Israel Begins Repatriation of Citizens Stranded By Iran Strikes
Israel is repatriating tens of thousands of its citizens stranded abroad after a flare-up in fighting with Iran, deploying emergency airlifts and ferries.
Authorities are rationing flights as a precaution, wary that aircraft could be threatened by incoming missile barrages.
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CNBC
28 minutes ago
- CNBC
Is the U.S. consumer OK? Fed chief Powell will soon be the latest to weigh in
Is the American consumer still all right? Several signals this week are flashing yellow, upping the ante as investors' attention turns to the Federal Reserve meeting on Wednesday. First, on Tuesday, retail spending in May showed a 0.9% decrease versus April, which itself was revised lower to indicate a 0.1% monthly decline, down from the 0.1% increase reported previously. The primary contributor to the decline was a 3.5% monthly decrease in sales at motor vehicle and parts dealers. Recall, a 25% tariff on vehicles not assembled in the U.S. went into effect on April 3, which, according to S & P Global Mobility, made up 46% of domestic sales in 2024. Another less direct signal of the weakening demand was Amazon's announcement Tuesday that its July Prime Day event has been extended to 96 hours this year, up from two days last year. The extended timeframe may simply be a move to try out a new sales feature called "Today's Big Deals" from big brands like Samsung, Kiehl's and Levi's. But we tend to believe that the extension of a well-established sale is an attempt to gin up demand. The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index for the U.S. rebounded to 60.5 in June, up from the 52.2 in April and May, but it's still well off the recent high we saw in December (74) or even the level seen in February (64.7) when President Donald Trump's tariff talk started to ramp up. And while it's too soon to measure the impact of the Israel-Iran conflict or the possibility of direct U.S. involvement, we assume the uncertainty is a net negative on consumer spending. That's even more true as energy prices, which represent a largely unavoidable cost for consumers that competes with discretionary spending, start to creep up as investors price in a "geopolitical premium," reflecting the implications of a supply shock should Iran's contribution to global supply start to wane. All of this adds even more importance to the Fed meeting later Wednesday, even as the market is widely expecting the central bank to keep rates unchanged in the range of 4.25% to 4.5%. It's more about where rates may go later this year. To that end, investors will be closely listening to Fed Chair Jerome Powell's press conference Wednesday to better understand how the central bank is thinking about the potential of weakening consumer demand at the same time energy prices have started to rise. That is a key factor when it comes to inflation given that energy costs ripple through every aspect of the global economy. The Fed needs to balance price stability and full employment, and right now it's facing risks on both sides of its dual mandate. The central bank's latest economic projections, released only quarterly, also are due out Wednesday and carry the potential to move markets. To be sure, consumer demand remains pretty strong on the whole. As noted, retail sales were heavily weighed down by vehicle sales, which represent large, often-financed purchases that were also hit with sizable tariffs. Other categories saw monthly gains. In addition, there have been positive updates in the restaurant sector, with both foot traffic and sales picking up, according to UBS. If anything, the consumer is becoming more budget-conscious and hungry for deals, but still spending. As long as the labor market holds in there , that may continue to be the case. We will continue to monitor for signs of further weakening from the consumer, which will in turn give us insight into the economic backdrop more broadly. Remember, private consumption accounts for roughly two-thirds of U.S. GDP. At the moment, our retail names are well positioned whether consumer confidence bounces back like we hope, or should it deteriorate further. Amazon is clearly ready to lean into promotional activity in order to keep the consumer shopping with them and has the scale to force merchants to play along. Costco also has the scale to keep prices low and buy selling in bulk can offer consumers prices they can't find anywhere else on daily essentials. Meanwhile, TJX Companies can still draw in consumers thanks to the best-in-class value it offers and stands to benefit from consumer push back on full-priced retailers by scooping up any quality unsold inventory. (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust's portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
Vox
30 minutes ago
- Vox
Trump doesn't have a foreign policy
