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Year: 2024

2024 Most Memorable Election Moments: December 29, 2024

2024 Most Memorable Election Moments: December 29, 2024

Choose your Most Memorable Election Moment of 2024.  Choose between President Joe Biden dropping out of the 2024 race for the White House, Vice President Kamala Harris on Special Report with Bret Baier, and Donald Trump surprising McDonald’s customers at a drive-through. Then see how your choice ranks and share the results with your friends. Check back each day this week to pick your Most Memorable Moments of 2024.  Thanks for playing!

A Year of Youth Protests: Reclaiming Power

A Year of Youth Protests: Reclaiming Power

On The Stream: We look back at various student protest movements prompted by young people in 2024. We examine the moments when young people advocating for causes that matter to them made headlines this year. The US and UK university protests, demonstrations in Kenya and youth rallies in Bangladesh all come under the spotlight. Presenter: Anelise Borges Guests:
Mahmoud Al Thabata – Harvard Out of Occupied PalestineKendall Gardner – Oxford University studentWanjira Wanjiru – Mathare Social Justice Centre co-founderPrapti Taposhi – Bangladeshi student activist Adblock test (Why?)

European officials pitch new idea to shore up defenses with Trump’s return

European officials pitch new idea to shore up defenses with Trump’s return

As NATO member states struggle to meet their defense spending goals and war rages on Europe’s eastern front, officials are struggling to agree on a plan to shore up hundreds of billions of dollars to bolster defenses.  Eight NATO countries did not meet their 2% target for defense spending in 2024. And as many member states struggle with chronically stressed budgets, calls to meet those goals are not being heeded quickly.  The European Commission estimates about 500 billion euros, the equivalent of $524 billion in investments, are needed in the coming decade to defend Europe against evolving threats.  NATO LEADERS PREDICT ERA OF 2% DEFENSE SPENDING ‘PROBABLY HISTORY’ AS TRUMP REPORTEDLY FLOATS HIGHER TARGET The EU’s budget cannot be used to fund defense directly, and some European officials and NATO experts are proposing a global defense bank to dole out funds for military modernization.  A defense, security and resilience (DSR) bank would issue bonds backed by AAA ratings for financially strapped countries to upgrade their defenses and would provide guarantees for commercial banks to offer credit to defense suppliers.  “This is not a substitute to raising defense spending in each of these countries. I think it should be a supplemental tool,” Giedrimas Jeglinskas, chairman of the national security committee in the Lithuanian parliament and a former NATO official, told Fox News Digital.  His remarks echo those of incoming President Trump, who has long threatened to pull the U.S. out of NATO due to the number of nations missing the mark on the 2% goal for defense spending.  “I think we have to look at it also as an opportunity for the U.S. as well,” Jeglinskas added. “I understand the skepticism by Donald Trump of the World Bank and then the IMF [International Monetary Fund] and IFC [International Finance Corporation] and other institutions. I think there’s been a lot of capital deployed and a lot of investments that these banks or institutions do. The real impact is, at best, questionable. So, I think we have to have very clear KPIs [key performance indicators]. We need to build defense.”  The United States’ $824 billion defense budget in 2023 equaled half of total defense spending by all NATO member states combined at $1.47 trillion. PUTIN SAYS RUSSIA READY TO COMPROMISE WITH TRUMP ON UKRAINE WAR The return of Trump to the White House, coupled with a U.S. push to refocus on China, has left Europeans wondering whether the U.S. will have less of an appetite to defend Europe in years to come.  More EU defense chiefs and foreign ministers have pitched the idea of issuing joint debt through bonds to finance military projects.  But some countries like Germany have voiced concerns about maintaining their own sovereignty and a disproportionate financial burden on some countries.  The DSR bank idea is explained at length in a new Atlantic Council report by defense fellow Rob Murray. “For allies across both the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions, the bank could go beyond offering low-interest loans for defense modernization to facilitating equipment leasing, currency hedging, and supporting critical infrastructure and rebuilding efforts in conflict zones like Ukraine,” Murray wrote.  “An additional critical function of the DSR bank would be to underwrite the risk for commercial banks, enabling them to extend financing to defense companies across the supply chain.” The goal would be to offer financing to small and medium-sized defense companies that often struggle with access to funds.  “By providing loans with extended maturities, the bank would offer predictable and sustainable funding for defence modernisation. Its governance structures would align funding with collective security goals, such as upgrading arsenals and investing in emerging technologies,” Jeglinskas wrote in a recent op-ed for the Financial Times. Asked how the DSR bank would get countries to agree on defense funding priorities, Jeglinskas likened the idea to the U.K.-led Joint Expeditionary Force, a military alliance that includes Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. Jeglinskas noted the 33 trillion euros in European assets under management across the continent.  “There’s really no political will, no risk appetite to move them anywhere besides the kind of bond markets where they rest now,” he said. “But several nations need to build that initial capital, and then, by using the sovereign rating to get to hopefully AAA in capital markets, raise that money from bond markets and to start funding defense programs.” The European Investment Bank has doled out long-term loans and guarantees to European nations’ projects that align with EU policy goals.  “But even they are struggling with kind of shifting their mandate towards more dual-use technologies is still not allowed in their funding package,” said Jeglinskas.  “Of course, every other bank in Europe is looking at EIB for their signals. That signaling hasn’t been there yet. So, that’s the point. We need to create some sort of mechanism, and that kind of global defense bank would be one of the tools that we could use to rally the capital and really direct it toward defense. So, it’s really creating another multilateral lending institution.”

