Meta named former Trump adviser Dina Powell McCormick to serve as president and vice chair Monday, further cementing the company’s growing ties to Republicans and President Donald Trump’s White House. In addition to a long career on Wall Street, Powell McCormick served as Trump’s deputy national security adviser during his first term. She was also a member of the George W. Bush administration. She first joined Meta’s board last April, part of a broader play by the social media and artificial intelligence giant to hire Republicans following Trump’s election. In a statement, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg praised Powell McCormick’s “experience at the highest levels of global finance, combined with her deep relationships around the world, [which] makes her uniquely suited to help Meta manage this next phase of growth.” Rightward trend: Powell McCormick’s time in global finance — she spent 16 years as a partner at Goldman Sachs and was most recently a top executive at banking company BDT & MSD Partners — could be a major asset to Meta as it raises hundreds of billions of dollars to build out data centers and other AI-related infrastructure. But her GOP pedigree and proximity to Trump likely played a significant role in her hiring as well. Since Trump’s election, Meta has worked to curry favor with Republicans in the White House and on Capitol Hill. The company elevated former GOP official Joel Kaplan to serve as global affairs lead last January, simultaneously tapping Kevin Martin, a former Republican chair of the Federal Communications Commission, as his No. 2. Under pressure from Republicans, last year Meta also rolled back many of its former rules related to content moderation. In 2024, the company apologized to congressional Republicans — specifically Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chair of the House Judiciary Committee — for removing content that contained disinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic. A Meta spokesperson declined to comment when asked whether Powell McCormick’s ties to Trump and Republicans played a role in her hiring. Trump thumbs up: In a Truth Social post Monday, Trump congratulated Powell McCormick and said Zuckerberg made a “great choice.” The president called her “a fantastic, and very talented, person, who served the Trump Administration with strength and distinction!”

BRUSSELS — The U.S. must preserve and grow the dominance of its financial sector worldwide, President Donald Trump argues in his new National Security Strategy. The 33-page document is a rare formal explanation of Trump’s foreign policy worldview by his administration, and can shape U.S. policy priorities. “The United States boasts the world’s leading financial and capital markets, which are pillars of American influence that afford policymakers significant leverage and tools to advance America’s national security priorities,” the document states. “But our leadership position cannot be taken for granted,” it continues, calling on America to leverage “our dynamic free market system and our leadership in digital finance and innovation to ensure that our markets continue to be the most dynamic, liquid, and secure and remain the envy of the world.” The strategy lists the “world’s leading financial system and capital markets, including the dollar’s global reserve currency status” as one of the U.S. key levers of power. Trump’s comments come as Europe looks to grow its own finance system to reduce the continent’s dependence on Wall Street. The EU has put forward a broad plan to boost its own finance industry by strengthening its single market for investment, and it will draft policy plans in the coming months aiming to boost its banks’ ability to compete globally. It is also creating a digital version of the euro currency, which would reduce its reliance on the dollar and on U.S. payment giants.

LONDON — Britain’s shortest-serving Prime Minister Liz Truss is launching her own YouTube show. She wants it to be the home of a “counter-revolution.” “The Liz Truss Show,” which launches Friday, will be a “bold new program in a media landscape dominated by groupthink and timid consensus,” a press statement announcing the show declared. She will be “taking the gloves off,” it added. Truss, who spent just 49 days in office before being ousted by her own party, has been active on the lucrative U.S. speech circuit since leaving office in 2022. She has repeatedly insisted the market crisis which triggered her downfall was not her fault. “The Deep State tried to destroy me but now I’m back and excited to launch this show,” she said. Truss is making the show with American journalist John Solomon’s Just the News network. Episodes will be released each week on both video and audio platforms including YouTube, Rumble and Spotify. The ex-PM said:  “People in Britain, America, and across the free world are tired of being talked down to. They’re tired of experts who get everything wrong, elites who refuse to listen, and weak leaders who won’t stand up for Western values.” After losing office, Truss wrote her memoir, which blamed the Bank of England, Treasury and Office for Budget Responsibility watchdog for her economic woes.

