Raw Story

At a time when the always newsworthy Donald Trump is headed back to the White House, the venerable Washington Post should be gearing up to cover his second term but instead is being subjected to an exodus of top reporters and internal strife, reports the Wall Street Journal's Alexandra Bruell.

In her report for the Journal, Bruell notes that Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos, who bought the Post in 2013 for $250 million, just watched his investment lose around $100 million last year as new management has failed to stop the bleeding.

The Journal also reports that top-flight journalists are also fleeing to greener pastures under the management of interim executive editor Matt Murray and publisher William Lewis who has still not righted the ship since his hiring.

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Adding to the Post's problems was a decision to spike an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris before the 2024 presidential election that led to a revolt by readers with a reported 250,000 people canceling their subscriptions within days.

According to the Journal, "The changes inside the Post have left many staffers frustrated and confused about the future, the people close to the newsroom said. Journalists across areas from politics to national security, including Ashley Parker, Michael Scherer, Tyler Pager and Hannah Allam, have defected to publications such as the New York Times, the Atlantic and ProPublica. Josh Dawsey, a political investigations and enterprise reporter, is leaving for the Journal, where he worked before the Post," adding, "National editor Philip Rucker, investigations editor Peter Wallsten and senior national investigations editor Rosalind Helderman are in the latest batch of newsroom leaders taking calls from other publications."

Attendant readership has also taken a reported drop, with the Journal reporting, "Post leadership has internally discussed a goal of reaching 200 million users, according to staffers, though some in the newsroom say it isn’t clear how that will be measured and whether the figure includes social media followers. The Post had 54 million digital visitors in November 2024, according to media-measurement firm Comscore, down from 114 million in November 2020."

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Reacting in real-time as Donald Trump's sentencing hearing on 34 felony counts was ongoing, an MSNBC legal analyst admitted she was "legally shocked" at how the president-elect conducted himself.

With Trump appearing in Judge Juan Merchan's courtroom via video feed, the hosts on MSNBC read texts from producers in the courtroom and related that Trump chose to challenge his convictions that now make him a felon when he was already notified he would face no penalties.

According to former prosecutor Kristin Gibbons Feden, she could understand why the convicted Trump would want to push back, but was nonetheless still surprised he did.

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"Actually what stands out to me is, while I am legally shocked, I'm personally not surprised," she admitted. "I'm surprised that Donald Trump exercised his right of allocution. The right of allocution is a right that is promised to every single criminal defendant, right before they are sentenced by a judge to offer some type of self-advocacy, contrition, something to say, 'Hey, I'm remorseful for what I did.'"

"Doesn't sound like that's what happened today," MSNBC host Ana Cabrera interjected.

"Not. At. All," Gibbons Feden replied. "And again, most defendants who have made clear that they intend to appeal any conviction don't really exercise that right of allocution, and here Donald Trump did."

"The reason why I'm legally shocked is because he really didn't need to," she elaborated. "Judge Merchan already stated that he intended to not really give him a sentence, that unconditional discharge, which means you have the conviction, but you have no jail time, you have no parole, you have no probation, you have no fine. You essentially get to walk home, unlike most other criminal defendants."

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by Beiyi SEOW

U.S. job gains soared past expectations in December, according to government data released Friday, in a sign the labor market remains healthy shortly before President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration this month.

Hiring in the world's biggest economy was 256,000 last month, up from a revised 212,000 in November, the Labor Department said.

The December figure was significantly above the market consensus estimate of 154,000, according to Briefing.com.

The jobless rate meanwhile crept down to 4.1 percent from 4.2 percent.

The latest report marks a solid end to 2024 for the jobs market, which has held up in the face of elevated interest rates, allowing consumers to continue spending.

Outgoing President Joe Biden lauded his administration's performance, saying: "Although I inherited the worst economic crisis in decades with unemployment above six percent when I took office, we've had the lowest average unemployment rate of any administration in 50 years with unemployment at 4.1 percent as I leave."

"This has been a hard-fought recovery," he added in a statement.

Trump's return to the White House this month could bring uncertainty.

He has pledged to cut taxes, raise tariffs on imports and deport undocumented immigrants -- many of whom make up a significant part of the US labor force in sectors such as agriculture.

- Interest rates steady? -

"This is a good report, but not a blockbuster one as it seems at first glance," said Robert Frick, corporate economist at the Navy Federal Credit Union.

"A big chunk of the headline number is from post-hurricane recovery, and the range of hiring remains narrow," he noted.

Yet, a surge in job growth could lead the Federal Reserve to be slower in cutting interest rates this year, as officials work to bring down inflation sustainably.

Such expectations sent Treasury yields higher early Friday.

"Strength in the labor market, recent stalling in the disinflationary trend in inflation, and the prospect of changes in tariff and immigration policies that could push inflation higher will keep the Fed cautious and patient," said Nationwide chief economist Kathy Bostjancic.

"We foresee them keeping rates steady throughout the first half of the year," she added.

For now, average hourly earnings picked up 0.3 percent from the month before in December to $35.69.

From a year ago, wages were up 3.9 percent.

Among sectors, the Labor Department said "employment trended up in health care, government, and social assistance."

Retail trade also added jobs in December after a loss in November.

"These data make at least a pause in cuts much more likely, which will push mortgage rates higher in the near term," said Mike Fratantoni, chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association.

But Samuel Tombs, chief US economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, believes that Fed officials are likely to conclude that monetary policy is still restrictive.

"Labor market data are so volatile and confidence intervals so wide that trends are best determined from at least six months of data," he said in a note.

