Tag: Washington

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Politics

Did Washington Simply Have an Precise Weekend?

Did Washington Just Have an Actual Weekend?

WASHINGTON – President Biden did nothing this weekend.

Let’s rephrase: President Biden did nothing alarming this weekend.

There were exactly eight tweets, each of which was rooted in reality. There was a visit to hang out with a sick friend, Bob Dole, a former Republican senator. And there was a stop at the church with the grandchildren.

Since Mr. Biden took office, the weekends have been portraits of domesticity – MarioKart with the kids at Camp David, bagels in Georgetown, and soccer in Delaware. As a peloton fanatic, he hasn’t even played golf. Mr. Biden’s demonstrable disinterest in bold headlines only underscores how much the Trump hole in Washington has created a sense of leisure in every area of ​​the capital. Mentally, if not literally.

Although the workload continues (after all, this is still Washington), people still sleep a few hours in what was formerly known as the weekend.

“It went from working around the clock to sort of unemployment in the blink of an eye,” said Representative Ted Lieu, a California Democrat and one of the property managers who persecuted Donald J. Trump in his second impeachment, of his first-hour post. “And it took a while for my body and mind to calm down.”

Mr Lieu says he is already back on top. Among other things, he is pushing for laws he says will be written to fill loopholes that Mr. Trump has exploited, including a law that provides penalties for failing to heed subpoenas from Congress.

But first binge-watching: On the Sunday after the trial ended, Mr. Lieu spent his first trump-free hours watching episodes of “Snowpiercer”.

Mr Biden, who is focused on his $ 1.9 trillion coronavirus aid package, has said he too no longer wants to talk about Mr Trump. “I don’t want to talk about him anymore,” the president said last week at a CNN town hall in Wisconsin. The reality is a little different. Mr Biden has repeatedly drawn attention to what he called the Trump administration’s neglect in trying to win the public’s patience with the introduction of coronavirus vaccines.

There’s a parallel in the news industry where reporters covering this new version of Washington say they’re ready to go back to the kind of journalism that isn’t about deciphering a human mood ring. CNN and MSNBC, whose journalists and personalities have questioned Mr. Trump’s guidelines for years, have been quietly reducing the number of Trump-focused journalists working on contracts in recent months.

Mr Trump, of course, predicted that without him the political news complex would collapse. Members of this complex say they have some room to breathe and, crucially, to plan.

“As the host of a weekly show, the apparent absence of the President’s Twitter scandals means that I can plan ahead that our plan will actually be implemented,” said Brian Stelter, a former New York Times reporter who moderates CNN for “Reliable Sources”. “Informally, we left a five-minute hole on my Sunday show and expected big news to come up on Saturday evening. Now we no longer assume that will happen. “

Other journalists welcome the renewed attention to politics.

“A linear political decision-making process that is still interesting,” said Jake Sherman, a Politico veteran and founder of Punchbowl News, of the relative return to normal that the Biden era brought about. “If you’re confident that changing casts won’t change the course of the American government, that’s a comforting thought.”

Olivia Nuzzi, a Washington correspondent for New York Magazine, said she had reconfigured her relationship with the White House – specifically the idea that the current president had little interest in undermining his own press secretaries and policy experts.

The new Washington

Updated

Apr. 22, 2021, 7:38 p.m. ET

This weekend, Ms. Nuzzi said, she was also surprised to learn that Mr. Biden had quietly gone to church. She realized how closely she had kept an eye on Mr. Trump’s every move, just in case he spontaneously turned the message cycle upside down.

“It becomes clear every day how much that happened during this one term of office, what has to do with how he felt,” said Ms. Nuzzi, “and how much our daily life was focused on getting a feeling for it, how he felt. ”

Outside of the isolated worlds of politics and the news media, there is no normalcy to return to. Washingtoners who don’t have to hold on to every word the president say are still struggling to adapt to life in a city where the Capitol and White House have been essentially militarized and where daily life has been both caused by the coronavirus and others was troubled by civil unrest.

Amy Brandwein, a cook and owner of Centrolina, watched brunch goers return to downtown on the weekends, but she and other restaurateurs struggled for almost a year to regain the business lost by the pandemic.

