Latest news with #HarryTruman
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Springfield-Branson National Airport unveils new history exhibit
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — The Springfield-Branson National Airport (SGF) and History Museum on the Square teamed up to create a new exhibit that is now on display at the airport. The exhibit, titled 'History of Aviation in the Ozarks,' is now open to the public and can be viewed in the terminal lobby, near the airline ticket counters. Steel, aluminum tariffs expected to impact Springfield consumers SGF says the three-panel display showcases the many stories of the Ozarks' aviation and cultural history. The exhibit features thousands of photos and artifacts reviewed by the History Museum team, such as photos of Harry Truman, pilots in Phelps Grove Park in 1916 and numerous Ozark Airlines milestones. 'Since its opening in 2009, the Springfield-Branson National Airport has served as a destination in itself for the Ozarks,' said Brian Weiler, director of aviation at SGF. 'But while we are a modern airport, there have been decades of aviation history in our region that led the airport to be what it is today. We honor the work of the aviators and pilots before us with this new exhibit and partnership.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Washington Post
3 days ago
- Health
- Washington Post
Gay history was made in D.C. At times, it was dispiriting — but also uplifting.
1. Lafayette Square At night during the Roaring Twenties, men strolled the 'old square' and sat in the benches under the grand magnolias and blossoming crabapples of Lafayette Square, across from the White House. Their felt hats slightly lowered, they locked eyes with others looking for something that couldn't be sought in the light of day 100 years ago. 'It happened like this: I went to Lafayette Square and found a seat in the deep shade of the big beech. It was the best bench in the park,' an author with the pen name Jeb Alexander wrote on Aug. 23, 1920, in a diary chronicling gay life in D.C. A man sat down beside him, 'in a green suit with a blue dotted tie. He has beautiful eyes and sensuous lips. He wants to become a diplomat …' The nation's capital was quietly a gay mecca in the early part of the 20th century, when LGBTQ people closeted in their small towns escaped to work for the government. The New Deal expanded the federal workforce, and the nation's capital became a city for fresh starts. That changed when Lt. Roy Blick was promoted to head of the vice squad in the D.C. Police Department. On June 19, 1947, the Evening Star reported Blick's arrest of 41 men after a 'routine cleanup' of Lafayette Square. Lt. Roy E. Blick was head of the D.C. police's vice squad. He oversaw the arrests of hundreds of gay men and lesbians. (Anthony Camerano/AP) That year, the U.S. Park Police began a 'Sex Perversion Elimination Program' and regularly updated President Harry S. Truman on the arrests. In 1948, Congress passed D.C. Public Law 615, 'for the treatment of sexual psychopaths,' which cleared a path for the arrest and punishment of LGBTQ people in Washington. The growing arrest list became fodder for blackmail and purges known as the Lavender Scare, which was named for Sen. Everett Dirksen's (R-Illinois) label for gay men in 1952 — 'lavender lads.' The Lavender Scare mirrored McCarthyism's Red Scare targeting suspected communists, but its impact was larger. 'While more widely remembered by history, the Red Scare produced few results,' the National Park Service wrote. '... Conversely, the oft-forgotten Lavender Scare victimized Americans in their workplace and beyond for the latter part of the 20th century.' Story continues below advertisement Advertisement In 1953, a 25-year-old University of Chicago student was arrested after allegedly soliciting an undercover detective. It was Lester C. Hunt, Jr., the son of Sen. Lester Hunt (D-Wyoming). Hunt had been publicly feuding with Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin). Senate historians said Hunt called the Red Scare architect a 'liar' and 'opportunist.' The charges against Hunt's son were dropped. But two Republican senators agitated to have them restored and Hunt Jr. was tried and fined, according to a letter the son wrote to the U.S. attorney general in 2015 asking for a formal review of his father's case. The senators told Hunt that his son's conviction 'would become a major campaign issue' unless he dropped his reelection campaign, according to the Senate's official history. Hunt abruptly withdrew from the race, citing health reasons. Sen. Lester Hunt (D-Wyoming) killed himself in 1954 after his son was arrested and outed in the Lavender Scare. (William J. Smith/AP) But Hunt believed the torment of his son and the election wouldn't end because he dropped out of the race, according to Senate historians. On June 19, 1954, he hid a .22 Winchester rifle under his coat and headed to his Senate office. Minutes after he got there, he sat at his desk and shot himself in the right temple. McCarthy was censured by Congress