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What began as a banner day for stocks turned into a major rout, as investors signaled ongoing skepticism about the longevity of the artificial intelligence boom and trimmed hopes of support from the Federal Reserve.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 2%, and the broad S&P 500 index dropped by more than 1.5%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which tracks 30 top-tier stocks, declined by nearly 390 points. It had been up 700 points earlier in the day. Cryptocurrencies also shed billions in value: Bitcoin had fallen below $87,000 as of late Thursday afternoon, weeks after having set highs above $120,000.

The stunning turnaround added further unease to an already shaky economy that has forced households to trim budgets amid stubborn inflation and signs of a wavering job market. With an ever-increasing part of the economy’s principal driver — consumer spending — now reliant on affluent households, an extended market pullback could inflict wider damage.

‘You don’t have to have the biggest bubble in history for an expensive stock market’ and end up seeing declines, said Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak asset management group.

Traders’ hopes were boosted early Thursday by a better-than-expected jobs report that appeared to show the economy remained resilient. Even before the day began, stocks looked poised to rise after Nvidia, the chipmaker at the heart of the AI boom, reported strong quarterly earnings and revenue.

Yet by midday, markets had turned red. The solid September jobs report diminished the odds that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates next month to lower the cost of borrowing money to spur economic activity. When investors don’t have to pay as much in interest, they often put those savings into stocks.

“The broad rebound in payrolls suggests diminished risks of a higher unemployment rate,” analysts with Morgan Stanley said in a note published shortly before noon. “We no longer expect a Fed cut in December.”

Losses were further compounded by ongoing concerns about AI — specifically, how much more profitable the companies buying chips like Nvidia’s will be. The fears were articulated Wednesday evening on X by Michael Burry, made famous by the movie ‘The Big Short.’

‘Just because something is used does not mean it is profitable,’ he wrote.

Finally, the ongoing sell-off of bitcoin indicated to some traders that a key source of support for stocks — retail or day traders — were beginning to waver on their trademark ‘buy the dip’ mentality.

‘I wouldn’t say we’ve flipped from bull to bear,’ said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers financial group. ‘I would say we’ve flipped from bull to balanced market in the short term. A lot depends on whether sentiment continues to weaken.’

Stocks had already been showing signs of flagging in recent weeks. With Thursday’s losses, the S&P 500 fell to its lowest point since September.

The long-delayed September jobs report, which showed that the United States added a sturdy 119,000 jobs, appeared to show some glimmers of hope for the economy.

Although the unemployment rate ticked up from 4.3% in August to 4.4%, about 450,000 workers entered the labor force. Economists view that as evidence that job opportunities are still plentiful, despite a wave of corporate layoffs.

Just before the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the jobs report, Verizon told employees it planned to lay off 13,000 employees, or about 13% of its workforce.

The company joined a suite of other blue-chip employers that say they plan to eliminate tens of thousands of jobs, including Amazon, General Motors, IBM, Microsoft, Paramount, Target and UPS.

The details of the jobs report, which captured conditions before the government shutdown, as well more recent jobs data, suggested a more mixed picture for the U.S. economy.

Manufacturing shed 6,000 jobs, continuing a trend in a sector the Trump administration has touted as a key target of its economic policies. Transportation and warehousing also lost 25,300 jobs. Wage growth slowed, and job totals for July and August were revised downward.

The employment gains in September were concentrated in the health care, hospitality and social assistance sectors.

Another snapshot of the economy came courtesy of Walmart, which on Thursday reported strong sales and raised its outlook for the year. That strength points to cracks in the economy, though. Executives said the chain is luring more high-income shoppers who are looking for bargains, and noted that lower-income families are feeling more pressure.

‘As pocketbooks have been stretched, you’re seeing more consumer dollars go to necessities versus discretionary items,’ Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey said on an earnings call Thursday morning.

Walmart’s stock closed 6.5% higher.

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS

Bitcoin and ether slumped to multi-month lows on Friday, with cryptocurrencies swept up in a broader flight from riskier assets as investors worried about lofty tech valuations and bets on near-term U.S. interest rate cuts faded.

Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, fell 5.5% to a seven-month low of $81,668. Ether slid more than 6% to $2,661.37, its lowest in four months.

Both tokens are down roughly 12% so far this week.

Cryptocurrencies are often viewed as a barometer of risk appetite and their slide highlights how fragile the mood in markets has turned in recent days, with high-flying artificial intelligence stocks tumbling and volatility spiking VIX.

“If it’s telling a story about risk sentiment as a whole, then things could start to get really, really ugly, and that’s the concern now,” Tony Sycamore, a market analyst at IG, said of the fall in bitcoin.

About $1.2 trillion has been wiped off the market value of all cryptocurrencies in the past six weeks, according to market tracker CoinGecko.

