Category Archives: Donald Trump

The Wall Street Bull, located in the financial district of New York City.

Mike Roy | MCT | Tribune News Service | Getty Images

As stocks close out 2019 with potentially the best gain in decades, strategists expect Wall Street's bull market to continue in 2020 as long as it appears President Donald Trump will be re-elected.

Analysts see the possibility of a slight pullback early next year, after this year's 29.2% surge so far in the S&P 500. But the market is still expected to go higher, with analysts targeting an average 3,320 for the S&P by the end of 2020, according to a CNBC survey.

"Since World War II, the average gain in the fourth year of a presidential term is 6.3%, and it's up 78% of the time," said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA. The price gain in the S&P is even better, with an average 6.6% gain, if it is a Republican seeking re-election, and the market has been higher each of the six instances of this since World War II.

The S&P 500 has returned more than 50% since Trump was elected, more than double the 23% average market return of presidents three years into their term, going back to 1928, according to Bespoke Investment Group.

Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives this month, but his trial in the Senate is not expected to lead to his removal from office and the market has so far ignored the proceedings.

"Most people believe that Trump will be re-elected, and only if we start to get a true challenger could that possibly cause increased volatility," said Stovall. There could be some hiccups when the Democratic field is narrowed depending on who the candidate is in the November presidential election, Stovall said.

"The only two people palatable to the market, in my opinion, are Bloomberg and Trump, and I don't really think Wall Street knows how to curve or score Buttigieg," he said. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg joined late in the race and is pulling low poll numbers, while Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, made some inroads but is still well behind the leaders.

Front-runner Joe Biden has discussed raising taxes, and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who want "Medicare for All," are viewed as too progressive by many investors.

On the near-term horizon, stocks have a good chance of rising into the final day of this year, based on history. The S&P 500 ended the past week with a 0.6% gain, at 3,240 and could keep rising in a late December "Santa rally." According to Bespoke, in the 21 years since 1928 that the S&P 500 was up more than 20% for the year, it gained an average 1.3% in the final week of the year and was higher four out of five times.

So far, the S&P is having its best year since 2013, but if its gain rises above 29.6%, it will be the best year since 1997.

The coming week is broken up by the Jan. 1 market holiday on Wednesday. There are a few economic reports to monitor, with Friday's calendar the most important. The important ISM manufacturing data is reported that morning, as are monthly car sales and construction spending. The Fed releases the minutes from its last meeting later that afternoon. There is home price data and consumer confidence Tuesday.

Stovall said beyond the election, another risk for next year could come from the Fed, if inflation readings begins to rise.

"Another risk is if we see the economy start to show signs of recovery too swiftly and start to see inflation numbers creep higher, investors will start to worry that not only is the Fed done cutting but they may have to think about raising rates again," said Stovall.

Stovall said the other challenge for stocks will be to see if fundamentals can catch up with now much higher price-to-earnings ratios.

"We're already at 19 times forward earnings. My feeling is we either start to see a dramatic acceleration of earnings growth expectations or we have to digest these gains," he said. "Maybe it won't happen until the beginning of January, but I think we're getting ahead of ourselves."

Analysts say there could also be other unanticipated events, like a new round of trade anxiety, but the belief for the most part is the White House will do its best to keep the economy on a positive track.

There is a concern that investors could miss out if they are too worried about the election, which already has strategists assessing how different sectors could be hit by Democratic candidates.

"The headlines and the anxiety that can typically come around an election have been pulled forward, and my fear is it will lead to inaction," said Cayman Wills, global head of equities at J.P. Morgan Private Bank. Wills said in a recent interview that she is fairly optimistic for next year.

"We've been focusing more on longer-term themes that can get clients invested and engaged that go beyond the election cycle, and you don't lose out on potential returns," she said.

Stovall said the 2019 performance of both stocks and bonds bodes well for next year, when looking at history going back to 1976. Since then, the S&P 500 has averaged a 12.9% gain. The Barclays Aggregate bond index, representing a diversified bond portfolio, was up 8.5% for 2019, above its average 7.5% return, he said.

Following years in which both stocks and bonds are making above-average returns, the stock market has done well, with the S&P up 14% in the next year and rising 82% of the time. Bonds averaged gains of 8% in the next year and rose 10 of 11 times. Bonds increase in value when yields fall.

Monday

8:30 a.m. Advance economic indicators

9:45 a.m. Chicago PMI

10:00 a.m. Pending home sales

Tuesday

9:00 a.m. S&P/Case-Shiller home prices

9:00 a.m. FHFA home prices

10:00 a.m. Consumer confidence

Wednesday

New Year's Day

Markets closed

Thursday

8:30 a.m. Initial claims

9:45 a.m. Manufacturing PMI

Friday

Monthly vehicle sales

10:00 a.m. ISM Manufacturing

10:00 a.m. Construction spending

2:00 p.m. FOMC minutes

More here:

Key reports to watch for this week as the S&P aims for its best year in 2 decades - CNBC

HONG KONGNearly a year and a half after Donald J. Trump ordered the Pentagon to establish the U.S. Space Forcea whole new sixth branch of the American armed forceshe signed the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act on Dec. 20. At least on paper, the U.S. Space Force is now a reality.

But the United States is late to this game. The Russians have been organizing and reorganizing space force variants since the 1990s. And more importantly, the Chinese Communist Partys Peoples Liberation Army has had such an organization up and running for the last four years. Its called the PLA Strategic Support Force, and it is something of a technological juggernaut responsible for space, cyber, electronic, and psychological warfare.

Outer space has become the new commanding heights in international strategic competition, declared a document published by the State Council in Beijing in 2015. Countries concerned are developing their space forces and instruments, and the first signs of weaponization of outer space have appeared.