The EU will on Thursday unveil plans to supercharge its finance industry, tearing up swathes of rules in a bid to take on Wall Street. The package, which is massive in scope and ambition, would amend at least 10 financial laws to crack down on protectionism and unclog the EU’s financial plumbing. But Brussels’ ambitions to create a U.S.-style financial market will reopen political wounds, especially its plan to create a powerful EU watchdog for financial markets. Despite the bloc’s urgent need for private investment, progress could be bogged down by political divisions over the strategy. “If we’re stuck in a never-ending discussion about how to organize supervision … that will not take us closer to our objective,” Swedish Minister for Financial Markets Niklas Wykman said. The Commission’s overarching goal is to remove barriers to investment in the bloc, allowing more money to flow to struggling businesses so the EU can better keep up with economic powerhouses like the U.S. and China. With national budgets under strain from a bruising pandemic and years of inflation, Brussels is hoping to unlock €11 trillion in cash savings held by EU citizens in their bank accounts to breathe life into the economy. It plans to do that by breaking down technical barriers and busting protectionism between the EU’s 27 national money markets, as well as by changing rules that create national barriers to finance flows and by creating a powerful EU watchdog for financial markets. The EU’s finance chief, Maria Luís Albuquerque, who has led work on the revamp, told POLITICO in an interview: “It’s going to be a difficult discussion, of course, but these are the ones worth having, right?” | Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu via Getty Images Some capitals, though, view the proposal as a power grab and are determined to keep oversight of financial markets at the national level. And there are other tweaks in the package that will dredge up painful recent debates over issues like crypto rules or trading data. Countries are already warning that the Commission should keep its nose out of their business. Sweden, the EU’s best-in-class country for financial markets, has warned the EU executive not to interfere with any rules but instead to focus on boosting the appetite of EU citizens to invest in products like stocks and bonds, rather than parking their cash in savings accounts. Supervision is “not the problem and it’s not the solution to the problem,” Wykman told POLITICO. Among other ideas the Commission was mulling ahead of the official publication — according to documents seen by POLITICO — are a stronger EU-wide public ‘ticker tape’ of trading data, an expanded pilot program for decentralized finance to include all products and crypto firms, and a reduction in paperwork to make it easier to sell investment funds across the EU. The plans are sure to please some industry players, like stock exchanges or central securities-depositary groups that operate in multiple EU countries. But they will also inevitably be opposed by others, such as asset managers who are reluctant to be subject to increased EU oversight, or stock exchanges that don’t want to see their pricey trading data services undercut by a stronger public EU ticker tape. The technical shifts, plus the idea of an EU-wide watchdog, are ambitious but are also reminders of how limited the Commission’s powers are compared those deployed by EU countries at the national level. The Commission can’t make game-changing reforms in areas like national pensions, taxation or insolvency law for businesses, all of which are major obstacles to a single money market. Nor will many national governments spend the political capital needed to make domestic reforms for the sake of the EU economy. Nonetheless, the Commission is sticking to its guns. The EU’s finance chief, Maria Luís Albuquerque, who has led work on the revamp, told POLITICO in an interview: “It’s going to be a difficult discussion, of course, but these are the ones worth having, right?”

The looming Supreme Court showdown over President Donald Trump’s tariffs amounts to an epic clash between two of the most deeply ingrained tenets of the conservative legal movement. The first is that presidents need and are entitled to extreme deference on matters of national security and foreign policy. That precept suggests the six conservative justices may be willing to uphold Trump’s unprecedented move to bypass Congress and unilaterally impose sweeping global tariffs. On the other hand, an indisputable hallmark of the Roberts court is a deep mistrust for government meddling in the free market. That ideological predilection, which has fueled a slew of pro-business, anti-regulatory rulings, could prompt the court’s conservatives to view Trump’s tariffs more skeptically than they view many of his other, non-economic policies. “I think that some of the justices that matter are going to feel a bit torn,” said Jonathan Adler, a professor at William and Mary Law School. “What’s interesting here is that this case requires some of the conservative justices to confront a conflict between different strands of their own jurisprudence.” In the case set for oral arguments Wednesday, Trump is asking the justices to overturn lower-court decisions that declared many of the tariffs — the centerpiece of Trump’s economic agenda — an illegal overreach. The lower courts found that a 1977 law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, did not authorize the president to impose such broad tariffs. FOREIGN RELATIONS AND THE KAVANAUGH FACTOR Lurking just below the surface in the case is a key dynamic: Should Trump’s tariffs be treated as a garden-variety economic policy, or are they a core part of the president’s management of international relations and national security? “How this case comes out will depend in large part on what the frame or the lens on it is,” said Vikram Amar, a law professor at the University of California at Davis. “Is this a case about unbridled, unauthorized — at least not explicitly authorized — broad executive authority, or is this a case about presidential ability to discharge foreign affairs and national security responsibilities?” That question could be