The feud between President Trump and Elon Musk grew exponentially extra bitter on Thursday.

The 2 exchanged volleys of insults that reached their pinnacle — or nadir, relying upon one’s perspective — when Musk alleged that recordsdata on the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein have been being saved secret to guard Trump.

The fissure between the 2 males now yawns broad, lower than every week after Musk formally left his place spearheading the quasi-official Division of Authorities Effectivity.

Within the intervening days, Musk had turn out to be bolder in expressing his dissent over the big price range and tax lower invoice presently making its means by means of Congress. Trump refers to that laws because the “big, beautiful bill.” It’s the centerpiece of his Capitol Hill agenda.

However Thursday introduced a much more acrimonious and private tone to the exchanges.

Listed here are the 5 huge takeaways.

Musk actually ‘went there’ on Trump and Epstein

Musk’s social media posts about Trump and Epstein, the rich serial intercourse offender who killed himself in murky circumstances in 2019, was a jaw-dropping shot on the president.

It’s well-known that Trump was acquainted with Epstein. On Thursday, Musk additionally took the chance to remind his followers of Trump’s quote in a New York journal profile of Epstein greater than 20 years in the past. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” Trump mentioned.

However Musk’s intervention gave new wings to lurid hypothesis. Musk alleged that Trump’s identify “is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.” A follow-up publish instructed marking the unique publish “for the future. The truth will come out.”

It bears emphasizing that there isn’t a proof that Trump’s connection to Epstein concerned nefarious exercise on the president’s half.

However Musk’s willingness to inject the story again into the nationwide conversations — amplifying it to his 220 million followers with a gleeful, “Have a nice day, DJT!” — will trigger actual unease in Trump World.

Musk’s insistence in a separate publish that Trump would have misplaced final yr’s election to then-Vice President Kamala Harris if it weren’t for his assist will even enrage Trump. So too will his on-line ballot as as to whether a brand new get together needs to be shaped.

There are huge risks for Musk too

The conflict between Trump and Musk seized the general public creativeness with its sheer melodrama.

However it additionally issues as a result of every of them has actual energy to harm the opposite.

If proof have been wanted, it was plainly seen on the inventory market. The underside fell out of Tesla inventory, with shares within the electrical automobile producer plunging greater than 14 p.c.

Tesla already confronted huge challenges as a result of many patrons — particularly these of a extra liberal disposition — had been turned off by Musk’s work for Trump.

Now it dangers being buffeted by currents from the opposite course.

Trump, in remarks earlier Thursday at a White Home assembly with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, had blamed Musk’s public displeasure on legislative proposals that will strip away tax incentives to purchase electrical autos.

Musk vehemently denies that that is the rationale for his break with Trump.

However Trump’s propensity to hunt vengeance on those that he believes have crossed him makes it very believable that Musk’s corporations can have a goal on their backs.

The political influence will likely be biggest with the web proper

The politics of Musk’s cut up with Trump are considerably difficult.

First, Musk himself is unpopular with most of the people. Opinion polling constantly exhibits him performing worse when it comes to favorability than Trump, himself an especially divisive determine.

To that extent, it’s attainable to argue that Musk’s fusillades at Trump, in the event that they proceed, might put on skinny with the general public and even rebound to some profit for Trump. There have been already some indicators by late Thursday afternoon of Trump-friendly media figures turning in opposition to the businessman.

However that’s not the total story.

Musk is exceptionally fashionable, even idolized, by many on what may be loosely termed the web proper. These youthful, overwhelmingly male, right-wing populists revere Musk not just for his enterprise achievements however for his rhetorical bombardments in opposition to “wokeness.”

Musk might wound Trump deeply amongst that constituency, which has beforehand been supportive of the president.

There may be already proof of this.

Proper-wing influencer Ian Miles Cheong, who has 1.2 million followers on Musk’s social platform X, posted at 3:50 p.m. that “my money’s on Elon” within the battle between Musk and Trump.

Cheong additionally asserted, “Trump needs to be impeached and JD Vance ought to exchange him.

Lower than half-hour later, Musk reposted Cheong including one phrase: “Yes.”

Will Musk’s fusillades sink the ‘big, beautiful bill’?

Amid all the non-public Trump-Musk drama, it was straightforward to lose sight of the truth that the fuse of this bomb started burning over the spending invoice.

Musk’s spectacular falling-out with Trump may make some congressional Republicans extra keen to voice their exasperation with Musk. This irritation has been constructing for a while.

However Musk remains to be coaching loads of fireplace on the invoice itself — a stance that’s positive to disconcert GOP leaders.

In a collection of social media posts, Musk focused not simply Trump but in addition Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Chief John Thune (R-S.D.), resurfacing previous feedback the place they lamented the hazards of letting authorities spending spiral uncontrolled.

The price range invoice in its present type is projected so as to add $2.4 trillion to the deficit over 10 years, in response to the nonpartisan Congressional Funds Workplace.

Musk, in characteristically fiery fashion, contended in one in all his Thursday afternoon postings that “Congress is spending America into bankruptcy!”

The GOP on Capitol Hill is general way more loyal to Trump than to Musk.

However it’s eminently attainable that Musk might peel off sufficient Republican members to sink the invoice.

Is anyone actually shocked?

No.

A rupture between two of probably the most fractious and selfish males in public life had been extensively forecast for the reason that beginning of their alliance.

And so it got here to cross.

The flaming comet of enmity that streaked by means of the nationwide dialog Thursday was spectacular.

It was removed from shocking.

SEOUL  — As South Koreans put together to elect a successor to ousted former president Yoon Suk Yeol, a courtroom ruling in opposition to front-runner Lee Jae-myung has thrust the nation — which has been below interim management for the final 5 months — into additional uncertainty.

Yoon, who was impeached for declaring martial regulation in December, was faraway from workplace final month, triggering a snap election that will likely be held June 3. Since then, the nation has been led by a descending order of deputies, together with the prime minister, the finance minister and, now, the schooling minister.

Lee, who till declaring his candidacy final month was the chief of South Korea’s liberal opposition get together, has been the clear favourite in polls. However his candidacy has been difficult by a number of felony trials he has decried as politically motivated.

These troubles got here to a head Thursday, when South Korea’s Supreme Courtroom overturned a decrease courtroom’s acquittal of Lee on costs he had violated the nation’s election regulation — which prohibits candidates from making “false statements” — and ordered the appeals courtroom to subject a sentence.

Impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol was faraway from workplace final month.

(Related Press)

If the appeals courtroom guidelines on Lee’s case earlier than the presidential election subsequent month, Lee could also be pressured out of the operating. The Supreme Courtroom ruling can even probably sway reasonable voters who could show essential in clinching the presidency.

It’s a stunning flip that has drawn hearth from Lee’s supporters, who say the Supreme Courtroom is inappropriately placing its finger on the dimensions of the election. Of the 12 Supreme Courtroom justices, all however two — who each issued dissenting opinions — have been nominated by Yoon, a conservative.

Within the wake of the ruling, Lee’s opponents have referred to as for his withdrawal from the race.

“Although the sentence has yet to be confirmed, Lee’s disqualification from the election is only a matter of time,”wrote Lee Jun-seok, a conservative candidate. “The Democratic Party should respect the Supreme Court’s decision and immediately replace him as the party candidate.”

Many authorized specialists have expressed skepticism on the Supreme Courtroom’s choice, which was unusually swift.

Lee’s first trial took simply over two years, and the second took round 4 months. The Supreme Courtroom, nevertheless, issued its choice after simply eight days of deliberation.

“I am doubtful whether there was enough time for the 12 justices to sufficiently review and debate the vast number of trial documents,”wrote Hong Sung-soo, a regulation professor at Sookmyung Girls’s College in Seoul, in a social media put up Friday. “Even with help from research judges, there is still a minimum amount of time that this will take.”

South Korean performing President Han Duck-soo speaks throughout a press convention on the Authorities Complicated in Seoul on Thursday. The presidential election will happen June 3.

(Hong Hae-in / Related Press)

Beneath South Korean election regulation, candidates are forbidden from mendacity about themselves or their opponents and may resist seven years in jail for doing so. These discovered responsible are prohibited from operating for public workplace for 5 years if their penalty is 1 million gained ($717) in fines or higher.

