These historians oversee unbiased accounts of U.S. foreign policy. Trump fired them all.
Huge volumes, bound in the timeless, red buckram linen of legacy books, are historians' gold — and crucial to the nation's understanding of how U.S. foreign policy is made.
There is a dispatch from Japan to President Abraham Lincoln's administration describing the 'bloody affair' of July 1861, the 'daring and murderous attacks' by samurai warriors on British diplomats stationed in Edo, now known as Tokyo.
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Indianapolis Star
2 hours ago
- Indianapolis Star
What does the end of the penny mean? Here's what experts are saying
Penny for your thoughts? Or maybe they are worth a nickel now that the Treasury Department is following President Donald Trump's suggestion to stop making pennies. Last month, the Treasury Department placed its last order of blanks – flat metal discs to make pennies – in a move set into motion by President Donald Trump in February. He argues that the coin costs more than 3 cents to produce (actually 3.69 cents, according to the U.S. Mint). Now that we know it's curtains for the coin, many questions arise. What does the demise of the penny mean for consumers and collectors? Could the last pennies be valuable? Here's what we know. MIA Money: $1.7 trillion sits in lost and forgotten 401(k) accounts. Is one of them yours? Doubtful. The U.S. Mint made about 3.2 billion pennies in 2024, according to its annual report, so there will be billions of 2025 pennies available. "There's nothing, statistically, that says they should become valuable," John Feigenbaum, publisher of rare coin price guide Greysheet and executive director of the Professional Numismatists Guild (PNG), a nonprofit organization composed of many of the nation's rare coin experts, told USA TODAY. The coin's legacy could be akin to the 1976 bicentennial quarter, Feigenbaum said. "Everybody, at the time, was hoarding them (and) you couldn't find bicentennial quarters in change. Now people have plastic bags full of them and they're still worth 25 cents," he added. However, the 2025 pennies could have an alternative value as an entry point to collectors. "This would surely spike demand … in other Lincoln pennies, like the ones that go all the way back to 1909," Feigenbaum said, adding that the Lincoln penny, which first featured the 16th president in that year, has had "quite a run." Parents could get a Lincoln penny coin collecting book – options include those from Whitman Publishing, which also publishes Greysheet – and talk to their children about "American history, and who this Lincoln guy is and what would the different designs be all about," Feigenbaum said. Not if you are hoping for them to be valuable. Just as there has been misleading hype about the value of some Lincoln wheat pennies, there may be misinformation about the increased value of 2025 pennies. That's nonsense, Feigenbaum said. They are "not going to be" more valuable, according to Feigenbaum, who said he favored getting rid of the penny. Maybe it's a good time to take all those coins gathering dust in a cup or piggy bank to the bank or a Coinstar machine. The average home has $60-$90 in coins at home, according to the Federal Reserve. Are your old pennies worth millions?: Experts say you shouldn't bank on it Maybe. Not making pennies will nix out the more than $179 million it costs taxpayers to make them, based on figures from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the department formerly connected to Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. The U.S. Mint estimates that not making pennies will save $56 million in material costs, with additional savings from better and more efficient production, CNBC reported. 'For every penny that the United States government prints, we're actually losing money. So, it's a net cost to the federal government,' said Raymond Robertson, director of the Mosbacher Institute for Trade, Economics and Public Policy at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, in a news release. But the lack of pennies likely means more reliance on nickels, which cost even more to produce – 13.78 cents, the U.S. Mint says. If the U.S. Mint makes more nickels, "It actually is going to increase costs for the government,' Robertson said. 