Who is Mike Waltz, Trump's security adviser likely to be fired for Signal chat leak
President Donald Trump's national security adviser, Michael Waltz, and his top deputy, Alex Wong, are likely to step down from their posts, US media reported on Thursday.
Waltz and his deputy Alex Wong were both set to leave, CBS News reported, while Fox News said Trump was expected to comment on the matter soon.
The former US congressman is the first major official to leave the administration in Trump's second term, which has so far been more stable in terms of personnel than his first.
A White House official did not confirm the reports, saying that they "do not want to get ahead of any announcement."
Waltz had been under pressure after the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic Magazine revealed in March that the national security adviser had mistakenly added him to a chat on the commercial messaging app Signal about attacks on Huthi rebels.
The NSA later took 'full responsibility' for it and said: 'It's embarrassing. We're going to get to the bottom of it.' However, he was later accused of using personal Gmail accounts for government communications.
The incident drew backlash from senior officials and fueled internal concerns about operational security within Trump's national security apparatus.
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Economic Times
14 minutes ago
- Economic Times
From TACO to FAFO, investors love parodies of Trump acronyms
Four months into President Donald Trump's second term, market observers have taken a cue from his fondness for condensing slogans into catchy acronyms like MAGA, DOGE and MAHA, and devised a few of their own that have been spreading across trading desks. Even those acronyms that do not directly reflect a specific trading strategy, still capture factors that traders say are important in Trump-era markets, such as volatility and uncertainty, that investors need to consider when making decisions. Some of the new labels are associated with investment strategies that aimed to capitalized on Trump's economic and trade polices, and international relations goals. Others riff off economic implications or his abrupt U-turns as markets and trade partners react to his proposals. The "Trump Trade" that played on the Make America Great Again theme in the wake of his November election victory and January inauguration, and contributed to record highs on Wall Street in February, is hardly discussed now that stocks, the dollar and Treasury bonds have succumbed to worries about his tariff polices. "Post the election, we heard a lot about YOLO (You Only Live Once), which seemed to promote taking outsize risks in a concentrated investment theme," Art Hogan, strategist at B. Riley Wealth, said. YOLO, is an acronym used to describe the tendency that was part of that Trump trade to chase high momentum strategies such as cryptocurrency. "While the term YOLO was popular for a period of time, it goes against all traditional advice," Hogan said. Here are of few more acronyms that have gotten play in the investment world in recent weeks: ** TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) - This one coined by a Financial Times columnist, has been used as a way to describe Trump's to-ing and fro-ing on tariffs in the wake of his April 2 "Liberation Day" speech. When asked about TACO in a recent press conference, the president lashed out, calling the question "nasty" "Where we end up might not be too far from what he promised on the campaign trail. So, does he always chicken out? I wouldn't go as far as to say that," said Christian DiClementi, fixed income portfolio manager at AllianceBernstein. "I think that he wants to rebalance the economy without pushing it off a cliff. And we're watching that being executed in real time. I think some of the ideas are thought out and some of them change on the fly." ** MEGA (Make Europe Great Again) - Mega first coined last year to address European competitiveness, resurfaced this Spring as a way to describe the flurry of investor interest in and flows into European markets. MEGA hats, spoofing their MAGA counterparts, are easily purchased online It's been revived by investors and traders in light of the outperformance European stocks in the immediate aftermath of Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs bombshell. ** MAGA (Make America Go Away) - While the original Trump Trade was also known as the MAGA trade, this variation cribbed the president's motto, first appearing in response to Vice President JD Vance's brief and unfruitful visit to Greenland, the autonomous territory of Denmark, which Trump has expressed interest in annexing. At least one Canadian investor says that quip is making the rounds of trading desks in Toronto and Montreal and sparking "wishful thinking" about simply boycotting U.S. investments. ** FAFO (Fuck Around and Find Out) - Although the acronym also came into being well before Trump's inauguration, it is being heard with increasing frequency in trading desk conversations. It is used to capture the financial market's volatility and chaos that Trump's policymaking process has created. Mark Spindel, chief investment officer of Potomac River Capital LLC, described the market as being caught in a "pinball machine as a result of that policymaking process." When reached for comment, White House spokesman Kush Desai said in an email "these asinine acronyms convey how unserious analysts have consistently beclowned themselves by mocking President Trump and his agenda that've already delivered multiple expectation-beating jobs and inflation reports, trillions in investment commitments, a historic UK trade agreement, and rising consumer confidence."
