor in whether or not a president is doing well. Follow USA TODAY columnist Sara Pequeño on X, formerly Twitter: @sara__pequeno You can read diverse opinions from our USA TODAY columnists and other writers on the Opinion front page, on X, formerly Twitter, @usatodayopinion and in our Opinion newsletter.


Politico
25 minutes ago
- Politico
The reverse migration: African Americans relocating to Kenya cite heritage and restoration
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an hour ago
US-China trade talks: Can China reduce its export dependence?
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'We could also discuss the elephant in the room, which is this great rebalancing that the Chinese need to do,' Bessent told financial news network CNBC. He said China's share of global manufacturing exports at nearly 30%, 'can't get any bigger, and it should probably shrink.' The issues are not new, and China has been working to address them for years, more for domestic reasons than to reduce its trade surpluses with the U.S. and other countries. Bessent's predecessor as treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, made industrial policy a focus of a trip to China last year. She blamed government subsidies for flooding the global market with 'artificially cheap Chinese products.' The European Union, whose top leaders met their Chinese counterparts in Beijing on Thursday, has cited subsidies to justify EU tariffs on electric vehicles made in China. In the 1980s, the U.S. pressured Japan to boost consumer spending when American manufacturing was overwhelmed by exports from the likes of Toyota and Sony. Economists have long argued that China likewise needs to transform into a more consumer-driven economy. Consumer spending accounts for less than 40% of China's economy, versus close to 70% in the United States and about 54% in Japan. Chinese leaders have spoken about both factory overcapacity and weak consumer spending as long-term problems and have sought over the past 20 years to find ways to rebalance the economy away from export manufacturing and massive investments in dams, roads, railways and other infrastructure. Fierce price wars have prompted critical reports in official media saying that companies are 'racing to the bottom,' skimping on quality and even safety to reduce costs. With strong government support, they've also expanded overseas, where they can charge higher prices but still undercut local competitors, creating a political backlash. All that competition and price cutting has left China battling deflation, or falling prices. When companies receive less for their products, they tend to invest less. That can lead to job cuts and lower wages, sapping business activity and spending power — contrary to the long-term goal of increasing the share of consumer spending in driving overall growth. To counter that, the government is spending billions on rebates and subsidies for people who trade in their cars or appliances for new ones. But acknowledging a problem and solving it are two different things. Economists say more fundamental changes are needed to boost consumption and rein in overcapacity. Such changes can only come incrementally over time. Private Chinese companies and foreign-invested companies create the most jobs, but they've suffered from swings in policy and pressures from the trade war, especially since the pandemic. Demographic changes are another challenge as China's population shrinks and ages. Many experts advocate expanding China's social safety net, health insurance, pensions and other support systems, so that people would feel freer to spend rather than save for a medical emergency or retirement. Yan Se, an economist at Peking University's Guanghua School of Management, warned at a recent forum that deflation will become a long-term issue if China doesn't step up its welfare benefits. 'Chinese people deserve a better life," he said. One possibility, put forward at the same forum by Liu Qiao, the dean of the business school, would be to change incentives for local government officials, rewarding them for raising consumption or household incomes instead of meeting an economic growth target. 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Going forward, the government is calling for more coordination of economic development polices in fields such as artificial intelligence so that not every province champions the same industry. But government moves to counter the impact of higher tariffs tend to support sectors already in overcapacity, and the share of consumption in the economy has fallen in recent years.