She also fears that the political turmoil will continue. Ms. Brandwein said her plans to install bubbly structures outdoors to provide a socially distant dining option were delayed due to the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6. She estimates she lost about $ 100,000 in business on days it had to close due to protests that attracted the Proud Boys and other extremist groups.

Mr. Trump may have disappeared from the capital, but she fears his supporters will continue to endanger their employees and their business. “I wonder about future security in downtown, or in DC in general,” she said, “because the Trump movement is still going on.”

As Washington gets on its feet, it is clear that Mr. Trump is happy to visit the dreams of someone who suddenly gets more sleep.

He has issued post-presidential press releases through his office targeting not only the entire Democratic Party, but also Kentucky Republican leader Senator Mitch McConnell. He has given Fox News and Newsmax interviews, repeating controversial or untrue theories about his loss of the election that his allies, including Sean Hannity, have declined to question.

And in Mar-a-Lago, his fortress by the sea, Mr. Trump still expects a full crowd to stand on the terrace of dinner and applaud, just as he did when he was in office.

Other Republicans have filled the void that Mr. Trump’s degraded profile has left. A nice part of the past week was dedicated to the gossiping class in Washington, who gathered around an old-fashioned political scandal like it was a warm campfire: Senator Ted Cruz from Texas fled to Cancun – Cancun! – while its constituents suffered during a snow storm and power outage. The Cruz caper was perhaps the strongest sign of a new political era yet: Mr. Trump wasn’t there to cover Mr. Cruz by instinctively turning the spotlight on himself.

But the former president’s supporters expect him to end his relative silence – perhaps with his planned address to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, on Sunday.

Wayne Allyn Root, a radio host and frequent visitor to Mar-a-Lago, said Mr. Trump was committed to Republican expectations of becoming a “kingmaker” for the party in 2022 if he didn’t become a 2024 candidate himself.

“It takes time to heal,” said Root, “and I think that time is coming to an end.”

Meanwhile, troubled and troubled capital has grown used to life at a quieter pace, with quieter activities and words replacing the profanity, characters, and gibberish that used to shape the way days were passed. Bagels over Bannon. Grandchildren about golf. Church over covfefe.

Historian Michael Beschloss said it would take some time to revert to the idea that presidents typically don’t judge their existence by the number of headlines they can generate.

“It is human nature that people locked in a speeding car with a ruthless driver have their eyes wide open and their hearts racing, with lots of adrenaline flowing,” said Beschloss. “I hope that for most Americans this car ride has now stopped and we can stagger and catch our breath.”

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Business

A Shadowy however Highly effective Wall St. Agency Has Its Second in Washington

A Shadowy but Powerful Wall St. Firm Has Its Moment in Washington

The GameStop saga was a David versus Goliath story, in which little traders competed against large hedge funds, and a cautionary story about what happens when fast-moving Silicon Valley collides with the highly regulated world of Wall Street.

Cast members include one of the most influential – and perhaps the least visible – personalities in the financial world, Chicago billionaire Kenneth C. Griffin.

And when the House Financial Services Committee meets on Thursday to interview key players in the GameStop madness, Mr Griffin will be asked about the two distinct roles his companies played in a two-week trading frenzy that created billions of dollars in wealth and destroyed.

The first company, Citadel, is a hedge fund firm that placed a small bet that GameStop stock would fall. It suffered as stocks rose as millions of small investors started buying up the stock, but not nearly as badly as another hedge fund, Melvin Capital, the Citadel, and some of its employees made a $ 2 billion investment in support of his finances.

The second company, Citadel Securities, is a broker who claims it handles more than a quarter of all stock trading in the United States. When retail investors furiously bought and sold GameStop stock – many of them through trading apps like Robinhood – Citadel did brisk business. It pays Robinhood and other retail brokers to process these orders, and makes money by pocketing tiny price differences between buy and sell orders that add up quickly.

“Citadel is one of the many truly gigantic financial companies that are incredibly important and woven throughout the financial system, but never visible to the public,” said Dennis M. Kelleher, president and CEO of Better Markets, a nonprofit group that supports this additional Financial regulation. “They operate in the shadows and they want to stay in the shadows and they don’t want anyone to pay attention to how they run their business.”