later that year. The Hunt family didn't speak about the affair until 2013, when Wyoming historian Rodger McDaniel interviewed Lester Hunt Jr. for a biography of his father, 'Dying for Joe McCarthy's Sins —The Suicide of Wyoming Senator Lester Hunt.' 2. The Mattachine Society Gay rights activists Jack Nichols, Frank Kameny and Lilli Vincenz protest with others outside the White House in 1965. (Bettmann Archive) It was Frank E. Kameny, a suit-wearing scientist in D.C., who led the first public protest of discrimination against LGBTQ people in the United States. A Harvard University graduate, World War II veteran, astronomer with the Army Map Service and professor at Georgetown University, Kameny was quiet and studious. Then, the federal government fired him for being gay. And a radical was born. On April 17, 1965, Kameny gathered 10 people to take a public stand. The men had crewcuts and suits, the women wore dresses and stockings, and they picketed outside the White House at 4:30 p.m. — quitting time at federal offices. They were fighting President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Executive Order 10450, which made ruining the lives of queer people a government policy in 1953. The order said 'sexual perversion' was grounds for outing and firing federal employees. Thousands were targeted — including Kameny, who was fired in 1957. His appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court. He wrote dozens of letters to lawmakers and presidents. A 1950 report concluded that gay people were "unsuitable for employment in the Federal Government." (Records of the U.S. Senate) In 1961, Kameny founded the D.C. branch of the Mattachine Society, an organization with several chapters across the United States that was named for the French society of masked dancers who criticized social norms with pointed satire. Although other chapters were primarily support groups, Kameny turned his into a vehicle for radical activism. His brick Colonial house in Northwest Washington became the national headquarters for a growing civil rights movement. At first, it was mostly White and male. Then women like Eva Freund joined the group and bucked the sexism within it. Eva Freund is one of the last surviving original members of the D.C. Mattachine Society. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post) 'The men in Mattachine thought the women were just there to take care of them,' Freund said in a 2019 interview with The Washington Post. She became fluent in Robert's Rules of Order, ensuring that lesbians were heard and acknowledged. They printed newsletters and pamphlets and continued their protests outside the State Department and Pentagon. They joined marches in Philadelphia and New York. In 1971, Kameny became the first openly gay American to run for a seat in Congress. He didn't win, but in 1973 he advocated for the passage of Title 34, the nation's first citywide human rights ordinance making it illegal to discriminate against LGBTQ people in the areas of employment, education and housing. 3. Gay Corner In Congressional Cemetery The grave of Leonard P. Matlovich, the first gay service member to fight the military's ban on homosexuality. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post) A cluster of tiny rocks always sits atop Leonard Matlovich's headstone in Washington's Congressional Cemetery, placed as prayers and gratitude by visitors. It's a pilgrimage made by thousands. The engraving in black granite reads: 'WHEN I WAS IN THE MILITARY THEY GAVE ME A MEDAL FOR KILLING TWO MEN AND A DISCHARGE FOR LOVING ONE.' Matlovich was a closeted airman who had earned a Bronze Star and Purple Heart until March 6, 1975 — the day he handed his Air Force commander a letter. 'After some years of uncertainty, I have arrived at the conclusion that my sexual preferences are homosexual,' it began. Matlovich had been inspired by Frank Kameny and offered to be the test case to challenge bigotry in the military. (Doug Chevalier) That fall, Matlovich's face was on the cover of Time magazine. 'I Am a Homosexual,' the headline stated. Matlovich had been inspired by Frank Kameny's activism and offered himself as the test case to challenge bigotry in the military. They carefully crafted Matlovich's coming-out letter. Despite his combat medals and continued exemplary service, Matlovich was ruled unfit for the military and discharged. (The Air Force was forced by court order to reinstate him and offer back pay, but he didn't return to the military.) Instead, became a vocal advocate for gay rights over the next decade. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement In his final act, Matlovich created what may be the only LGBTQ section of a cemetery in the world. And it started as a wry joke. A stone's throw from what is now known as Gay Corner is the grave of former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who died in 1972. Hoover led a program compiling thousands of pages of information on the sex lives of Washington's powerful. Near his plot is that of his close adviser, Clyde Tolson. There has been speculation that the two were more than co-workers, but historians have never found evidence to confirm the rumors. Matlovich was buried at Congressional Cemetery in 1988 after his death from AIDS-related complications. (Ira Schwartz/AP) Matlovich bought two plots near Hoover and Tolson. He died in 1988 at 44 after being diagnosed with AIDS. 