Trump Sees His MAGA Base Dividing Over Iran
President Donald Trump is keeping his cards close on Iran.
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Yahoo
8 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Swiss see risk of tariffs increasing cost of U.S. F-35A jets
(Reuters) -Switzerland remains committed to buying Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II fighter jets from the United States despite an unclear total cost of procurement in part due to the impact of U.S. tariffs, the government said on Wednesday. The Swiss government reaffirmed its commitment to buying the jets a week after the United States imposed some of its highest tariff rates worldwide on Switzerland due to the size of the U.S. trade deficit with the European country. The price of the jets would ultimately depend on inflation in the United States, global commodity prices "and other factors such as price increases due to the tariffs imposed by the USA worldwide," the government said in a statement. Bern chose the F-35A as its next-generation fighter plane in 2021 for what it considered a fixed price of around 6 billion Swiss francs ($7.47 billion) for 36 jets. The U.S. has since said that sum was a misunderstanding. Talks with the United States to avert the total sum from potentially increasing by $650 million to $1.3 billion showed it was impossible for Switzerland to assert a fixed price, the Swiss government said. ($1 = 0.8028 Swiss francs) Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
8 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Mark Cuban Says Rich People Should Get Incentives To Help Others, But Gets Asked Why The Working Class Only Gets Discipline, Not Incentives
Billionaire Mark Cuban has been speaking out on social media, arguing that wealthy people should get targeted incentives to help others, while critics are asking why similar incentives aren't offered to the working class. Cuban's Incentives For The Rich Cuban recently argued on Bluesky that policy decisions have ripple effects, warning, "Think the 60% of Americans with stocks or retirement funds will like it when their savings crash? The layoffs when companies close and investment slows down considerably?" Cuban, who has long said he is fine with raising his own income taxes, proposed lowering corporate taxes for companies paying at least $25 per hour or giving employees stock at the same percentage as the CEO. "Bottom up incentives work. Dems never innovate. They bitch," he wrote. Don't Miss: The same firms that backed Uber, Venmo and eBay are investing in this pre-IPO company disrupting a $1.8T market — 'Scrolling To UBI' — Deloitte's #1 fastest-growing software company allows users to earn money on their phones. You can That drew sharp criticism. One person replied, "It's always been funny how the rich need to be incentivized but the working class needs to be disciplined." The comment ratioed what Cuban wrote, meaning it received more engagement than Cuban's original post. They also questioned why Cuban would make this case so soon after a large corporate tax cut was passed, calling it tone-deaf, adding that many companies work to push wages as low as possible, undermining his claims about innovation. Defending Trump's Semiconductor Tax Structure Cuban also recently posted on X about a Trump policy imposing what he called a "billionaire's tax" on semiconductor sales to China from the most valuable company in the world, Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA). He credited Trump for using business leverage to get companies to pay, something he said progressives have failed to do. Trending: These five entrepreneurs are worth $223 billion – "POTUS is more progressive when it comes to taxation than anyone in the progressive wing of the Dems has ever been. The Dems should be celebrating just how progressive it is. The irony," Cuban wrote. While he disagrees with Trump on tariffs and most non-business issues, he called the move "the ultimate wealth tax" because it diluted all shareholders by 15% upfront. Cuban estimated the measure will result in Nvidia paying about $4 billion per year, connected to roughly $25 billion in high-margin revenue. He stressed that while it won't fix the deficit, it shows how targeting what wealthy companies need can result in significant tax revenue. Cuban's comments tie together a recurring theme in his public statements: using incentives to drive behavior. Whether it's corporate tax breaks for companies that pay higher wages, leveraging business needs to generate revenue from billionaires, or teaching his children to earn their own way, Cuban repeatedly comes back to the idea that motivation should come through opportunity rather than punishment. Still, the pushback shows that many people believe those same incentives should apply to working-class Americans, not just the wealthy. Read Next: Kevin O'Leary Says Real Estate's Been a Smart Bet for 200 Years — Bill Gates Warned About Water Scarcity. Imagn Images Up Next: Transform your trading with Benzinga Edge's one-of-a-kind market trade ideas and tools. Click now to access unique insights that can set you ahead in today's competitive market. Get the latest stock analysis from Benzinga? NVIDIA (NVDA): Free Stock Analysis Report This article Mark Cuban Says Rich People Should Get Incentives To Help Others, But Gets Asked Why The Working Class Only Gets Discipline, Not Incentives originally appeared on © 2025 Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. Sign in to access your portfolio