The 2 false statements Lee is accused of constructing date again to his second presidential run in 2021 — a race he finally misplaced to Yoon — and concern a controversial actual property improvement venture within the metropolis of Seongnam the place Lee was mayor from 2010-18.

Throughout his marketing campaign, Lee claimed {that a} {photograph} displaying him with a municipal official implicated within the venture was doctored — and that he didn’t know the official. He additionally acknowledged {that a} re-zoning choice he made throughout that point was attributable to strain from the central authorities.

Prosecutors indicted Lee, arguing the 2 statements have been false.

The primary courtroom discovered Lee responsible final November. However the appeals courtroom disagreed 4 months later, saying that Lee’s claims needs to be understood as subjective viewpoints, somewhat than factual statements.

Many authorized students have argued that this provision within the nation’s election regulation — which politicians from either side have weaponized in opposition to their opponents — violates each the spirit of free political expression and the prerogative of residents to evaluate the truthfulness of their leaders’ statements on their very own phrases.

That was the warning issued by the 2 Supreme Courtroom justices who voted in opposition to the ruling in opposition to Lee. “The various statements that are made during the course of an election are a mixture of facts, opinions and judgments that, existing within the context of political interests, cannot always be clearly defined as true or false,” they wrote.

“But the judiciary is nonetheless still responsible for maintaining political impartiality, and for it to intervene in this mixed-up realm of politics and sort truth from falsehood is itself an act that compromises its political impartiality.”

Rep. Al Inexperienced (D-Texas) opened up concerning the second he was escorted out of the Home chamber Tuesday night, saying he protested at President Trump’s joint tackle to Congress as a result of “he needs to save Medicaid.”

Talking with reporters within the Capitol after being faraway from Trump’s speech, Inexperienced mentioned he was protesting the president’s sweeping cuts to federal applications — a difficulty that has left Democrats reeling and threatening to permit a lapse in authorities funding later this month.

“I used to be making it clear to the president that he has no mandate to chop Medicaid,” Green said of his outburst. “I’ve people who find themselves very fearful, these are poor folks and so they all want Medicaid of their lives in terms of their well being care.”

Throughout Trump’s first main speech to lawmakers, he declared that the outcomes of the 2024 presidential election have been a “mandate” from the American folks that “has not been seen in lots of a long time,” echoing phrases he mentioned throughout his victory speech in November.

Inexperienced stood up and asserted that the president had no mandate and didn’t sit again down.

Then, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) repeatedly instructed these in attendance to take care of decorum, however Inexperienced continued to talk. Johnson then requested the sergeant-at-arms to “restore order” by throwing the Texas Democrat out of the chamber.

The lawmaker instructed reporters that Trump is slicing security nets that individuals in his district depend on.

“This president seems to care less about them and more about the number of people that he can remove from the various programs that have been so helpful,” he mentioned.

Many Democrats protested in their very own manner from holding up indicators studying “false” to strolling out through the speech. Inexperienced defended his determination to talk out.

“It is the best way to get it across to a person who uses his incivility, who uses his incivility against our civility,” Inexperienced mentioned.

He added later that he’s “willing to suffer” any consequence he might face from the protest, saying it was “worth it” to indicate the American folks that some members of Congress will stand as much as Trump.

“This is about the people who are being punished by virtue of losing their health care,” the Texas lawmaker mentioned. “This is the richest country in the world, and we have people who don’t have good health care.”

“We’ve got to do better,” he added. “Health care has become wealth care for many people and we can’t afford to let that happen.”

Johnson, in response, argued that his Democratic colleague ought to be “censured” over the protest.

The transfer got here after Inexperienced mentioned early final month that he would deliver articles of impeachment towards Trump after the president instructed the U.S. ought to take over Gaza.

“This president is unfit. He mustn’t maintain the workplace,” Inexperienced mentioned Tuesday, pointing to Trump’s 34-count felony conviction within the New York hush cash case — which ended with no punishment — and the 2 occasions he was impeached by the Home.

The published is being ballyhooed as historic, the primary time a play has been aired dwell from Broadway. And whereas there isn’t a arguing with that reality, performances of performs have been recorded onstage earlier than, and are being so now. It’s a terrific apply; I want it have been carried out extra usually. In the intervening time, PBS.org is streaming current productions of Cole Porter’s “Kiss Me, Kate!,” the Bob Dylan-scored “Girl From the North Country,” David Henry Hwang‘s “Yellow Face” and the Pulitzer Prize-winning mental health rock musical “Next to Normal.” Britain’s Nationwide Theater at Residence subscription service provides a wealth of classical and fashionable performs, together with Andrew Scott’s one-man “Vanya,” as scorching a ticket in New York this spring as Clooney’s play. And the archives run deep; {that a} journey to YouTube can ship you Richard Burton’s “Hamlet” or “Sunday in the Park With George” with Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters is a present to not be neglected.

Clooney, with co-star Anthony Edwards, had earlier been behind a dwell broadcast of “Ambush,” the fourth season opener of “ER” as a throwback to the actual seat-of-your-pants, walking-on-a-wire vitality of Fifties tv. (It was carried out twice, as soon as for the East and as soon as for the West Coast.) That it earned an viewers of 42.71 million, breaking a few information within the cut price, means that, from a business perspective, it was under no circumstances a foul concept. (Critiques have been blended, however critics don’t know every little thing.)

Like that episode, the “live” aspect of Saturday’s broadcast was primarily a stunt, although one which ensured, no less than, that no post-production enhancing has been utilized, and that if anybody blew a line, or the home was invaded by heckling MAGA hats, or just disrupted by viewers members who regarded the big value they paid for a ticket as a license to chatter via the present, it might presumably have been a part of the printed. None of that occurred — however, it might have! (Clooney did stumble over “simple,” however that’s all I caught.) And, it provided the groundlings at residence the prospect to see a much-discussed, well-reviewed manufacturing solely a comparatively few have been in a position to see in particular person — which I applaud on principal and loved in apply — and which is able to very in all probability not come once more, not counting the following day’s remaining efficiency.

Glenn Fleshler, left, performs Fred Pleasant within the stage manufacturing, a task that George Clooney carried out within the movie model of “Good Night, and Good Luck.”

(Emilio Madrid)

The movie, directed by Clooney and co-written with Grant Heslov (who co-wrote the stage model as effectively), featured the actor as producer and ally Fred W. Pleasant to David Strathairn’s memorable Murrow. Right here, a extra aggressive Clooney takes the Murrow function, whereas Glenn Fleshler performs Pleasant. Launched in the course of the second time period of the Bush administration, the film was a meditation on the state of issues via the prism of 1954 (and a well-known framing speech from 1958 in regards to the potentialities and potential failures of tv), the fear-fueled demagoguery of Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and Murrow’s willpower to take him on. (The 1954 “See It Now” episode, “A Report on Sen. Joseph McCarthy,” helped result in his finish.) As within the movie, McCarthy is represented completely via projected movie clips, echoing the way in which that Murrow impeached the senator together with his personal phrases.

Although fashionable stage productions, with their computer-controlled modular elements, can replicate the rhythms and scene adjustments of a movie, there are apparent variations between a film, the place digicam angles and enhancing drive the story. It’s an phantasm of life, stitched collectively from bits and items. A stage play proceeds in actual time and provides a single view (differing, after all, relying on the place one sits), inside which you direct your consideration as you’ll. What illusions it provides are, because it have been, stage magic. It’s choreographed, like a dance, which actors should repeat night time after night time, placing feeling into traces they might communicate to 1 one other, however ship out to the farthest corners of the theater.

Clooney, whose furrowed forehead is an efficient match for Murrow’s, didn’t try to imitate him, or maybe did throughout the limits of theatrical supply; he was severe and efficient within the function if not reaching the quiet perfection of Strathairn’s efficiency. Scott Pask‘s set was an ingenious moving modular arrangement of office spaces, backed by a control room, highlighted or darkened as needs be; a raised platform stage left supported the jazz group and vocalist, which, as in the movie, performed songs whose lyrics at times commented slyly on the action. Though television squashed the production into two dimensions, the broadcast nevertheless felt real and exciting; director David Comer let the camera play on the players, rather than trying for a cinematic effect through an excess of close-ups and cutaways.