'It was his way of having the last laugh,' said A.J. Orlikoff, Interim Executive Director of the cemetery, "forcing FBI Agents visiting Hoover's grave to walk past the grave of someone so openly gay.' The corner has since expanded to be the final resting place of dozens more LGBTQ Washingtonians. It's a popular stop on gay history tours and the occasional setting for same-sex weddings. 4. The Furies Collective The June-July 1972 edition of The Furies, a radical magazine that was published by a lesbian collective. (The Furies Collection, courtesy Rainbow History Project Archives) 'We call our paper The FURIES because we are also angry,' Ginny Z. Berson wrote in 1972, in the inaugural edition of a radical, feminist newspaper run out of the basement of a brick rowhouse on Capitol Hill. 'We are angry because we are oppressed by male supremacy,' Berson wrote. 'We are working to change the system which has kept us separate and powerless for so long.' The Furies Collective was a group of 12 lesbians who said it all out loud. Their newspaper, in an age of mimeographs and hand delivery, reached 5,000 readers across the nation. They organized meetings and ran workshops on car repair and self defense. They had film festivals and softball games. They wanted nothing to do with men and little to do with straight women. 'We considered ourselves a revolutionary cadre, and our intention was to overthrow the patriarchy and capitalism,' Berson, a member of the collective, said in a recent interview. D.C. was 'a hotbed of political activism' in the early 1970s, and the lesbian feminists Berson met led to an epiphany. 'You mean, I don't have to live my life in order to please men?' Berson said. 'It was astonishing. It was a liberation.' The rowhouse in Southeast D.C. was perfect, with room for wide layout tables for publishing and space for meetings. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement 'Women have been kept down in many ways,' Lee Schwing wrote in one of the pieces about her new karate habit and how her strong, thickening torso and sculpted arms challenged the beauty standards of the day. 'Women are rarely encouraged to be strong, because it is undesirable to men,' she wrote. The collective adopted an ethos that 'any woman who's sleeping with a man is basically sleeping with the enemy.' Berson recently laughed a little at that radical thought: 'We were a little extreme.' 5. Gay Clubs Revelers dance at the ClubHouse, a gathering space for Black gay men in D.C. that attracted gay and straight celebrities. (Courtesy of John Eddy) Washington was a buttoned-up, bureaucrat's world during the day. But at night, the scene was vibrant. At least 200 LGBTQ clubs have operated over the past 100 years in D.C. The Rainbow History Project, an organization that has amassed a thorough history of LGBTQ D.C. history, plotted the often-segregated clubs on its mapping archive. The Chicken Hut was the hot spot for gay White Washington in the 1950s. A block away from the White House, it operated from 1948 until the 1970s, hosting drag shows and piano tunes. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement For queer Black Washington, discrimination was twofold: The government was actively hunting homosexual men and women in workplaces, bars and parks at a time when racial discrimination was still codified by federal law. In 1953, a rowhouse on Kenyon Street NW in Columbia Heights became a word-of-mouth house party and sanctuary for gay Black men. It opened its doors wide to the public in 1957 as a club called Nob Hill. When it closed in 2004, it was acknowledged as one of the longest-operating LGBTQ bars in the nation. But nothing bumped like the The ClubHouse in the 1970s. Inspired by New York City's Loft and Studio 54, it was the epicenter of Chocolate City's gay nightlife, tucked in a residential neighborhood near a high school. At the time, Black people 'got hassled getting into the white clubs. You needed two or three IDs and all of this stuff,' said Kwabena Rainey Cheeks, who was working construction when John Eddy and other friends recruited him to turn a gutted commercial garage into one of the hottest scenes on the East Coast. In the 1970s, the scene flourished in the D.C. warehouse district surrounding South Capitol Street. Cinema Follies was where largely closeted, queer men came for adult films. It was equally popular with police for raids and arrests, becoming a rallying point for activists who fought police profiling. In 1977, a fire engulfed the theater and killed nine people. A former Marine and Republican congressman outed themselves as survivors. It took days to identify the victims. Many of them were married with children. There was a pastor, a congressional aide, an Army major, a hairdresser and an economist with the World Bank. 6. The National Mall The entire AIDS quilt was on display from Oct. 11 to 13, 1996, on the National Mall. It contained more than 48,000 panels. (Frank Johnston/The Washington Post) The AIDS epidemic hit the United States in 1981, the year President Ronald Reagan took office. Washington was frigid to the gay community. 