Bitcoin’s slide follows a stellar run this year that propelled it to a record high above $120,000 in October, buoyed by favourable regulatory changes towards crypto assets globally.

But analysts say the market remains scarred by a record single-day slump last month that saw more than $19 billion of positions liquidated.

“The market feels a little bit dislocated, a bit fractured, a bit broken, really, since we had that selloff,” said Sycamore.

Bitcoin has since erased all its year-to-date gains and is now down 12% for the year, while ether has lost close to 19%.

Citi analyst Alex Saunders said $80,000 would be an important level as it is around the average level of bitcoin holdings in ETFs.

The selloff has also hurt share prices of crypto stockpilers, following a boom in public digital asset treasury companies this year as corporates took advantage of rising prices to buy and hold cryptocurrencies on their balance sheets.

Shares of Strategy, once the poster child for corporate bitcoin accumulation, have fallen 11% this week and were down nearly 4% in premarket trade, languishing at one-year lows.

JP Morgan said in a note this week that the company could be excluded from some MSCI equity indexes, which could spark forced selling by funds that track them.

Its Japanese peer Metaplanet has tumbled about 80% from a June peak.

Crypto exchange Coinbase was down 1.9% in premarket trade and is on course for its longest losing streak in more than a month.

Crypto miners MARA Holdings and CleanSpark were down 2.4% and 3.6%, respectively, while the Winklevoss twins’ newly-listed Gemini has plunged 62% from its listing price.

“Bitcoin market conditions are the most bearish they have been since the current bull cycle started in January 2023,” said digital asset research firm CryptoQuant in its weekly crypto report on Wednesday.

“We are highly likely to have seen most of this cycle’s demand wave pass.”

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS

A moderate House Democrat representing a district that President Donald Trump won in 2024 is warning fellow elected officials, both within his party and the GOP, from pandering to the extremes of their base.

‘It’s a road to ruin, because too many extremists, too many elected officials, are busy pandering to their base instead of listening to the general public and instead of trying to find common ground,’ Rep. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., told Fox News Digital.

Suozzi said people on the far-left and far-right make up a relatively small — but active — section of both sides. He suggested that it’s a group that’s had an outsized influence in Congress as well.

‘We have not seen much compromise these days. And everything has been, you know, one party or the other trying to do a my-way-or-the-highway partisan effort,’ he said. ‘I’m sure both sides are inspired by good intention, but it’s not long-lasting, and it’s not going to help move our country forward.’

Suozzi’s district encompasses part of the New York City suburbs of Long Island and includes part of the Big Apple itself as well.

But his district is not as progressive as other parts of New York that have shown support for socialist Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani — whose candidacy Suozzi spoke out against on multiple occasions. 

Suozzi did not answer directly when asked if Mamdani’s leadership in the city will affect him in the coming 2026 midterms, but he pointed out significant Republican gains in the district in the 2025 election cycle where he won.

‘In Queens, in my portion of the district, Mamdani lost to Cuomo by 27%. And also, a Republican city councilwoman from the City of New York won in my district, and she won big. And then in my Long Island portion of it, which is not the city, but it’s right next to the city, Mamdani was weaponized by the Republicans in their races, and they won everything,’ Suozzi said.

‘I was always in a vulnerable district, because Trump won by 19,000 votes and I won by 11,000 votes, and I had to get 20,000 people who voted for Donald Trump to also vote for me,’ he said. ‘But that’s still the case for me. So while there were a lot of Democratic victories throughout the country on Election Day, in my district, it still performed pretty Republican.’

He credited his success with ‘listening’ to voters on both sides and reflecting those views in Washington.

‘The reason I was successful in 2024 is because I was endorsed by the police, is because I was clear on my position on immigration, that we do need to secure the border, because I’m fighting for affordability. I mean, I feel like I’ve got to do what the people are asking to do,’ he said.

Suozzi conceded that he believed both Trump and Mamdani were correct in their focus on the high cost of living.

‘Mamdani was right, much like Trump is right, that people are economically insecure. They’re worried about their financial security. They properly diagnose the problem,’ he said.

‘The challenge is, you know, what’s the solution? I believe that socialism is a terrible solution. It will not work. It’s never worked in the history of the world. And it will not work now.’

But he urged Democrats nationwide to continue the focus on affordability, both trying to find solutions that are unique to their districts and on the federal level.

One example he cited was the minimum wage, which has been $7.25 on the federal level since July 2009.

‘That’s absurd, 20 states have a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. We should be fighting to increase the minimum wage,’ he said.

In the end, however, he called for a Democratic Party that errs away from socialism on the national level.

‘We’ve got to be capitalist, not socialist. We’ve got to be mainstream, not extreme. We’ve got to be about safety, not lawlessness. We’ve got to be for reform, not the status quo,’ Suozzi said. ‘We have to be proud of our country, not ashamed of our country.’