Last but not least, there is the audience, your stand-ins at the Winter Garden Theatre, which laughed at the jokes and applauded the big speeches, transcribed from Murrow’s personal. After which, the curtain name, to remind you that no matter got here earlier than, the actors are nice, consuming in your appreciation and sending you out blissful and exhilarated and maybe stuffed with hope.

A CNN roundtable adopted to carry you again to Earth.

At this time is Monday, Feb. 24, the fifty fifth day of 2025. There are 310 days left within the yr.

At this time in historical past:

On Feb. 24, 1868, the U.S. Home of Representatives impeached President Andrew Johnson by a vote of 126-47 following his tried dismissal of Secretary of Conflict Edwin M. Stanton; Johnson was later acquitted by the Senate by a single vote.

Additionally on this date:

In 1803, in its landmark Marbury v. Madison choice, the U.S. Supreme Court docket established judicial evaluate of the constitutionality of legal guidelines and statutes.

In 1942, the SS Struma, a constitution ship making an attempt to hold almost 800 Jewish refugees from Romania to British-mandated Palestine, was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine within the Black Sea; all however one of many refugees died.

In 1981, a jury in White Plains, New York, discovered Jean Harris responsible of second-degree homicide within the deadly capturing of “Scarsdale Diet” writer Dr. Herman Tarnower. (Sentenced to fifteen years to life in jail, Harris was granted clemency by New York Gov. Mario Cuomo in December 1992.)

In 1988, in a ruling that expanded authorized protections for parody and satire, the Supreme Court docket unanimously overturned a $200,000 award that the Rev. Jerry Falwell had received in opposition to Hustler journal and its writer, Larry Flynt.

In 1991, america started floor operations within the Gulf Conflict by coming into Iraqi-held Kuwait.

In 2008, Cuba’s parliament named Raul Castro president, ending almost 50 years of rule by his brother Fidel.

In 2011, Discovery, the world’s most traveled spaceship, thundered into orbit for the ultimate time, heading towards the Worldwide Area Station on a journey marking the start of the tip of the shuttle period.

In 2022, Russia started a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, launching airstrikes on cities and army bases and sending troops and tanks from a number of instructions.

At this time’s birthdays:
Actor Dominic Chianese is 94.
Nike co-founder Phil Knight is 87.
Actor Barry Bostwick is 80.
Actor Edward James Olmos is 78.
Musician George Thorogood is 75.
Baseball Corridor of Famer Eddie Murray is 69.
Actor Billy Zane is 59.
Boxing Corridor of Famer Floyd Mayweather Jr. is 48.
Tennis Corridor of Famer Lleyton Hewitt is 44.
Actor Daniel Kaluuya is 36.

I stepped on my toilet scale the opposite morning and couldn’t imagine the three digits staring up at me.

And I imply that actually — the size was rigged.

I do know this as a result of I’ve been weight-reduction plan my butt off, and I swear I’ve dropped 20 kilos. So the very first thing I did was ask my spouse whether or not she messed with the size as some type of prank.

She stated no, including, “Maybe you’re retaining liquids.”

Steve Lopez

Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Occasions columnist since 2001. He has gained greater than a dozen nationwide journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.

I threw the size out instantly. Then I went again into the lavatory, took one look within the mirror, and bought one other shock.

That couldn’t be me within the reflection. No manner.

I’ve bought extra hair than that. Everyone is aware of it, and folks touch upon it. I am going onto social media and individuals are asking each other, virtually on daily basis: “How does he maintain such a full mane and youthful glow?”

I referred to as my barber and fired him.

It’s not the barber, my spouse stated. It’s best to take one other look within the mirror.

Our columnist was dismayed when he found the Bible ranks greater in e book gross sales than his personal works. “That should be on the list of fake miracles, right up there with the loaves and fishes,” he writes.

(Marta Lavandier / Related Press)

She’s been considerably out of kinds these days, ever since I went on Nextdoor to want all my neighbors a contented Independence Day, together with “all you scum I wouldn’t speak to IF YOU WERE THE LAST ONES at the picnic.”

Half the time, my spouse doesn’t even dwell with me, and I don’t know the place she is. It’s odd, as a result of the wedding is ideal. Folks ask us what the key is, and I say it’s hospitality. We open our hearts and our house to others, and we had been planning on constructing a yard ballroom till our monetary advisor advised us we had been already working up huge debt.

I sued him for negligence and monetary fraud.

My spouse introduced house a few refugees sponsored by her church, and I went together with it, though I believe it’s unsuitable in charge coyotes each time a neighborhood pet disappears. We had been having a cup of espresso and some pastries, and one in all them took a second almond croissant. After which, even earlier than he completed it, he reached out and grabbed a bear claw.

There I’m, watching it disappear, and between bites, this freeloader begins telling us our nation has to supply extra assist to his nation.

I couldn’t take it anymore.

“I wanted the bear claw!” I stated. “You didn’t even say thanks for the croissant, and now you want a third pastry? Get out of my house!”

To calm myself, I slipped into the lounge to chill out with a e book. I picked one which was on a shelf subsequent to 3 books I’ve written, which made me interested in how gross sales have been going these days.

So I went to Amazon to examine the rankings.

The primary e book I checked was ranked 3,907,369. I swear on the Bible, which, by the way in which, was ranked 206 on the bestsellers record.

Actually?

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John have been within the floor for what, a few thousand years? No one can inform you whether or not any of them knew a Magi from a Musketeer, to not point out that the Roman Empire they labored beneath was a failed administration. And their e book is promoting higher than mine by a mile?

That must be on the record of pretend miracles, proper up there with the loaves and fishes.

A dispute with a neighbor over a property line ? “The boundaries are rigged.”

(A dispute with a neighbor over a property line ? “The boundaries are rigged.”)

My e book is a superb e book. It’s already listed up there with the all-time classics, and it bought starred evaluations in every single place. At Barnes & Noble, they hold it within the Lovely Books part. Once I was on a e book tour, I had the most important crowds ever. Method larger than Hemingway. Individuals are nonetheless speaking about it.

So to chop to the chase, I gave my gross sales rank a Triple F ranking.

Faux.

False.

Fony.

And I fired my e book agent.

I checked out among the books ranked greater than mine — apart from the “holy” Bible — and it didn’t take lengthy to determine what’s occurring.

To begin with, quite a lot of the individuals allegedly “buying” books don’t exist. Someplace between 30% and 40% of the individuals who go onto the assessment part and declare they love Stephen King books are literally useless.

After which you may have lots of people coming into this nation illegally, ghastly individuals, and they’re voting in elections and they’re voting on books, too, as a result of they’re being put as much as it, and being well-compensated, I’d add.

Little-known truth:

The vote-counting machines and the book-counting machines are made by the identical firm.

what they need to name that firm?

RIGGED!

To not be obsessive, however I’ve heard it stated that Stephen King doesn’t look after me a lot, and that’s high-quality. Water off a duck’s again. My canine has extra expertise than that man. All he does is write tales about killers and horrible, sick individuals.

He ought to write a e book about my neighbor, if he likes deranged individuals a lot. Most neighbors love me; they’re kissing my you-know-what. However then there’s this man, whom I’m having investigated. I went out to the curb to throw the lavatory scale away, and what do I see? That jackalope is placing his trash can on my property. I’m the one who’s encroaching, he tells me, and I ought to go to the county workplaces and examine the property information.

Properly, it simply so occurs that I already checked the information, and so they’re inaccurate. It figures, as a result of that final county administration was the worst in historical past. A bunch of corrupt, evil individuals. Who ought to have been impeached. They employed incompetents as surveyors, so don’t stand on the road and inform me the place I can and may’t put my trash can, as a result of the boundaries are rigged and I’m having them rewritten.

My attorneys are on it, and we are going to win this case on Day One, assured, with time left over for a spherical of golf.

Observe to self:

On the way in which house, decide up a toilet scale.

George and Teddy Kunhardt made the documentary “Becoming Katharine Graham” for a similar purpose most individuals make documentaries: to inform a narrative they thought individuals ought to know.

As writer of the Washington Submit and CEO of the Washington Submit Co. Katharine Graham grew to become the primary lady to run a significant media group and a key participant within the paper’s rise to prominence within the Seventies, first with its position within the publication of the Pentagon Papers after which with its well-known investigation of the Watergate break-in.