'If we take a look at the Federal Government's response to the AIDS crisis it leads unavoidably to the conclusion that within this administration, there is a sharp contrast between the rhetoric of concern and the reality of response,' Virginia Apuzzo, executive director of the National Gay Task Force, said during a congressional hearing in 1983. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement A year later, a gaunt Rock Hudson came to the White House for a party. Nancy Reagan was alarmed by his appearance and wrote him a letter urging him to get a mole she spotted on his neck checked out. He was diagnosed with AIDS, and the Reagans distanced themselves from him until his death in 1985, according to Kate Andersen Brower's biography, 'Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit & Glamour of an Icon.' In Washington, the Gay Men's VD Clinic — later rebranded the Whitman-Walker Clinic — opened a full-time AIDS clinic by 1986, following similar facilities in San Francisco and New York. The Whitman-Walker Clinic — first known as the Gay Men's VD Clinic — opened its doors to Washingtonians in 1986. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post) The federal government finally began to step up in the wake of a 1986 report issued by the National Academy of Sciences titled 'Confronting AIDS.' Public health campaigns reached out to the gay community with condom-promoting posters featuring scantily clad men. That riled some on Capitol Hill. The AIDS quilt, shown above in 1996, was officially unveiled on the Mall in October 1987 with panels honoring 1,920 victims. (Larry Morris/The Washington Post) Then-Sen. Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina) said the disease was a result of 'unnatural' and 'disgusting' behavior. But Helms's 1987 purity campaign was eclipsed when a memorial the length of two football fields was unfurled on the nation's front lawn on an October morning. The AIDS quilt, with panels honoring 1,920 victims of the disease, showed the nation the tangible scope, size and humanity of the crisis. The massive, growing quilt was unfolded on the National Mall several more times. 'I can't do anything for the patients but watch them die,' Suzanne Phillips, a medical student from Brooklyn, told The Washington Post in 1987 as she watched the quilt being unfurled. 'I can't stand it anymore.'
Business Journals
5 days ago
- Business
- Business Journals
TMT Development CEO: The tragic side of Portland's abandoned RVs
It's easy for taxpayers to be cynical about government overspending and underperforming. That cynicism is nothing new. In 1940, an obscure Missouri senator named Harry Truman gained fame with a 10,000-mile drive around the country to uncover waste and fight wartime profiteering. By 1944, the Truman Committee that evolved from his auto odyssey was credited with saving the U.S. government $10 billion-$15 billion (roughly $230 billion in current value). The fame Truman gained through that effort was pivotal to his ultimate selection as the vice president for Franklin Roosevelt, whom he ultimately succeeded as the president that presided over the end of World War II. The Truman Committee created a model for impartiality and fairness as it critiqued and culled countless line items on countless ledgers, doggedly seeking to differentiate good allocations from the bad and the ugly. But as every elected official knows, objectivity is inherently challenging in government budgeting. Programs considered invaluable by some can be dismissed as wasteful or unnecessary by others. How does all this relate to the present day? Just as it was for the Truman Committee in the 1940s, debating government spending is as frustrating and controversial as ever. It's especially vexing with the added complication of the $93 million shortfall Portland elected officials must accommodate before the vote to finalize the city's budget later in June. The fine art in budgeting is the sensitivity to understand not just what to cut, but what not to cut. Some proposed expenditures can appear expendable at first glance, but carry deceivingly important implications for the community. An example is what The Oregonian reports as a $1 million line item on the City of Portland's proposed budget; 'General Transportation Revenues for increased towing and demolition of derelict RVs.' Lurking within that unassuming line item is a tragic reality with far greater implications than merely removing eyesore vehicles from the roadside. Law enforcement officials are all too familiar with the dirty little secret that derelict RVs can be a culprit in the dark world of human trafficking. Human trafficking is a gargantuan industry, with more than 20 million victims worldwide. In may surprise some to know that Oregon is among the top 20 states for sex trafficking. We're 10th in the U.S. for human trafficking victims per capita, with about 25% of cases involving minors aged 9 to 17.