CCP leader Xi Jinpings move to dominate those commanding heights is one more of his moves to modernize the Chinese military, which is also developing potentially revolutionary technology for its conventional air force, and a blue water navy.

The competition in space, as elsewhere, is squarely directed at the United States. Its part of the tech war between the U.S. and Chinaa front often overlooked in the slow drip of information related to the trade war and potential export deals.

Chinas space warfare specialists have been conducting research and training as a unit for nearly four years to rival U.S. Space Command and the newly formed Space Force.

Chinas recent achievements in space have eclipsed those of Russia, and its quickly catching up to the United States.

Chinas biggest rocket, the Long March 5, was loaded onto a launchpad a week ago and successfully launched on Friday, carrying an eight-ton satellite. The heavy-lift rocket previously failed to launch in 2017, but its successful launch puts Chinas space program on track to send a probe to Mars and acquire rock and fine-grain soil samples from the moon next year. The Long March 5 will also deliver modules of the Tiangong space station, which is due to go online within two to four years.

Even though China hasnt sent any taikonauts into space since late 2016, it has been placing a lot of equipment into orbit. Its BeiDou systeman alternative to the American GPSis set to be completed in June. And the Chinese space program already has a rover on the far side of the moon; it has been operating for about a year.

Civilian operations also are progressing rapidly. iSpace, a company based in Beijing, is similar to SpaceX. It placed two satellites in orbit in late July.

How does the PLASSF operate?

The branch projects power in what it describes as strategic frontiers, specifically referring to areas that are not defined as part of geographical topology. China hasnt been involved in large-scale armed conflicts since the 1970s, so the force has been contributing to training exercises where it plays the role of an adversary, deploying electronic and psychological warfare, preparing the PLAs other branches for disruptive battle tactics.

Although outer space remains an untested domain for armed conflict, the PLASSF is busy formulating the Chinese militarys space operational doctrine. And Chinas space warfare specialists have been conducting research and training as a unit for nearly four years to rival U.S. Space Command and the newly formed Space Force.

Xi Jinping and the CCP believe it is crucial to match and surpass the U.S. in technological prowess in all arenas.

In the meantime, the PLASSF has recruited hundreds of specialists and scientists whose expertise in deep tech will define Chinas space warfare capabilities. The scenario that is of utmost concern is a long-range attack launched from, say, the United States. Only by controlling a chunk of outer space can the PLA conduct long range operations against the U.S. or other forcesor deter potential attacks.

Xi Jinping and the CCP believe it is crucial to match and surpass the U.S. in technological prowess in all arenas. As Chinese entities bulk up their presence beyond the stratosphere, the Party is also harnessing other forms of cutting-edge tech, like big data, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing. In September, Xi appointed a big-data expert, Wang Yingwei, as the CCPs new cybersecurity chief. And the Peoples Bank of Chinathe countrys central bankis redoubling efforts to create a digital currency, likely in response to Facebooks proposed Libra, which may be rolled out in 2020.

The Party recognizes that warfare is evolving, and new fronts have emerged. Its plans for civil-military fusion mirror the U.S. militarys cooperation with contractors to develop new weapons. Clusters of private companies in China specialize in serving the PLAs needs.

This month, Xi Jinping commissioned the Shandong, Chinas first domestically built aircraft carrier. CCP officials find parallels in maritime power projection and dominance in space. Last year, the head of Chinas lunar exploration program likened the moon and Mars to islands in the South China Sea, a region where territorial disputes have pitted the governments of the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, and others against Beijing.

China has even staked its claim for supremacy in outer space on the silver screen. In The Wandering Earth, a film based on a novella of the same name written by Hugo Award-winner Liu Cixin, a few taikonauts and futuristic truck drivers from China save our planet from total destruction. The absence of America (and other nations) from the narrative may not have been politically motivated, but as Daily Beast contributor David Axe wrote, its a handy metaphor for Chinas rise in space.

Beijing says it always adheres to the principle of use of outer space for peaceful purposes and opposes the weaponization of or an arms race in outer space.

The PLAs readiness to co-opt Chinas developments beyond Earths surface tell us otherwise.

Go here to see the original:

Donald Trump's New Space Force Will Have Trouble Catching Up With China's - The Daily Beast

Few hearts can have been left unbroken on Friday night, when footage emerged of President Donald Trump triumphantly celebrating the killing of Father Christmas by American military forces on Boxing Day.

My children were in floods of tears as we watched a clearly aroused Trump make the following televised statement, sitting beneath a sumptuously decorated Christmas tree at his Mar-a-Lago resort, his hands twitching rhythmically beneath a stars and stripes beach towel that covered his shaking lap.

Father Christmas is dead. No US personnel were lost in the operation, while a large number of Christmass elves and reindeer were killed with him. He died after running into a dead-end tunnel, whimpering and crying and screaming. The toy workshop had been cleared by this time, with elves either surrendering or being shot and killed. Eleven young elves were moved out of the workshop uninjured. The only ones remaining were Christmas in the tunnel, who had dragged three elves with him to certain death. He reached the end of the tunnel, as our dogs chased him down. He ignited his beard, killing himself and the three elves. His body was mutilated by the blast, but test results gave certain and positive identification.

It was difficult to explain to the children why Trump had decided that Santa had to die, as it involved complex ideas concerning economic interventionism and the values of the free market. But apparently Trump had been pleading with that Christmas guy since he came to power in 2016, to abandon his traditional Christmas Eve practice of distributing free toys to all the children in the world.