However, because the Kunhardts wrote of their administrators’ assertion, her position in these and different cultural milestones has been too usually neglected. Reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward and govt editor Ben Bradlee grew to become, and stay, family names. However within the revered 1976 movie “All the President’s Men,” Graham by no means seems and is just talked about by way of the notorious risk — “Katie Graham’s gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that’s published” — delivered by then-attorney normal John Mitchell.

With this movie, they hoped to set the document straight.

Katharine Graham in 1971 with Washington Submit editors.

(Katharine Graham Property)

However her story makes it abundantly clear that the dangers journalists should absorb demanding fact of energy are solely attainable when homeowners have their backs.

Certainly, when “Becoming Katharine Graham” premiered on the Kennedy Middle on Sunday, Bezos, chief govt Will Lewis and govt editor Matt Murray had been notably absent. (Bezos was on the Oscars.)

Throughout her tenure, Graham, who died in 2001, confronted loads of criticism, and various direct threats, from each inside and outside her group. Members of her board most definitely didn’t assist publishing parts of the Pentagon Papers. In retribution for the paper’s Watergate protection, then-President Nixon tried to destroy the Submit by withholding the licenses of the corporate’s worthwhile TV stations. And through a violent 1975 pressman’s strike, seen within the opening of the movie, employees burned Graham in effigy.

Having come of age throughout a time when it was frequent for publishers and editors to socialize with presidents and first women, Graham had private relationships with many Washington energy brokers, to not point out monetary pursuits that could possibly be affected by authorities approval. However, as she says within the movie: “You can be friends with people in the government, but you remember, and they remember, that the paper comes first.”

A cri de coeur then, from past the grave.

Greater than most biodocs, “Becoming Katharine Graham” is guided by Graham’s voice from the numerous interviews and speeches she gave earlier than her demise in 1991 and from her memoir, “Personal History.” Although constructed out with the customary mixture of up to date interviews from those that knew her and archival footage — together with chilling parts of the Nixon White Home tapes — Graham primarily tells her personal story, from her privileged youth — her father, financier Eugene Meyer, grew to become chairman of the Federal Reserve — to her retirement and resolution to put in writing the memoir that informs a lot of the movie.

She emerges as an unintended hero, a self-described “door-mat wife” who labored briefly on the Submit after her father purchased it in 1933 (at a chapter public sale) till assuming the duties of spouse, mom and gracious society hostess. She was completely satisfied to see her husband, Phil Graham, named writer in 1946. Two years later, Meyer transferred management over the corporate’s then privately owned inventory to the couple, with Phil receiving 70% to Graham’s 30%.

Katharine Graham together with her husband, Phil.

(Katharine Graham Property)

However summon it she did, regardless of being made very conscious that, as she says, “A lot of men don’t like working for a woman.”

In an anecdote that feels particularly significant given the present tensions over editorials, Gloria Steinem remembers being requested to handle an editorial board assembly as a result of Graham needed them “to support the Equal Rights Amendment editorially and they were not doing so. She felt she couldn’t order them to, so she asked me to come …”

A big chunk of the movie offers with Graham’s braveness in the course of the Nixon administration. By agreeing to publish parts of the Pentagon Papers after a federal courtroom had ordered the New York Instances to cease, she risked legal prosecution, the lack of the corporate’s tv stations and doubtlessly the entire enterprise, which had simply gone public in an try to shore up financing. (After being ignored in “All the President’s Men,” her bravery is central to Steven Spielberg’s 2017 movie “The Post.” )

The next 12 months, she constantly supported her paper’s investigation into the Watergate break-in even when no different outlet adopted the story; for months, that reporting brought on many to query the Submit’s intentions and Graham’s judgment. Famously vindictive, Nixon received reelection and his private hatred of Graham, whom he known as at one level “a miserable bitch,” drove his efforts to place the Submit out of enterprise. When he threatened to withhold the TV licenses of its stations, the corporate’s inventory plummeted.

Enter journalism’s first billionaire savior, Warren Buffett, who purchased a big quantity of low-priced nonvoting shares. As she says within the movie, Graham had by no means met him, knew nothing about him and “worried that he wasn’t benevolent.” Many round her suggested maintaining him at a distance. As an alternative, Graham traveled to California to fulfill with Buffett (who, in accordance with his daughter, ran out and acquired swim trunks to be able to burnish his Golden State mystique). The 2 hit it off (the trunks weren’t concerned) and Buffett grew to become her key monetary advisor, because the paper’s funds teetered, and for lengthy after.

Warren Buffett was a key monetary advisor to Katharine Graham.

(From Warren Buffett)

As Bernstein and Woodward continued their investigation, threats and strain from the Nixon White Home elevated. Graham started taking the reporters’ notes and analysis to her own residence at evening to maintain them protected. In a up to date interview, Bernstein remembers getting a name from the guard on the paper’s entrance desk alerting him to a subpoena that demanded his notes. He informed Bradlee, who known as Graham, returning to inform Bernstein, “‘They’re not your notes. Katharine says they’re her notes and if anyone is going to go to jail for withholding their notes … it’s going to be her.”

“You need nerve, you need to be able to withstand stuff,” says Courtland Milloy, former columnist and reporter for the Submit. “Kay Graham set the standard, a high bar, for having nerve.”

That nerve paid off; a 12 months of reporting lastly cracked open Nixon’s involvement within the Watergate break-in, which was only one a part of his reelection marketing campaign’s use of political spying, sabotage and unlawful funding. In the course of the Watergate hearings, the existence of the White Home tapes was revealed. When parts of the tapes made it clear that, amongst different issues, he had been concerned in masking up the break-in, he was threatened with impeachment. With just about no public or political assist, he grew to become the primary U.S. president ever to resign.

Graham discovered herself immediately being touted as probably the most highly effective lady within the nation. However, she mentioned, “I didn’t take any personal pleasure in this. We were pleased to have our reporting vindicated, but I don’t think that anybody … thought that the president of the United States having to resign because he would be impeached was a great event for the country.”

A 12 months later, Graham confronted one other take a look at. The Submit’s pressmen went on strike, destroying the paper’s printing presses and staging an enormous picket line through which one signal taunted her together with her husband’s suicide: “Phil shot the wrong Graham.”

Graham’s first concern was getting the paper out. Plates had been taken to the printing presses of close by papers by helicopter. When the union refused to simply accept administration’s last supply, she started to rent outdoors employees, partially, says her son, as a result of she couldn’t think about rehiring the individuals who destroyed the presses and set fireplace to the constructing.

Picketing continued, and prolonged to the world premiere of “All the President’s Men,” which was characterised as “the most eagerly awaited picture since ‘Jaws.’” Graham calls the strike, through which administration ultimately emerged victorious, the toughest factor she confronted throughout her working life. “In many ways,” she mentioned, “the strike broke my heart.”

Lined within the movie nearly totally from administration’s viewpoint, the strike was additionally the final massive battle Graham confronted as a writer. In 1979, Don took over, although Graham continued as CEO of the Washington Submit Co. till 1991. She started engaged on her memoir, which got here out in 1997 and received a Pulitzer Prize in 1998.

There are lots of causes to observe “Becoming Katharine Graham.” As a girl, she was a trailblazer, a singular mixture of privilege and humility, grace and grit, who overcame nice private trauma and pure reticence to assist information the nation by political and cultural turmoil.

However at this second, there’s an much more necessary message.

“The press in this country under a constitutional democracy is set up to be a critic of the government,” she says within the wake of Nixon’s resignation, “and it’s important that they do that, with a lot of responsibility.”

Many journalists, and the individuals who pay and handle them, will say the identical. “Becoming Katharine Graham” supplies the uncommon likelihood to see what it seems to be like when somebody like Kay Graham repeatedly dangers the whole lot to do it.

WASHINGTON — A federal decide on Wednesday mentioned he has discovered possible trigger to carry the Trump administration in prison contempt of court docket and warned he might search officers’ prosecution for violating his orders final month to show round planes carrying deportees to an El Salvador jail.

The ruling from U.S District Decide James E. Boasberg, whom President Donald Trump has mentioned must be impeached, marks a dramatic battle between the judicial and govt branches of presidency over the president’s powers to hold out key White Home priorities.

Boasberg accused administration officers of dashing deportees in a foreign country beneath the Alien Enemies Act final month earlier than they might problem their removing in court docket, after which willfully disregarding his order that planes already within the air ought to return to america.

