Passing major milestones such as the 40,000 barrier the Dow Jones Industrial Average eclipsed this week makes for a nice headline, but market experts do not take much else from the move. What really matters is what underpins the market, namely, whether companies are seeing sustainable profits, where monetary and fiscal policy is positioned and what the future landscape is for economic health and specifically the labor market. Fortunately for the market, most of those variables look pretty...

Donald Trump’s allies are drawing up detailed proposals to implement the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s plans for an unprecedented immigration crackdown, including an effort that would deport asylum seekers to other countries, according to people involved in the effort. A cadre of former Trump administration officials, Trump supporters and conservative immigration wonks are writing executive orders, policy memos and other documents in a bid to transform campaign rhetoric...

There has been steadily increasing interest in a federal job guarantee since Bernie Sanders reintroduced the concept to the American public in the wake of the 2016 presidential primaries. The idea of a job guarantee is to provide a public option for struggling workers to find gainful employment — especially contributing to badly needed public infrastructure projects but also a wide range of other service-based work in education, health, recreation, and the arts. The idea...

Shortly after dozens of felony charges were rolled out against former President Donald Trump by the Democratic District Attorney in Manhattan a little over a year ago, I reviewed the case and concluded, "the indictment reeks."  At the time, my initial impression boiled down to this: "[The case] is widely and rightly seen as a profoundly feeble case, with even the New York Times conceding that the legal theory behind it rests on a novel, 'untested,' and 'risky' bank shot,...

The Biden administration expanded tariffs on imported solar panels on Thursday, capping a busy week of escalating trade barriers for climate tech that risks inviting a backlash from China in exchange for cementing the political coalition behind climate policy ahead of a high-stakes presidential election. The new solar tariffs apply to dual-sided panels that are popular with utility-scale solar farms and constitute the majority of US solar imports, and which had previously been exempted from...

The farm bill, which governs nutrition, agriculture, and conservation policy, is up for renewal again, and the negotiations in Congress have hit a familiar road block: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, an anti-hunger program used by millions of low-income Americans. House Republicans and Senate Democrats have introduced competing versions of the bill, and they differ significantly when it comes to the so-called nutrition title, which includes funding for SNAP. That has...

Israel Defense Forces have recovered the bodies of three Israeli hostages in Gaza including Shani Louk, who became an international symbol of Hamas’ savagery after images showed her being paraded around half-naked in the back of a pickup truck during the Oct. 7 attacks. IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari announced Friday that they recovered Louk, 22, and two additional victims of the music festival massacre, Amit Buskila, 28, and Itzik Gelernter, 58, during the Rafah operation