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

Two federal inmates previously on death row, one a crooked New Orleans cop and the other the man behind a multi-state killing spree, have been transferred to a notorious ‘supermax’ prison in Colorado, the Justice Department told Fox News Digital. 

News of their transfers comes as U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi looks to crack down on the previous administration’s sweeping clemency actions, especially those against violent crime. 

The former death row inmates were transferred Thursday to the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado, also known as ‘ADX,’ Justice Department officials confirmed. 

They are among the 37 death row inmates whose sentences Biden commuted shortly before leaving office last December. The news prompted criticism and complaints that the record clemency and commutation actions were done as a political ‘Hail Mary,’ and without proper vetting.

Eight death row inmates have already been transferred to ADX, the Justice Department told Fox News Digital, bringing to 10 the number of death row inmates that have been transferred to the facility since mid-September. 

More are expected soon, as all 37 death row inmates commuted by Biden are expected to be moved to the facility by ‘early next year,’ the Justice Department told Fox News Digital.

The effort comes as Bondi and the Trump administration have sought to reverse some of the Biden administration’s efforts on criminal justice reform, with an emphasis on cracking down on violent crime.

Though sentence commutations cannot be fully reversed, Justice Department officials told Fox News Digital, Bondi has prioritized ways to penalize these individuals, in coordination with directives from Trump, and to ensure that the ‘conditions of confinement’ are ‘consistent with the security risks those inmates present because of their egregious crimes, criminal histories, and all other relevant considerations,’ according to an earlier DOJ memo. 

‘Two more monsters who plotted and violently murdered innocent people will spend the rest of their lives in our country’s most severe federal prison,’ Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News Digital in a statement. 

‘This Department of Justice will continue to seek accountability for the families blindsided by President Biden’s reckless commutations of 37 vicious predators,’ she added.

Like the eight former death row inmates that were sent to Colorado’s supermax prison, the two criminals processed in ADX on Thursday have been convicted of particularly heinous crimes. 

One individual chased down his ex-girlfriend from Roanoke, Virginia, to Charlotte, North Carolina, where he cut the phone lines to the apartment she was living in before using cans of gasoline to set the building on fire.

Though she escaped via a second-story window and was hospitalized for second-and third-degree burns, he followed her back to her family’s home in Virginia two months later, where he gunned her down on the streets of her neighborhood and just steps from her mother.  

Another inmate, a former New Orleans police officer dubbed ‘Robocop’ for his large physical demeanor and aggressive law enforcement style, was caught on tape by the FBI as he ordered and orchestrated the killing of a mother of three who had come to the precinct hours earlier to submit a supposedly confidential brutality complaint about his behavior that she witnessed on her way home the night before. 

The FBI had stumbled upon the conversation as part of a broader probe they had started to investigate a so-called ‘protection racket’ between cocaine dealers in New Orleans and the city’s police force, which had been guarding a warehouse stocked with the drug. The same officer was later revealed as one of the chief conspirators in the protection racket. 

He was also found to have falsely testified in two murder cases, including one murder he has since been linked to. The statements were used to exonerate four men from prison, including three teenagers who had been wrongfully convicted of a murder 28 years prior.

ADX is the only true federal ‘supermax’ prison in the U.S., and its inmates are as notorious as the prison’s reputation. 

Among them are Ramzi Yousef, convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers; former Sinola Cartel leader Joaquín Guzmán, or ‘El Chapo’; and Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, the co-founder of al-Qaeda.

Shortly after her confirmation as attorney general, Bondi issued a memo aimed at ‘restoring a measure of justice’ to the victims’ families. 

The measures granted by Biden earned more criticism than former President Barack Obama: As Fox News reported at the time, the vast majority of Obama’s clemency actions focused on commuting the sentences of federal inmates who met certain criteria outlined under his administration’s Clemency Initiative.

Bondi hosted victims’ families earlier this year to hear their concerns about the commutations, DOJ said. Some said they had been stunned by the eleventh-hour commutations, and that they not been given a heads-up by the Biden administration.

In February, Bondi issued a memo to the Bureau of Prisons ordering an evaluation of where these prisoners should be detained.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

Having covered Ukraine … and Russia … for over three decades, especially the war between the two countries for the last several years, I’ve naturally been fascinated by the latest Trump administration effort to broker peace.

The reaction I’ve been getting from contacts in Ukraine to the 28-point plan to end the war is not all that positive.  

‘It’s not worth the paper it’s written on,’ said one observer.

‘Any deal would have to include Ukraine…and Europe,’ noted another. 

The overall consensus of analysts is that the document is slanted heavily towards Moscow. The man at the center of things, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has been diplomatic in various statements, basically saying he’s ‘reviewing the points’ aiming at arriving at a ‘dignified peace.’

