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President Trump said Thursday there is an upside to rising oil prices as a result of the war against Iran — the U.S. will make money as a major producer. Mr. Trump, posting on Truth Social, was responding to oil prices that flirted with $100 per barrel as Tehran clamped down on tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, where about 20% of the world’s oil supply transits. “The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money,” Mr. Trump posted. Mr. Trump’s post on...

President Trump signaled on Wednesday that he plans to tap into the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an effort to bring down rising gas prices. “I filled it up once, and I’ll fill it up again, but right now, we’ll reduce it a little bit, and that brings the prices down,” Trump said during an interview with Local 12 in Kentucky. The president shrugged off rising gas prices as a “matter of war” earlier in the day and expressed confidence the market would settle soon. I figured we’d be hit a little bit. We were hit less than I thought...

MIAMI — President Trump said Monday that he’s brought prices down so much that Democrats have stopped using the word “affordability.” “They also gave us very high prices and then they said the word, ‘affordability.’ That’s first time I ever heard it,” Trump said at the annual House Republican retreat in Miami. “My first day in office, they said, ‘affordability,’ They’re the ones that caused the problem,” he continued. “But we’re really bringing down prices big. “Do you notice you don’t hear that word anymore? … They don’t say it anymore because we brought down prices so much.” Trump said...

Eight months before the crucial midterm elections, the administration of President Donald Trump is battling high living costs. The strike against Iran threatens to undo the first successes achieved in the struggle against inflation via falling energy prices. Ludwig Erhard understood the formula for sustained political success. The equation was as simple as it was powerful: stable money circulating in free markets coordinates the millions of individual decisions made by households, businesses, and credit institutions -- day after day -- in the most efficient manner. Stable money requires a lean state. Public debt, meanwhile, is widely regarded as the primary...

Iran has threatened to attack any oil tanker passing through the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s oil transits. US oil futures rose 18% to about $108 a barrel, their highest level since July 19, 2022. Brent futures, the global benchmark, increased 16%, near $108 a barrel. Surging oil prices have weighed heavily on stocks in recent days, as traders fear that a prolonged spike in fuel prices could lead to another spike in inflation and hurt the economy. Dow futures dropped more than 800 points, or 1.7%. S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures fell 1.6%. Triggered by...

Gas prices will dip below $3 a gallon “again before too long,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright promised Sunday — as he denied the US was targeting energy infrastructure in Iran. “The Trump administration has been all in on lowering energy prices, and I would say quite successfully,” Wright told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “We have seen a dramatic decline in gasoline prices, in diesel prices. Soon, you will see it in electricity prices as well.” The national gas price average is $3.45 a gallon as of Sunday, per the American Automobile Association. It was just below $3...

A commercial oil tanker was set ablaze in the Strait of Hormuz after it was struck by an Iranian suicide drone, the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Saturday, with a US Navy mission to safeguard ships through the region possibly still weeks away. The IRGC claimed the tanker — the Prima, sailing under a Maltese flag — had ignored repeated warnings not to enter the strait, according to Tasnim News Agency, Iran’s state media. The flow of oil through the strait — one of the world’s most vital energy arteries connecting the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman...

It’s hard for taxpayers to stomach! The Baltimore mayor’s office spent more than $890,000 on lavish meals and parties — including crab feasts, catered “farewell” bashes and massive tabs at Ravens football games, according to a report Wednesday. Mayor Brandon Scott’s administration blew taxpayer cash on over-the-top perks for staffers — including $52,589 on grub in the Mayoral Suite at Ravens and Orioles games — in a gross violation of the city’s “public funds” rules, according to baltimorebrew.com. One of the elaborate meals was served at a $3,636 farewell “office party” for Scott’s former campaign manager Marvin James, which featured...

The Republicans' "Big Beautiful Bill" (BBB) enacted last year cut the nationwide federal tax burden by billions of dollars. In Oregon that amounted to more than $300 million in cuts. Rep. Nancy Nathanson (D-Eugene) introduced state legislation to convert the federal cuts into state tax increases, saying "enriching taxpayers is not a high priority for us in Oregon. Folks who previously paid higher taxes to the feds can afford to keep paying those higher taxes to the state government." The Representative dismissed the intent of the BBB to stimulate business investment as "not as important as funding increased budgets for...

RICHMOND, Va. (7News) — Legislators in Virginia could see a nearly 300% pay increase if an amendment added to the budget by Democrats in the state Senate makes it to Gov. Abigail Spanberger's desk. The Democrat controlled Virginia Senate and House of Delegates have both passed their versions of the commonwealth's budget, largely along party lines.