The decide mentioned he might maintain hearings and probably refer the matter for prosecution if the administration doesn’t act to treatment the violation. If Trump’s Justice Division management declines to prosecute the matter, Boasberg mentioned he’ll appoint one other lawyer to take action.

“The Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders — especially by officials of a coordinate branch who have sworn an oath to uphold it,” wrote Boasberg, the chief decide of Washington’s federal court docket.

The administration mentioned it could attraction.

“The President is 100% committed to ensuring that terrorists and criminal illegal migrants are no longer a threat to Americans and their communities across the country,” White Home communications director Steven Cheung wrote in a publish on X.

The case has turn into one of the contentious amid a slew of authorized battles being waged towards the Republican administration that has put the White Home on a collision course with the federal courts.

Administration officers have repeatedly criticized judges for reigning within the president’s actions, accusing the courts of improperly impinging on his govt powers. Trump and his allies have known as for impeaching Boasberg, prompting a uncommon assertion from Chief Justice John Roberts, who mentioned “impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”

Boasberg wrote that the federal government’s “conduct betrayed a desire to outrun the equitable reach of the Judiciary.”

Boasberg mentioned the federal government might keep away from contempt proceedings if it takes custody of the deportees, who have been despatched to the El Salvador jail in violation of his order, so that they have an opportunity to problem their removing. It was not clear how that may work as a result of the decide mentioned the federal government “would not need to release any of those individuals, nor would it need to transport them back to the homeland.”

The decide didn’t say which official or officers may very well be held in contempt. He’s giving the federal government till April 23 to clarify the steps it has taken to treatment the violation, or as a substitute determine the person or individuals who made the choice to not flip the planes round.

In a separate case, the administration has acknowledged mistakenly deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the El Salvador jail, however doesn’t intend to return him to the U.S. regardless of a Supreme Court docket ruling that the administration should “facilitate” his launch. The decide in that case has mentioned she is figuring out whether or not to undertake contempt proceedings, saying officers “appear to have done nothing to aid in Abrego Garcia’s release from custody and return to the United States.”

Boasberg, who was nominated for the federal bench by Democratic President Barack Obama, had ordered the administration final month to not deport anybody in its custody beneath the Alien Enemies Act after Trump invoked the 1798 wartime legislation over what he claimed was an invasion by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

When Boasberg was informed there have been already planes within the air headed to El Salvador, which has agreed to accommodate deported migrants in a infamous jail, the decide mentioned the plane wanted to be returned to america. However hours later, El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, introduced that the deportees had arrived in his nation. In a social media publish, he mentioned, “Oopsie…too late” above an article referencing Boasberg’s order.

The administration has argued it didn’t violate any orders, famous the decide didn’t embrace the turnaround directive in his written order and mentioned the planes had already left the U.S. by the point that order got here down.

The Supreme Court docket earlier this month vacated Boasberg’s non permanent order blocking the deportations beneath the Alien Enemies Act, however mentioned the immigrants should be given an opportunity to combat their removals earlier than they’re deported. The conservative majority mentioned the authorized challenges should happen in Texas, as a substitute of a Washington courtroom.

Boasberg wrote that despite the fact that the Supreme Court docket discovered his order “suffered from a legal defect,” that “does not excuse the Government’s violation.” The decide added that the federal government appeared to have “defied the Court’s order deliberately and gleefully,” noting that Secretary of State Marco Rubio retweeted the publish from Bukele after the planes landed in El Salvador regardless of the decide’s order.

“The Court does not reach such conclusion lightly or hastily; indeed, it has given Defendants ample opportunity to rectify or explain their actions. None of their responses has been satisfactory,” Boasberg wrote.

SEONGNAM, South Korea  — South Korean President-elect Lee Jae-myung has all the time described his politics as deeply private, born of the “wretchedness” of his youth.

In his final presidential run three years in the past, when his conservative opponent Yoon Suk Yeol, a former prosecutor, appealed to the rule of legislation, Lee advised a narrative from his childhood: how his household’s poverty pushed him into manufacturing facility meeting strains whereas his friends have been coming into center faculty — and the way his mom would stroll him to work each morning, holding his hand.

“Behind every policy that I implemented was my own impoverished and abject life, the everyday struggles of ordinary South Koreans,” he stated in March 2022. “The reason I am in politics today is because I want to create … a world of hope for those who are still suffering in the same puddle of poverty and despair that I managed to escape.”

Lee Jae-myung, foreground middle, joins a rally in opposition to then-President Yoon Suk Yeol on the Nationwide Meeting in Seoul in December 2024.

(Ahn Younger-joon / Related Press)

Though Lee misplaced that race by 0.73 of a proportion level — or 247,077 votes — it was Yoon who set the stage for Lee’s comeback. Impeached midway into his time period for his declaration of martial legislation in December, the previous president is now on trial for riot.

Within the snap presidential election that passed off Tuesday, the liberal Lee emerged the winner, with South Korea’s three main tv broadcasters calling the race simply earlier than midnight right here.

On the marketing campaign path, Lee framed his run as a mission to revive the nation’s democratic norms. However he additionally returned to the theme that has, through the years, advanced from childhood craving into his signature political model: the promise of a society that provides its most weak a “thick safety mat” — a approach out of the puddle.

Born in December 1963, the fifth of seven siblings, Lee grew up in Seongnam, a metropolis close to the southeastern fringe of Seoul that, by the point his household settled there in 1976, was referred to as a neighborhood for individuals who had been evicted from the capital’s shantytowns.

The household rented a single semi-basement room by an area market, the place his father made a dwelling as a cleaner. At occasions his household lived on discarded fruit he picked up alongside his route. Lee’s mom labored as a toilet attendant simply across the nook.

Lee spent his teenage years hopping from one manufacturing facility to a different to assist. His first job, at 13, was soldering lead at a jewellery maker for 12 hours a day, respiratory within the acrid fumes. At one other job, the proprietor skipped out with out paying Lee three months’ value of wages.

A number of years later, whereas working a press machine at a baseball glove manufacturing facility, Lee suffered an accident that completely disfigured his left arm. In despair, Lee tried to finish his personal life. He survived solely as a result of the pharmacist he went to for sleeping drugs had caught wind of his intentions, giving him digestive treatment as an alternative.

Banners that includes ruling and opposition presidential candidates dangle over a avenue in Seoul days earlier than an election in March 2022.

(Ahn Younger-joon / Related Press)

Lee then started learning for center faculty and highschool at night time after getting off work. He proved to be a gifted pupil, incomes himself a full experience to Chung-Ang College to review legislation.

After passing South Korea’s bar examination in 1986, he was moved by a lecture given by Roh Moo-hyun, a human rights lawyer who went on to grow to be president in 2003, and the 26-year-old Lee opened up his personal authorized observe to do the identical.

Seongnam by then was quickly creating, changing into the positioning of a number of tasks, and Lee threw himself into native watchdog activism.

Ha Dong-geun, 73, who spent a decade organizing within the metropolis with Lee, recalled the day they met: The latter wore an expression of nice urgency — “like something bad would happen if he didn’t immediately hit the ground running.”

He added: “He wasn’t afraid of what others thought of him.”

Ha remembered Lee as a eager strategic thoughts, with a knack for “finding out his opponent’s weaknesses.” But regardless of the noise they made, substantive change proved tougher to realize, resulting in Lee’s political awakening in 2004.

A yr earlier, two of town’s main hospitals had shut down, threatening the accessibility of emergency care in its poorest neighborhoods. However although Lee’s marketing campaign had gathered almost 20,000 signatures from residents to construct a public hospital of their place, the proposal was struck down virtually instantly by town council.

“Those in power do not care about the health and lives of people unless there are profits to be made,” Lee wrote in 2021 of his response then. “If they won’t do it, let’s do it ourselves. Instead of asking for it from someone else, I will become mayor and do it with my own hands.”

Lee Jae-myung was attacked and injured throughout a January 2024 go to to town of Busan in South Korea.

(Sohn Hyung-joo / Yonhap / AP)

Lee was mayor of Seongnam from 2010 to 2018. Throughout that point, he repaid over $400 million in municipal debt left behind by his predecessor. He moved his workplace down from the ninth to the second ground, incessantly showing in particular person to area questions or complaints from residents.