* Sadly, these numbers could be misleading because the numbers of trafficking victims are notoriously underreported. Human trafficking takes many forms other than sexual exploitation. Victims could be subjected to forced labor in agriculture, domestic work, factories, bars, hotels, and forced marriage. Some of the many souls panhandling with cardboard signs at intersections may seem innocuous, but some of these folks may be involuntary beggars being managed and exploited by pimps just as sex workers are. Some human trafficking victims could be housed against their will in the numerous derelict RVs scattered around the city. When you pass these rigs, often with flat tires and plastic tarps bungeed over the roof, you may think it's better for someone down on their luck to be sheltered in an RV than a tent. But what drivers whizzing past don't realize is that some of these RVs could be serving as roadside prisons housing sex workers involved in prostitution and pornography. Some could be used to manufacture drugs. City sweeps targeting derelict RVs for towing do more than remove them, they give authorities the means to discover and shut down the clandestine roadside brothels, porn film studios and drug mills hiding within — and most importantly liberate the unwilling victims held captive in them. Granted, city funding to tow derelict RVs is just one wrench in the box of tools used to fight human trafficking. But every tool that can be used should be welcomed and supported in a battle that is too often a whack-a-mole exercise for Portland's Human Trafficking Unit, which works tirelessly to give sex workers an off ramp from their perilous plights. Thankfully there are numerous agencies in the Portland area doing what they can to locate and liberate victims trapped by human trafficking. But there are still too many of them out there that are hidden in plain sight along our roadsides. The $1 million proposed for towing of derelict RVs would be money well spent. Harry Truman earned deserved praise for saving billions of dollars on his celebrated 10,000-mile drive around the country to fight government waste. Today's fight against human trafficking in Portland gives us the opportunity to save something more important than money — the lives of the humans held in human trafficking's evil grip. *According to TMT Development Vanessa Sturgeon is the president and CEO of TMT Development. For over two decades, Vanessa has led a team with a whole-hearted investment in preserving and innovating Pacific Northwest real estate for those who call it home. Her extensive board service, leadership mentoring and community involvement demonstrate her steadfast belief in Portland and its residents.
New York Times
6 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
Pardons Become the Latest Trump Flex
Before he left office in 1953, President Harry Truman handed out a number of pardons to politically connected convicts — and, perhaps to avoid blowback, he did so entirely in secret. In 2001, Bill Clinton waited until the final day of his presidency to issue a pardon he knew would go off like a political bomb: to Marc Rich, the oil trader and fugitive indicted in a sprawling tax evasion case, whose former wife had made donations to the Clinton presidential library and the Democratic Party. And around Christmas in 2008, President George W. Bush rescinded a pardon he had granted to a Brooklyn developer, Isaac Toussie, after The New York Post reported that Toussie's father had donated $28,500 to the Republican National Committee and another $2,300 to Senator John McCain. 'This is a good decision,' a Justice Department lawyer told the White House aide who went to retrieve Toussie's pardon grant before it could be delivered to him, according to my colleague Peter Baker's book on the Bush presidency, 'Days of Fire.' 'Because I don't know if anybody could survive this.' The power of the pardon is so absolute that the only way to punish a president for how he uses it is to impeach him or to vote him out. Most presidents have wanted to avoid those things. So they've granted pardons carefully, even furtively, often saving what might prove scandalous until the very last days of their terms. 'The pardon power for a president is virtually unlimited,' said Alberto Gonzales, who served under Bush as White House counsel and then as the attorney general. 