According to Trump, the jobs of millions of hardworking Americans were at risk, and there was a serious reduction of toy-generated retail revenue in the American economy because Christmas was undercutting everyone with his free toy bullshit. Mr Christmas, Trump explained, has ignored my ultimatums and so this Christmas, if he tries his free toys crap again, we are going to neutralise him permanently, and I hope we can count on the cooperation and technological support of our allies worldwide in tracking him to his Christmas lair.

My children were even more upset to find out that Britain was the only country to answer Trumps call. The chancellor, Sajid Javid, explained the governments position to a sympathetic Laura Kuenssberg and a group of unconvinced children attending a pantomime in central London.

Obviously, America is an important ally for us, and technically what Father Christmas has been doing every Christmas Eve for years now, with impunity, constitutes a socialist intervention in the market, artificially depressing the value of toymakers labour and the value of their goods in the marketplace by the introduction into the equation of free toys at no cost to the consumer, courtesy of some mythic philanthropist who, while naively trying to bring children joy in the short term, seems willingly blind to the long-term unintended consequences of his actions.

My children were even more upset to find out that Britain was the only country to answer Trumps call

Kuenssberg seemed delighted with Javids answer and gave him a Christmas kiss before explaining to the viewer at home: These children here are crying, but sooner or later they were going to stop believing in Father Christmas anyway, so in a way the government has helped them to grow up. Thank you, chancellor.

On the Today programme, Dominic Raab justified the governments actions to a pointless Nick Robinson, explaining that though they had allowed the US to piggyback on to GCHQ systems to track Santas journey home after his final delivery, in the islands of American Samoa, British forces were not involved in the assault on his workshop that left Father Christmas and many of his workers and livestock dead.

Meanwhile, on Nick Ferraris LBC radio show, an evasive Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Vampires Haircut Wall-Spaffer Spunk-Burster Fuck-Business Fuck-the-Families Get-Off-My-Fucking-Laptop Girly-Swot Big-Girls-Blouse Chicken-frit Hulk-Smash Noseringed-Crusties Death-Humbug Technology-Lessons Surrender-Bullshit French-Turds Dog-Whistle Get-Stuffed FactcheckUK@CCHQ Get-Brexit-Done Johnson would neither condone nor endorse the Santa attack.

Whatever we had done, someone would have been offended these days, Turds explained. Nick Ferrari then said he hoped the prime minister had had a good Christmas and wished him a happy new year, before playing a recording of Trump further elaborating on the Christmas-killing operation: The reach of America is long. Father Christmas died in a vicious and violent way, running and crying. He died like a dog. He died like a coward. God bless the United States of America!

For me, Christmas had already died. It died about 10 days earlier, two days after the election of Boris Johnson. It died just at the west end of Oxford Street, when a group of Muslim women went for a day out at Hyde Parks Winter Wonderland funfair, as they have every right so to do, irrespective of their belief in a nonexistent God.

Proving they had assimilated, the Muslim women had chosen to attend an event where all the ancient British yule traditions eating takeaway Chinese food, zooming round and round on terrifying rides with German names, and drinking buckets of Coca-Cola are celebrated. While the women were indulging in the festive act of taking a selfie, a group of men jumped into the frame and one shouted fucking letterbox cunts at them, an unsophisticated response to the complex debate surrounding the rights and wrongs of wearing the burqa.

Of course, its not possible to prove that the prime ministers undoubted popularisation of the word letterbox as a way of insulting Muslim women is directly responsible for the tone of this incident, but it probably is obviously and, leading by example, Turds has certainly changed the rules on what sort of language is publicly acceptable.

Luckily, the Conservative party have dropped, or broadened the scope of, the independent inquiry into Islamophobia in the party that Boris Johnson promised in one of his rare election debate appearances, as its conclusions may have landed rather too close to home. God bless us one and all!

Extra London dates of Stewart Lees latest live show, Snowflake/Tornado, have just been announced at the South Bank Centre in June and July, and it tours nationally from January

View post:

Why Trump killed Santa and other stocking chillers - The Guardian

The survival of eight endangered and threatened species, including four kinds of endemic fish, is in doubt in Arizona, as massive quantities of groundwater are extracted to construct Donald Trumps border wall.

The 30ft-high barrier is under construction on the edge of the San Bernardino national wildlife refuge in south-eastern Arizona, where rare desert springs and crystalline streams provide the only US habitat for the endangered freshwater Ro Yaqui fish.

The regions water reserves are already depleted due to prolonged drought and record high temperatures linked to the climate crisis. The expansion of water-intensive crops such as alfalfa and pecan farms is also draining aquifers in the arid region.

Now, experts fear that construction of this 20-mile stretch of Trumps wall, which began in October, has reduced spring flow and groundwater levels in San Bernardino which provide scarce habitat for the Yaqui topminnow, chub, beautiful shiner and the most vulnerable, the Yaqui catfish.

Theres good reason to believe that the Yaqui fishs only US habitat is drying up as a result of tens or hundreds of thousands of gallons of groundwater being pumped to build the border wall, said Laiken Jordahl, a borderlands campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity who recently visited the area.

In September, the Trump administration pledged to erect 450 to 500 miles of the wall by the end of 2020, an ambitious undertaking to be partially funded by $6bn previously earmarked for defense and counter-drug programmes.

Construction in Arizona and New Mexico is under way, despite multiple ongoing lawsuits challenging the constitutional basis of Trumps executive orders which diverted billions of defense dollars to the wall by declaring a national emergency in February.

Despite the potential for far-reaching long-term consequences, details about the plans are sparse since the government suspended 28 federal laws mandating protections and oversight, relating to clean air and water, endangered species, public lands and the rights of Native Americans, in order to expedite construction.