However he was finest recognized for his welfare insurance policies, which he rolled out regardless of intense opposition from the then-conservative central authorities: free faculty lunches, free faculty uniforms for middle-schoolers and monetary help for brand spanking new moms searching for postpartum care. For all 24-year-old residents, town additionally offered an annual fundamental earnings of round $720 within the type of money vouchers that may very well be used at native companies.

In 2016, when the plight of a highschool pupil who couldn’t afford sanitary pads utilizing a shoe insole as an alternative made nationwide headlines, town additionally added a program that gave underprivileged teenage ladies money for feminine hygiene merchandise. A number of years later, Lee additionally made good on his marketing campaign promise to construct the general public hospital that had first propelled him into politics.

“My personal experiences made me aware of how cruel this world can be to those who have nothing,” he stated in 2021.

Although it has been years since Lee left town to grow to be the governor of Gyeonggi province and to stage three presidential runs, his observe file nonetheless evokes fierce loyalty in Seongnam’s working-class neighborhoods, the place Lee is remembered as a doer who taken care of even the little issues.

“His openness and willingness to communicate resonated with a lot of people,” stated Kim Seung-man, 67, a store proprietor in Sangdaewon Market, the place Lee’s household eked out a dwelling within the Nineteen Seventies. “Working-class people identify with him because he had such a difficult childhood.”

Folks shout slogans throughout a rally on April 4, 2025, to have a good time impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s removing from workplace by the Constitutional Court docket.

(Lee Jin-man / Related Press)

And whereas the Seongnam Residents Medical Middle — which opened in 2020 — is deep within the purple and has grow to be a goal for Lee’s critics who dismiss his welfare insurance policies as low cost populism, Kim says it’s a lifeline to this working-class neighborhood.

“It was a treatment hub for COVID patients during the pandemic,” he stated. “Serving the public good means doing so regardless of whether it is profitable or not.”

Past Seongnam’s working-class neighborhoods, Lee has provoked in lots of an equally intense dislike — a reality that can’t be defined by his insurance policies alone.

Some have attributed this to his brusque, generally confrontational demeanor, others to classist prejudice. Lee has pointed to his standing as an “outsider” on this planet of South Korean institution politics, the place the paths of most formidable younger politicians observe a script he has eschewed: getting in line behind a celebration heavyweight who will open doorways to favorable legislative seats.

He has confronted assaults from inside his personal celebration, and conservatives have solid him as a tyrant and a prison, noting allegations in opposition to him in authorized instances. Former President Yoon cited the “legislative tyranny” of the Lee-led liberal opposition as justification for declaring martial legislation in December.

“There are still controversies over character or ethics trailing Lee,” stated Cho Jin-man, a political scientist at Duksung Girls’s College. “He doesn’t have a squeaky clean image.”

Since shedding the 2022 election, Lee has confronted trial on quite a few expenses, together with election legislation violations and the mishandling of an actual property growth mission as mayor of Seongnam — indictments which Lee has decried as politically motivated assaults by Yoon and his allies.

Lee Jae-myung speaks throughout a Dec. 15 information convention in regards to the impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol.

(Lee Jin-man / Related Press)

Few of the allegations in opposition to Lee have caught. Others, like an election legislation clause that prohibits candidates from mendacity throughout their campaigns, is an oft-abused technicality that would depart few politicians standing have been it persistently enforced.

“On the contrary, these have only led to perceptions that there are problems with the prosecution service,” Cho stated.

In current months, Lee has tried to clean the rougher edges of his public persona, vowing to fix the nation’s more and more flamable partisan rifts.

Final yr, after he survived an assassination try by which the assailant’s blade nicked a significant vein in his neck, Lee denounced the “politics of hate” that had taken root within the nation, calling for a brand new period of mutual respect and coexistence.

In his current marketing campaign, Lee has billed his welfare agenda, which incorporates pledges for higher labor protections in addition to extra public housing and public healthcare, not as class warfare however as commonsense pragmatism, reflecting his efforts to win over average conservatives.

However there are nonetheless questions whether or not Lee, whose celebration now controls each the manager and legislative branches, can be profitable.

”He now has a transparent path to push by means of what he desires very effectively,” Cho stated. “But the nature of power is such that those who hold it don’t necessarily exercise restraint.”

Though Lee has promised to not search retribution in opposition to his political enemies as president, he has additionally made it clear that those that collaborated with former President Yoon’s unlawful energy seize can be held accountable — a transfer that can inevitably inflame partisan discord.

His working-class background has not staved off criticisms from labor activists, who say his proposal to spice up the home semiconductor trade would stroll again the rights of its staff.

That background can even do little for Lee’s first and most urgent agenda merchandise: coping with President Trump, whose tariffs on South Korean automobiles, metal and aluminum are set to completely go into impact in July.

“I don’t think Lee and Trump will have good chemistry,” Cho stated.

“They both have such strong personalities, but they are so different in terms of political ideology and personal upbringing.”

SEOUL — The winner of South Korea’s upcoming presidential election will likely be confronted with the duty of uniting a rustic riven by political acrimony because the impeachment of former President Yoon Suk Yeol, who sparked nationwide outrage after declaring martial regulation in December.

However first, they must take care of President Trump’s tariffs.

On Wednesday, U.S. and South Korean commerce officers kicked off a brand new spherical of negotiations aimed toward reaching a deal by July 8, when Trump’s 90-day reprieve for his “liberation day” tariffs expires. South Korea faces a 25% reciprocal tariff charge in addition to product-specific duties of 25% for metal, aluminum and vehicles — all of that are main exports.

With the election scheduled for June 3, carrying these talks to the end line would be the first and most urgent agenda merchandise for South Korea’s subsequent president.

For now, officers from the 2 international locations have agreed to broaden the talks past tariffs charges to incorporate broader subjects reminiscent of forex trade charges and financial safety — a mirrored image of Trump’s need for a sweeping realignment of the U.S.–South Korea relationship that he has described as “one-stop shopping.”

However there are more likely to be additional issues.

Trump, who has lengthy griped that South Korea doesn’t pay sufficient for the maintenance of the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed within the nation, has expressed a need to fold protection cost-sharing into the present talks. Writing on his social media web site final month, he mentioned that he had mentioned “payment for the big time Military Protection we provide to South Korea” with then-acting President Han Duck-soo.

However with Trump having as soon as claimed he would get Seoul to pay $10 billion a yr, the subject has been extremely delicate in South Korea, fueling requires the nation’s nuclear self-armament on grounds that the U.S. can not be relied upon for army help. There are additionally issues within the nation {that a} “package deal” favored by Trump could not work out to Seoul’s benefit.

Right here’s what to find out about what South Korea’s three main presidential candidates have mentioned about tariffs and the U.S.-South Korea relationship beneath Trump.

Lee Jae-myung, a candidate of the ruling Democratic Occasion, holds a information convention at a Kia Motors plant in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, on Jan. 4, 2025.

(Chung Sung-Jun / Related Press)

Lee Jae-myung

The previous chief of South Korea’s liberal Democratic Occasion, Lee, 61, is the front-runner within the race, having led by as many as 20 share factors.

Throughout Trump’s first time period, Lee, then the mayor of Seongnam, cautioned in opposition to what he referred to as “overly submissive attitudes” within the face of calls for that South Korea ought to pay extra for the presence of the U.S. army.

“Giving up whatever is demanded of us will only lead to us losing everything,” he mentioned. “We need to boldly assert our position.”

Lee echoed these sentiments in a presidential debate Sunday, criticizing Han, the previous appearing president, for reportedly signaling his willingness to renegotiate the newest protection cost-sharing deal between Seoul and Washington.

Below what is called the Particular Measures Settlement, the U.S. has lined 40% to 50% of the full prices of retaining troops in South Korea, in accordance with the U.S. Congressional Analysis Service.

Below the newest model, which was signed beneath the outgoing Biden administration and can final from 2026 to 2030, Seoul’s annual contribution within the first yr will likely be $1.19 billion, an 8.3% improve from 2025.

A U.S. Military soldier walks on the Panmunjom border village in Paju, South Korea, in October 2022. President Trump has lengthy complained that South Korea doesn’t pay sufficient for the maintenance of the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed within the nation.

(Ahn Younger-joon / Related Press)

Lee, who’s operating on a platform of pragmatic diplomacy, has additionally harassed the necessity to steadiness South Korea’s relationship with the U.S. in opposition to these with regional neighbors reminiscent of Russia or China.

