The Latest: Libraries cut some services across the US after Trump order to dismantle agency
President Donald Trump is hoping that separate phone calls Monday with Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will make progress toward a ceasefire in the war in Ukraine.
Trump expressed his hopes for a 'productive day' Monday — and a ceasefire — in a social media post over the weekend. His effort will also include calls to NATO leaders.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the upcoming conversation would be 'important, given the talks that took place in Istanbul' last week between Russian and Ukrainian officials, the first such negotiations since March 2022.
Trump has struggled to end a war that began with Russia's invasion in February 2022, and that makes these conversations a serious test of his reputation as a dealmaker after having claimed he would quickly settle the conflict once he was back in the White House, if not even before he took office.
Here's the latest:
Libraries cut some services after Trump's order to dismantle small agency
Libraries across the U.S. have cut back on some digital services weeks after the Trump administration's move to dismantle the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Maine has temporarily closed its state library and others across the country have paused their interlibrary loan programs. The reductions in services coincide with a lawsuit filed by more than 20 state attorneys general and the American Library Association to restore funding.
They argue only Congress has the authority to control federal spending. E-book and audiobook programs are especially vulnerable to budget cuts, even though those offerings have exploded in popularity since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trump's new executive order targets barcodes on ballots
Trump's executive order seeking to overhaul how U.S. elections are run includes a somewhat obscure reference to the way votes are counted.
Voting equipment, it says, should not use ballots that include 'a barcode or quick-response code.' Those few technical words could have a big impact.
Voting machines that give all voters a ballot with one of those codes are used in hundreds of counties across 19 states.
Trump, in justifying the move, said in the order that his intention was 'to protect election integrity.'
Trump tax cut package advanced out of House committee
Trump's big bill advances in rare weekend vote: House Republicans narrowly advanced Trump's big tax cuts package out of a key committee during a rare Sunday night vote, but just barely, as conservative holdouts are demanding quicker cuts to Medicaid and green energy programs before giving their full support.
House Speaker Mike Johnson is pushing to approve the package and send it to the Senate by Memorial Day.
Democrats say they will fight what House party leader Hakeem Jeffries calls an 'extreme and toxic bill.'
Former President Biden diagnosed with cancer
Former President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, his office said Sunday. Trump posted on social media that he was saddened by the news and 'we wish Joe a fast and successful recovery.'
The finding came after the 82-year-old reported urinary symptoms, which led doctors to discover a nodule on his prostate. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer on Friday, with the cancer cells having spread to the bone.
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Rev. Bauch retires after leading Peace United through era of change
Jun. 1—ROCHESTER — Rev. Paul Bauch doesn't remember the exact event at Peace United Church of Christ that people were protesting. It was likely something affirming an LGBTQ event — likely a perennial drag queen bingo event there. Protesters literally brought semiautomatic rifles to the front lawn of the church, he recalled. "We stood together," Bauch told his congregation Sunday. It was his last day as lead pastor at the church. His message was one of gratitude and reflection of the changes he saw over 23 years. However, Bauch stressed it was the congregation and not him that led the church to be a more open inclusive and changed institution. He recalled a protester yelling at him that he wasn't a pastor, he was an activist. "And what did you answer back?" "Amen," the congregation shouted with no hesitation. In his time at Peace United Church, Rev. Paul Bauch oversaw other major changes there. Some changes were literal physical improvements. A construction contractor, Bauch was quick to take the lead on construction projects he saw as helping the church. Those included renovation of the church's sanctuaries, adding balcony seating in one, renovation of the congregation hall, a new parking lot and then renovation and rebuilding after a fire in the church in 2022. However, it was the face and culture of the congregation Rev. Bauch also reinvigorated. In 2006, the church openly declared itself as being welcoming to people of all sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions and affirmed its inclusion in the ministry. For Bauch, the decision was not a difficult one. "If you really look at the depth of what Jesus did, he stood up for the outcasts and the poor and people persecuted by the system," he said. It's that principle Bauch used to guide his decisions while leading the church. Bauch said it's the congregation's willingness to see the connection between that principle that has made the church the welcoming place it is today. That includes becoming a platinum sponsor of Rochester's annual Pride event. "You modeled for us how to listen and respond," said Peace United Rev. Linda Reynolds, during the midday farewell service there Sunday. Bauch said his biggest surprise in more than two decades leading the church was the willingness of the congregation to embrace change and try new things. "Never did I face, 'Oh, we have to be careful, oh, we can't change that,'" Bauch said. Lynn Alcock, Peace United church member, talked about Bauch's ability to include people. "It's just so important to Paul that everyone has a place," Alcock said. Bauch considered retiring after the church returned to in-person service following the COVID-19 pandemic. Then an intentionally set fire damaged the church in 2022 . Bauch stayed on board to help lead recovery and restoration efforts. "He brought us back to where we are today," said Brian Winters, a church member who served on the search committee that brought Bauch to Rochester from Chesterfield, Missouri, in 2002. The farewell service and lunch drew hundreds of people. A spillover crowd watched the proceedings from folding chairs in the hall and a video feed in the second sanctuary. The event also drew a former Chesterfield church member, Jan Bentheimer, to speak at the service. Rev. Kelly Gallagher, associate conference minister of the Minnesota Conference of the United Church of Christ, also attended. The church's other pastors also spoke and wished Bauch well. Bauch said the church is in good hands, not only because of the strong leadership, but because of the entire congregation's commitment to following a message of affirmation and love. "Everything we did went back to that message," he said.