The waiver includes the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (Nepa), considered the cornerstone of environmental protection in the US, the Endangered Species Act, National Fish and Wildlife Act and Migratory Bird Conservation Act. These laws require robust scientific, environmental and costs analysis before projects can be sanctioned.

With his wall obsession, President Trump has created an environmental crisis at the border, said the Arizona congressman Ral Grijalva. Through environmental waivers and stolen funds, hes building a wall that will deplete precious water resources, desecrate sacred sites and destroy the environmental treasures and biodiversity that make the borderlands unique.

Jordahl added: The wall could not be built without the waiver. Nepa requires the government to choose the least invasive, best option for taxpayers surveillance cameras could be installed every hundred metres at a fraction of the economic and environmental cost. This wall is an unjustifiable project.

More than 100 miles of the new border wall have been slated for Arizona, costing roughly $14m a mile, according to the US army corps of engineers. Thirty-seven federally listed endangered and threatened species live around the Arizona-Mexico border.

The Arizona stretch will need at least 50 million gallons of water, according to Gary Nabhan, an agricultural ecologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson investigating food and water security on the borderlands. (US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said it was still working with the army corps of engineers to estimate the volume of water required for construction and dust suppression.)

Work is progressing rapidly in the Tucson sector which includes the 20-mile San Bernardino stretch. A nearby well has been tapped to extract groundwater which is used to make concrete bases to hold the towering steel slats, and for dust control. Crews have razed a large section of privately owned land near the refuge for the staging area and concrete batching plant. There are currently eight wells being used in the Tucson sector for three sections, according to the CBP.

In addition to the Yaqui fish, water depletion also threatens federally protected Chiricahua leopard frogs, Huachuca water umbel, Mexican garter snakes and Aplomado falcon, as well as the San Bernardino springsnails which are confined to a couple of fragile springs.

The impenetrable bollard wall also encroaches into a crucial migratory corridor where Sombra, one of just three known surviving jaguars in the region, most likely crossed into the US from Mexico. In Arizona, 13 state laws have been suspended in addition to the 28 federal statutes.

Its painful to see how much flora and fauna has already been destroyed in our beautiful desert, said Regina Romero, the newly elected mayor of Tucson.

Throwing billions of dollars into building a wall will not make our borders more secure, but will cause destructive flooding and irreparable damage to migration patterns for many wildlife species only found in the Sonoran desert.

In December, the city council voted to join environmental organizations including the Center for Biological Diversity in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the waiver as an amicus brief. (The plaintiffs are appealing the case to the supreme court.)

CBP remain committed to responsible environmental stewardship and meeting the intent of these [suspended] laws to the greatest extent possible while allowing the Government to meet its requirements to secure the southern border, a spokesman said in a statement.

In total, 93 federally listed endangered and threatened species live close to the 2,000-mile southern border, which is North Americas most arid region. The native wildlife and fauna, as well as migratory birds and butterflies rely on the dwindling wetlands, streams and rivers for survival.

Its the kind of wall concrete footers, absurdly high, with 24/7 lighting that Trump has chosen to build which will cause most disruption to humans, wildlife and vegetation, and the effects will be seen across the continent, said ecologist Nabhan.

Pumping the groundwater will increase the vulnerability of endangered and threatened species and undo 30 years of work costing tens of millions of dollars by governments and conservation groups to protect water habitats.

Go here to read the rest:

Water-guzzling demands of Trump's border wall threaten fish species - The Guardian

As its Christmas gift to America, President Donald Trumps reelection campaign created a Snowflake Victory website that provides honest God-fearing Americans with the arguments they need to demolish any young leftist relatives they may encounter over the holidays.

The site is a series of video clips with accompanying text coaching you through various pro-Trump talking points about the strength of the American economy, the need for a wall, and how there was no quid pro quo with the Ukrainian government. As is typical for Trumps official communications, it relies pretty heavily on the strategy of saying things that arent true.

The environment section, for example, says we have the cleanest air on record. That would be great news if it were true, since recent studies indicate that air pollution is much more harmful than previously believed. The truth, however, is that people in the US are currently living through an unprecedented deterioration of air quality. Thats only partially the fault of Trumps deregulatory initiatives, but his team has a lot more deregulatory initiatives in the pipeline that will make things even worse.

The Snowflake Victory document does convey one critically important truth Trump really does not want to talk about his record on health care. On most topics at hand, Trumps team has something whether true or not to say in favor of the Trump administrations policy initiatives. But on health care, the argument is entirely negative Democrats are bad; Medicare-for-all is bad.

And that makes sense, because when it comes to health care, Trump cant really tout his priorities. Over the past three years, he has pursued policies that would reduce the number of people who have health insurance and the quality of the insurance enjoyed by the insured.

The Snowflake Victory site has a pretty simple talking point when it comes to touting President Trumps health care record: Democrats are bad.

Democrats like to squawk a lot about President Trump, Republicans, and healthcare, but the truth is, the 2020 Democrats are the ones who want to strip you of your private, employer-provided health insurance! goes one talking point. The site talks about how Medicare-for-all requires tax increases, and argues that public option alternatives are designed to kill employer-provided health plans too. It also serves up for the reader what it considers a killer line: Ask your relative if they like going to the DMV? Now tell them to imagine the government controlling their healthcare system because thats exactly what it would be like.

Personally, it has not been my experience that filing reimbursement paperwork with Cigna is a notably superior customer service experience to whats provided at the Department of Motor Vehicles. And I suppose the snowflakes might turn this around and ask their older MAGA relatives if they feel Medicare is really so awful.

But the key thing is this discussion would leave you with no idea that Trump is actually doing stuff on health insurance stuff his reelection campaign cant really defend.