most acute for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, whose public appearances frequently include an account of his searing experiences working in President George W. Bush’s White House after 9/11. Kavanaugh is often the high court’s most outspoken voice for the president’s need for flexibility and dexterity in response to international challenges. But he is also highly skeptical of government power in the economic realm. A year before Trump nominated him to the Supreme Court, Kavanaugh declared his fealty to the conservative theory known as the “major questions doctrine” — the notion that courts should block executive branch actions of widespread impact when their legal basis is ambiguous. Staking out his position in a case involving net neutrality rules, Kavanaugh said he saw the doctrine applying to “a narrow class of cases involving major agency rules of great economic and political significance.” “If an agency wants to exercise expansive regulatory authority over some major social or economic activity … an ambiguous grant of statutory authority is not enough,” Kavanaugh wrote. “Congress must clearly authorize an agency to take such a major regulatory action.” Under this sort of test, the widespread tariffs Trump implemented would be on shaky legal ground because the 1977 law at issue, known as IEEPA, does not expressly empower the president to enact tariffs. However, just four months ago, Kavanaugh emphasized that the court’s skepticism about legally dubious executive branch actions has an important limit. “The major questions canon has not been applied by this Court in the national security or foreign policy contexts. … The canon does not translate to those contexts because of the nature of Presidential decisionmaking in response to ever-changing national security threats and diplomatic challenges,” he wrote in a solo concurring opinion in a case about funding to improve internet and phone service for low-income and rural Americans. TRUMP CLAIMS TARIFF POWER Trump announced his sweeping, worldwide “Liberation Day” tariffs in April, hitting nearly every country in the world with a minimum 10 percent tariff and including rates reaching 50 percent on some nations. The president claimed the authority to impose the tariffs under IEEPA, which Congress passed to try to rein in broader powers granted by a predecessor statute. IEEPA gives the president the right to “regulate … importation” of items from foreign countries during a presidentially declared national emergency. It’s fairly clear that in such an emergency the president has the power to put an embargo on foreign individuals or particular foreign countries. The administration contends that broader power to regulate and prohibit imports implies the related power to impose import taxes better known as tariffs, but opponents of Trump’s move say Congress knew how to confer that power on the president if it wanted to do so. “Nowhere does it say tariffs, taxes, duties,” noted Elizabeth Goitein, who studies emergency powers at New York University’s Brennan Center. A federal appeals court ruled, 7-4, in August that Trump’s broad tariffs exceeded his authority under IEEPA. However, the Federal Circuit’s majority stopped short of saying the law could never be used to impose more targeted tariffs. WATCHING THE COURT’S CENTER Many experts consider Kavanaugh likely to lean toward blessing the tariffs, although his vote isn’t a sure thing. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch are thought by court watchers to be even more likely to uphold the tariffs. Assuming the three liberal justices vote against the administration, that leaves Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett in play, although under that scenario both Roberts and Barrett would have to join the liberals to assemble enough votes to strike down the tariffs. “The center of the court is going to be especially interesting to watch,” Roman Martinez, a former law clerk to Kavanaugh and Roberts, said during a discussion at Georgetown Law. “I think this case will probably split the conservatives,” said Cary Coglianese, a University of Pennsylvania law school professor who specializes in administrative law and regulatory processes. Among the liberal justices, the Trump administration’s strongest prospect for support in the tariffs cases may be Obama appointee Elena Kagan. Like Kavanaugh, she saw presidential decisionmaking up close in White House jobs, although hers were under President Bill Clinton.thathis travel ban policy. That seemed to show deference to the president’s need for flexibility, although she joined the court’s liberal wing in dissent six months later when the court issued a final, 5-4 ruling upholding the travel ban. ‘THE STAKES IN THIS CASE COULD NOT BE HIGHER’ Some court watchers say the conservative justices, including Trump’s three high court appointees, could be hesitant to rule against Trump on an issue so central to his policy agenda. Just as many saw politics at work in the Supreme Court’s 2012 decision to leave a key part of President Barack Obama’s signature health care law in place, the justices might decide not to provoke the political fury that would be unleashed by striking down the tariffs. “This, along with ICE and immigration … is the paramount domestic policy initiative of this president,” said Donald Verrilli, who served as solicitor general under Obama. “One way of thinking about this is that the justices who are going to determine the outcome of this case feel like they need a really pretty strong case on the legal merits before they’re going to decide to cross swords with the president.” The tariffs case also comes to the court amid an extraordinary winning streak for Trump and his policies. Since January, Trump has brought an unprecedented number of emergency appeals to the justices and has prevailed in more than 20 of them, freeing his hand to gut foreign aid, fire leaders of federal agencies, and strip hundreds of thousands of immigrants of deportation protections. Trump and his administration have sought to keep that streak going by painting a potential defeat for his tariff policy as so cataclysmic that the justices would be ill-advised to take that risk. Trump warned on