is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he covers ideology and challenges to democracy, both at home and abroad. His book on democracy,, was published 0n July 16. You can purchase it here. This story was adapted from the On the Right newsletter. New editions drop every Wednesday. Sign up here. For years, there has been an increasingly bitter foreign policy fight between two factions of the Republican Party. On one hand, you have the GOP hawks like Sen. Lindsey Graham (SC) who want the United States to impose its will on the world by force. On the other, you have the 'America First' crowd — like Tucker Carlson and Vice President JD Vance — who want the US to withdraw from international commitments and refocus its attention on domestic concerns. The big question, as always, is where President Donald Trump lands. If Trump says that the MAGA foreign policy is one thing, then that's what it is — and the rest of the party falls in line. On one read, Trump's early response to the Israel-Iran war settles the debate in the hawks' favor. After months of opposing an Israeli strike, Trump rapidly flipped after the attack looked more and more successful. Since then, his rhetoric has grown increasingly heated, opening the door to possible US involvement. And he has publicly attacked Carlson for criticizing the war, writing on Truth Social that 'somebody [should] please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson that, 'IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!'' And yet, I think the factional debate remains far less settled than it seems. In fact, I believe it will remain unsettled as long as Trump is in power. Trump's own foreign policy thinking does not align neatly with either of the two main camps. The president does not do systematic foreign policy, but rather acts on the basis of a collection of impulses that could never amount to anything so grandiose as a doctrine. Those gut instincts include a sense that the United States should look out for itself only, ignore any rules or norms that might constrain it, use force aggressively without regard to civilian casualties, and seek 'deals' with other states that advantage the United States and/or make Donald Trump look good personally. It looks, in effect, like an internationalized version of Trump's approach to New York real estate in the 1980s and 1990s. But its significance for US policy is widely underappreciated. His lack of ideology does not mean that he can be permanently persuaded by one faction or the other, but rather produces volatility. The president has teetered back and forth between interventionism and isolationism, depending on the interplay between Trump's idiosyncratic instincts and whoever he's talking with on a particular day. Given the near-dictatorial power modern presidents have over foreign policy, this will likely produce something worse than ideological rigidity: an incoherent, mutually contradictory policy that ends up undermining itself at every turn. At a moment of acute geopolitical peril, when Trump's ascendant hawkish allies are calling for yet another war of regime change in the Middle East, it's easy to see how that could end in true disaster. Trump's real foreign policy guide is his instincts Foreign policy analysts like to talk a lot about 'grand strategy.' What they mean by this is a vision that identifies the objectives leaders want to accomplish in world politics — like, say, protecting American territories from physical threats — and then develops a series of specific policies designed to work together in accomplishing that goal. Both the right's hawks and the America First crowd have distinct visions of grand strategy. The hawks start from the premise that the United States benefits from being the world's dominant power, and from there they develop a series of policies designed to contain or eliminate threats to that dominance from hostile powers like Russia or China. The America Firsters, by contrast, believe that remaining a globe-spanning power costs the United States too much in blood and treasure — and that the American people will be both safer and more secure if the US reduces its involvement in non-essential conflicts and lets other countries settle their differences without American help. When you start from each of these grand strategic premises, you can basically deduce where most members of each bloc land on specific issues. The hawks love Israel's war in Iran, while the America Firsters fear it might pull in the United States more directly. The hawks believe in aggressively trying to contain Chinese influence in East Asia, while the America Firsters seek accommodations that don't risk a nuclear war over Taiwan. The hawks (mostly) support arming Ukraine against Russia, while the America Firsters are overwhelmingly against it. On all of these issues, Trump's actual policy is all over the map. He first tried to negotiate a nuclear agreement with Iran, which the hawks hated, but swiftly flipped to supporting Israel's war. His China policy has been inconsistent, pairing initially