To review the record here, the Trump administration spent months pushing a variety of Affordable Care Act repeal plans, each of which would have cost tens of millions of people their health insurance. None of those efforts succeeded, but it wasnt for lack of trying.

He has followed that up by pushing a variety of Medicaid waiver schemes to allow GOP-held states to restrict low-income families access to health care. His administration is particularly enthusiastic about work requirements that reduce coverage while doing nothing to encourage work. Work requirements in several states were put on hold by federal courts, but Trump is also remaking the federal judiciary and confirming sympathetic judges at a record pace. Consequently, hes likely to ultimately prevail in this effort to reduce coverage.

Speaking of the courts, the Trump administration is also vigorously pursuing a lawsuit that, if successful, would toss out the entire Affordable Care Act.

That would entail a much more dramatic reduction in Medicaid coverage, plus the loss of subsidies for millions of Americans who buy coverage on the exchanges, plus the removal of critical regulatory protections for everyone who gets job-based insurance. GOP appointees on the Fifth Circuit Court seemed poised to give Trump what he wanted on this, then got cold feet just before Christmas. But they didnt rule in favor of upholding the Affordable Care Act. Instead, they came up with some procedural delays that may have been designed to not do anything politically explosive until after the election.

The result of all this is that the uninsured rate in America is actually rising even though the labor market is getting stronger a clear sign that health care remains an important policy area that wont be fixed just by good generic economic conditions. And its a policy area where Trump is pursuing priorities less insurance that his own team has no defense for.

Here is the original post:

Trumps health care record is something hed rather not discuss - Vox.com

One night in 1953, the Reverend Billy Graham awoke at two in the morning, went to his study, and started writing down ideas for the creation of a new religious journal. Graham, then in his mid-thirties, was an internationally renowned evangelist who held revival meetings that were attended by tens of thousands, in stadiums around the world. He had also become the leader of a cohort of pastors, theologians, and other Protestant luminaries who aspired to create a new Christian movement in the United States that avoided the cultural separatism of fundamentalism and the theological liberalism of mainline Protestantism. Harold Ockenga, a prominent minister and another key figure in the movement, called this more culturally engaged vision of conservative Christianity new evangelicalism. Graham believed a serious periodical could serve as the flagship for the movement. The idea for the publication, as he later wrote, was to plant the Evangelical flag in the middle of the road, taking a conservative theological position but a definite liberal approach to social problems. The magazine would be called Christianity Today.

During the next several decades, Grahams movement became the dominant force in American religious life, and perhaps the countrys most influential political faction. From the late nineteen-seventies through the mid-eighties, evangelicals became increasingly aligned with the Republican Party, progressively shifting its priorities to culture-war issues like abortion. Today, evangelical Protestants account for approximately a quarter of the U.S. population and represent the political base of the G.O.P. Despite President Trumps much publicized moral shortcomings, more than eighty per cent of evangelicals supported him in the 2016 election. Last week, however, Mark Galli, the ninth editor to lead Christianity Today since its founding, in 1956, published an editorial calling for President Trumps impeachment and removal from office. The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the presidents political opponents, Galli writes. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral. Galli, who will retire from his post early in the new year, implores evangelicals who continue to stand by Trump to remember who you are and whom you serve. Consider how your justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior.

Galli and other contributors to the magazine have been critical of Trump in the past, but the forcefulness of the editorial took many by surprise. The piece became a sensation, trending online and receiving widespread media coverage. On Twitter, Trump lashed out at the magazine, labelling it a far left publication that has been doing poorly. Grahams eldest son, Franklin, who became the head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association after his fathers death, in 2018, claimed that his father would have been very disappointed by the piece and had, in fact, voted for Trump in the 2016 election. Its obvious that Christianity Today has moved to the left and is representing the elitist liberal wing of evangelicalism, Franklin wrote on Facebook. On Sunday, Timothy Dalrymple, Christianity Todays president and chief executive officer, issued a statement defending the editorial and reaffirming one of Gallis assertions: that the alliance of American evangelicalism with this presidency has wrought enormous damage to Christian witnessthe heart of believers evangelistic mission.

There has long been a segment of evangelical leaders and commentators who are critical of the President, including Russell Moore, the head of the public-policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention; Peter Wehner, the author of the recent book The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump; and David French, a writer and constitutional lawyer whom anti-Trump conservatives courted, unsuccessfully, to mount a third-party bid against Trump in 2016. The Christianity Today editorial reflects much of their distressabout the moral hypocrisy of Christian supporters of Trump, the damage done to efforts to serve as ambassadors for the gospel in an unbelieving world, and the ways Trump and his Administration have perpetuated racism, xenophobia, and other traits that are antithetical to the God of justice and mercy. In late 2017, the Reverend Timothy Keller, a renowned Presbyterian pastor in New York City, wrote a piece for The New Yorker on the future of evangelicalism, with the headline Can Evangelicalism Survive Donald Trump and Roy Moore? Evangelical used to denote people who claimed the high moral ground; now, in popular usage, the word is nearly synonymous with hypocrite, Keller writes. Last year, a group of evangelical pastors, nonprofit leaders, college presidents, and scholars convened at the Billy Graham Center, at Wheaton College, in Illinois, to discuss ways to revitalize the movement in light of its turn toward Trumpism. The meeting disbanded with little to show for it, but the organizers issued a press release that states that an honest dialogue about the current state of American evangelicalism had occurred.