Wholesale prices rose at a faster-than-expected pace in January, countering hopes that inflation was easing, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. The Producer Price Index which excludes volatile food and energy prices, increased a seasonally adjusted 0.8%, more than the 0.6% gain in December and well ahead of the Dow Jones consensus estimate for 0.3%. On an all-items basis, the headline PPI rose 0.5%, also above the forecast for 0.3% and 0.1 percentage point more than the prior month.

Sometimes people just vote with their feet. And a new poll out this week suggests many New Yorkers might be willing to do just that. The Marist poll reveals that one in three New Yorkers are planning to leave the State in the next five years. After the week we’ve just had I suppose you might sympathize with the 7% of respondents who said they want to leave because they’re fed up with the weather. It hasn’t been much fun trying to get around the streets as Mayor Mamdani´s paid volunteers made their unsupervised efforts to push the snow around....

Sorry, Gav. Sorry, Gretch. Sorry, Pete. And nothing for you, Josh Shapiro. The DNC establishment selected newly elected Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger as the face of their party to make their official response to President Trump's State of the Union speech. And all anyone could conclude from it was 'what were they thinking?' [Rebuttal video at link] With her knobby nose and missing lips, she had the unfortunate appearance of a gnome, and not a cute one. She can't help that, but Breitbart notes that her gestures were off, too, which she could have practiced a little. Abigail Spanberger's response...

There's one utterly reliable thing about socialism: It fails, every time it's tried. It may fail on the national scale, like the Soviet Union, or it may fail on the municipal scale, like New York City is in the throes of doing right now. The "democratic socialist" mayor of the Big Apple, Zohran Mamdani, has never seen a commie policy he didn't like.One of those policies is freezing rents in the city. That's already producing predictable results: Landlords are selling out and leaving.When Zohran Mamdani ran for mayor of New York City, he made one promise unmistakably clear: he would...

Over the course of 2025, the average tariff rate on U.S. imports increased from 2.6 to 13 percent. In this blog post, we ask how much of the tariffs were paid by the U.S., using import data through November 2025. We find that nearly 90 percent of the tariffs’ economic burden fell on U.S. firms and consumers. [...] We highlight two main results. First, 94 percent of the tariff incidence was borne by the U.S. in the first eight months of 2025. This result means that a 10 percent tariff caused only a 0.6 percentage point decline in foreign export...

SUPPLEMENTING OUR BEEF SUPPLY: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed a Proclamation temporarily increasing the U.S. tariff-rate quota for lean beef trimmings to boost supply and make ground beef affordable for American consumers despite current supply challenges.The Proclamation permits an additional 80,000 metric tons of lean beef trimmings per year from Argentina to be imported tariff-free in four quarterly tranches of 20,000 metric tons each.The Secretary of Agriculture, in consultation with the United States Trade Representative, will continue monitoring domestic lean beef supplies and related imports and will advise on any additional actions needed to ensure an adequate domestic supply.RESPONDING...

Democrats successfully defended a conservative seat in rural Louisiana on Saturday night, as Chasity Martinez defeated Republican Brad Daigle by a dominant 62-38 margin—a massive 37-point overperformance compared to the 2024 presidential result. Republicans had hoped to score their first legislative pickup of any kind during Donald Trump’s second term, and they had good reason to think they might succeed in the 60th House District. Voters in the district, which includes part of Assumption and Iberville parishes (Louisiana’s equivalent of counties), had long backed state and local Democrats but had moved decidedly toward Republicans on the federal level in recent...

(NewsNation) — It’s never been easier to tap a button and have dinner show up at your door, but the line between convenience and cost is drawing new attention. A recent New York Times story explored the rise of America’s food-delivery culture, prompting fresh scrutiny of how much people are spending on apps like DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub. The Times spoke to a 34-year-old woman in San Diego with a $50,000 annual salary who said she spends at least $200 to $300 a week on food delivery — a pattern she said has eaten away at her savings. Another...

After Abigail Spanberger won the Virginia governor’s race going away in November, the consensus among the political chattering class was that it’s a foregone conclusion the Republicans will lose in next year’s midterms. The experts said this was a referendum on President Donald Trump, and an early sign that his America First movement is cracking. The same experts pointed to “key Democrat wins” in the New Jersey governor’s race and the New York City mayoral election as further indicators of a coming blue wave. To be so smug in their predictions, the experts had to ignore the fact that the...

After campaigning on “affordability,” Virginia state Democrats have introduced a measure to more than double their salaries, now that fellow Democrat Abigail Spanberger is in the Governor’s Mansion, giving them control of all three branches of their state’s government. “Virginia Democrats are now trying to give themselves a PAY RAISE after proposing thousands of dollars in new taxes hammering working families, the Virginia Senate Republican Caucus warned in a X.com post highlighting how the legislators’ pay raise would hurt taxpayers: “They ran on ‘affordability,’ but all they’ve done is introduce insane left-wing policies and take from your pocket to line...