There are all sorts of talks happening now between the U.S. and Ukraine and among European leaders. We’re even hearing from Russian President Vladimir Putin. It’s no wonder: The stakes in this war for Europe and the world are enormous. If I were to send a quick note to Zelenskyy, it would go something like this: 

Dear Volodymyr, 

So far so good. You haven’t freaked out, and you’re promising to engage. Rejection of this plan out of hand would have been a non-starter.

You’re staying cool (though a bit grim and determined), and you’re talking to people. 

My overall advice is … pick your fights, don’t sweat the small stuff, and keep the big picture in mind. 

I know what your country is going through. Every time I’m in Kyiv, I go to the same military cemetery outside the city, and it keeps getting bigger and bigger and sadder.

So, as to the points of the plan: There are a lot easy ‘gimmes’ to Russia. Re-joining the G-8. Gradual dropping of sanctions. Granting of amnesty for everything Russian troops have done. I know this stuff is going to stick in your craw, but little of it affects your country’s future. 

I mentioned that you shouldn’t ‘sweat the small stuff.’ Some of the points might sound like a big deal. Like prohibiting ‘Nazi ideology’ in Ukraine. And adopting ‘EU rules on religious tolerance and linguistic minorities.’ That’s pretty much window-dressing for Moscow. Having the Russian language and Russian church regain official status is not horrendous. 

In fact, the plan’s glass is at least one-third full for you guys. Confirming your sovereignty. Russia expected not to invade you again. You will receive reliable security guarantees. Rebuilding pledges and humanitarian promises. They are all good. Just nail down the specifics. Get all sides to commit for sure.

Now to three of the points which cross, according to analysts, your red line. 

Like handing over the rest of the eastern Donetsk region to Russia even though Moscow’s troops haven’t even taken it. The region is referred to as a demilitarized zone in the plan. A ‘DMZ’ ala the divider between North and South Korea. Well, hold them to that. No troops from either side. Tough security on both sides. A neutral body running things. And see if you can get them to not call it Russian!

Then there’s the reduction by a third of your military. Troop strength limited to 600,000. That’s a huge cut, but it’s still not a bad-sized force. That is if…it was properly trained, well-armed, and finely-positioned.  Guarantees are needed for all of this to happen.

And then there’s the other red line : No NATO troops in Ukraine. That would seem to scupper the plan to have foreign peace-keepers on the ground, which has been in the works, to monitor the peace. A possible compromise? They’re stationed around Ukraine’s borders, surveillance keeps a close eye on things and rapid-response forces are at the ready. 

There are also a few ‘gimmes’ for the U.S. in all this, like sharing in the profits of reconstruction. But that’s the price of doing business with President Trump. 

As for that Thanksgiving deadline to sign the deal? The president has already signaled he’s willing to let that slide if there’s talking. 

And that other deadline? One-hundred days until a new election? I know it’s a tough time for you politically with those corruption charges getting near. It might be something you have to live with. 

Anyway, for what it’s worth, that’s my take. 

Negotiations will probably sink on any hard discussion of any of these main points. But you know what the old adage is : ‘jaw-jaw’ is better than ‘war-war.’ 

For the proud people of Ukraine, who have suffered so much during this time, it’s worth your best shot.

Sincerely,

Greg

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

Two federal inmates previously on death row, one a crooked New Orleans cop and the other the man behind a multi-state killing spree, have been transferred to a notorious ‘supermax’ prison in Colorado, the Justice Department told Fox News Digital. 

News of their transfers comes as U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi looks to crack down on the previous administration’s sweeping clemency actions, especially those against violent crime. 

The former death row inmates were transferred Thursday to the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado, also known as ‘ADX,’ Justice Department officials confirmed. 

They are among the 37 death row inmates whose sentences Biden commuted shortly before leaving office last December. The news prompted criticism and complaints that the record clemency and commutation actions were done as a political ‘Hail Mary,’ and without proper vetting.

Eight death row inmates have already been transferred to ADX, the Justice Department told Fox News Digital, bringing to 10 the number of death row inmates that have been transferred to the facility since mid-September. 

More are expected soon, as all 37 death row inmates commuted by Biden are expected to be moved to the facility by ‘early next year,’ the Justice Department told Fox News Digital.

The effort comes as Bondi and the Trump administration have sought to reverse some of the Biden administration’s efforts on criminal justice reform, with an emphasis on cracking down on violent crime.

Though sentence commutations cannot be fully reversed, Justice Department officials told Fox News Digital, Bondi has prioritized ways to penalize these individuals, in coordination with directives from Trump, and to ensure that the ‘conditions of confinement’ are ‘consistent with the security risks those inmates present because of their egregious crimes, criminal histories, and all other relevant considerations,’ according to an earlier DOJ memo. 

‘Two more monsters who plotted and violently murdered innocent people will spend the rest of their lives in our country’s most severe federal prison,’ Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News Digital in a statement. 