There has been little to suggest that these rumblings of dissent represent any kind of threat to Trumps political support. Many of these Trump critics might be best understood as part of a more urban, internationalist, and broad-minded lite class within the evangelical movement. In his 2007 book, Faith in the Halls of Power, D. Michael Lindsay, a former sociologist at Rice University and currently the president of Gordon College, distinguished between cosmopolitan and populist evangelicalism. The populist wing of the movement depends on mass mobilization and large-scale democratic action and relies upon a rhetoric of dichotomies (as in good and evil) and appeals to the commonsense concerns of average people, Lindsay writes. He points to prominent figures such as James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, and the pastor and televangelist Joel Osteen as representatives of populist evangelicalism. He describes cosmopolitan evangelicals as having greater access to powerful institutions and writes that the social networks they inhabit are populated by leaders from government, business, and entertainment. The problem for Trump opponents is that, when it comes to electoral sway and cultural influence within evangelicalism, the populists exercise far greater leverage.

Lindsays focus is on documenting the emergence of the lite class of evangelicals. He devotes less attention to the root causes of differing cultural and political attitudes between cosmopolitan and populist evangelicalsthough those causes may hold the key to understanding evangelicalisms turn toward Trumpism. Earlier this year, James L. Guth, a political scientist at Furman University, published a study on the prevalence of populist traits among white evangelicals, including distrust of political institutions, preference for strong leadership, and commitment to majority rule. Guth finds that these qualitiescharacteristics that lead to support for populist leaders like Trumppermeate white evangelicalism. It is a disquieting conclusion and suggests that evangelical support for Trump may be far more deeply entrenched than previously understood. Guth suggests that evangelical backing of Trump is less transactionalabout his ability to, say, deliver conservative appointments to the Supreme Courtand more about certain shared cultural beliefs. Guth writes that white evangelicals share with Trump a multitude of attitudes, including his hostility towards immigrants, his Islamophobia, his racism and nativism, as well as his political style, with its nasty politics and assertion of strong, solitary leadership.

The crucial question, then, is: What is driving these attitudes? In a forthcoming book, Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States, the sociologists Andrew L. Whitehead, a professor at Clemson University, and Samuel L. Perry, a professor at the University of Oklahoma, propose a cultural framework for understanding support for Trumpism that goes beyond religious categories. Through extensive survey work, they discover that an amalgam of cultural beliefsfusing Christianity with American identity and centered on the belief that America is, and should be, a Christian nationis a better predictor of support for Trump than economic dissatisfaction, political party, ideology, religion, or a host of other possible determining factors. Whitehead and Perry call this framework Christian nationalism and argue that the popularity of these beliefs among white evangelicals explains their support for Trump.

Notably, Whitehead and Perry find that about a quarter of white evangelicals hold beliefs that do not align with Christian nationalism. They also find that though greater religiosity is correlated with Christian-nationalist beliefs, once those beliefs are accounted for, Americans who engaged in more frequent religious practicechurch attendance, prayer, and bible readingwere less likely than their less observant peers to subscribe to political views normally associated with Christian nationalism, such as believing that refugees from the Middle East pose a terrorist threat to the United States, or that illegal immigrants from Mexico are mostly dangerous criminals. In other words, Whitehead and Perry find that the threat to democratic pluralism is not evangelicalism itself but the culture around evangelicalism. The true motivator for Christian nationalists is not actually their religious beliefs but the preservation of a certain kind of social order, one that is threatened by racial minorities, immigrants, and Muslims. Where Christian nationalists seek to defend particular group boundaries and privileges using Christian language, other religious Americans and fellow Christians who reject Christian nationalism tend to oppose such boundaries and privileges, they write.

Their findings highlight serious obstacles for anyone hoping that white evangelicals will abandon Trump, but they also suggest a path forward. Within evangelicalism, cultural influence in the secular world is highly prized as part of advancing the message of Christianity. Christians concerned about Trumpism and worried about the future of their faith, however, may need to turn their focus inward, to reshape the culture of evangelicalism and counter the corrosive influence of Fox News and other demagogic forces that sow division and breed suspicion. Cultural change is dauntingmuch of what ails the evangelical faithful is not entirely under the control of their leadersbut the challenge is not so different from the one Graham contemplated more than sixty years ago, in the middle of the night, as he launched his movement to unify Christian believers and transform them into a positive force for society.

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What it Would Take for Evangelicals to Turn on President Trump - The New Yorker

Donald Trumps hatred of windmills is the stuff of world-historical record. Long before he launched his presidential bid, Trump lost a legal battle with Scotland over the installation of a wind farm near his golf course there, arguing that the turbines would completely destroy the bucolic Aberdeen Bay and cast a terrible shadow upon the future of tourism for the area. Since becoming president, his claims have grown more derangedin April he argued, with zero basis in fact, that the noise from wind turbines causes cancer. And over the weekend, his quixotic vendetta agains the wind reached new levels of crazy.

Speaking to supporters at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit in Florida on Sunday, the president went on a another deranged tangent about his least-favorite renewable energy source, claiming that wind turbines look like hell, fill the atmosphere with tremendous fumes, and should be put in jail for killing eagles.

Acknowledging that he has never understood wind, despite claiming in his next breath to know windmills very much thanks to his having studied it better than anybody I know, Trump opened his tirade like so:

Theyre manufactured tremendousif youre into thistremendous fumes. Gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything. You talk about the carbon footprintfumes are spewing into the air. Right? Spewing. Whether its in China, Germany, its going into the air. Its our air, their air, everythingright?

After alerting his audience to the fact that we have a world, Trump next expressed grievances about the havoc windmills wreak on the landscape:

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Donald Trump Is Still Feuding With the Wind - Vanity Fair

George Conway, the husband of White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, has speculated that the regular barrage of tweets that President Donald Trump sends is part of a plan to portray himself as not being mentally stable enough to face an impeachment trial.