'In almost every case at the federal level, the question is not a concern over the authority to grant clemency, but whether clemency is appropriate given history, the circumstances of the offender and the politics.' This week, though, President Trump has shown he has no intention of allowing such an unchecked executive power to go unexploited over as trifling a concern as the ordinary rules of politics. Rules that say, among other things, that doling out favors to donors and allies might carry an odor of impropriety. Today, Trump pardoned former Representative Michael Grimm, a Republican from New York who pleaded guilty in 2014 to felony tax evasion. Grimm has been a vigorous and public Trump supporter. My colleague Ken Vogel reported Tuesday that the president had pardoned Paul Walczak, a convicted tax cheat, after Walczak's mother raised millions of dollars for Trump's presidential campaigns and those of other Republicans. The same day, the White House announced pardons for two reality-television stars, Todd and Julie Chrisley, who had been convicted of evading taxes and defrauding banks of more than $30 million, after their daughter depicted them as persecuted conservatives in a speech at last summer's Republican National Convention. And this week, the president's new pardon attorney, Ed Martin, told The Wall Street Journal that he had personally fast-tracked a pardon for Scott Jenkins, a Virginia sheriff convicted of bribery who has been an outspoken supporter of Trump's immigration agenda. This is scarcely the first time Trump has defied political gravity. But it still represents something new. Trump knows that his first-term pardons of political allies like Roger Stone, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn didn't cost him much if any political support. Since that first term, he has pressed so hard and for so long to demonize and undo the work of the Biden administration's Justice Department — claiming that it was weaponized against him and his supporters — that he may have conditioned much of the public to believe him if he says that the recipient of a pardon was indeed a fellow victim. He appears to be counting on his having changed the weather, hoping that the old rules won't apply to him in this term, either. Are Trump's approval ratings rising? My colleague Ruth Igielnik, a Times polling editor, looks at a key number that helps explain the political moment. Today, she has a temperature-check on how voters feel about President Trump. Donald Trump came into office in January with the lowest approval rating of any modern president — except for his own at the start of his first term. Over the first 100 days of his second term, Trump's approval rating steadily declined, similar to what Barack Obama and Bill Clinton faced in their first months as president. The difference is Trump's lower starting point: Unlike his predecessors, he quickly found himself underwater, with more Americans disapproving of his job performance than approving of it. But since the beginning of May, Trump's job approval has stopped dropping. It might even be improving ever so slightly — although the few high-quality polls we have seen recently show little change. One possible explanation: Trump may have already lost all of the tentative or hesitant support he once enjoyed among independents, and he can't drop much more because of his rock-solid Republican support. In our last New York Times/Siena College poll, conducted in late April, 86 percent of Republicans approved of Trump's job performance, while 92 percent of Democrats disapproved of it. So Trump is not losing many Republicans, and Democrats disliked him from the start. But among independents, just 29 percent approved of his performance. For a finer-grain look at his bleeding among independents, consider two polls by Quinnipiac University: In January, more independents viewed Trump unfavorably than favorably by a difference of five percentage points. In April, Trump was underwater with independents by a margin of 22 percentage points. What Iowa tells us about Trump's America Over the weekend, my colleague Shane Goldmacher published a report showing just how much President Trump has realigned the American political landscape. He found that 1,433 counties were 'triple-trending' Republican — that is, they shifted toward Trump in each of the last three presidential elections — while only 57 counties trended Democratic in that way. I asked him to tell us about one state that tells the story. President Obama won Iowa in 2012, but the state has since completely fallen off the battleground map. And while Iowa is too white to truly show the racial changes in the political coalitions of the two parties, it shows vividly how Trump has made inroads with the working class, while Democrats are inching up only in the richest and most educated enclaves. All told, 69 of the state's 99 counties were 'triple-trending' toward Trump — and by wide margins, with none shifting by fewer than 15 percentage points and nearly two dozen shifting by 40 or more. Not a single county in Iowa trended steadily toward Democrats between 2012 and 2024. Two Iowa counties did vote more Democratic in 2024 than they had 2012, however. But the demographics of those pockets were as revealing as the Trump bump across the rest of the state. One was the state's wealthiest county, Dallas, a suburb of Des Moines. It's the only Iowa county with a median household income above $100,000. The other was the most educated county in the state, Johnson, home to the University of Iowa. Democrats point to a handful of close House races in recent