‘This Department of Justice will continue to seek accountability for the families blindsided by President Biden’s reckless commutations of 37 vicious predators,’ she added.

Like the eight former death row inmates that were sent to Colorado’s supermax prison, the two criminals processed in ADX on Thursday have been convicted of particularly heinous crimes. 

One individual chased down his ex-girlfriend from Roanoke, Virginia, to Charlotte, North Carolina, where he cut the phone lines to the apartment she was living in before using cans of gasoline to set the building on fire.

Though she escaped via a second-story window and was hospitalized for second-and third-degree burns, he followed her back to her family’s home in Virginia two months later, where he gunned her down on the streets of her neighborhood and just steps from her mother.  

Another inmate, a former New Orleans police officer dubbed ‘Robocop’ for his large physical demeanor and aggressive law enforcement style, was caught on tape by the FBI as he ordered and orchestrated the killing of a mother of three who had come to the precinct hours earlier to submit a supposedly confidential brutality complaint about his behavior that she witnessed on her way home the night before. 

The FBI had stumbled upon the conversation as part of a broader probe they had started to investigate a so-called ‘protection racket’ between cocaine dealers in New Orleans and the city’s police force, which had been guarding a warehouse stocked with the drug. The same officer was later revealed as one of the chief conspirators in the protection racket. 

He was also found to have falsely testified in two murder cases, including one murder he has since been linked to. The statements were used to exonerate four men from prison, including three teenagers who had been wrongfully convicted of a murder 28 years prior.

ADX is the only true federal ‘supermax’ prison in the U.S., and its inmates are as notorious as the prison’s reputation. 

Among them are Ramzi Yousef, convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers; former Sinola Cartel leader Joaquín Guzmán, or ‘El Chapo’; and Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, the co-founder of al-Qaeda.

Shortly after her confirmation as attorney general, Bondi issued a memo aimed at ‘restoring a measure of justice’ to the victims’ families. 

The measures granted by Biden earned more criticism than former President Barack Obama: As Fox News reported at the time, the vast majority of Obama’s clemency actions focused on commuting the sentences of federal inmates who met certain criteria outlined under his administration’s Clemency Initiative.

Bondi hosted victims’ families earlier this year to hear their concerns about the commutations, DOJ said. Some said they had been stunned by the eleventh-hour commutations, and that they not been given a heads-up by the Biden administration.

In February, Bondi issued a memo to the Bureau of Prisons ordering an evaluation of where these prisoners should be detained.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

Having covered Ukraine and Russia for over three decades, especially the war between the two countries for the last several years, I’ve naturally been fascinated by the latest Trump administration effort to broker peace.

The reaction I’ve been getting from contacts in Ukraine to the 28-point plan to end the war is not all that positive.  

‘It’s not worth the paper it’s written on,’ said one observer.

‘Any deal would have to include Ukraine … and Europe,’ noted another. 

The overall consensus of analysts is that the document is slanted heavily toward Moscow. The man at the center of things, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has been diplomatic in various statements, basically saying he’s ‘reviewing the points’ aiming at arriving at a ‘dignified peace.’

There are all sorts of talks happening now between the U.S. and Ukraine and among European leaders. We’re even hearing from Russian President Vladimir Putin. It’s no wonder. The stakes in this war for Europe and the world are enormous. If I were to send a quick note to Zelenskyy, it would go something like this: 

Dear Volodymyr, 

So far so good. You haven’t freaked out, and you’re promising to engage. Rejection of this plan out of hand would have been a non-starter.

You’re staying cool (though a bit grim and determined), and you’re talking to people. 

My overall advice is … pick your fights, don’t sweat the small stuff and keep the big picture in mind. 

I know what your country is going through. Every time I’m in Kyiv, I go to the same military cemetery outside the city, and it keeps getting bigger and bigger and sadder.

So, as to the points of the plan: There are a lot of easy ‘gimmes’ to Russia. Re-joining the G8. Gradual dropping of sanctions. Granting of amnesty for everything Russian troops have done. I know this stuff is going to stick in your craw, but little of it affects your country’s future. 

I mentioned that you shouldn’t ‘sweat the small stuff.’ Some of the points might sound like a big deal. Like prohibiting ‘Nazi ideology’ in Ukraine. And adopting ‘EU rules on religious tolerance and linguistic minorities.’ That’s pretty much window dressing for Moscow. Having the Russian language and Russian church regain official status is not horrendous. 

In fact, the plan’s glass is at least one-third full for you guys. Confirming your sovereignty. Russia expected not to invade you again. You will receive reliable security guarantees. Rebuilding pledges and humanitarian promises. They are all good. Just nail down the specifics. Get all sides to commit for sure.

Now to three of the points which cross your red line, according to analysts.