“The U.S.-South Korea alliance is important, and we need to expand and develop that in the future — from a security alliance into an economic alliance and a comprehensive alliance,” he mentioned Sunday. “But that does not mean we can rely exclusively on the U.S.-South Korea alliance.”

Whereas describing Trump’s tariffs because the “campaign of a madman,” Lee has additionally indicated a willingness to debate a package deal deal that spans Trump’s Alaska pure fuel pipeline mission, the protection price situation and cooperation in shipbuilding.

Lee’s camp has mentioned that if elected, he’ll start his time period by looking for an extension of Trump’s 90-day grace interval for the tariffs.

Kim Moon-soo

A distant second within the polls, Kim, 73, served as labor minister beneath the impeached Yoon and is the conservative Individuals Energy Occasion’s nominee.

Staying true to the South Korean proper’s self-identification because the staunchly pro-U.S. political camp, Kim has accused Lee of looking for to curry favor with China on the expense of the U.S.-South Korea relationship.

“Your comments in the past would be considered appalling from the perspective of the U.S.,” he informed Lee on the debate Sunday.

Members march to the headquarters of the Individuals Energy Occasion in Seoul throughout a December 2024 rally to demand South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment.

(Ahn Younger-joon / Related Press)

Not like Lee, who has warned in opposition to speeding right into a commerce deal in favor of a slower and extra strategic method, Kim has mentioned that he would instantly arrange a U.S.-South Korea summit to ink a deal earlier than July 8, if he’s elected president.

“I will make sure that tariffs against South Korea are either removed or the lowest out of any country in the world,” he mentioned at a latest rally.

To this finish, Kim has solid himself because the candidate with the best likelihood of profitable over Trump.

Throughout his get together’s main debates in April, when requested by the moderator whether or not he would put on a MAGA hat if Trump requested it throughout any tariff negotiations, Kim responded: “I would do even more, I would even wear a jumper if he asked.”

“The most important thing in negotiating with President Trump is trust,” he mentioned Sunday. “Only when both sides can trust each other can the U.S.-South Korea alliance be strengthened, and I am the one who has the most favorable and trusting relationship with President Trump.”

A forex dealer works on the international trade dealing room of KEB Hana Financial institution headquarters in Seoul on April 9, 2025. U.S. and South Korean commerce officers have kicked off a brand new spherical of negotiations aimed toward reaching a deal by July 8, when President Trump’s 90-day reprieve for his “liberation day” tariffs expires.

(Ahn Younger-joon / Related Press)

On protection cost-sharing, Kim has struck a noticeably extra acquiescent tone than Lee: At a gathering Monday of the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea, he mentioned that he can be keen to just accept a hike in Seoul’s contribution.

“The global order and trade environment is rapidly changing. In order to overcome these crises, it is critical that we strengthen positive cooperation and the U.S.-South Korea alliance,” he mentioned. “I will establish common ground between the two countries through comprehensive negotiations and find a win-win solution for both.”

Lee Jun-seok

Polling round 10%, the 40-year previous candidate from the conservative Reform Occasion faces lengthy odds for the presidency.

Nonetheless, he has emphatically rejected repeated calls to kind a unity ticket, presenting himself because the youthful, shrewder and fewer doctrine-driven different to what he has criticized because the old-hat conservatism of these reminiscent of Kim.

On the debate Sunday, Lee Jun-seok referred to as for “careful calculation” in navigating the U.S.-South Korea relationship beneath Trump, whereas emphasizing the necessity to show that South Korea isn’t just a buying and selling accomplice but additionally an essential strategic ally to Washington.

But with regards to tariffs, he has additionally brazenly referred to as Trump’s bluff.

“I think we have to bet on the fact that Trump will eventually find that it’s difficult to maintain this situation,” he mentioned on a YouTube political speak present final month, citing the financial pressures that tariffs in opposition to China will create for Trump’s heartland supporters.

“What Trump is advancing isn’t sustainable…. My view is that, it’s likely that Trump will admit defeat as soon as within the next six months.”

In the present day is Friday, Might 16, the 136th day of 2025. There are 229 days left within the yr.

In the present day in historical past:

On Might 16, 1966, the Chinese language Communist Occasion issued the Might 16 Notification, a doc that criticized “counterrevolutionary revisionists” inside the occasion and marked the start of the Cultural Revolution.

Additionally on this date:

In 1770, Marie Antoinette, age 14, married the longer term King Louis XVI of France, who was 15.

In 1868, having already been impeached by the Home of Representatives, President Andrew Johnson narrowly averted impeachment by the Senate, which voted 35-19 in favor of impeachment—one vote shy of the required two-thirds majority.

In 1929, the primary Academy Awards had been introduced. “Wings” received the award for Excellent Image, whereas Emil Jannings and Janet Gaynor had been named Greatest Actor and Greatest Actress.

In 1943, the almost monthlong Warsaw Ghetto Rebellion got here to an finish as German forces crushed the Jewish resistance and blew up the town’s Nice Synagogue.

In 1960, the primary working laser was demonstrated at Hughes Analysis Laboratories in Malibu, California, by physicist Theodore Maiman.

In 1975, Japanese climber Junko Tabei grew to become the primary lady to achieve the summit of Mount Everest.

In 1997, President Invoice Clinton publicly apologized for the infamous 40-year Tuskegee Experiment, through which authorities scientists intentionally allowed Black males to weaken and die of treatable syphilis.

In 2018, officers at Michigan State College mentioned they’d agreed to pay $500 million to settle claims from greater than 300 girls and ladies who mentioned they had been assaulted by sports activities physician Larry Nassar.

In 2022, the U.S. demise toll from COVID-19 reached 1 million.

In the present day’s Birthdays:

Actor Danny Trejo is 81.
Actor Pierce Brosnan is 72.
Olympic gymnastics gold medalist Olga Korbut is 70.
Baseball Corridor of Famer Jack Morris is 70.
Actor Debra Winger is 70.
Olympic marathon gold medalist Joan Benoit Samuelson is 68.
Actor Mare Winningham is 66.
Rock musician Krist Novoselic (Nirvana) is 60.
Singer Janet Jackson is 59.
Soccer Corridor of Famer Thurman Thomas is 59.
Singer Ralph Tresvant (New Version) is 57.
Actor David Boreanaz is 56.
Political commentator Tucker Carlson is 56.
Tennis Corridor of Famer Gabriela Sabatini is 55.
Actor Tori Spelling is 52.
Actor Melanie Lynskey is 48.
Actor Megan Fox is 39.
Actor Thomas Brodie-Sangster is 35.

By STAN CHOE

NEW YORK (AP) — Extra losses are hitting Wall Avenue on the shut of a brutal week, and U.S. shares have erased earlier features to fall after a nervously anticipated financial report got here in near expectations.

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The S&P 500 was down 1% in noon buying and selling after erasing an early acquire of 0.6%. It’s coming off a punishing stretch the place it swung at the least 1%, up or down, in every of the final six days, and it’s on monitor for its worst week since 2022.

The Dow Jones Industrial Common was down 340 factors, or 0.8%, as of 11:45 a.m., and the Nasdaq composite was 1.4% decrease.

The main focus was on the job market, the place the U.S. Labor Division stated employers added 151,000 extra jobs final month than they reduce. That was barely beneath economists’ expectations, however it was nonetheless an acceleration from January’s hiring.

U.S. shares have been struggling, and the S&P 500 has dropped greater than 7% from its all-time excessive set final month on worries that the U.S. financial system’s progress could also be slowing. Latest, discouraging surveys have proven the temper is souring for U.S. companies and households due to uncertainty round President Donald Trump’s tariffs, however economists weren’t positive if that was translating into actual ache for the financial system and the job market.

Whereas Friday’s jobs report did are available near expectations, economists warned it contained regarding particulars beneath the floor that would indicate extra bother forward in future months. The variety of folks working half time who would reasonably be full time rose 10% in February from January, for instance.

“The market might breathe a sigh of relief that the labor market was still looking healthy, but a deeper dive shows that spring could be a more challenging season,” stated Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Administration.

The whiplash actions from the White Home on tariffs — first putting them on buying and selling companions after which exempting some after which doing it once more — have raised uncertainty for companies. That sparked fears they may merely freeze in response and pull again on hiring. U.S. households, in the meantime, are bracing for a lot larger inflation due to tariffs, which is weakening their confidence and will maintain again their spending. That will sap extra power from the financial system.