the eve of the arguments that the case “is, literally, LIFE OR DEATH for our Country.” Trump’s lawyers have also pushed the rhetorical envelope. The Trump administration’s formal plea to the high court to take up the tariff case turned heads in the legal community by including language so hyperbolic that it seemed designed to remind the justices of the intense retort they are certain to receive from Trump if they rule against him. “The stakes in this case could not be higher,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote. “The President and his Cabinet officials have determined that the tariffs are promoting peace and unprecedented economic prosperity, and that the denial of tariff authority would expose our nation to trade retaliation without effective defenses and thrust America back to the brink of economic catastrophe.” THE WALL STREET JOURNAL EFFECT That sort of apocalyptic verbiage is a rarity in Justice Department filings with the high court. While the justices will likely be reluctant to mount a direct challenge to those sorts of presidential predictions, the administration’s sky-is-falling claims could actually prompt some of the court’s conservatives to give Trump less running room, lawyers who practice before the court said. Even as the legal challenges have been playing out, Trump has raised doubts about whether the tariffs his imposed are a response to bona fide emergencies or more mundane concerns. Last month, Trump declared he was imposing an additional 10 percent tariff on Canada to express his irritation at a TV advertisement the province of Ontario aired showcasing President Ronald Reagan’s opposition to tariffs. “If the justices think that these assertions are kind of pretextual, I think that could shape their thinking about the other more purely legal issues in the case,” said Martinez, who authored an amicus brief for the Chamber of Commerce opposing the tariffs. “It could … bring into sharp relief in their eyes the dangers of giving the president this broad authority to impose tariffs. So, that’s a dynamic that could play out, as well.” Another factor undercutting the potential political blowback the court could receive from voiding the Trump tariffs: Most of the Republican establishment is profoundly unenthusiastic about them. Even some Trump backers might quietly celebrate a court ruling preventing the kind of broad-based tariffs the president announced in April. For decades, liberals and many legal academics have argued that the Roberts court is beholden to business interests, delivering a broad blow to the power of federal government agencies to regulate businesses, reining in federal authority to prevent development on environmental grounds and weakening federal enforcement of securities laws. If one subscribes to the notion that the opinions of some billionaires hold outsized sway at the court, well-heeled business people and investors have been sharply negative about the tariffs, although the markets have shrugged them off at least for now. “Tariffs are taxes,” one of many Wall Street Journal editorials skewering Trump’s tariffs declared. “If he can impose a tax on any imported product any time he wants, he really has the power of a king.” In short, while a ruling against the tariffs would surely infuriate Trump, it wouldn’t do much if anything to hurt the conservative justices’ standing in their legal, political and social circles. A RULING AGAINST HIM WOULDN’T LEAVE TRUMP WITHOUT TOOLS If the justices are looking for some sort of middle ground on tariffs or are divided in a way that makes an up-or-down ruling on Trump’s powers infeasible, they have a couple of options. The court could reject Trump’s broadest and most extreme tariffs, while highlighting his options under laws other than IEEPA. Many legal experts have pointed to powers Congress gave the president in 1974 to put quotas on imports and impose tariffs of up to 15 percent “to deal with large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits,” a concept that trade specialists say encompasses trade deficits. Those experts argue that Congress’ decision to pass that law, known as the Trade Act, undercuts Trump’s arguments that he should be able to use IEEPA to address the trade deficit problem. However, the Trade Act comes with clear limits, declaring that those tariffs and trade restrictions must be “temporary” and last no longer than five months, unless Congress extends them. That may not represent enough of a cudgel for the Trump administration to use in talks with foreign countries in an effort to get them to agree to longer-lasting trade deals. Another concession the Supreme Court could offer Trump is to allow some tariffs involved in the legal fight to remain in effect. Part of the battle is over tariffs he imposed on Canada and China over trafficking in fentanyl and drug precursors into the U.S. and on Mexico to address those problems as well as migration and human trafficking. A ruling upholding those tariffs, but striking down the more global import taxes linked to trade deficits, would allow Trump to claim a partial win but probably won’t insulate the justices from a presidential rebuke. THE OPTICS OF TURNABOUT Despite the efforts some justices may make to distinguish the worldwide tariffs from other policies federal courts have blocked under the major questions doctrine, if the court allows Trump’s tariffs, many politicians and commentators are likely to accuse the justices of a double-standard. Exhibit No. 1 in this argument will be the Supreme Court’s ruling striking down one of President Joe Biden’s signature policies: his student debt relief plan. That 6-3 decision, wielding the doctrine to invalidate student debt forgiveness, was handed down by the same nine justices over two years ago. “It’s arguably quite analogous,” Goitein said. “Will the Supreme Court act consistently? Of course, the justices might say in a ruling upholding the Trump tariffs that they are pivoting based on legal substance and not politics. But for a court that many members of the public already view skeptically, the result may look partisan. “This will be a true test of the Supreme Court in many, many ways,” Goitein said. Erica Orden contributed to this report.