Like handing over the rest of the eastern Donetsk region to Russia even though Moscow’s troops haven’t even taken it. The region is referred to as a demilitarized zone in the plan. A ‘DMZ’ a la the divider between North and South Korea. Well, hold them to that. No troops from either side. Tough security on both sides. A neutral body running things. And see if you can get them to not call it Russian!

Then there’s the reduction by a third of your military. Troop strength limited to 600,000. That’s a huge cut, but it’s still not a bad-sized force. That is if … it was properly trained, well-armed and finely-positioned.  Guarantees are needed for all of this to happen.

And then there’s the other red line: No NATO troops in Ukraine. That would seem to scupper the plan to have foreign peacekeepers on the ground, which has been in the works, to monitor the peace. A possible compromise? They’re stationed around Ukraine’s borders, surveillance keeps a close eye on things and rapid-response forces are at the ready. 

There are also a few ‘gimmes’ for the U.S. in all this, like sharing in the profits of reconstruction. But that’s the price of doing business with President Trump. 

As for that Thanksgiving deadline to sign the deal? The president has already signaled he’s willing to let that slide if there’s talking. 

And that other deadline? One hundred days until a new election? I know it’s a tough time for you politically with those corruption charges getting near. It might be something you have to live with. 

Anyway, for what it’s worth, that’s my take. 

Negotiations will probably sink on any hard discussion of any of these main points. But you know what the old adage is: ‘Jaw-jaw’ is better than ‘war-war.’ 

For the proud people of Ukraine who have suffered so much during this time, it’s worth your best shot.

Sincerely,

Greg

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

Former President John F. Kennedy’s granddaughter, Tatiana Schlossberg, announced on Saturday — exactly 62 years after he was assassinated — that she has terminal cancer.

The 35-year-old said she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, with a rare mutation called Inversion 3, soon after the birth of her daughter in May 2024, and that doctors recently told her she probably has about a year to live.

‘My first thought was that my kids, whose faces live permanently on the inside of my eyelids, wouldn’t remember me,’ she wrote in an essay for The New Yorker. ‘My son might have a few memories, but he’ll probably start confusing them with pictures he sees or stories he hears.’

She said she ‘didn’t ever really get to take care of my daughter—I couldn’t change her diaper or give her a bath or feed her, all because of the risk of infection after my transplants. I was gone for almost half of her first year of life. I don’t know who, really, she thinks I am, and whether she will feel or remember, when I am gone, that I am her mother.’

She said the diagnosis was shocking because she felt perfectly healthy.

‘I did not—could not—believe that they were talking about me,’ she wrote of the first talk of leukemia. ‘I had swum a mile in the pool the day before, nine months pregnant. I wasn’t sick. I didn’t feel sick. I was actually one of the healthiest people I knew.’

She said the cancer is mostly seen in older patients and doctors frequently asked her if she had spent much time at Ground Zero in New York City, which she had not.

Schlossberg, who is the daughter of Caroline Kennedy, JFK’s oldest surviving daughter, described in heartbreaking detail her months on end of different treatments to beat the cancer.

She went through a round of chemotherapy to ‘reduce the number of blast cells in my bone marrow,’ then received a bone-marrow transplant with the help of her sister.

She said after she went into remission and went home she had no immune system and had to get all of her childhood vaccines again.

Then she relapsed, her doctor telling her that leukemia with her mutation ‘liked to come back.’

At the beginning of the year, she joined a clinical trial of CAR-T-cell therapy, ‘a type of immunotherapy that has proved effective against certain blood cancers.’

That was followed by another round of chemotherapy and a second blood transfusion from an unrelated donor.

‘During the latest clinical trial, my doctor told me that he could keep me alive for a year, maybe,’ she wrote.

She also wrote of her concerns after her cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom she called an ’embarrassment,’ was nominated as secretary of Health and Human Services.

‘Suddenly, the health-care system on which I relied felt strained, shaky,’ she wrote. ‘Doctors and scientists at Columbia [Presbyterian hospital], including [her husband] George, didn’t know if they would be able to continue their research, or even have jobs.’

She praised the rest of her family, whom she said sat at her bedside while she endured treatments and took care of her children.

Of her husband, urologist George Moran, she wrote, ‘he is perfect, and I feel so cheated and so sad that I don’t get to keep living the wonderful life I had with this kind, funny, handsome genius I managed to find.’

Her brother Jack Schlossberg, who is running for congress in New York, wrote on his Instagram on Saturday, ‘Life is short, let it rip.’

 
 
 
 
 
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Her mother’s cousin, Maria Shriver, shared her essay on Instagram, writing, ‘If you can only read one thing today, please make take the time for this extraordinary piece of writing by my cousin Caroline’s extraordinary daughter Tatiana. Tatiana is a beautiful writer, journalist, wife, mother, daughter, sister, and friend.’