On Thursday, lawmakers will put Mr Griffin in the spotlight. He is – together with the directors of Robinhood and Reddit, the social media site – to testify before the House committee about the GameStop rally. Also on the list of witnesses are Keith Gill, a Reddit user and YouTube poster who made millions on his popular GameStop deal, and Gabe Plotkin, the founder and CEO of Melvin, who was bruised so badly that he became Citadels Help accepted.

In particular, Mr. Griffin has to deal with speculation that he used his companies’ stakes to manipulate the situation for his own benefit. Retail investors, irritated that Robinhood was restricting GameStop trading, suggested Citadel lag behind the boundaries, and put pressure on Robinhood to protect its own bet against the video game dealer – claims that both Citadel and Robinhood have denied to have.

“There’s a huge pachyderm walking around and that’s the crazy theory that we got Robinhood or some other company to impose trade restrictions on GameStop,” Griffin said in an interview on Wednesday. “Never in my life have I seen such a completely absurd theory.”

Representative Maxine Waters, the California Democrat who heads the committee, said the hearing – the first of three she has planned – was an information trip.

“They will tell their story,” she said of Citadel and the other witnesses. “We hope the hearing gives us some facts and a very clear understanding of who did what.”

For Mr. Griffin, who started trading at Harvard in his sophomore year, the answer to such questions depends precisely on which arm of his financial empire officials ask about.

Citadel – the hedge fund – had limited holdings of GameStop and other meme stocks, which have soared over the past month. On January 22, the Friday before GameStop went through the roof, Citadel’s bet against GameStop was limited to just 92 shares, said a person familiar with the company’s position at the time. However, after GameStop shot up, Mr. Griffin – one of the most accomplished operators in the financial world – discovered an opening in beleaguered Melvin.

One of Mr. Griffin’s lieutenants called Mr. Plotkin to show interest in an investment, Mr. Griffin said. At the end of the day, Citadel and Melvin had a handshake. Citadel and some of its executives would buy less than 10 percent of Melvin for $ 2 billion in cash, said a person who was familiar with the details of the transaction and had no authority to disclose confidential details about it. That money, along with $ 750 million from hedge fund Point72, allowed Melvin to weather heavy losses when GameStop – a stock he’d bet on – rose more than 600 percent.

Melvin’s losses were staggering: 53 percent in January. Citadel, which at the time had little risk for Melvin’s loss and a loss on its own GameStop investment, was down 3 percent. (The S&P 500 was down 1.1 percent over the month.)

However, the opportunity that GameStop’s rise offers for Mr. Griffin’s hedge funds has to do with the other role his companies play, particularly Citadel Securities. And here damaged investors smelled a conspiracy.

On the morning of January 28, Robinhood, the Silicon Valley startup that had become a target for small investors, throttled sales of GameStop and a few other stocks. The reasons were not fully explained and had the immediate effect of reversing the rally.

Users were angry – first with Robinhood and then with Citadel.

Some amateur traders, knowing that Citadel had already invested in Melvin and that Citadel Securities ran a huge trading operation of which Robinhood was a customer, jumped online to conspiracy theories. (The agreement, known as “Paying for Order Flow,” allows Robinhood and other app users to trade for free.)

“Little did I know Citadel had its hands in so many pockets !!” One commenter wrote on Reddit’s Wall Street Bets forum on Jan. 31, “Remember, they own some of Melvin’s capital! They tried to manipulate the market against us. “

Mr. Griffin said he and his team paid little attention to the online chatter because they were busy with the huge flood of trades. For example, on January 28, Citadel Securities traded 7.4 billion shares in total – roughly the same amount as the total volume of the exchange on any given day in 2019.

But when Mr. Griffin recognized the reputational risk of the rumor mill, he issued statements from both companies denying any role in Robinhood’s decision to restrict trade.

Citadel Securities had no commercial reason to slow or stop trading because of its business model, Griffin and other company officials said. The company bridges the tiny gap between a buy and sell price for a single stock order as a fee and slower trading that limits Citadel Securities’ ability to make money.

But the anti-Citadel vitriol hasn’t waned even after Robinhood’s chief executive Vlad Tenev presented the reason for the slowdown: The heavy trading of a wildly volatile stock by Robinhood’s users meant a large safety net payment was required to the industry-run clearinghouse who makes the deal.

