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Immigration remains top priority as Trump wraps first 100 days in office

Immigration remains top priority as Trump wraps first 100 days in office

Yahoo29-04-2025
(NewsNation) — President Donald Trump has signed three new executive orders in an effort to crack down on illegal immigration in the United States.
Paul Perez, president of the National Border Patrol Council, joins 'Morning in America' to discuss the Trump administration's efforts to reduce border crossings.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Editorial: Saving lives no more — RFK risks us all in targeting mRNA vaccine research
Editorial: Saving lives no more — RFK risks us all in targeting mRNA vaccine research

Yahoo

time25 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Editorial: Saving lives no more — RFK risks us all in targeting mRNA vaccine research

Showing that his loyalty to his own anti-vax mentality is greater than his loyalty to President Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the dangerous quack atop the Department of Health and Human Services, has announced that he will be rescinding a half billion dollars in grants and contracts for the development of mRNA technology and vaccines. It was mRNA that was key to both the Pfizer-BioNTech and the Moderna COVID vaccines that were created under Trump in his first term, but RFK does not like life-saving vaccines and so he's pulling the plug. Part of the problem with policymaking at the level of the federal government is that the impacts are often too large, too long-winded, too abstract to really be able to nearly encompass their full breadth, particularly for busy people who have their own immediate concerns to worry about. In this case, though, we can point to very clear, very grim and almost unavoidable repercussions directly caused by this decision: many people worldwide — including in the United States — will die deaths that could have been prevented. Setting aside all of the jargon, at its most basic level a vaccine is about allowing the body to ward off or survive pathogens that would otherwise be extremely dangerous and debilitating or kill a person outright. The model itself is far from new; inoculations in some form of another, including the basic utilization of a dead virus to create antibodies that can attack a live one, date back centuries. What's mainly changed since then is that we have only advanced our understanding and technology to keep infectious diseases from running rampant in our society. One such technological leap was the mRNA process, an innovation so significant that its pioneers won the Nobel prize. The effectiveness and the safety of this process has been well-documented in research settings, but we don't even have to parse the studies to know this because we all collectively lived it. As Trump's Operation Warp Speed produced, the first and most widespread COVID inoculations were mRNA-based vaccines, which enabled us to blunt the rampaging pandemic and much more quickly return our society to a semblance of normalcy. Those COVID vaccines have already been synthesized, but the real issue here are the ones that haven't, or even the inoculations for viruses that we have not even identified or think to be a threat today. Whether we like it or not, our relationship to infectious diseases is something akin to an arms race, in which we are constantly trying to counteract pathogens that, by dint of evolution, are constantly finding ways to elude our defenses and sicken us. We've stayed largely on top of this arms race over the last six decades or so in particular because of constant efforts that have developed sophisticated tools to fight back, including mRNA. A disarmament here for no other reason than ideologically-driven conspiracy that drives Bobby Kennedy is going to mean that we give the diseases an opening, which they will no doubt exploit to sicken and kill us. There are quite simply no two ways about it, and any pause in the research could have dire consequences, even if it is reversed later. Ongoing and sometimes multimonth or even multiyear projects will lose funding and might have to be shut down, with all their efforts wasted. There's no way to really put the genie back in the bottle so we have to stop it in the first place, which means RFK must be fired immediately or impeached and removed by Congress. Many lives hang in the balance. _____

Trump's meeting with Putin is a win-win for European defense stocks, no matter the outcome
Trump's meeting with Putin is a win-win for European defense stocks, no matter the outcome

CNBC

time28 minutes ago

  • CNBC

Trump's meeting with Putin is a win-win for European defense stocks, no matter the outcome