Tatiana added in her essay, ‘For my whole life, I have tried to be good, to be a good student and a good sister and a good daughter, and to protect my mother and never make her upset or angry. Now I have added a new tragedy to her life, to our family’s life, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.’

Robert F. Kennedy Sr., her mother, Caroline Kennedy’s uncle, was assassinated five years after JFK, and along with having two siblings who died in infancy, Caroline’s only surviving brother, JFK Jr, died in a plane crash in 1999.

Schlossberg’s grandmother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, also died of cancer in 1994, of non-Hodgkin lymphoma when she was 64.

She finished her essay by saying that she lives to be with her children now.

‘But being in the present is harder than it sounds, so I let the memories come and go,’ she admitted. ‘So many of them are from my childhood that I feel as if I’m watching myself and my kids grow up at the same time.’

She added, ‘Sometimes I trick myself into thinking I’ll remember this forever, I’ll remember this when I’m dead. Obviously, I won’t. But since I don’t know what death is like and there’s no one to tell me what comes after it, I’ll keep pretending. I will keep trying to remember.’

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The chair of the House Republican campaign arm says the Democrats’ sweeping victories in this month’s 2025 elections are a ‘wake-up call’ for GOP voters.

And Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, who’s chairing the National Republican Congressional Committee for a second straight election cycle, said in an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital that he wants President Donald Trump ‘out there on the trail’ in next year’s midterm elections, when the party defends its razor-thin House majority.

Democrats won the only two races for governor this year, in New Jersey and Virginia, by double digits, and also scored big wins in ballot box showdowns in battlegrounds Georgia and Pennsylvania and left-tilting New York City and California.

Plenty of Republicans have discounted the Democrats’ high-profile victories, since they mostly occurred in blue-leaning states, since they mostly occurred in blue-leaning states.

Hudson noted the top elections took place in ‘Democrat states,’ but added, ‘I think our big takeaway as Republicans is the Democrats were energized. They turned out at record levels. Republicans turned out in normal levels.’

‘I think there’s a wake-up call there to conservatives and Republicans who are happy with the direction of the country. They’re glad President Trump’s back in the White House. But if they want to keep this momentum going, they’ve got to show up and vote,’ he emphasized.

Many of Trump’s MAGA supporters are considered low-propensity voters, who head to the polls only when Trump is on the ballot. But Trump won’t be on the ballot in the 2026 midterms.

Hudson, who noted that ‘House Republicans are very closely aligned with President Trump, and we’re supporting his agenda,’ said that ‘we want him out there on the trail, campaigning with our candidates. I think he brings a lot of energy.’

Pointing to ‘a lot of folks who don’t vote when he’s not on the ballot,’ Hudson said, ‘I don’t need all of them to show up, but I need some of them. And so having President Trump out there will be a big benefit for us.’

Those requests for the MAGA motivator are already coming in to the president’s political team.

Matt Van Epps, the Republican nominee in next month’s special congressional election for a vacant GOP-held House seat in Tennessee, has asked for Trump to campaign in person with him ahead of the Dec. 2 election.

Democrats were laser-focused on affordability on the 2025 campaign trail.

Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said his party’s candidates met ‘voters at the kitchen table. . . . From New Jersey and Virginia and New York, to Georgia and beyond, Democrats ran campaigns relentlessly focused on costs and affordability.’

And Martin emphasized the 2025 elections were a preview of things to come in next year’s midterms.

‘In ‘26, we’ll do it again. We’ll run a National Coordinated Campaign to win races up and down the ballot to provide a check on the out-of-control Trump administration and its Republican rubber stamps,’ he argued.

Hudson, pointing to former President Joe Biden, said ‘there are challenges out there with the economy, because Biden broke it, and House Republicans, working with President Trump, are going to fix it, and we’re working very hard to do that. ‘

‘Certainly, we could always improve the way we communicate with our voters about it,’ he added. ‘But we are laser focused on the issues that matter to them. You know, it’s the cost of things, it’s the security in their neighborhood, it’s a secure border. We are very focused on that, and we’ve delivered a lot of things that are going to make their lives better.’

And looking ahead to next year, he added, ‘come tax season, a lot of families are going to be really happy to see they’ve got a lot more take-home pay, and that’s because of Donald Trump and House Republicans.’

Hudson, in step with fellow Republicans, aimed to link Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a socialist who pushed a far-left platform on the campaign trail this year, to House Democrats who may face challenging re-elections next year.

‘The entire Democrat Party has shifted to the left. This is Mamdani’s party now,’ Hudson charged. ‘And every single House Democrat needs to answer for his policies, and they need to let their constituents know, do they stand with Mamdani or not?’

The power in power, which nowadays is clearly the Republicans, traditionally faces political headwinds in the midterm elections.

And Hudson was interviewed as two new national polls indicated Democrats with the upper hand in the 2026 battle for the House majority.