Time of India
18 minutes ago
- Time of India
Supreme Court allows Trump administration, for now, to end Biden-era migrant program
Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the Trump administration, for now, to revoke a Biden-era humanitarian program intended to give temporary residency to more than 500,000 immigrants from countries facing war and political court's order was unsigned and provided no reasoning, which is typical when the justices rule on emergency applications. It granted a request that will allow the administration to act even as an appeals court considers the case and, potentially, the justices review it ruling comes as the White House is stepping up pressure on the Department of Homeland Security to increase the pace of deportations and could speed efforts to remove thousands of migrants living legally in the United immediate practical impact of the court's order, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in a dissent joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, will have "the devastating consequences of allowing the government to precipitously upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending."The ruling, which exposes some migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti to possible deportation, is the latest in a series of emergency orders by the justices in recent weeks responding to a flurry of applications asking the court to weigh in on the administration's attempts to unwind Biden-era immigration court's decision to side with the Trump administration, though a temporary order at an early stage in the litigation, is a signal that a majority of the justices believe the administration is likely to prevail in the indicated as much in her dissent, when she wrote that the Supreme Court should have kept the lower court's pause in place, allowing people to maintain their immigration status for now "even if the government is likely to win on the merits." Jackson added that "success takes time" and that standards to block a lower court order "require more than anticipated victory."Friday's ruling focused on former President Joe Biden 's expansion of a legal mechanism for immigration called humanitarian parole. It allows migrants from countries facing instability to enter the United States and quickly secure work authorization, provided they have a private sponsor to take responsibility for month, the justices let the Trump administration remove deportation protections from nearly 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants who had been allowed to remain in the United States under a program known as Temporary Protected Status In a statement, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, called the Biden-era parole program "disastrous" and accused the previous administration of using it to admit "poorly vetted" for the immigrants said Friday's decision would be devastating to thousands of people who had sought protection in the United States."The Supreme Court has effectively greenlit deportation orders for an estimated half a million people, the largest such de-legalization in the modern era," said Karen Tumlin, founder and director of the Justice Action Center, an immigrant advocacy parole and Temporary Protected Status are two different mechanisms by which migrants from troubled countries can be temporarily settled in the United States. Humanitarian parole is typically obtained by individuals who apply on a case-by-case basis, while protected status is more often extended to large groups of migrants for a period of time. Individuals can hold both statuses at the same the two rulings, the justices have agreed that, for now, the Trump administration can proceed with plans to deport hundreds of thousands of people who had fled war-torn and unstable homelands and legally taken refuge in the United use of humanitarian parole has a decades-long history. It was used to admit nearly 200,000 Cubans during the 1960s and more than 350,000 Southeast Asians after the fall of Saigon during the Vietnam Biden administration announced a humanitarian parole program in April 2022 for Ukrainians seeking to flee after the Russian officials then introduced the program for Venezuelans in late 2022 and for Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans in January 2023. With a stalemate in Congress over immigration and a sharp rise in border crossings, the programs cleared the way for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from those nations to enter the country officials had hoped that the programs would encourage immigrants to fly to the United States and apply for entry in an organized fashion, instead of traveling north by foot and crossing the border the program was adopted for Venezuelans, official ports of entry had been closed to migrants since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, which had provided additional incentive for those intent on reaching the country to take more dangerous routes and cross the border the administration introduced its policy, Border Patrol apprehensions of migrants at the border from those countries dropped lawmakers have pushed back sharply against the humanitarian parole programs, arguing that they allowed migration by those who would not have otherwise qualified to enter the and other Republican-led states filed lawsuits while Biden was in office seeking to block the parole program, arguing that it burdened them by adding costs for health care, education and law enforcement. The courts upheld the programs' Donald Trump moved to end the humanitarian parole programs for people from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti on his first day back in far, the Trump administration has not tried to revoke the status of 240,000 Ukrainians who received humanitarian parole, though it has paused consideration of new applications under that for migrants have sued. They argued that the termination of the humanitarian and other immigration parole programs was "contrary to law, arbitrary and capricious."A federal judge in Massachusetts temporarily paused the administration's revocation of the program in April, finding that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem lacked the authority to categorically revoke parole for all 532,000 people without providing individualized, case-by-case May 5, a three-judge panel in the 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court's temporary block on the administration, finding that Noem had not made a "strong showing" that her "categorical termination" of humanitarian parole for all migrants was likely to survive a court an emergency application to the Supreme Court on May 8, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that Noem had "broad discretion over categories of immigration determinations" and that federal immigration law permitted the secretary "to revoke that parole" whenever its purposes had been blocking the Trump administration from ending the programs, the lower court had "needlessly" upended "critical immigration policies that are carefully calibrated to deter illegal entry" and had undone "democratically approved policies that featured heavily in the November election," Sauer for the immigrants filed a brief with the court arguing that Noem's decision to end the parole protections "contravened express limits on her authority" and that siding with the Trump administration would "cause an immense amount of needless human suffering" for the lawyers for the immigrants added: "All of them followed the law and the rules of the US government, and they are here to reunite with family and/or to escape, even temporarily, the instability, dangers and deprivations of their home countries."