Thursday’s hearing could provide more details on what was going on in the companies so closely linked to the GameStop rally, but it’s also likely that both parties are showing populist anger against both Robinhood and the Targets short sellers targeting GameStop.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat and member of the Financial Services Committee, said Robinhood’s decision to shut down some business for GameStop in January was “unacceptable.” And Representative Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat on the committee, called the decision “utterly absurd” and accused the app of “blocking the ability to trade to protect hedge funds.”

David McCabe contributed to the coverage.

Categories
Politics

A Yr of Hardship, Helped and Hindered by Washington

A Year of Hardship, Helped and Hindered by Washington

Even so, Mrs. Stewart worked happiest in solitude.

Ms. Stewart was a night nurse until 2019 and lived in Grand Rapids with her sister. Her sister fell behind with the rent and insisted that they move in with her mother, who is five hours away in rural Ossineke. Mrs. Stewart succumbed reluctantly. “We all depend on each other, which is good, except that we don’t get along,” she said.

With four children and conflicting parenting styles, the trailer turned out to be crowded and tense. When Mrs. Stewart found work as a gas station cashier – $ 10 an hour, 20 hours a week – she welcomed the escape as much as the payment.

The coronavirus hit a few weeks later.

When the virus spread in early March, President Donald J. Trump insisted it did not pose a threat. “Jobs are booming, incomes are rising,” he tweeted. For the next week, Disneyland and Broadway were padlocked, and the stock market posted its worst daily loss in decades.

While the need for action in Washington was clear, the risks of an impasse were great. Liberal Democrats controlled the House, Conservative Republicans held the Senate, and Mr Trump ridiculed the House Speaker as “Crazy Nancy” Pelosi. However, within a few weeks they agreed on a $ 2.2 trillion plan.

One surprise was how much it did for the poor, a class not known for its political clout. Even the poorest families fully qualified for stimulus payments – $ 1,200 for adults, $ 500 for children (some Republicans had suggested giving them less) – and at the urging of the Democrats, Congress significantly expanded unemployment benefits .

The existing program was filled with gaps: it only comprised around a quarter of the unemployed and replaced less than half of their lost wages. Congress expanded coverage, temporarily adding part-time workers, independent contractors, and other people who are normally excluded. And for four months everyone on unemployment benefits was given a big bonus: $ 600 a week.

Categories
Business

Washington Publish, Reuters and Los Angeles Occasions Seek for New Prime Editors

Washington Post, Reuters and Los Angeles Times Search for New Top Editors

Vox, the flagship of Vox Media, has two high-profile vacancies: Editor-in-Chief and Senior Vice President. Both jobs will be filled by Lauren B. Williams, one of the relatively few black women to have run a large general interest media company. In November, she announced that she was heading to a startup, Capital B, a website targeting black communities nationwide. Vox Media has limited its search for the next Vox editor to three finalists, said two people with knowledge of the matter who were not empowered to publicly discuss it.

HuffPost will likely not name its next editor until after it completes its sale to BuzzFeed, a deal that was announced in November. Jonah Peretti, who will be the managing director of the combined companies, is leading the search with Mark Schoofs, editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News.

HuffPost hasn’t had an editor-in-chief since Lydia Polgreen, a former New York Times deputy editor-in-chief who ran the site for three years, left Spotify in March for podcasting company Gimlet Media. A BuzzFeed spokesperson said the search involved “a strong pool of diverse candidates.”

A number of other outlets are on the alert. Since December Wired, Condé Nast’s tech-oriented magazine, has been looking for a replacement for its editor-in-chief Nicholas Thompson, who is leaving as the Atlantic’s chief executive. Leading candidates for the wired job include Nilay Patel, 40, editor-in-chief of The Verge, a Vox Media website, and Megan Greenwell, 37, editor of Wired.com, according to three people with search skills.

Anna Wintour, Condé Nast’s Chief Content Officer, has the final say on the election. A Condé Nast spokesman declined to comment on the details of the search.

As members of the emerging generation of journalism refine their résumés, watch a possible change at the New York Times as its editor-in-chief Dean Baquet approaches the newspaper’s usual 66-year retirement age for editors and top executives. Mr Baquet turned 64 in September and there have been numerous promotions among the newspaper’s editors lately.