 | BY SUDEEP REDDY | | 
President Joe Biden delivers remarks on his "Bidenomics" economic plan, at CS Wind, the largest wind tower manufacturer in the world, in Pueblo, Colorado, on Nov. 29, 2023. | Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images | A YEAR WITHOUT SURPRISES — Saturday marks three years since Joe Biden’s inauguration. On the day he became president, with Covid-19 still strangling the economy, the latest U.S. unemployment reading stood at a painful 6.7 percent while annual inflation sat at a now unimaginable 1.4 percent. What happened over the next two years created a political challenge for the ages. Joblessness fell to near historic lows. But inflation surged to multi-decade highs, souring the nation’s mood (and Biden’s approval ratings) by contributing to the vibecession across much of America. Biden will try explaining his way through both of them until Nov. 4, while also selling the sweeping legislation he enacted to spend federal funds on energy, infrastructure, semiconductors and much more. Importantly for the president today, both measures are moving in the right direction. Today’s economic data showed consumer sentiment posting its sharpest two-month increase in decades, while expectations for inflation in the year ahead fell to the lowest level since December 2020. Thursday’s jobless claims reading fell to the lowest in 16 months. Combined with the stock market closing at a record high today, Biden is certainly wishing today’s economy could be frozen in place. The fact that it can’t be locked in place is perhaps the biggest election risk hanging over the president in his fourth year in office. Three years ago tonight, Nightly imagined a few threats that could derail the promise of Biden’s grand policy agenda. “The bond market could take a surprise turn and reignite financial turbulence,” we wrote at a moment when nobody was worrying about the bond market, borrowing costs or inflation. “Extremists at home or abroad could create a new round of turmoil,” we also wrote when a Russian war, Hamas terrorism and daily Houthi missile launches at commercial ships were not in the headlines. “Crises have a way of introducing themselves when nobody expects them.” Both of those risks — an unsettled bond market and global turmoil — are poised to shape the nation’s economic fortunes in the coming year. The turbulence of the bond market — the result of Federal Reserve interest-rate hikes designed to fight inflation — have sent borrowing costs soaring, contributing to the wave of angst across corporate boardrooms over the past two years. The magicians at the central bank are still hoping to pull a soft landing out of their hat, a feat that’d keep the stock market lofty — and keep employers happy and hiring — throughout the year. For the Fed to make that happen, it needs a year without surprises in order to keep inflation on its downward path. Hot wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have been two of those surprises hitting the U.S. economy before. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine two years ago sent oil prices soaring, worsening Biden’s inflation woes from the supply-chain troubles of 2021.
"R" voters are too lazy or too stupid to look up FACTS that are available and continue to embrace disinformation. tRump negotiated with the SAUDIS to cut OPEC production --- the MAGA GOP want to pretend it didn't happen. MAGA CULT want to ignore RECORD US OIL PRODUCTION!
WHY HASN'T BIG OIL REDUCED THE PRICE?
The Hamas attack in Israel continues to ricochet across the Middle East in unpredictable ways. Biden’s latest daily headache is ensuring Yemeni rebels don’t cripple the global economy. A cheap missile hitting an oil tanker would send oil prices soaring — reigniting inflation, strangling consumers, slamming markets and sending employers panicking. Even the rerouting of container ships to avoid the Red Sea is already raising transportation costs for manufacturers in a way that could show up in U.S. inflation later this year. Biden is well aware of the risks, acknowledging the problem openly last week. Nobody will credit him for record U.S. oil production if prices are soaring anyway. Four years ago, President Donald Trump had a strong message going into the final year of his term: Unemployment was sitting at historic lows, the stock market was hitting fresh records and the Fed was growing less concerned about inflation risks. It looked like a recipe for reelection until a new crisis struck — Covid. Biden, for a long and nervous nine months ahead, needs to avoid a similar crisis scenario to prevent the same fate. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at sreddy@politico.com on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @Reddy .
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| | GLOBAL PLAYBOOK IS TAKING YOU TO DAVOS! Unlock the insider's guide to one of the world's most influential gatherings as POLITICO's Global Playbook takes you behind the scenes of the 2024 World Economic Forum. Author Suzanne Lynch will be on the ground in the Swiss Alps, bringing you the exclusive conversations, shifting power dynamics and groundbreaking ideas shaping the agenda in Davos. Stay in the know with POLITICO's Global Playbook, your VIP pass to the world’s most influential gatherings. SUBSCRIBE NOW . | | | | | | | — Biden speaks with Netanyahu amid two-state solution outrage: President Joe Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today for the first time in nearly a month about the ongoing war in Gaza and the potential for a postwar Palestinian state. The conversation came on the cusp of Netanyahu’s rejection of creating an independent Palestinian nation once the fighting in the Gaza Strip concludes, though the White House contends the timing of the call was coincidental. The Biden administration has forcefully pushed for a two-state solution in the region, but Netanyahu’s latest remarks signal that he won’t adhere to Washington’s appeals. — Washington takes aim at facial recognition: A group of Democratic senators on Thursday demanded that the Justice Department look at how police use facial recognition tools and whether it violates civil rights laws — part of a fresh wave of scrutiny in Washington to a technology that has triggered national concerns but has never come under federal regulations. The letter, shared exclusively with POLITICO, calls for the Justice Department to explain how the agency’s policies and practices ensure that law enforcement agencies receiving federal funds for facial recognition technology comply with civil rights protections. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) is the letter’s lead author, joined by Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and 15 other Democrats and one independent. — DOJ and FTC both push to investigate Microsoft’s OpenAI partnership: The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission are deep in discussions over which agency can probe OpenAI , including the ChatGPT creators’ involvement with Microsoft, on antitrust grounds. The FTC initiated talks with the DOJ months ago to figure out which one can review the matter, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. But neither agency is ready to relinquish jurisdiction, the people said, which must be resolved before the government can formally intervene in one of the most high-profile and controversial tech partnerships in recent years.