The roles report despatched yields down within the bond market, the place the 10-year Treasury yield fell to 4.23% from 4.28% late Thursday. It’s been sinking since January, when it was nearing 4.80%, as buyers have ratcheted again their expectations for the U.S. financial system’s progress.

The yield on the two-year Treasury notice additionally continued its descent, which underscores constructing expectations amongst merchants that the Federal Reserve will reduce its predominant rate of interest at the least two or thrice this 12 months with a view to prop up a slowing financial system.

On Wall Avenue, Hewlett Packard Enterprises slumped 16.2% after reporting revenue for the newest quarter that fell simply in need of analysts’ expectations. CEO Antonio Neri acknowledged that “we could have executed better in some areas in the quarter,” and the corporate gave a forecast for income within the present quarter that was weaker than anticipated.

Costco sank 7.2% after the retailer reported a weaker revenue for the newest quarter than anticipated.

They helped offset Walgreens Boots Alliance, which rallied 6.9% after the pharmacy and drug retailer chain agreed to be acquired by personal fairness agency Sycamore Companions. The buyout would take the struggling chain personal for the primary time since 1927 and provides it extra flexibility to make adjustments to enhance its enterprise with out worrying about Wall Avenue’s response.

Broadcom rose 3.7% after delivering stronger revenue and income for the newest quarter than analysts anticipated. The chip firm additionally gave a forecast for upcoming income that topped analysts’ expectation, thanks partially to robust demand for its artificial-intelligence choices.

After rocketing larger in Wall Avenue’s frenzy round AI, shares throughout the trade have hit a wall this 12 months as this 12 months’s downturn hit hardest on the areas of the market that earlier appeared essentially the most unstoppable. Broadcom’s inventory had dropped greater than 20% up to now this 12 months, earlier than Friday, after having greater than doubled in 2024.

In inventory markets overseas, German shares dropped 1.8% to present again a few of the massive features from earlier within the week following a seismic shift in its coverage on debt. The historically debt-averse German authorities seems prepared to permit for way more borrowing.

Indexes fell 0.6% in Hong Kong and 0.3% in Shanghai after China reported slower than-expected-trade for January and February, with exports rising simply 2.3% and imports sinking 8.4%, the federal government stated. China’s commerce information for the primary two months of the 12 months are normally mixed to make up for distortions from Lunar New 12 months holidays.

South Korea’s Kospi fell 0.5% after a courtroom ordered impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol to be launched from jail, greater than a month after he was arrested and indicted over his short-lived imposition of martial legislation.

AP Enterprise Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.

“Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary dismissed the importance of the general public feud between President Trump and Elon Musk, saying the 2 males “really need each other” and can discover a approach to transfer ahead.

In an interview on Fox Information’s “Jesse Watters Primetime,” O’Leary stated “it’s a good thing” that the stress between Trump and Musk appears to be subsiding.

“I’m pretty happy that these two have started to reconcile their differences,” O’Leary stated. “I mean, you know, this is a classic case of ‘poo poo happens.’ But they really need each other.”

O’Leary pointed to Musk’s business success — in electrical autos, robotics, neurosurgery, SpaceX and different ventures — as a possible asset for Trump going ahead.

“Elon is the No. 1 industrialist in America, with many of these technologies the envy of the world,” O’Leary stated, including, “All this stuff is the cutting edge of American tech, and Trump wants to have that in his back pocket.”

O’Leary stated repairing the connection is essential for Trump, so he expects Trump to have the ability to overlook the “little fight.”

“The most powerful man on Earth wants the richest man on Earth for a million reasons,” O’Leary stated.

“So if they have a little fight for a week or two, so what? Maybe the relationship is slightly different going forward, but it’s going to be there again.”

O’Leary famous that mending the connection between the 2 males is helpful for outdoor events too.

“I think it’s a good thing, and the market loved it, by the way. Investors loved it. They don’t want this fight. Nobody wants this fight,” he stated.

Trump and Musk spoke on the cellphone late Monday evening, after allies of each males urged them to reconcile their feud that exploded final week with a torrent of social media barbs.

The very public falling out final week got here after Musk departed from his position as a particular authorities worker and chief adviser to the Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE).

The billionaire, who owns six corporations, had criticized the large reconciliation package deal working its method via Congress as an “abomination.” Trump stated he was “very disappointed” in Musk, who responded with a wave of assaults on social media that included echoing a name for Trump to be impeached and an allegation that the president was named in paperwork related to a federal investigation of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

The Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder, who spent thousands and thousands of {dollars} in assist of Trump’s 2024 presidential marketing campaign, had deleted his extra inflammatory posts in current days. Early Wednesday, he posted on social platform X, which he additionally owns, that a few of his assaults “went too far.”

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) on Thursday referred to the feud between tech billionaire Elon Musk and President Trump as a circus sideshow because the Senate focuses on passing Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”

“This is a little speed bump, it’s a little side circus show,” Marshall informed NewsNation’s Blake Burman on “The Hill.” “We are absolutely locked in on passing the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill.’”

On Thursday, Trump and Musk’s relationship shortly fell aside in a really public approach. In an Oval Workplace assembly with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the president informed reporters that he was “very surprised” and “very disappointed” in Musk, who has lately mounted a marketing campaign in opposition to the president’s signature coverage invoice.

In response, Musk claimed on social media that he was behind the president’s November 2024 election victory. He additionally alleged in a mid-afternoon submit on X that Trump had ties to convicted intercourse offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein.

“We’ll prevent the largest tax increase in American history,” Marshall mentioned of the “big, beautiful bill.” “We’re going to kick illegal aliens off of Medicaid. So, there’s so many great things in this bill that we have to get it through.”

Musk additionally backed a name to question Trump on Thursday, a transfer that marked a notable reversal from the apparently tight relationship the tech billionaire and the president appeared to have even simply earlier this yr.

“President vs Elon. Who wins? My money’s on Elon. Trump should be impeached and JD Vance should replace him,” Ian Miles Cheong, a Malaysia-based right-wing author, mentioned in a day submit X.

“Yes,” Musk mentioned in response to Cheong’s submit about 20 minutes later.

The Hill has reached out to Tesla for remark.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk backed a name to question President Trump on Thursday, one of many newest swipes on the president by the billionaire in an ongoing disagreement between the previous allies.

“President vs Elon. Who wins? My money’s on Elon. Trump should be impeached and JD Vance should replace him,” Ian Miles Cheong, a Malaysia-based right-wing author, stated in a Thursday afternoon publish on Musk’s social platform X.

“Yes,” Musk stated in response to Cheong’s publish about 20 minutes later.

Dwell updates: Trump, Musk feud blows large open on Thursday

On Thursday, Trump and Musk’s relationship rapidly fell aside in a really public manner. In an Oval Workplace assembly with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the president advised reporters that he was “very surprised” and “very disappointed” in Musk, who has not too long ago mounted a marketing campaign in opposition to the president’s signature coverage invoice.

In response, Musk claimed on social media that he was behind the president’s November 2024 election victory. He additionally alleged in a midafternoon publish on X that Trump had ties to convicted intercourse offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein.

“Time to drop the really big bomb,” Musk stated within the X publish. “[Trump] is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.”

“Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out,” Musk stated in a subsequent publish.

In his first Fact Social publish after Musk’s Epstein information declare, Trump touted the Home’s “big, beautiful bill” and instructed Musk ought to’ve turned in opposition to him a very long time in the past.

“I don’t mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done so months ago. This is one of the Greatest Bills ever presented to Congress. It’s a Record Cut in Expenses, $1.6 Trillion Dollars, and the Biggest Tax Cut ever given. If this Bill doesn’t pass, there will be a 68% Tax Increase, and things far worse than that. I didn’t create this mess, I’m just here to FIX IT. This puts our Country on a Path of Greatness. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

The White Home responded later Thursday to Musk’s and Cheong’s posts.

“This is an unfortunate episode from Elon, who is unhappy with the One Big Beautiful Bill because it does not include the policies he wanted. The President is focused on passing this historic piece of legislation and making our country great again,” White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated in an emailed assertion to The Hill in response to the posts.

Up to date at 7:04 p.m. EDT