harsh tariffs and talk of trade 'decoupling' with a negotiated climb-down and vagueness on Taiwan. On Ukraine, where Trump cozies up to Russia's Vladimir Putin and berates Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, the policy substance is even more muddled — he has cut US aid to Ukraine while simultaneously extending President Joe Biden's sanctions on Russia, and even threatened new ones if Putin won't make a ceasefire deal. Trump's second-term record, in short, is a tangle of incoherent policies and whiplash-inducing policy shifts. There is no consistent vision of the world, just whatever Trump decides policy should be in the moment — regardless of how much it contradicts what he's said or done previously. And while all presidents have to develop new policies based on events, the Trump administration makes confusing and radical policy shifts over the course of very limited time periods (Exhibit A: the still-fluctuating tariff rates). This foreign policy ping-pong can only be understood if you see Trump as someone who is allergic to foreign policy doctrine. You can spin his allergy positively (he's pragmatic) or negatively (he knows nothing and doesn't care to learn). Perhaps both are true to a degree, but the evidence — like his refusal to read briefing documents — tilts heavily in the latter direction. What we get, in place of doctrine, are Trump's instincts about interests, deals, and strength. We know he thinks about current US policy in zero-sum terms, such as that NATO and trade agreements cannot benefit both sides. We know he's indifferent to legal constraints from domestic and international law. We know he's willing to use force aggressively, authorizing attacks against terrorist groups in his first term that produced shockingly high civilian body counts. And we know he sees himself as the consummate dealmaker, with much of his policy seemingly premised on the idea that he can get leaders like Putin and China's Xi Jinping onside. Sometimes, of course, these instincts combine and crash into each other — with Iran as a case in point. Trump spent quite a lot of effort in his second term trying to negotiate a new nuclear deal with Iran. In both April and May, he explicitly warned Israel not to attack Iran. Yet now he seems fully on board with Israel's war, posting bellicose Truth Social posts suggesting Iranians should 'immediately evacuate Tehran.' Trump's jumping from negotiations to cheerleading war is not a result of him changing his foreign policy worldview. It's that he wanted to be the dealmaker and then was persuaded, by a combination of Israeli pressure and his own lack of patience, that the talks weren't working. Hence, Trump decided, war would be the order of the day. 'Now Mr. Trump is seriously considering sending American aircraft in to help refuel Israeli combat jets and to try to take out Iran's deep-underground nuclear site at Fordo with 30,000-pound bombs — a step that would mark a stunning turnabout from his opposition just two months ago to any military action while there was still a chance of a diplomatic solution,' the New York Times reports. But even amid said deliberations, Trump pines to be the dealmaker — suggesting in an ABC News interview this weekend that war 'had to happen' for talks to succeed, and that it 'may have forced a deal to go quicker.' His more hawkish allies see Israel's offensive as the opening shots in a war of regime change; Trump sees it as the art of the deal. It is, in short, a category error to try to align Trump with one GOP foreign policy faction or the other. He's just Trump — a man with a long track record of endorsing and ordering armed violence, but also a deep faith in his near-magical dealmaking powers. Trump's real policy is chaos So, if Trump's guide is his instincts, why do the factional disagreements splitting the GOP matter? Because we know for a fact that Trump can be easily influenced by the people around him. While he has some fixed and unchangeable views, like his peculiar idea that trade deficits are inherently bad, there are many areas on which he doesn't have a strong opinion about the facts — and can be talked in one direction or another. This is the well-known phenomenon of Trump making public pronouncements based on whoever he spoke to most recently. In Trump's first term, this ended up having a surprisingly stabilizing effect on policy. He was surrounded by more establishment types like Jim Mattis and Mark Milley, who would frequently talk him out of more radical policies — or else quietly make policies on their own that were consistent with longstanding bipartisan consensus. There were still many Trumpian moments — everyone forgets that we were shockingly close to war with North Korea in 2017 — but the overall foreign policy record wasn't as radical as many feared. As we all know, the second term is different. The Mattis types are gone, replaced instead by loyalists. The factional disputes are not between Trump's allies and