'So, it's really not clear how much cost savings the government will realize by eliminating the penny," he added. One of the bills (H.R. 1270) introduced in the House of Representatives (technically, Congress holds the power to eliminate a currency) also proposes getting rid of the nickel, too. There is no time frame for prices to be set in five-cent increments – a move to change all those prices ending in 49 or 99 cents to the nearest five cents due to lack of pennies – but they will likely eventually, said Bill Maurer, dean of the School of Social Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, and director of UCI's Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion. When there are not enough pennies for stores and other retailers to make change, businesses will need to round up or down, the Treasury Department said, according to The Wall Street Journal. For the time being, merchants can keep prices as they are, but the 18% to 20% of Americans who rely on cash could eventually pay a rounded-up price, based on 5-cent increments. "If someone comes to you with cash, you round up, right? So if you're kind of doubly screwed if you're poorer," Maurer told USA TODAY. Other countries that have eliminated low-denomination coins – Australia, Canada and New Zealand, among them – have resulted in differing outcomes, with some prices rounding up and some down, according to As the move to eliminate coin and paper currency continues, a publicly-accessible digital payment system will be needed so that consumers of all income levels can participate, Maurer said. But the loss of physical currency removes a redundancy in the monetary system that's invaluable during disasters and emergencies, according to Maurer. "The more dependent on cashless methods of payment we become, the more risk we place ourselves when there are emergencies or disasters, because you need a well-functioning cash system," he continued. Contributing: Fernando Cervantes, Daniel de Visé and Melina Khan. Mike Snider is a reporter on USA TODAY's Trending team. You can follow him on Threads, Bluesky, X and email him at mikegsnider & @ & @mikesnider & msnider@
Washington Post
3 hours ago
- Washington Post
American students in China face a barrage of questions about Trump
Susan likes to think of herself as a 'free diplomat.' With fewer than 900 American students in China at a time of unprecedented bilateral tensions, Chinese classmates continually ask her to explain President Donald Trump's decisions, while American friends and family ask her to translate the intricacies of Chinese politics.
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
China: US needs to ‘stop spreading disinformation,' correct ‘wrongful actions'
China said on Tuesday that the United States needs to 'stop spreading disinformation' and correct 'wrongful actions' as the trade tensions between the two countries continue. China's foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian claimed the U.S. 'falsely accuses and smears' China and that Washington has taken 'extreme suppression' measures. He listed 'chip export controls, blocking EDA sales and announcing plans to revoke Chinese students' visas' as actions that have 'seriously disrupted the consensus and hurt China's legitimate rights and interests.' 'China firmly opposes them and has lodged strong protests with the US,' Lin wrote in a Tuesday post on the social media platform X. Treasury Department Secretary Scott Bessent said on Sunday that President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will likely talk 'soon' — a conversation that will include discussing critical minerals. 'I am confident that when President Trump and party Chairman Xi have a call, that this will be ironed out,' Bessent said during his Sunday appearance on CBS's 'Face the Nation.' 'But the fact that they are withholding some of the products that they agreed to release during our agreement — maybe it's a glitch in the Chinese system, maybe it's intentional.' The world's two biggest economies have accused each other in recent days of violating the terms of the trade agreement struck during the meetings in Geneva last month. Trump hammered China on Friday, arguing that Beijing violated the terms of the agreement. 'Two weeks ago China was in grave economic danger! The very high Tariffs I set made it virtually impossible for China to TRADE into the United States marketplace which is, by far, number one in the World. We went, in effect, COLD TURKEY with China, and it was devastating for them. Many factories closed and there was, to put it mildly, 'civil unrest.' I saw what was happening and didn't like it, for them, not for us,' the president wrote on Truth Social. 'I made a FAST DEAL with China in order to save them from what I thought was going to be a very bad situation, and I didn't want to see that happen,' the commander-in-chief added. China fired back on Monday, saying that Washington was in breach of the trade agreement, citing the guidance on chip export controls, the pause of sales of chip design software to China and the revocation of F-1 student visas of Chinese students in the U.S. After the May talks in Switzerland, the Trump administration brought down the tariffs on Chinese imports from 145 percent to 30 percent. China lowered its duties on U.S. goods from 125 percent to 10 percent. Lin, the foreign ministry spokesperson, added on Tuesday that pressure and 'coercion are not the right way to engage China.' 'We urge the US to respect the facts, stop spreading disinformation, correct its wrongful actions, and act to uphold the consensus reached between the two sides,' the spokesperson added. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