Although the White House is pushing to resume ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas, President Donald Trump and his closest aides are worried that Israel’s brazen strike against Hamas leaders in Qatar this week has derailed such negotiations — possibly for good. The administration’s frustrations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have deepened since the Israeli strike on Tuesday, according to a person close to the president’s national security team and a U.S. official familiar with the situation, both granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. In fact, Trump and top aides have come to question whether Netanyahu, who authorized the strike and has threatened more, was trying to sabotage the talks, according to the person close to Trump’s team. “Every time they’re making progress, it seems like he bombs someone,” the person said. “That’s why the president and his aides are so frustrated with Netanyahu.” Reports from the region have suggested that Israel failed to kill the top Hamas members it was targeting but hit others in the group in Doha. At the same time, the two people said, the White House has been working to calm the Qataris, whose top leaders have used words such as “barbaric” to describe the Israeli move. Qatar’s prime minister will be visiting New York and Washington on Friday, and is expected to meet U.S. officials to discuss the Israeli strike and the status of ceasefire talks in Gaza, according to a person familiar with his visit. He is expected to see Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump peace envoy Steve Witkoff. The person close to the president’s national security team said Rubio has also spoken in recent days with the Qatari premier, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani, about prioritizing a plan to expand its defense cooperation agreement with the U.S. Rubio is scheduled to visit Israel next week. It’s not clear if he will swing by Qatar, but such trips usually involve stops in multiple capitals. The initial response from the White House, a statement from spokesperson Karoline Leavitt at Tuesday’s briefing, made clear that Trump was frustrated with Israel’s decision to carry out a mission inside Qatar, a key partner and home to a major American military base that Trump visited in May. The administration has also stressed that it learned about the attack from the U.S. military, and that Israel did little to notify and did not consult with U.S. officials in advance. Leavitt’s initial statement asserted that the administration had warned officials in Doha ahead of the strike. After a Qatari official responded online and noted that they’d received no such warning, Trump amended Leavitt’s statement in a post on social media, saying that Israel hadn’t given the White House an adequate warning about the attack, and that phone calls from special envoy Steve Witkoff to Qatari officials came “too late.” According to a defense official, also granted anonymity to discuss the internal conversations, “the vague notice given was wholly insufficient [and] lacked the specifics needed to adequately warn regional partners.” That’s partly why Trump’s statement, which went further than Leavitt had, was so blunt in declaring that the decision was “made by Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu, it was not a decision made by me.” He continued: “Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a Sovereign Nation and close Ally of the United States, that is working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker Peace, does not advance Israel or America’s goals.” “That was the most publicly critical I’ve seen a Republican president be of an Israeli leader in quite some time,” the person close to Trump’s national security team said. Trump’s phone call with Netanyahu on Tuesday, the first of two conversations between them following the attack, was even more “heated,” the person added. “The president was very displeased, and he made that known.” The tense phone conversation was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. When Trump traveled to the Middle East in May, he opted not to visit Israel. And he told leaders in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates that, even then, he’d grown frustrated with Netanyahu, the person close to his team said. According to the U.S. official, Trump’s “inability to control Netanyahu” is especially vexing to American officials when the Israeli prime minister makes moves that directly affect U.S. relations in places such as Syria and Qatar. The official was unaware, however, of any Trump administration plans to penalize Netanyahu. The Israeli attack has frustrated many Arab countries who had staked hopes on the Qatar-led mediation to end the fighting in Gaza. The war in the strip has angered many of these countries’ populations, leaving their governments — which tend to be monarchies or otherwise autocracies — worried about their own stability. Netanyahu’s threat in the days since the Qatar strike that Israel will attack any country that hosts Hamas representatives is particularly worrisome for U.S. allies because it could undermine efforts at mediation in many places. There’s also the question of whether Hamas itself will engage in talks now. As far as Qatar, the “focus is on our national security and sovereignty, which were directly threatened by this attack. All other political considerations have taken a back seat,” a Qatari official said, having been granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue. “When one party chooses to bomb the mediator and one of the negotiating delegations, what kind of talks can be considered valid?” Paul McLeary and Felicia Schwartz contributed to this report.