establishmentarians who wished to check him, but rather between different strains of MAGA — some more hawkish, others more dovish. But neither is big on stability, in the sense of wanting to ensure Trump colors within the longstanding lines of post-Cold War US foreign policy. This creates a situation where each faction is trying to persuade Trump that their approach best and most truly embodies his MAGA vision. The problem, however, is that no such vision exists. Each will have successes at various times, when they succeed at tapping into whichever of Trump's instincts is operative at the moment. But none will ever succeed in making Trump act like the ideologue they want him to be. What this means, in concrete policy terms, is that the chaos and contradictions of Trump's early foreign policy is likely to continue. In the post-9/11 era, presidents have accrued extraordinary powers over foreign policy. Even explicit constitutional provisions, like the requirement that Congress declare war or approve treaties, no longer serve as meaningful checks on the president's ability to use force or alter US international commitments. This environment means that the twin factors shaping Trump's thinking — his own jumbled instincts and his subordinates' jockeying for his favor — are likely to have direct and immediate policy consequences. We've seen that in the whiplash of his early-term policies in areas like trade and Iran, and have every reason to believe it will continue for the foreseeable future. In a new Foreign Affairs essay, the political scientist Elizabeth Saunders compares US foreign policy under Trump to that of a 'personalist' dictatorship: places where one man rules with no real constraints, like Russia or North Korea. Such countries, she notes, have a long track record of foreign policy boondoggles. 'Without constraints, even from elites in the leader's inner circle, personalist dictators are prone to military misadventures, erratic decisions, and self-defeating policies,' she writes. 'A United States that can change policy daily, treat those who serve its government with cruelty, and take reckless actions that compromise its basic systems and leave shared secrets and assets vulnerable is not one to be trusted.'
37 minutes ago
Minnesota shooting suspect started as a frustrated idealist, his writings show
Vance Boelter was preoccupied with societal problems and how he could fix them to serve the greater good, according to some of his previous writings and the man who worked with Boelter for more than a decade doing web design for a series of his projects. Before allegedly carrying out a "political assassination" on Saturday, Boelter was "clearly very religious, very passionate," and "devout, and sincere in his beliefs," said Charlie Kalech, CEO of the web design firm J-Town, commissioned by Boelter. But at that time, Boelter appeared to show no signs of the violent extremism of which he's now accused, Kalech said. Boelter is charged with killing Democratic Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and wounding Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife. Allegedly posing as a police officer over Father's Day weekend, authorities said Boelter "shot them in cold blood" in an alleged early-morning rampage that launched a two-day manhunt. However, in the preceding years, Boelter seemed like a hard worker striving to make his ideas real, and sometimes, struggling to make ends meet. His fervent personality frothed with big, civic-minded ideas on how to "make the world a better place," Kalech said. In the professional relationship they had, Boelter was clearly "idealistic." "I think he sincerely believed in the projects that we worked on, that he was acting for the greater good," Kalech told ABC News. "I certainly never got the impression he saw himself as a savior. He just thought of himself as a smart guy who figured out the solution to problems, and it's not so difficult – so let's just do it. Like a call to action kind of person." Most of those grand-scale projects never came to fruition, and the last time Kalech said he had contact with Boelter was May 2022. But in planning documents and PowerPoint presentations shared with ABC News, which Kalech said Boelter wrote for the web design, Boelter detailed lengthy proposals that expressed frustration with what he saw as unjust suffering that needed to be stopped. Some of those projects were also sweeping, to the point of quixotic -- even for the deepest-pocketed entrepreneur. Boelter first reached out to Kalech's firm for a book he had written, "Revoformation," which Kalech took to be a mashup between "revolution" and "reformation." It's also the name of the ministry Boelter had once tried to get off the ground, according to the organization's tax forms. "It seemed to me like maybe he volunteered more than what was good for him. In other words, he gave too much away instead of worrying about earning money, because he didn't always have money," Kalech said. "It was