© Agence France-Presse

Last year set a record for high temperatures across the mainland United States, with the nation also pummeled by a barrage of tornadoes and destructive hurricanes, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a report Friday.

The announcement came as Europe's climate monitor confirmed 2024 was the hottest year globally, with temperatures so extreme that the planet breached a critical climate threshold for the first time ever.

President-elect Donald Trump, a vocal climate skeptic, is just days away from taking office and has pledged to expand fossil fuel production -- the main driver of human-caused warming -- while rolling back the green policies of his predecessor, Joe Biden.

According to NOAA, the average annual temperature across the lower 48 states and Washington was 55.5 degrees Fahrenheit (13.1 degrees Celsius) -- 3.5F above average and the highest in the agency's 130-year records.

It was also the third-wettest year since 1895 and saw the second-highest number of tornadoes on record, trailing only 2004.

Annual precipitation totaled 31.6 inches (802.1 millimeters) -- 1.7 inches above average -- while 1,735 tornadoes struck amid a punishing Atlantic hurricane season that included Hurricane Helene, the second deadliest hurricane to hit the US mainland in more than half-a-century.

Wildfires scorched 8.8 million acres, 26 percent above the 20-year average. These included the devastating Park Fire in California, the state's fourth-largest on record, which consumed nearly 430,000 acres and destroyed over 600 structures.

In total, the United States experienced 27 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters, second only to the 28 recorded in 2023.

Weather extremes battered the country from all sides, with heavy rainfall mid-year and drought conditions covering 54 percent of the nation by October 29.

The last two years exceeded on average a critical warming limit for the first time as global temperatures soar "beyond what modern humans have ever experienced," the European Commission's Copernicus Climate Change Service confirmed Friday.

This does not mean the internationally-agreed target of holding warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels has been permanently breached, but it is drawing dangerously near.

Copernicus also confirmed that 2024 was the hottest year on record, surpassing 2023 and extending a streak of extraordinary heat that fuelled climate extremes on all continents.

A repeat in 2025 is considered less likely, with the onset of a La Nina weather system expected to offer slight relief.

China remains the world's largest current emitter, but the United States is historically the biggest polluter, underscoring its responsibility to confront the climate crisis, according to environmental advocates.

But progress remains tepid, with US greenhouse gas emissions dipping just 0.2 percent last year, according to a study by the Rhodium Group -- leaving the country dangerously off track to meet its climate goals under the Paris agreement.

© Agence France-Presse

President-elect Donald Trump has turned toward an obsession with acquiring various neighboring lands, from Greenland and Canada to the Panama Canal, with his ally Steve Bannon even fantasizing about conquering the entire continent of North America. But the irony, wrote conservative analyst Noah Rothman for the National Review, is that such conquests were made unnecessary by the modern international order of free trade and cooperation — which Trump is now seeking to tear down.

Specifically, Trump is pushing for massive trade wars against all of the U.S.' major trade partners, which economists have raised alarms would be devastating to U.S. consumers. But, wrote Rothman, it goes deeper than that.

"There is something to be said about a particular disposition that regards territorial expansionism as a necessary tool of statecraft. It is the sort of outlook that was common to policymakers in the pre-War world — an environment typified by inviolable spheres of influence in which international free trade agreements were far rarer," wrote Rothman. "If you are inclined to see resource acquisition as a zero-sum competition for finite commodities — indeed, if you view trade as a form of war by other means, as Moscow did in the years preceding its adventurism in Ukraine — you’re more likely to see expansionist wars of conquest as vital national projects."

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Indeed, he noted, research published in recent years suggests that nations with more expansive free trade agreements are less likely to get involved in territorial wars — while more isolated ones display greater military aggression to their neighbors.

The bottom line, Rothman argued, is that Trump plans to tear down the very institutions and systems that currently let the United States freely use the resources of the countries and territories he now says America should seize for itself.

"Trump is not 'thinking big.' Rather, the president-elect and those who have entertained his thought bubble as though it was a serious proposition have demonstrated their adherence to a dangerous fallacy," Rothman concluded. "It’s no coincidence that the renewed popularity of protectionist thinking has made the prospect of war more thinkable."

President-elect Donald Trump continued his rants about the California wildfires on Wednesday afternoon by once again blaming the ordeal on Democrats.

Trump for years has claimed that California is suffering from fires because it does not properly "rake" its forests, which was a theme he continued when it comes to the current fire despite the fact that it started in a residential area.

"As of this moment, Gavin Newscum and his Los Angeles crew have contained exactly ZERO percent of the fire. It is burning at levels that even surpass last night. This is not Government. I can’t wait till January 20th!" Trump first posted.

A few moments later, he raged: "NO WATER IN THE FIRE HYDRANTS, NO MONEY IN FEMA. THIS IS WHAT JOE BIDEN IS LEAVING ME. THANKS JOE!"

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FEMA continues to dispel the myth that they don't have any funds to aid Americans in disasters. This particular myth began after hurricanes hit Florida and the east coast this past fall.

The Palisades Fire largely burned populated areas like Santa Monica, Malibu, and the Pacific Palisades. Fire officials said that they are investigating the cause of the blaze that began around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday.

The California fire chief briefed the press and President Joe Biden on Wednesday, saying that in her 25-year career, she's never seen winds that strong. She explained that firefighters are being forced to lean into the wind just to continue standing and holding a firehose.

The police chief echoed the comments, saying, "I've never seen anything like this."

Southern California is suffering from drought conditions and strong Santa Ana winds. The National Weather Service announced on Monday that the winds were coming and that they would be powerful and destructive.

"The combination of low humidity, dry fuels and shifting winds has heightened the potential for spot fires and rapid expansion," Cal Fire said in an update.