Billionaires cozy up to Trump with seven-figure inaugural donations after past feuds with incoming president

Billionaires cozy up to Trump with seven-figure inaugural donations after past feuds with incoming president

Companies that previously feuded with President-elect Trump are now making seven-figure donations to his 2025 inauguration. Trump has butted heads with several Fortune 500 company executives over the years, but following his presidential election victory in November, some of those same big-business leaders are dropping major cash on the incoming president’s exclusive inaugural festivities.  “In the first term, everyone was fighting me. This time, everyone wants to be my friend,” Trump recently said at Mar-a-Lago, according to The Washington Post. Meta, the world’s largest social media network headed by Mark Zuckerberg, suspended Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in 2021 after the events of Jan. 6 — which Trump called an “insult” to his voters. In his new book, titled “Save America,” Trump accused Zuckerberg of “plotting” against him in 2020.  DOJ SEEKS TO BLOCK JAN. 6 DEFENDANTS FROM ATTENDING TRUMP INAUGURATION “He told me there was nobody like Trump on Facebook. But at the same time, and for whatever reason, steered it against me,” Trump wrote. “We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison — as will others who cheat in the 2024 Presidential Election.” Trump, in his book, also accused Zuckerberg of “always plotting to install shameful Lock Boxes in a true PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT.” However, the relationship appeared to change course as the election drew nearer. After Trump’s Butler, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt in July, Zuckerberg said Trump’s fist pump in the air after suffering a bullet wound to the ear was “one of the most bada– things I’ve ever seen in my life.” Shortly after Trump won the election in November, Zuckerberg met with the incoming president at Mar-a-Lago. Just weeks later, Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund.  JOHNSON ALLIES URGE TRUMP TO INTERVENE AS MESSY SPEAKER BATTLE THREATENS TO DELAY 2024 CERTIFICATION “Mark Zuckerberg has been very clear about his desire to be a supporter of and a participant in this change that we’re seeing all around America, all around the world with this reform movement that Donald Trump is leading,” Trump adviser Stephen Miller said during an appearance on “The Ingraham Angle.” Despite a yearlong clash between Amazon’s billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos — who also owns The Washington Post — and the incoming president, the e-commerce company recently pledged to donate $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. After Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in 2016 that Amazon was “getting away with murder, tax-wise,” Bezos fired back at the then-presidential candidate. Bezos, appearing at a technology conference, said that Trump’s comments were “not an appropriate way for a presidential candidate to behave.” “Washington Post employees want to go on strike because Bezos isn’t paying them enough. I think a really long strike would be a great idea,” Trump wrote in another hit at the billionaire on X, then Twitter, in June 2018. “Employees would get more money and we would get rid of Fake News for an extended period of time! Is @WaPo a registered lobbyist?” The mood appeared to have shifted following the 2024 election, when Bezos said he was “very optimistic” about Trump’s regulatory agenda. “I’m very hopeful — he seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation,” Bezos said at the New York Times DealBook Summit. “My point of view is, if I can help him do that, I’m going to help him.” When Ford agreed to make a deal to meet California’s efficiency standards, the company defied then-President Trump’s plans to push back on the state setting its own green energy standards for automakers.  Trump voiced his opposition to the auto giant’s decision, saying that Henry Ford, the company’s founder, would be “very disappointed if he saw his modern-day descendants wanting to build a much more expensive car that is far less safe and doesn’t work as well, because execs don’t want to fight California regulators.”   Ford, one of the world’s largest automakers, recently announced it will be making a seven-figure donation to Trump’s inauguration in January.  Other major automakers, such as GM and Toyota, will also make individual donations of $1 million to Trump. Trump will also receive a $1 million inauguration donation from Intuit, whose stock recently dropped in November after it was reported that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was considering creating a free tax-filing app.