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Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) speaks in front of President Donald Trump during a campaign rally on Feb. 28, 2020, in North Charleston, S.C. | Patrick Semansky/AP | SCOTT DITCHES HALEY — Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina will endorse Donald Trump this evening at a rally in New Hampshire, according to the New York Times. Scott traveled to Florida today so that he could fly with Trump to New Hampshire for the rally, the two people said. His endorsement of Trump is likely to spur additional discussion of Scott as a potential running mate for the former president. He is the highest-ranking elected Black Republican in the nation. THE DAILY 14TH AMENDMENT — Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows is asking the state’s highest court to weigh in on her decision to remove Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot while a related decision by Colorado judges remains pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, reports POLITICO. Bellows ruled last month that Trump should not appear on the state’s 2024 ballot, concluding that his incitement of the Jan. 6 violence at the Capitol put him afoul of the 14th Amendment’s bar on insurrectionists holding public office. Trump challenged her ruling in Maine superior court, and a judge put Bellows’ ruling on hold in anticipation of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on the matter. IN THE FOXHOLE — When the Fox News host Laura Ingraham urged Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida “to step aside and endorse Trump” on Tuesday night, it was t he latest sign of a sharp deterioration of relations between the Republican presidential hopeful and the network that made him a star , writes the New York Times. Ms. Ingraham’s exhortation, in the wake of Mr. DeSantis’s second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, was met with mockery and derision by two of the governor’s most prominent aides. It was the latest broadside from Mr. DeSantis’s inner circle against the cable network that until recently had been among the loudest advocates of his candidacy. VP IS ‘OFF THE TABLE’ — Nikki Haley says being vice president is “off the table .” The declaration, delivered to a pair of diners at MaryAnn’s in Amherst and overheard by a POLITICO reporter today, was one of Haley’s most pointed remarks yet about her disinterest in the vice presidency. That Haley, the former U.N. ambassador under Donald Trump, had not previously definitively ruled out being Trump’s running mate has been a source of concern for some anti-Trump voters in New Hampshire who are considering casting ballots for her next week. Even as she ramped up her attacks on her former boss, voters here have taken issue with Haley responding to questions about serving as Trump’s vice president by saying only that she doesn’t “play for second.”
| | BIG TIME BUST — Dozens of boxes containing 2,000 kilograms of Ketamine have been discovered in a shed in Muiderberg , a village east of Amsterdam, with a street value of tens of millions of euros, reports POLITICO EU. “This is the largest amount of ketamine ever found in the Netherlands,” police say. Acting on a tip, the police raided the property and arrested a 55-year-old man, who lives in a house on the premises. Two children were also found and brought to an emergency shelter. The police removed the Ketamine, along with several kilograms of hard drugs, and destroyed them, it said in a statement. Police estimate the stash to have a street value of almost €55 million. Trading Ketamine without registration can be punished by up to six years in prison in the Netherlands. According to the police, trafficking is “accompanied by other forms of crime, such as money laundering and weapons possession.” Ketamine, an anesthetic for depression and anxiety, is not illegal in the Netherlands and is increasingly used as a party drug because of its hallucinogenic effects. The Netherlands has been struggling with drug trafficking and drug use. Amsterdam’s mayor Femke Halsema warned in an op-ed in the Guardian on Jan. 5 that “without a fundamental change of course, the Netherlands is in danger of becoming a narco-state.” BALTIC BARRICADE — Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia agreed today to set up a common Baltic defense zone on their borders with Russia and Belarus amid growing security concerns, reports POLITICO EU. The defense ministers of the three Baltic countries met today in Riga to approve the construction of "anti-mobility defensive installations" on their eastern frontiers. They also agreed to develop missile-artillery cooperation. Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur stressed the need for bunkers at the border, saying: “Russia’s war in Ukraine has shown that in addition to equipment, ammunition and manpower, we also need physical defensive structures at the border from the first meter to protect Estonia."
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| | | DO YOU EVEN LIFT — As Americans embark on their endless quests to remain fit, some of them are getting some help in the form of anabolic steroids . The number of Americans who have been legally prescribed steroids in recent years has exploded, and with it has come all kinds of easy ways to get the drugs illicitly as well. We’ve all heard the scary warnings about abusing steroids and how they might change your body and lead to hair loss or heart disease. But writing in The Baffler, Adrian Nathan West makes the case that at least in left-wing circles, all those fears might be rooted in something else: longstanding concerns about what it means to cultivate a traditional image of manliness. He does so by exploring both the medical concerns associated with steroid use and the psychological worries that come along with it.
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On this date in 1979: More than a million supporters of an Islamic republic gathered at the Shah Memorial monument in Tehran in a show of strength against the civilian government left behind by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The Shah left the country three days earlier. Similar demonstrations were held all over the country, most of them peaceful. | Aristotle Saris/AP | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here . | |
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