DL Open Thread: Monday, May 19, 2025
Could Be A Tough Week For The Economy:
Stock futures tumbled on Monday as a downgrade of the U.S.′ credit rating by Moody’s caused Treasury yields to spike.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 212 points, or 0.5%. S&P 500 futures pulled back 1%, while Nasdaq-100 futures lost 1.4%.
Moody’s on Friday after the bell bumped the country’s rating down by one notch to Aa1 from Aaa, bringing the agency in line with its peers. The firm cited the financing challenges tied to the federal government’s growing budget deficit and the ramifications of rolling over existing U.S. debts in a period of high borrowing costs.
The debt downgrade pressured bond prices, sending yields higher, at a time when the economy is already under pressure from President Donald Trump’s unfolding tariff policy. The 30-year U.S. bond yield traded above 5% on Monday and the 10-year yield topped 4.5%, levels that pressured equity markets last month and helped cause Trump to back off his stiffest tariffs. Loans for houses, cars and credit cards track these rates.
An end to the ‘Trump Tariff Relief Rally’?
Trump Orders Government To Stop Enforcing Rules He Doesn’t Like:
Across the government, the Trump administration is trying a new tactic for gutting federal rules and policies that the president dislikes: simply stop enforcing them.
“The conscious effort to slow down enforcement on such a broad scale is something we have never seen in previous administrations,” said Donald Kettl, a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy. “It amounts to a dramatic assertion of presidential power and authority.”
This account of the Trump administration’s efforts to scale back application of many laws is based on interviews with more than a dozen federal employees across seven agencies, as well as a review of internal documents and federal data. The employees spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
Trump officials say these efforts will allow the president to swiftly scrap regulations that are burdening a variety of businesses and industries.
Critics say the administration is breaking the law and sidestepping the rulemaking process that presidents of both parties have routinely followed.
“They’re making across-the-board decisions not to enforce whole categories of standards, and it is of very dubious legality,” said Richard Revesz, who led the White House regulatory affairs office under President Joe Biden and is now the faculty director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law.
‘Make Life Better’. A simple message that Democrats can, and should, run on:
Democratic National Committee Vice Chair Malcolm Kenyatta said he thinks he has a winning message ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
“Our mission, and then ultimately our message, can be summed up for me in three words,” he told MSNBC’s Alex Witt on Sunday. “Make life better.”
Kenyatta said President Donald Trump has spent his first months in office “making life worse and miserable” for ordinary Americans while enriching himself and his donors.
Democrats, he said, can campaign on making life better for people across demographics, from seniors worried about Social Security cuts to working Americans in need of a raise.
Kenyatta, who is also a state representative in Pennsylvania, said that means focusing on specific issues and standing up to Trump at the same time.
“If you’re talking about how we make life better for folks, then you have to have a conversation at the same time that we can’t fund tax breaks for billionaires and then cut the social safety net for the American worker,” he said. “That puts you in a position where you’re doing both.”
Rock ‘N Roll Drama Never Ends. Even when we’re talking octogenarians:
The Who’s drummer Zak Starkey has been fired from the band for a second time, just one month after he was fired then quickly reinstated.
In an Instagram post on Monday, the group’s guitarist, Pete Townshend, announced that Starkey was no longer part of the band, just months shy of their farewell tour across North America.
Starkey, the Who’s drummer since 1996, later claimed his departure was not a mutual decision.
“I was fired two weeks after reinstatement and asked to make a statement saying I had quit to follow my other musical endeavours,” Starkey wrote on social media, an hour after Townshend’s statement.
“Not true. I love The Who and would never have quit and let down so many amazing people who stood up for me through all this madness.”
He added there had been “weeks of mayhem of me going ‘in and out and in and out’ … like a bleeding squeezebox”.
A Hope Center For Kent County? I’m all for it:
The New Castle County Hope Center is a hotel-turned-homeless shelter that opened in December 2020 in an effort to get unhoused people safe from the winter weather and COVID-19 pandemic.
The county-owned facility has since evolved into not only a property that provides emergency housing, but one that offers a more holistic and connected model of care.
Continuity and connectivity of care is something State Sen. Eric Buckson (R-Dover) is looking to bring to Central Delaware after seeing the success of the Hope Center model in New Castle County.
Spotlight Delaware Previews The Week, And How You Can Get Involved. Featuring ‘Dueling Foghorns’:
Also on Monday, Delaware’s competing Port of Wilmington oversight boards will each hold public meetings to discuss the embattled facility and its ambitious plan to expand through construction of a $635 million container terminal in Edgemoor.
The meetings will occur less than a month after the legislature’s port oversight task force held an inaugural meeting that became the latest front in a power struggle between legislators and Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer.
That task force will meet again Monday between 4 and 4:45 p.m. The meeting will be held virtually. For details about attending, click here.
After the meeting concludes, the board of the Diamond State Port Corporation is scheduled to hold its first meeting with new members who had been appointed by Meyer. Those appointments followed a monthslong fight over control of the port board that culminated in March when the Delaware Supreme Court declared that Meyer could rescind nominations made by his predecessor.
The Diamond State Port Corporation board will meet in New Castle between and 5 and 7 p.m. Monday evening. Details about how to attend in person or virtually can be found here.
Perhaps it’s just me, but isn’t there a better way to get a $635 mill project moving than to have two separate entities working at cross-purposes meeting separately?
What do you want to talk about?
Really? Joe Biden having prostate cancer doesn’t make the roundup?
As usual with all things Biden, the real news is the media coverage and the MAGA spin.
I, uh, figured that everybody had already seen that one.