But Hudson said: ‘The only number I’m concerned about is three. We have three Republicans in seats Kamala Harris carried.’

And he highlighted that Democrats have ‘thirteen sitting in seats Donald Trump won. They’ve got 21 more sitting in seats that Donald Trump barely lost. So there, there are only a few seats up for grabs this time, most of them are Democrat seats.’

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The conservative movement has found itself in a season of confusion in recent weeks. Former friends quarrel, familiar institutions are in turmoil, and some voices, both new and old, on the right have begun to wonder aloud whether the United States should still stand with Israel. 

That question deserves a resolute answer, and the answer is this: for our security, for democracy in the Middle East and for the very destiny of our nation, America must stand with Israel.

Americans should always be open to debate how we spend our money abroad and whether our foreign policy truly serves national interest. The rising generation in particular demands rigorous answers beyond empty platitudes.  

But lately, it seems that something deeper, something darker, has driven those questions. After decades of conflict in the Middle East, some are tempted to embrace isolationism, to treat moral clarity as naïveté, and to spurn our allies as unwanted burdens under the strain of massive national debt. For others, it is nothing more than antisemitism.  

The acceptance of antisemitic voices on the left and the right, from the halls of Congress to social media, represents a vile and dangerous trend in American politics, and it must be forcefully opposed wherever it appears. There is no place in the conservative movement for antisemitism.

 

For nearly 80 years, the bond between the United States and Israel has been more than a diplomatic arrangement. It has been a covenant of free peoples who share the same ideals: faith in God, belief in human dignity and gratitude for the blessings of liberty. Israel’s survival has never depended on our charity; it has depended on our partnership, and that partnership has made America safer and paid dividends. 

Centuries before the founding of modern Israel, our Founding Fathers championed the return of the Jewish people to Israel and made special provision for the Jewish faith in America. George Washington assured Jewish Americans that the fledgling United States ‘gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.’ John Adams supported ‘the Jews again in Judea’ as ‘an independent nation.’ Elias Boudinot, the president of the American Revolution’s Congress, boldly suggested that ‘God has raised up these United States… for the very purpose of… bringing his beloved people to their own land.’ Even the famously thrifty Benjamin Franklin once opened his coffers to help a local Philadelphia synagogue weather financial difficulty.  

But the case for Israel is far more than historic.

 

Today, Israel stands as an oasis of democracy in a Middle East where dozens of its neighbors are Islamic states or still practice monarchy. It is a cruel irony that, in a world of 46 majority-Muslim nations, the presence of a single majority-Jewish nation is seen by many of Israel’s neighbors as one too many. Thirty-one countries still refuse to recognize Israel on their maps. Some of those would love nothing less than to see Israel wiped off the map altogether. And yet Israel persists.  

Thanks to Israel’s courage and the decisive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities by the United States, we no longer live under a nuclear sword of Damocles wielded by a regime that chants ‘Death to America.’ From the Stuxnet cyber operation that crippled Iran’s enrichment program, to Israel’s assistance with U.S. airstrikes, and to many heroic covert operations, Israel has repeatedly helped delay Tehran’s progress toward obtaining nuclear weapons. Those actions protected not only Jerusalem and Tel Aviv – they protected Washington, New York and every American city within reach of Iran’s hatred. 

That may not matter much to a segment of the New Right that confuses isolation for safety. But the rest of us know better. We understand what it would mean if the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism ever possessed nuclear weapons.  When Israel takes the fight to Iran’s terror network proxies like Hezbollah, Hamas and the Revolutionary Guard, it is not merely doing our bidding; it is doing what conscience and common sense require. It stands between civilization and chaos. Israel’s cause is our cause.  

When Israel succeeds, as it did in 2024 by decapitating Hezbollah’s leadership in a precision pager-bombing campaign, America is safer. The practical case for our alliance is clear.

Centuries before the founding of modern Israel, our Founding Fathers championed the return of the Jewish people to Israel and made special provision for the Jewish faith in America.

But the heart of American support is still a matter of shared values and faith. We stand with Israel because we believe in right over wrong, in good over evil, and in liberty over tyranny. Israel must be empowered to finish the fight against those who would harm her, terrorists who hide behind women, children, hospitals and holy places as they launch rockets indiscriminately into Israel. Peace and justice, within Gaza and without, require that Hamas be destroyed. 

In the end, Americans have always supported Israel because the very existence of this enduring nation bears witness to God’s faithfulness. And the support of millions of Americans throughout the generations has been built upon the ancient words recorded in Genesis where God promises to ‘bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.’

For 250 years, America has been blessed like no other country in history. As we prepare to celebrate our blessings as a nation, I believe we must never forsake that promise or our cherished ally. If the world knows nothing else, let the world know this: America stands with Israel. 

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