George Conway, a conservative attorney, took to social media to give his explanation for the president's Twitter use, which on Friday included retweets of compliments from his supporters and comprised of 18 tweets between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. and another 18 between 11 p.m. and midnight, according to the Trump Twitter archive.

The flurry included a retweet of a conspiracy theory about links between the son of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Ukraine, in which Trump wrote, "Wow Crazy Nancy, what's going on? This is big stuff!"

Trump was referring to a video clip shown on the pro-Trump right-wing radical news channel OAN which revisits a debunked story that Pelosi's son, Paul Pelosi Jr., was allegedly doing business in Ukraine with an energy company called Viscoil.

Factcheck.org noted state records show that Viscoil was based in Californianot in Ukraine.

George Conway mused that the Twitter torrent was part of a calculated plan, tweeting at 6.20 a.m. on Saturday morning: "It's as though @realDonaldTrump is trying to establish that he's not mentally competent to stand trial on the articles of impeachment.

"Too bad for him, though, that there's no legal basis for a mental competence requirement in the impeachment process." He capped off his remarks with the hashtag "#IMPOTUS," referring to his nickname for the president which started trending earlier in the month.

George Conway repeated the theme in a later tweet about what will happen during the president's time off over the holiday period, writing: "Sorry@realDonaldTrump's diseased mental state doesn't take vacations."

George Conway pulls no punches in his criticism of Trump, tweeting this week in response to Trump's complaint about the challenges he faces as foreign leader, that it is because other leaders think the president is a "deranged idiot."

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He has publicly questioned the president's mental health, writing in The Atlantic that "you don't need to be a mental-health professional to see that something's very seriously off with Trump."

George Conway has joined forces with other Republicans to form a political action committee known as the Lincoln Project with the aim of ousting Trump.

The president on the other hand has backed the wife of his fierce critic, refusing to fire her when the Office of Special Counsel found she had repeatedly violated the Hatch Act which prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan political activities.

Newsweek has contacted the White House and George Conway for comment.

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George Conway Says Trump's Twitter Dump Is Ploy to Be Ruled Unfit for Trial - Newsweek

National security adviser Robert OBrien on Sunday defended President Donald Trumps decision to roll back disciplinary action against Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, the disgraced Navy SEAL who was accused of war crimes on suspicion of killing an Iraqi teenager and later posing with the corpse for a photograph.

In an interview on ABC News This Week, OBrien contended that there were very serious legal issues with the pretrial portion of Gallaghers legal proceedings, echoing the arguments made by Trump and others in defense of Gallagher.

Ultimately, the president, as commander in chief, has said that hes got the back of our men and women in uniform, OBrien said. He has the power to pardon and to grant clemency. He exercised that power here. This is a case that deserved clemency.

Trumps embrace of Gallagher got messier Friday after the New York Times published video testimony showing men who had worked under him describing their former chief as evil, toxic and an unrepentant killer.

I saw Eddie take a shot at probably a 12-year-old kid, one of the SEALs says in the video testimony.

Asked Sunday whether he finds those comments troubling, OBrien did not respond directly.

Look, its very troubling that we send folks out that have to make split-second decisions dealing with terrorists, dealing with bombmakers, in very, very, difficult decisions overseas, he said. And what the president has said is were going to stand behind our warriors.

OBrien added that the testimony published by the New York Times represents a selective group of SEALs and that there were also many, many SEALs and many folks in the special warfare community that support Chief Gallagher, that appealed to the president and asked him for this clemency.

Trump intervened several times during Gallaghers prosecution, and when a military court in July acquitted the chief petty officer of the majority of war-crimes charges he faced, the president tweeted that he was glad to have been able to help.

Gallagher was convicted of the lesser charge of posing with the body, but Trump ensured that he faced no punishment for that crime, overruling military leadership and firing Navy Secretary Richard Spencer.

When asked about Spencers ouster in late November, Trump said he had to protect my warfighters and called Gallagher one of the ultimate fighters and a tough guy.

Earlier this week, Gallagher socialized with Trump and his inner circle at the presidents Mar-a-Lago estate, suggesting he could become a fixture in Trumps orbit during the 2020 campaign.

Gallagher and his wife, Andrea, posted several photos on their joint Instagram account of their West Palm Beach, Fla., visit.

One photo shows the couple at a conservative student summit where Trump spoke, posing with a group that included Donald Trump Jr., the presidents eldest son.

Another shows them around a dinner table with Eric Trump, another son of the president, and Rudy Giuliani, the presidents personal attorney.

And the couple posted eight candid photos of them chatting with the president and the first lady at Mar-a-Lago, along with a caption declaring that they finally had been able to give Trump a thank-you gift from Mosul, Iraq.

The Washington Posts Missy Ryan contributed to this report.

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National security adviser O'Brien defends Trump's handling of Edward Gallagher case - Stars and Stripes

Even blah a 2 percent-or-so growth rate with unemployment still near or below 4 percent could be enough to help Trump overcome a low approval rating and win again.

But if he really hopes to romp over the eventual Democratic nominee, hell probably need markets to keep popping and growth to bubble higher, especially in the industrial Midwest. And it is far from obvious how the United States can get there from here.

I dont think we are going to see growth reaccelerate in 2020, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moodys Analytics. The trade truce takes the recession risk off the table for now, but its not enough to propel stronger growth. If its a 2 percent economy, then all else being equal and its a typical turnout Trump will probably win. But if theres strong Democratic turnout, especially in manufacturing states with weaker economies, those states will probably flip.

The White House and the rest of the GOP, of course, take a very different view.

They see the China deal and U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement as rocket boosters and predict a breakout in previously stalled capital spending and manufacturing, driving Trump to a Morning in America Electoral College blowout that keeps former Blue Wall Midwestern states firmly in his column. They also talk up what will certainly be a Tax Cuts 2.0 plan Trump will roll out some time next year as a tantalizing treat with no chance of becoming law in 2020.