The Hill
10 minutes ago
- The Hill
On gerrymandering, Democrats should fight fire with fire
If you want to understand how Congress became so polarized, look no further than Texas. Egged on by President Trump, Gov. Greg Abbot (R) and Republican leaders in the state are trying to engage in mid-decade redistricting, bucking the norm of waiting until the conclusion of the census every 10 years to redraw congressional maps to accommodate population changes. Both Democrats and Republicans have weaponized gerrymandering over the years. But only Texas Republicans have tried twice — in 2003 and now — to exercise the nuclear option of mid-decade redrawing of districts twice. I understand the motivations of these Republicans — and the desire of Democrats to take revenge. In 2012, I chaired the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and we had a score to settle with Republicans for eliminating six Democratic seats in Texas in their 2003 mid-decade assault. We might have tried to persuade Democratic governors and legislators to strike earlier than the typical redrawing of maps after the 2010 census, but we decided not to retaliate against Republican rule-breaking with rule-breaking of our own. Instead, we waited for the regular process to take place ahead of the 2012 election. Once the decennial census concluded, we quickly realized that our best opportunity to pick up more seats was in Illinois, where the House delegation had eight Democrats and 11 Republicans. Gov. Pat Quinn and Democratic leaders in the statehouse became political Picassos, redrawing districts to create three more Democratic seats after the 2012 elections. That was not a one-off. Both parties have regularly engaged in designing their own abstract district art. Pennsylvania's old Seventh District — designed in 2011 to protect Republican incumbent Rep. Patrick Meehan — was famously called ' Goofy kicking Donald Duck ' for its bizarre resemblance to the Disney characters. In 2000, Arizona created a district that snaked oddly along the Colorado River so as to include the Hopi Reservation but not the surrounding Navajo Reservation, circumventing longstanding tensions between the two tribes. In 2022, a plan favored by Democrats in New York extended my former Third Congressional District across several bridges and the Long Island Sound, into the Bronx. But that gerrymandering plan backfired, as a state judge struck it down. The result of this map madness is that the moderate, competitive districts have shriveled, while the number of highly partisan districts has skyrocketed. When I first entered Congress in 2001, there were 29 districts with a partisan voting index within a range of four points, reliably swinging between a two-point Republican or Democratic advantage, depending on national trends. In other words, they were toss-ups, and the incumbents needed crossover voters to win reelection. Bipartisanship wasn't a fuzzy goal — it was an urgent strategic imperative. Today, the number of those districts is just 16. Most of the other districts have been drawn to be more red or blue. That means that many House members don't lay awake at night fretting about being defeated in the general election by someone in the other party. Instead, they lay awake thinking about being defeated by a fringe, extreme candidate in their next primary. The political gravity of Congress has shifted. Our system forces legislators to the ideological extremes, when most Americans fall closer to the center. That's without even accounting for the trend of partisan residential sorting, as Americans increasingly live with ideologically likeminded neighbors. We've divided ourselves into Fox News and MSNBC districts, where contradicting views are rarely found on any given block. Of course, some states have attempted redistricting reforms. California and Arizona adopted independent commissions. New York has a bipartisan redistricting commission that places guardrails on just how much Democrats can gerrymander. And that's part of the problem Democrats face: Republicans in Texas and elsewhere play to win by breaking the rules, while in Democratic controlled states, leaders often play to protect the rules, even when it costs them. Over the years, many have argued that Democrats need to fight fire with fire. Instead, Democrats have historically focused on writing a fair fire code even as arson consumes American bipartisanship. But this new Texas mid-decade redistricting push seems to have finally changed the Democratic mindset. Govs. Gavin Newsom of California, Kathy Hochul of New York and JB Pritzker of Illinois are teasing mutual assured gerrymandering destruction by threatening mid-decade redistricting in their own states if Texas Republicans go through with their plan. Each of these efforts faces an uphill legal climb, however, given that voters in two of those three states outlawed such practices. Democrats have realized that patiently waiting until the next redistricting cycle is not an option. Congressional majorities aren't won on a moral high ground but on the streets. Only when Republican members of Congress from New York, California and Illinois see their seats turn blue will national GOP leaders recognize that, in gerrymandering, 'an eye for an eye' makes the whole political system blind. And so to restore bipartisanship in the long run, Democrats may need to play by Texas Republican rules.