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9 minutes ago
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10 ways the 'Trump discount' is hurting the stock market
We keep getting thrown off, and the lack of predictability is driving investors elsewhere. Do we really think the economies in Europe are doing that well? Is Italy on fire? Spain soaring? No. But what they do have is consistency , even if it is the consistency of mediocrity. We, on the other hand, have no stability whatsoever because of the incredible, mind-boggling power of the White House. It's so pervasive, frightening even if you care about the U.S. Constitution, that I think the rank-and-file of both parties in the House and the Senate are shocked to their core. We have never seen anything like it. To think, you have to go back to the time of Andrew Jackson's presidency to worry about what happens if the judiciary is disobeyed is a statement for the ages. So, it throws us off. We sit here, agog, as Europe goes higher when we have companies in our stock indexes that are doing much, much better than any of theirs. But it doesn't matter because ours can be taken away with a stroke of President Donald Trump's pen — and don't we know it. 1. Nvidia The fact that Club name Nvidia last Wednesday evening could blow away numbers without China is incredible. The stock showed it Thursday but gave back most of the gains Friday. That's the power of the Trump discount. 2. Retail stocks We have whole swaths of the stock landscape getting held back by the Trump discount. We all were hoping to see that retailers would try to extract discounts from suppliers and then split the tariff pain with the customer. But the president attacks Walmart , perhaps the only company besides Club name Costco , to actually do Trump's bidding. Or what we thought was the president's bidding. Makes me wonder, if something were made in America, could you jack up the price without consequences? Most likely. It's no wonder that Costco's stock shot higher last week. It's the only retailer that's not yet having to raise prices. I don't picture the president being a Costco customer. If he were a member, I bet he would crow about it. The dollar stores may be right in the crosshairs next week. The Street worships them right now. But retail is mighty hard to trust. Thank heavens for Club name TJX , the company behind T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods, which really is cutting prices. The stock is still too low as far as I am concerned. 3. Drugs stocks The drug companies have a huge Trump discount. I didn't pay much attention to the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) this year because I figured that no experimental cancer drug would come to the fore. Who would want to trumpet that? We know the president is adopting a position that's been antithetical to the Republicans, who have fought for years to not allow Medicare to negotiate prices. Now we have little-to-no understanding of what awaits us with pricing — so the price to earnings (PE) multiples keep shrinking. That's the Trump discount. Oh, and heaven forbid, you make vaccines. You are experiencing the wrath of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Glaxo's managed to avoid it, but there's that European halo again. 4. Food stocks On Monday, you will see how hobbled another group has become when Campbell's reports its quarterly results. We don't know what's happening behind the scenes of the soup company, which also owns brands including Prego and Rao's pasta sauces, Goldfish snacks, and V8 drinks. We do know that other food companies have been called in — don't know the names —and told by RFK Jr. to get the coloring out of their foods. 5. Apple Of course, Nvidia isn't the only tech company that's under fire. The Trump discount is crushing fellow Club name Apple . It's bad enough that people believe that Apple has "missed" artificial intelligence even as we know AI is going to go on forever, and Apple will catch up. To be sure, though, it has been slower than everyone would like, so far. But it's the incredibly shocking switch that Apple has endured that's so painful. Did anyone believe that the only goal for the president was to make all iPhones in America? We all got confused. We thought that Trump's goal was to get manufacturing out of China to anywhere. (So many retailers thought that, too.) It turns out that getting out of China to go to another jurisdiction, say India in Apple's case, might have been as bad or worse than staying in China because at least you had a better shot at selling things in China. That's probably no longer the case given the Chinese government's subtle antipathy for those who are pulling out or trying to minimize China. 6. Software stocks So far, software has dodged a bullet, or I should say DOGE'd a bullet because it looks like the federal agencies that were supposed to cut back on vendors saw their havoc wreaked on Booz Allen and not many others. That Club name Salesforce went down, at least, had nothing to do with the Department of Government Efficiency advisory group. It's an alleged sales slowdown from "old" Salesforce that's driving things lower. 