LONDON — Britain’s Ambassador to the United States Peter Mandelson referred to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein as his “best pal,” according to a letter released by U.S. lawmakers. A note purportedly from Mandelson is included in a “birthday book” marking Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003, arranged by the sex offender’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. It was released Monday by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform. POLITICO has not been able to independently confirm the note’s veracity. A number of pages in the document include pictures of Mandelson — at the time a Labour member of parliament — and a message which reads: “Once upon a time, an intelligent, sharp-witted man they call ‘mysterious’ parachuted into my life.” It continues: “You would spend many hours just waiting for him to turn up. And often, no sooner were you getting used to having him around, you would suddenly be alone…. again. “Leaving you with some ‘interesting’ friends to entertain instead…. Or just some dogs to keep you company (he wasn’t always so keen on them). “But then he would parachute back in… Very occasionally, taking you by surprise in some far off places. “Or in one of his glorious homes he likes to share with his friends (yum yum). It concludes: “But, wherever he is in the world, he remains my best pal! Happy birthday, Jeffrey we love you!!” The existence of Mandelson’s contribution to the book was first reported by the Wall Street Journal in July. The British ambassador has previously distanced himself from Epstein, and a spokesperson told the BBC Monday: “Lord Mandelson has long been clear that he very much regrets ever having been introduced to Epstein.” The British government has so far rowed in strongly behind Mandelson, who has been a key point person between Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the Trump administration, earning praise from the U.S. president in the Oval Office earlier this year for his “beautiful accent.” Health Secretary Wes Streeting on Tuesday denied the message could lead to a change of ambassador, as he warned against implying any wrongdoing by association. The Cabinet minister told LBC that “the ambassador has been clear that he regrets ever having been introduced to Epstein.” “And who can blame him? Who would want to be associated with Epstein given what we know now about the horrific crimes that he perpetrated.” He added of Mandelson: “I’m sure he will have more to say. But I don’t think we should tar everyone as kind of guilty by association.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has weathered market turbulence from President Donald Trump’s trade wars, the administration’s clashes with the Federal Reserve and battles with fellow officials. But his biggest challenge may lie ahead, with signs that the economy is faltering just eight months into the Trump presidency. Throughout Trump’s second term, Bessent has built strong credibility with financial markets even amid significant policy confusion and bolstered his relationship with the president, cementing his role as a power center in the administration. Stocks have continued to climb even as tariffs have eaten into corporate profits and growth has slowed. Now, however, the labor market is losing momentum, while inflation is ticking back up. The housing market is largely frozen because of high mortgage rates, and swelling fiscal deficits are fueling pressure on the cost of government debt. A more painful economic slowdown, particularly one accompanied by falling markets, would test Bessent’s mettle in new ways. “There’s a high degree of confidence right now in the competency of the team at Treasury,” said one person close to the White House who was granted anonymity to speak more freely about administration personnel. But “there are some concerns about whether these problems are just unmanageable, without a lot of pain. There’s going to be pain. The question is … what can you do to mitigate it?” Bessent has maintained a reputation on Wall Street as being level-headed and rational, despite whipsawing trade policies and high-profile conflicts with other Trump advisers, such as Elon Musk, and most recently, housing finance regulator Bill Pulte. POLITICO reported that Bessent threatened to punch Pulte at a private dinner attended by dozens of other people after Pulte allegedly badmouthed him to the president. Regardless of that episode, Bessent has demonstrated considerable staying power in the administration. “He is a calming force,” said Scott Wren, senior global market strategist for Wells Fargo Investment Institute. “The financial markets in general have some confidence that things aren’t going to go too far off the rails if he has a lot of influence.” People familiar with their relationship say Bessent enjoys a particularly close relationship with Trump that is centered on the president’s respect for the Treasury chief’s advice. “He got picked because he convinced the president that he could give the president honest analysis of different policies and what the outcomes might be of those policies,” said a second person close to the White House, also granted anonymity. “Let’s just say, President Trump respecting the judgment of others on things he himself knows a lot about is not [his] usual approach to things.” “Scott has given him good advice,” another person with close ties to the administration said. “There are weird scenarios where [Trump] doesn’t quite want the yes person. He wants to be told not no, but not yes.” That confidence in Bessent has been vindicated by the seemingly positive feedback loop between him and markets. Stocks plunged in early April when Trump announced his sweeping new tariff regime, where the levies were set much higher than investors were expecting. Stress in bond markets prompted the president to