never clear to me if the ministry really existed. Are there congregants? Is there a constituency? I don't know. Or was it like something in his head that he was trying to make? That was never clear to me." Kalech recalled that Boelter chose his firm for the work because they are Jerusalem-based, and he wanted to support Israel. Boelter's interest in religion's impact on society is reflected in a "Revoformation" PowerPoint that Kalech said Boelter gave him, dated September 2017. "I am very concerned that the leadership in the U.S. is slowly turning against Israel because we are losing our Judaic / Christian foundations that was [sic] once very strong," the presentation said. "I believe that if the Christians are united and the people who are leading this Revoformation are a blessing to Israel that it will be good for both Israel and the U.S." Over the years, Boelter would reach out with what appeared to be exponentially ambitious endeavors, Kalech said: "What he wanted to take on, I think, might have been bigger." Boelter wanted to end American hunger, according to another project's PowerPoint. And while the idea would require massive changes to current laws and food regulation, it appeared Boelter dismissed that as surmountable if only elected officials could get on board. "American Hunger isn't a food availability problem," the presentation said. "American Hunger is a tool that has been used to manipulate and control a vast number of American's [sic], with the highest percentage being people of color. This tool can and should be broken now, and failure to do so will be seen as intentional criminal negligence by future generations." "We should be embarrassed as a nation that we let this happen and have not correctly [sic] this injustice 100 years ago," one slide said. One slide how described how his own lived experience informed his idea, referring to him in the third person: "several times in his life Vance Boelter was the first person on the scene of very bad head on car accidents," and that he was able to help "without fear of doing something wrong" because he was "protected" by Good Samaritan law – which could and should be applied to food waste, the slide said. To keep an eye on which lawmakers supported the necessary legislation, "there needs to be a tracking mechanism," the presentation said, where citizens could "see listed every singe [sic] elected official and where they stand on the Law (Food Providers Good Samaritan Law)." "Those few that come out and try to convince people that it is better to destroy food than to give it away free to people, will be quickly seen for who they are. Food Slavers that have profited off the hunger of people for years," the 18-slide, nearly 2,000-word presentation said. "At least in his mind and on paper, he was solving problems," Kalech told ABC News. "He would think about things and then have a euphoric moment and write out a manifesto of, How am I going to solve this? And then bring those thoughts to paper and bring that paper to an action plan and try to implement it." The last project Kalech said Boelter wanted to engage him for was a multifaceted collection of corporations to help start-up and expanding businesses in the Democratic Republic of Congo, all under the umbrella "Red Lion Group." The 14-page, over 6,000-word planning document for the project outlined ideas for what Red Lion Group would offer: ranging widely from "security services" to agricultural and weapons manufacturing sectors, medical supplies, investment services, martial arts, oil and gas and waste management. Red Lion would also serve in media spaces: with "CONGOWOOD" Film Productions "to be what Hollywood is to American movies and what Bollywood is to Indian movies." Boelter was to have a 49% minority ownership of the group, with a business partner owning 51%. "The Africa thing, the Red Lion thing, we didn't really get into it, because it became pretty apparent pretty soon that he just didn't have the funds to go ahead," Kalech said – at least, as far as his web design services were concerned. "He was interested in doing good," Kalech said. "But moderation in all things, and when good becomes extreme, it actually becomes bad," adding that hurting anyone crosses a "red line." "The question one keeps coming back to is – what makes the seesaw tip? Like, he's good, he's good, he's good, he's acting for the greater good, he has all these good ideas, he's trying to engage community, serving on a government committee, he's engaging churches and places of worship, and then something happens, and he goes ballistic," Kalech said. "Who would do that? Someone who's absolutely desperate, just seeing that there's no other choice. That's the only thing I can imagine. But look, obviously someone like this is not operating on the same frequency as we are," Kalech said. "They're blinded by their faith, or their beliefs. And, you know, especially something like murder, it's so ironic, because that's one of the big 10."