7. Google What about the internet? Can you believe how hated Google-parent Alphabet is that the Trump administration has embraced the single most leftwing case brought by the Justice Department against the search giant? The fact that a case that I thought was confiscatory and punitive is being pursued as aggressively as it was under former President Joe Biden is shocking to me. 8. Bank stocks We even have a Trump discount in banking. We've seen almost no let-up in regulation except when it comes to bitcoin , which is rapidly becoming the only entity in this market that has a Trump premium. It is true that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent makes some sense — and is, bizarrely for this administration, consistent — but he's more of a fire fighter than a deregulator. I can only imagine the role he is going to have to play if we get a weaker employment number but a spike in inflation. I don't envy him. 9. M & A I do expect more mergers and acquisitions, and I know that there have been a few already that would have been shot down by the Federal Trade Commission under Biden. But that's a low bar. How can you do deals in a world where nobody can predict cash flow because of how unpredictable the White House is? Call that a huge discount. The stocks reflect it. 10. Energy stocks It's particularly galling when there's no lift in a group that had been hated under Biden: the oil and natural gas industry. I know the Trump administration wants more pipe, but nothing is happening. Trump wants to open up federal lands to drilling, oblivious to the fact that the oil companies haven't been calling for it because it is too expensive. No energy source is getting a break. The president is permitting all sorts of nuclear power, or he says he is. But his Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is the gating factor, and I see no change there. Bottom line The takeaway from all of this is pretty sickening. Take tomorrow. We were going down pretty consistently Friday — and when we got to down 1% on the S & P 500 , the president let it be known that there could be a call soon with Chinese President Xi Jinping . Nevermind, that hours before, he accused China of violating the terms of the trade deal it made with the United States last month. Over the weekend, there was no call with Xi, so I have to figure we just resume Friday's decline from the get-go, barring something positive from the president about American business. Although it's hard to predict what that could be. The funny thing is, I feel very alone writing this stuff, given how rarely it is talked about. But that's part of the overall mystique of the White House. What will happen to you if you speak up? How long will it take to produce a level of retribution to make you the Harvard of the S & P 500? Suffice it to say, there's no let-up in the derision of business and the uncertainty of it all. Sometimes, I pine for the previous administration as Biden knew so little about business that he didn't know who to hate, so he just hated everyone. Nevertheless, unlike Trump, he had ineffectual hatred. No premium. But no discount either. (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.
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‘Absolute Disaster:' Senate Dems Take Aim At Trump's Tax Bill
Senate Democrats laid into President Donald Trump's sweeping tax bill on Sunday, emphasizing the impact it is poised to make on millions of Americans on Medicaid. 'This Republican budget bill is an absolute disaster for the country, in particular for middle-class and poor people,' Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said in an interview on CNN's State of the Union, noting that it seeks to pay for tax cuts by curbing spending on social programs. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) echoed these concerns in an interview on NBC News's Meet the Press, stressing that 'Republicans are trying to push forward this big ugly bill that's going to literally cut as many as seven million Americans off of their healthcare.' Murphy and Warnock's statements come as Republicans' massive tax and spending bill heads to the Senate, where it's likely to face staunch Democratic opposition as well as GOP dissent. The bill slashes spending on social programs like SNAP and Medicaid, while proposing trillions in tax cuts and billions in investments to strengthen border security. According to an initial analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, it would push 7.6 million people off Medicaid, in part by making it more difficult to qualify for the program. One way it does so is by imposing a new work requirement, which would force many able-bodied recipients to prove that they've worked, volunteered or attended a training program to obtain Medicaid coverage. Warnock stressed that a similar policy in Georgia has added new barriers for people in need of healthcare. This 'work reporting requirement is very good at kicking people off of their health care,' he said. 'It's not very good at incentivizing work at all.' Earlier this May, House Republicans narrowly passed the bill by just one vote. It'll take a simple majority – which Republicans have – to advance again in the Senate, though some GOP lawmakers have said they'd like to make changes of their own to tax and Medicaid provisions. GOP Senators like Rick Scott (R-FL) have also raised concerns about how the bill could add to the federal debt, an issue Murphy alluded to as well on Sunday. 'It's just unreal the amount of gaslighting this administration is doing,' Murphy said, while referring to the White House's claims that the legislation won't alter the deficit at all.