years to insist that they still have hope in Iowa, though notably Republicans currently hold every congressional seat in the state. If Democrats are ever going to make the state competitive again, it will require improving in a lot more counties than two. Not a taco fan, it would seem My colleague Shawn McCreesh sends this dispatch from the White House beat. President Trump learned a new acronym today. He was holding one of his marathon question-and-answer sessions with journalists in the Oval Office when one reporter asked him about a new term of art being used on Wall Street. Taco. It stands for 'Trump Always Chickens Out.' Coined by a columnist for The Financial Times, it captures the belief — held by an increasing number of traders and analysts — that Trump never really follows through with his tariff threats in the end, and implies a warning to buy or sell accordingly. Evidently, this was the first time Trump had heard the term, which immediately sent him into a state of high dudgeon. 'Oh, isn't that nice,' he started to say. 'I chicken out? I've never heard that.' He offered a defense of his trade maneuvering. But he seemed as annoyed by the question as by the term itself. 'Don't ever say what you said,' he said to the reporter who had said what she had said. 'That's a nasty question. To me, that's the nastiest question.' It had seemed like sort of an inconsequential question compared with others he was getting on Wednesday. There were lots of big, scary, thorny, inconvenient questions, about Russia and Iran and Gaza and nuclear weapons, and about how Elon Musk dared take a swipe at Trump on CBS. But this was the one that clearly unnerved him. And there was a pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain kind of quality to the exchange: What will it mean if Wall Street and the world stop believing in the power of the tariff wizard? Taco is both a serious matter — Trump has, indeed, retreated from many of his trade threats — and what sounds like a joke. Made at his expense. And that clearly made an impression. Just before the press was ushered out, Trump alluded to the new term all on his own. 'They'll say, 'Oh, he was chicken, he was chicken!'' he said while riffing about continuing negotiations with China. 'That's so unbelievable,' he said, sounding perhaps a little bruised. 'Usually, I'm the opposite. They say, 'You're too tough.''
Indian Express
27-05-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
For Israel, a growing discontent among its allies
For decades, Western powers have justified Israel's military actions by invoking its right to self-defence. Since the establishment of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948, and its recognition by US President Harry Truman, it has consistently received diplomatic and military largesse from the US and leading European nations including Germany, the UK and France. The motivations behind this alignment have been both strategic — viewing Israel as a key ally in West Asia — and moral, rooted in the tragic legacy of the Holocaust and the need for a Jewish homeland. Now, more than 19 months into the ongoing war in Gaza, triggered by Hamas's October 7 attack, the foundations of that international support are beginning to crack. In a joint statement last week, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney criticised Israel's military actions in Gaza as 'wholly disproportionate'. The UK has suspended trade talks and imposed sanctions targeting West Bank settlers, while the EU announced that it would review its political and economic relations with Israel. European and Arab nations gathered in Madrid on Sunday in an effort to halt what Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares described as Israel's 'inhumane' and 'senseless' war. In the coming weeks, France and Saudi Arabia are expected to convene a conference in New York to promote the two-state solution. These developments underscore Israel's growing isolation within the international community over its Gaza offensive, despite the widespread sympathy that followed the tragic shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC on May 21. Even President Donald Trump, during a recent tour of West Asia in which he notably skipped Israel, has acknowledged Gaza's hunger crisis. The deaths of over 53,000 people (according to the latest estimate by Gaza's health ministry) and the large-scale destruction of civilian infrastructure by Israel are increasingly seen as components of a strategy aimed at collective punishment. Mounting pressure from Israel's international allies, though belated, is welcome. The marked shift in their tone is necessary. By continuing to block humanitarian aid and escalating its military campaign, Israel is inflicting immeasurable suffering on Gaza's civilian population. This strategy will not defeat Hamas — which, according to US intelligence, has already recruited between 10,000 and 15,000 members since the conflict began — and will only fuel further violence and instability. World powers, including the US, need to work together to restrain Israel.