As long as there is no recession, I think Trump is in good shape and if growth is stronger hes in really good shape, said Stephen Moore, a conservative economist and outside adviser to the president. I think we will grow at 2.5 to 3 percent. And the last two weeks have been really good for Trump with USMCA and the China deal. And they couldnt have come at a better time for him.

As the year draws to a close, here are three big things that could make or break the economy and the stock market as big advantages for Trump heading into his 2020 reelection bid.

Manufacturing in 2020 could also take a significant hit from Boeings decision to halt production of its 737 MAX airliner. | David Ryder/Getty Images

Perhaps the biggest risk to Trump and the toughest knock on his record is the monthslong decline in manufacturing that began as Trumps trade wars really took hold. Manufacturing tipped into recession territory over the summer and has yet to turn around, leading to weaker economies in states that Trump needs to win in 2020. That includes places like Pennsylvania, where the unemployment rate is rising and hit 4.2 percent in October.

Michigan also has an unemployment rate above the national average at 4.1 percent and saw declines in the manufacturing sector in both September and October, though some of that came from the now-ended strike at General Motors.

The question for Trump is whether at least stopping new tariffs on Chinese imports which are often inputs into the manufacturing process can reverse the slide in manufacturing, a sector that represents a small slice of the overall U.S. economy but was critical to the presidents Make America Great Again message. Economists are skeptical that a China deal leaving most of the existing tariffs in place will have a large impact.

Im not sure you are going to see a very sustained change unless uncertainty around trade dissipates completely, said Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics. One positive is the threat of new tariffs at least is not there, though honestly Im not sure its really gone away.

Farooqi noted that some readings on capital spending are looking positive, including in the Empire State and Philadelphia Fed surveys. But its unclear that a broad uptick in capital spending the White House is hoping for will materialize.

Manufacturing in 2020 could also take a significant hit from Boeings decision to halt production of its 737 Max airliner after serious safety concerns. Boeing is a giant part of U.S. manufacturing and the hit will be felt not just in the loss of production of planes but also well down the supply chain.

The halt to Boeing 737 Max production next month will likely shave half a percentage point off first-quarter economic growth, RSM economist Joe Brusuelas said in a note to clients. The economic damage will likely be noted via the inventory channel, factory orders, industrial production and likely headcount among aircraft suppliers.

Trump grew so concerned about the Boeing impact he placed a direct call to the companys now-former CEO, Dennis Muilenburg.

President Donald Trump and chairman of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Trump loves to brag about new records in the stock market, tweeting about them relentlessly since taking office in 2017. And hes correct that there have been big gains, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up more than 50 percent since his election in November 2016 (his preferred time frame for calculating the increase).

Market professionals say Trumps corporate tax cuts and deregulatory agenda in energy, financial services and other industries get much of the credit for the gains. But the Fed played a role as well.

Stocks took a big plunge in the second half of 2018 as the trade wars raged and the Fed quickly stepped in early this year after heavy brow-beating from Trump with a series of rate cuts that helped push markets higher even as overall growth slowed and the impact of Trumps tax cuts faded.

But earlier this month, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell signaled the central bank is out of the rate-cutting business for now, removing one catalyst for future market gains. And a very strong November jobs report only reinforced the Feds view that the economy should be fine without added stimulus.

This did not sit particularly well with Trump, though he has generally reduced the frequency of his attacks on Powell.

Would be sooo great if the Fed would further lower interest rates and quantitative ease, Trump tweeted Dec. 17. The Dollar is very strong against other currencies and there is almost no inflation. This is the time to do it. Exports would zoom!

Thats not likely to happen. And traders worry that expected slow growth and current high market valuations mean 2020 might not be a boom year for Wall Street.

The thing about gains this year was they largely came from an increase in multiples and not earnings growth, said Steve Massocca of Wedbush Securities, referring to a phenomena in which the price of a stock goes up without the underlying company actually earning much more money. And a lot of it was driven by monetary policy not just from the U.S., but from the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank. This is an expensive market and the tea leaves dont show significant further gains.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Vice President Joe Biden. | M. Scott Mahaskey, POLITICO

One concern bubbling around economic and Wall Street circles these days is that while impeachment doesnt seem like a big deal everyone thinks Trump will get acquitted in the Senate the 2020 election could produce a significant drag on markets and economic growth.

Polls suggest a close race no matter who emerges with the Democratic nomination. And even if the nominee is a more business-friendly moderate like former Vice President Joe Biden, a switch in power in the executive branch could bring dramatically different tax and regulatory policies. Some of this will depend on the outcome at the congressional level, because even a President Elizabeth Warren would not be able to reverse Trumps tax cuts with the GOP holding at least one house of Congress. But a radical change in course in the White House is a widely held concern.

What is health care going to look like? Are you going to be able to have corporate profits? Are we going to have certain taxes on corporate profits? What are they going to do with corporate buybacks? What are they going to do with corporate legislation? It's a really tough environment, Gary Cohn, Trumps former National Economic Council director, said at a recent event hosted by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Trumps allies are worried about this as well, wondering whether a race that is expected to be more expensive and nastier than perhaps any in American history could create a drag on corporate spending and stock prices that in turn dents the presidents consistently solid ratings on the economy.

Im a little surprised the market is doing so well now given what I call the Elizabeth Warren risk, Moore said. Lets say you get to a 50-50 race, then you start pricing in the likelihood of Warren or really whoever it might be winning, and then the market reacts to that and that drags everything down.

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3 factors that could make or break Trump in 2020 - POLITICO