European defense stocks have further to run regardless of whether U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin achieve a breakthrough on the war in Ukraine later this week, market watchers say. Trump and Putin are slated to meet in person in Alaska on Friday, with a view to discuss what it would take to end the more-than-three-year conflict that began with Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. Reports that the two heads of state would meet buoyed broader European equities on Thursday, but sank regional defense stocks . Concerns about Russian aggression had contributed to decisions by European governments and the NATO military alliance to drastically hike their defense budgets, benefiting security companies operating in the region . So far this year, the Stoxx Europe Aerospace and Defense index has surged by 52%. Following three consecutive days of losses after the Trump-Putin summit was announced, the index regained some ground, and was last seen trading 1.3% higher in Thursday's session. Market watchers told CNBC that a deal to end the fighting in Ukraine — which may not be on the horizon of Friday's meeting — was unlikely to throw Europe's defense growth off course. 'Win-win' for defense stocks In emailed comments to CNBC on Wednesday, Dmitrii Ponomarev, product manager at VanEck EU, pointed to a recent Financial Times report that Europe is "building for war," with arms sites expanding at roughly thrice the pace struck during peace time. He labeled this as "evidence that the current ramp is broader than Ukraine resupply alone." "No firm would add that much capacity if it depended only on Ukraine shipments; the bigger driver is NATO Europe's pivot to modernization and restocking under the new 5% of GDP long-term goal, of which about 3.5% is the truly comparable "core" defense spend, anchoring multi-year demand," he said. "Even with a peace deal, stockpiles don't magically refill: governments still face years of munitions and air-defense replenishment, so revenues likely shift from short-term surge programs toward steadier replenishment, sustainment, and long-horizon modernization." VanEck runs a $6.9 billion Defense ETF, which includes stakes in some of Europe's biggest defense stocks. Among the fund's top holdings are Italy's Leonardo , France's Thales and Sweden's Saab . Ponomarev said that companies that rely more heavily on deliveries to Ukraine or supplying short-cycle munitions "may feel a sharper de-rating if urgency fades" from any potential breakthrough emerging from this week's Alaska summit between the Russian and U.S. leadership. "[But] more diversified primes with long-cycle programs, services, and sustainment should be better placed to absorb near-term volatility," he said. Asked on Monday whether the European defense boom remained a long-term story regardless of the outcome in Ukraine, Christopher Granville, managing director of TS Lombard, said he "strongly agrees" that the momentum has further to run. "My call on European defense stocks since about 2023 — when it became clear that the Russian military was extremely powerful and was not going to be rolled out of those territories in eastern and southern Ukraine — has been buy on any weakness, on any temporary pullback, because this is a win-win for European defense stocks," he told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe." Granville pointed out that either the negotiations would go off the rails on Friday — an outcome that he labeled "more than perfectly possible, if not likely" — or peace would be struck. The former would result in the need for America and Europe to replenish their arms inventories, he said, while the latter would lead to "a very powerful Russian military." "Although the words victory and defeat [would] be bandied around, [this would be] a Russian military which has to an extent, prevailed," he said. "That reality will force a continued increase in defense procurement by European governments, and it's also good for European defense stocks. Either way, it's a winner." Granville noted that markets had been discounting the second scenario's ability to benefit defense companies. "From time to time, those names pull back a bit — you should buy on that weakness in my opinion," he advised. 'At least a decade' of rearmament Defense company leaders have been telling CNBC in recent weeks that an end to the Ukraine war would be unlikely to derail the boost to European defense spending. In conversation with CNBC's "Worldwide Exchange" on Monday, Dimitrios Kottas, co-founder and CEO of Greek autonomous defense tech developer Delian Alliance Industries, said the timing of Europe's consensus to modernize defense capabilities was correlated with the invasion of Ukraine, but argued that this rearmament would last "at least a decade." "It's something that is driven by historical macroeconomic forces, [that are] much stronger than the current ongoing invasion in Ukraine," he said. Micael Johansson, CEO of Swedish defense giant Saab , meanwhile insisted the growth in European defense was "absolutely" a long-term trend. "I have a hard time seeing, after all that happened with the invasion in Ukraine and the aggressive neighbor that we have to the east … even if we get a ceasefire or peace deal that is reasonable with Ukraine, that [governments] would step back and say it's over," he said in an interview with CNBC toward the end of July. Earnings misses and downgrades The bull run this year hasn't been a continuously upward trajectory, even without questions surrounding the future of Ukraine. Shares of German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall shed 8% on Thursday, after the firm's earnings came in below expectations . The company said contracts had not been awarded during the reporting period given the election of a new government in Germany, but noted that an anticipated influx of orders in the second half of 2025 meant Rheinmetall was able to confirm its full-year guidance. Rheinmetall is one of the best performers in European defense this year, with its shares gaining roughly 160% over the course of 2025. In a Friday note, Deutsche Bank's Christoph Laskawi argued that Rheinmetall's second-quarter result "does not change the investment case by any means." "The order intake potential ahead remains significant and the win rate should be high which is the basis for sizeable revenue growth in the coming years," he said. Back in June , Citi's European Aerospace and Defence analyst Charles Armitage downgraded Hensoldt, Renk and Saab — whose shares have all more than doubled in value this year — to give them a "sell" rating. He argued at the time that the companies were "pricing in more growth than seems likely." A lot of optimism nevertheless still remains in the sector. "It's no surprise [defense] share prices have jumped sharply this year, maybe to unsustainable levels in the short term and a welcome resolution or ceasefire in Ukraine may see their prices soften," Neil Birrell, chief investment officer at U.K. investment management firm Premier Miton, told CNBC by email. "However, the spend on defence and related infrastructure is here to stay and will be taking place over the coming years and decades. The move to greater … regional self-reliance for defence, energy, food and raw materials is a very long-term one. Defence stocks will be big beneficiaries of that."

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