change course, partly based on Bessent’s counsel. Trump then made Bessent one of his lead trade negotiators — and equities have since steadily recovered, repeatedly hitting fresh record highs in recent months. The Treasury chief was also an important voice in advising the president that he was risking market turmoil if he were to attempt to remove Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Another indicator of Bessent’s relationship with markets: Yields on government debt that matures in 10 years — a key benchmark for mortgages and consumer loans and a central focus for Bessent — have eased during his tenure even as bond investors have grown more nervous about the ballooning federal debt. But Bessent can’t count on faith from markets alone to maintain his reputation. Stocks have been driven upward by the artificial intelligence boom, and the economy has held up better than many feared in the wake of the highest tariffs in a century. A pessimistic turn on either front could lead to a sudden plunge in markets, as could other unexpected shocks. “You should never, as a policymaker, take credit for what happened to equity prices,” said Vincent Reinhart, chief economist of investments at BNY. “It can break your heart a couple of weeks later — or sooner than that.” Still, people close to the administration said Bessent has enough goodwill as a communicator on behalf of the president that he’s likely to remain a central figure even in the event of an economic crisis. “Scott is one of the most respected members of the administration,” the first person close to the White House said. “Period.”

France summoned U.S. Ambassador Charles Kushner after he published an open letter accusing President Emmanuel Macron’s government of not doing enough to combat rising antisemitism in his country. In a statement published late Sunday, the French foreign ministry said it had summoned Kushner, the father of U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, to appear on Monday over what it called “unacceptable” allegations that “violate international law, particularly the duty not to interfere in the internal affairs of states.” Summoning an ambassador is a formal diplomatic tool used by host countries to express their disapproval. The French statement said Kushner’s allegations “fall short of the quality of the transatlantic relationship between France and the United States and the trust that should result.” Kushner’s open letter, published Sunday in the Wall Street Journal, noted the U.S. envoy’s “deep concern over the dramatic rise of antisemitism in France and the lack of sufficient action by your government to confront it.” “President Trump and I have Jewish children and share Jewish grandchildren,” Kushner wrote. “I know how he feels about antisemitism.” Antisemitic incidents have surged in France following the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza. France said it “firmly refutes” Kushner’s claims, adding that its “authorities are demonstrating total mobilization, as these acts [of antisemitism] are intolerable.” Kushner’s letter followed France’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state, which is being spearheaded by Macron ahead of next month’s U.N. General Assembly. That sparked a vociferous response from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who claimed it was “fueling the antisemitic fire in France.” POLITICO contacted the U.S. State Department seeking comment.

The financial world is barreling toward a lobbying civil war in Washington. Cryptocurrency companies are increasingly coming to blows with banks and other Wall Street firms over Republican-led efforts to enact new rules for digital assets, creating a clash between powerful lobbying groups that is poised to come to a head next month when Congress returns from its August recess. The crypto industry has notched a series of lobbying victories since President Donald Trump returned to office earlier this year, including the first-ever legislative overhaul of digital asset regulations. Now, with Republicans on Capitol Hill preparing to pass a second, larger bill aimed at boosting the crypto market, Wall Street groups are starting to pump the brakes, warning that some crypto-friendly reforms could upend their businesses and threaten financial stability. The worry for some banks is that lenders could face deposit flight, with customers fleeing to more loosely-regulated crypto products. But the fight isn’t confined to Capitol Hill. It’s also spilling into more obscure corners of financial policy. For example, bank groups are trying to slow a push by crypto firms to secure national banking licenses. At the same time, crypto executives are lobbying the White House to preserve a ban on banks charging fees for access to customer data. Meanwhile, some traditional financial firms are warning Wall Street regulators about efforts to make stock trading look more like crypto. “Change is hard, and people — especially entrenched, successful people in organizations — are always going to shudder a little bit at the thought of a sea change,” said Dan Zinn, general counsel at OTC Markets, which operates stock trading systems. “It is absolutely waking everybody up, whether that is through a little bit of fear or a little bit of excitement.” The clash highlights how the lobbying dynamics on financial policy issues have shifted vastly in recent months as Washington has moved to embrace the crypto sector. The fervor on the right for embracing the crypto industry, which has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Washington influence efforts in recent years, has in some cases outweighed the interests of traditional financial firms, which normally align with much of the GOP’s financial policy agenda. The lobbying fight has kicked into high gear this month as bank trade associations have called on lawmakers to retroactively