Economic Times
23 minutes ago
- Economic Times
Wall Street's macro traders get schooled in Trump-Era turbulence
For anyone on Wall Street still clinging to a time-honored macro-investing playbook, Trump 2.0 has been a source of endless punishment. ADVERTISEMENT Market narratives keep shifting faster than traders can adjust positions. Tariffs are on, tariffs are off — then they're on again. One minute it's 'Sell America,' the next 'buy the dip.' Old-school fiscal anxieties land, just as Nvidia Corp. sells a vision of AI-driven productivity nirvana. To cap it off, President Donald Trump's unpredictability — trade, foreign relations, taxes and so on — is making life brutal for institutional pros paid to predict the market cycle. And the numbers show it: macro hedge funds are off to their worst start to a year in at least two decades. That confusion was on full display this week. As the US commander-in-chief fumed over the 'Trump Always Chickens Out' jab, and again as a legal ruling threatened his signature tariff weapon, some on Wall Street braced for retaliation. Yet in the end — buoyed by signs of still-solid corporate earnings and bets on economic resilience — Trump's combative posture failed to scare off risk-loving S&P 500 closed up almost 2% this week, notching a 6% gain overall in May, its best monthly performance since late 2023. High-yield bonds also climbed in May, with an index posting its highest return in 10 months.'Macro trading, which has never been easy, has just taken on a whole other difficult dimension,' said Priya Misra, portfolio manager at JP Morgan Asset Management. 'You can still position for a macro trend but you have to absolutely prevent getting whipsawed.' ADVERTISEMENT Nothing this week inspires much confidence that the rally is built to last. Traders still see the economy sputtering enough to warrant two Federal Reserve rate cuts this year, while the inflation risk from tariffs remains as uncertain as the same time, policy flip-flops, data head-fakes, and the White House's reactive posture have made macro forecasting a bitter exercise. In just six months since Trump's re-election, markets have priced in everything from an economic boom and resurgent inflation to outright recession. ADVERTISEMENT These fast-moving narratives are confounding the macro set, including trend-following quants, futures speculators and managers trying to stay ahead of shifting data. The HFRX Macro/CTA Index is down 4.3% this year through Wednesday, the worst start since at least 2004.'It's been very hard to filter the noise and get to the signal,' said James Athey, a portfolio manager at Marlborough Investment Management Ltd. 'Many systematic strategies have probably struggled, forced to derisk into falling markets, only to find they had low net and gross risk levels when the market turned so they missed the recovery.' ADVERTISEMENT May will go down as a stretch when defensive strategies adopted in the April chaos backfired with rare force. Pain hit value stocks, bearish options, fixed-income havens, trades tied to stagflation — in short, anything premised on the idea that April's volatility would linger or fell as traders questioned the sustainability of US debt. An ETF tracking long-dated bonds (TLT) trailed the S&P 500 by the most since 2022. ADVERTISEMENT Playing it safe in equities proved costly, too. Defensive shares lagged their cyclical counterparts by 10 percentage points, the second-widest gap since the start of the 2009 bull run. Betting on stagflation-like outcomes — slowing growth and strong inflation — misfired. A Goldman Sachs Group Inc. stock basket wagering that scenario tumbled for the worst month in two defensiveness quickly turned into a liability. Two of the largest ETFs linked to the Cboe Volatility Index, or VIX each slumped at least 25%, a moment of reckoning for those who have piled into these protective funds this popular buffer funds such as the FT Vest Laddered Buffer ETF (BUFR) — a darling trade of 2025 that limits downside risk while capping the upside — underperformed. So did derivative-powered ETFs like the JPMorgan Equity Premium Income ETF (JEPI) — strategies favored by income-seeking investors that attracted billions this the twists and turns, retail investors who stayed the course are having a moment of quiet vindication. After a record pace of dip buying in April, $10 billion has since flooded the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO), a favored destination of retail many investors, the best strategy has been to do nothing, rather than venture into the almost impossible task of figuring out the next Trump turn. Since election day, the S&P 500 is up 2% overall — masking how vicious the whiplash has been, with stocks sinking to the brink of a bear market before a powerful comeback. Another way to frame the market-timing challenge: If you missed the worst five days, you're up over 20% now. If you missed the best five, you're down 16%.To Ed Al-Hussainy, a rates strategist at Columbia Threadneedle, the mistake traders keep making is underestimating the economy's natural resilience. Amid the turbulence, his team is pulling back from aggressive positions. 'There's a great quote that I think comes from the army: 'slow is smooth, and smooth is fast,'' he said. 'They use it to train military recruits. Applies to macro traders as well.' (You can now subscribe to our ETMarkets WhatsApp channel)