amend through forthcoming legislation an already-signed crypto law that Congress adopted in July, sparking pushback from the crypto industry. (House Republicans are also pushing for retroactive changes to the measure after they opted to accept the Senate’s version of the bill.) Bankers have long been seen as skeptical of crypto. Leading industry figures including JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon previously derided digital assets and their Washington agenda has long differed from the goals of digital asset firms. “This is a turf war that’s been going on for years, and frankly prevented us from passing any regulatory clarity up until now,” said Rep. Warren Davidson, an Ohio Republican who sits on the House Financial Services Committee and has been a longtime ally to the crypto industry. But for months, the leading trade associations representing the banking industry offered only tepid public criticism of fast-moving GOP legislation that aimed at giving regulatory legitimacy to digital assets. After Trump signed into law a major bill last month creating new rules for so-called stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency that is pegged to the value of the dollar, they have become more vocal. Groups like the American Bankers Association are now pressing senators to make changes to the stablecoin law when they take up a second, larger crypto market structure bill next month. They want to block all crypto companies from paying yield to customers who hold stablecoins and repeal a section of the law that they say allows state-chartered uninsured depository institutions to operate nationwide without proper supervision. The concerns are especially pronounced for smaller banks, which say they could suffer from customers pulling their money out and parking it instead in crypto products like stablecoins. “It feels like there’s a move to replace us,” said Christopher Williston, president and CEO of the Independent Bankers Association of Texas, the only major bank group that came out against the stablecoin bill outright. The stablecoin bill, known as the GENIUS Act, is “a fundamental threat to bank deposits” for small lenders, Williston said, adding that the new law feels like “the thousand-and-first cut” for community banks “after 15 years of regulatory burden” imposed by reforms that followed the 2008 financial crisis. Crypto firms, which had lobbied for years for a stablecoin bill, insist the matter is settled. The GENIUS Act “is settled law,” said Summer Mersinger, CEO of the Blockchain Association, a leading industry trade group. “There was robust debate on the Hill, and the way this bill came out was a compromise from policymakers. So we really shouldn’t be trying to go back and reopen that.” Paige Pidano Paridon, executive vice president at the Bank Policy Institute, which represents large banks, said the group wanted to work collaboratively with the crypto industry to develop “clear, fair rules.” This isn’t bank vs. crypto — it’s about working together to create rules of the road that apply equally to everyone while protecting consumers and the financial system,” she said. “America’s financial system is built on trust and when your average consumer can’t distinguish between what’s safe and what’s not, risk increases, and American competitiveness suffers.” At the Securities and Exchange Commission, legacy financial players have been advocating for the Wall Street regulator to proceed cautiously as the agency considers the crypto industry’s pleas to “tokenize” U.S. stocks. Tokenization refers to the process of putting such assets onto the same blockchain technology that underpins crypto tokens like bitcoin and ether. Proponents argue tokenization will help make trading stocks faster and cheaper around the world. Yet, some like the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and Citadel Securities, the trading behemoth owned by GOP megadonor Ken Griffin, argue that tokenized stocks should follow the same rules as the thousands of conventional shares that trade today. Lobbyists expect the tokenization fight will play a role in the upcoming debate on Capitol Hill over a market structure bill, which would divvy up crypto oversight between market regulators. Senate Republicans have vowed to pass such a bill this fall. To be sure, the banking industry has hardly lost its influence in Washington, where the big bank CEOs still win Oval Office meetings and lenders are benefiting from Republicans’ sweeping deregulatory agenda. And some in the traditional financial industry are leaning into the promise of crypto. But, at the same time, the banking industry is navigating a political landscape that was shaped by the rush of campaign cash that crypto executives poured into the last election — and are again promising for the coming midterms. Crypto is a top policy priority for the White House and Trump, whose family is invested in various crypto ventures. Those dynamics make the industry a formidable force. At the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, crypto executives successfully lobbied the Trump administration to back down from its effort to join with big banks to nullify a Biden-era “open banking” rule governing consumer data-sharing. The policy prohibits banks from charging for access to that data, which fintechs and crypto companies use to power their services and make it easier for customers to set up accounts and move money. After crypto executives teamed up with fintechs to intervene, the CFPB is now going back to the drawing table on the rule — instead of gutting it entirely. “Banks are still respected,” Davidson said, adding that Republicans have worked with the industry to roll back some post-2008 regulations. “But frankly, there are other aspects that banks have really enjoyed, benefits that have shielded them in a lot of ways from the market.”