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Oregon Senate Democrats passed a bump stock ban late last week and the legislation also allows local municipalities to ban the carry of firearms in buildings where public meetings are held. A bump stock ban once existed at the federal level but the Supreme Court of the United States struck it down on June 14, 2024. In the majority opinion for the bump stock decision, Justice Clarence Thomas made clear the ban faltered in claiming bump stocks turn semiautomatic firearms into machine guns: Semiautomatic firearms, which require shooters to reengage the trigger for every shot, are not machineguns. This case...

Elon Musk’s Tesla suffered a massive 71 percent drop in profits for the first quarter, but the company’s shares reacted positively on Wednesday morning after Musk pledged to decrease his time spent working with the federal government on DOGE, but not halt his involvement entirely. Musk also continued his criticism of Donald Trump’s tariffs on China during his earnings call with analysts. CNBC reports that Tesla, the electric vehicle giant, has reported a staggering 71 percent year-over-year plunge in net income, accompanied by a 20 percent drop in revenue from car sales, according to its latest quarterly earnings report. The...

UnitedHealth Group’s stock nosedived Thursday morning after earnings fell short of Wall Street’s expectations, and the healthcare giant substantially downgraded its projected results for 2025, citing problems in its Medicare business. There were steep declines in share prices across the insurance industry, as investors reacted to the bellwether company’s unexpected financial woes. In premarket trading, shares of UnitedHealth fell more than 20%. Meanwhile Humana shares dropped more than 13%, while Elevance was down nearly 11% and CVS fell almost 8%. [Snip] UnitedHealth slashed its guidance for the full year, to a range of $26 to $26.50 per share in adjusted...

Thrifty Big Apple shoppers were rushing to stock up on the basics Wednesday after President Trump’s sweeping reciprocal tariffs briefly went into effect — before he then announced a 90-day pause. “Pray to God that we all survive,” said Angelia Gonzalez, a 48-year-old mother who was filling her cart at the East Harlem Costco. “I feel some kind of way. I mean, I have a family.” Gonzalez travelled across town from her longtime home in West Harlem to stock up at the wholesaler over fears that prices will soon skyrocket from Trump’s massive “reciprocal” tariffs, which went into effect at...

Wall Street kicked off Friday with another brutal stretch of losses driven by President Trump’s new tariffs despite stronger than expected March jobs data. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down more than 1,200 points shortly before 10:30 a.m. EDT Friday, a day after the market suffered its worse single-day of trading in five years. The S&P 500 index was down 3.6 percent, and the Nasdaq composite was down 3.5 percent. All three major indexes took serious losses Thursday, the first full day of trading after Trump’s announcement of up to $600 billion in new import taxes. The scale and...

Nike stock is plunging on Thursday, the day after President Donald Trump announced reciprocal tariffs that will end the nation’s decades-long free trade policy. “NKE was last seen 11.3% lower at $57.62, as investors digest the long-term impact of rising supply chain costs on the company’s margins,” Schaeffer’s Investment Research reports. “The stock is set to snap a three-day win streak, extending its late-March post-earnings bear gap and hitting its lowest level since November 2017. Nike stock now carries a 23.5% year-to-date deficit.” On Wednesday evening, Trump announced reciprocal tariffs — adding a 34 percent tariff on China, a 46...

On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “All In,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) defended his comments about taking glee in Tesla’s stock — which his state’s retirement fund owns shares of — falling and stated that “It’s a little bit personal.” But it’s also because CEO Elon Musk is “attacking the portfolios of working Minnesotans and working Americans who’ve paid into these programs that he calls a Ponzi scheme.” Walz said, “It’s a little bit personal. I don’t want to be disingenuous. The guy does bother me. It’s a little bit personal. But look, my beef on this is, is that...

Shortened title. Full title: Congressional shooter James Hodgkinson was abusive alcoholic, foster daughter told judge before her overdose death Teenager Cathy Rainbolt told a judge her foster father hit her in the face when she failed to mow the lawn correctly. She got hit in the face when she argued. She got hit and dragged by the hair when she tried to get away. Her foster father was James "Tom" Hodgkinson, who is now infamous after shooting U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, two police officers and a staffer on a Virginia ballfield Wednesday. Rainbolt told the judge that Hodgkinson...

Elon Musk and former Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) sparred on Wednesday as the failed vice presidential candidate celebrated the recent dip in Tesla’s stock price. “If you need a little boost during the day, check out Tesla stock,” Walz wrote, featuring a video of the former vice presidential candidate’s town hall in Wisconsin on Tuesday night. He even suggested that audience members that have a Tesla can pull the badge off of the electric car. Many analysts have blamed Musk’s more political role for the price performance of Tesla, while there have been many protests of Tesla dealerships, including one...

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Tuesday on CNN’s “News Central” that President Donald Trump’s 25% tariff on Canada is making the stock market go “downhill faster than the American bobsled team.” Ford said, “Canadians love Americans. We love the U.S. It’s one person that’s causing these problems. I’ve talked to senators and Congress people and governors, Republicans and Democrats, not one of them agree with him. I’ve talked to business CEOs of the largest companies they totally disagree with us. President Trump ran on a mandate to lower costs, to create more jobs. This is going to do exactly the...

Do they know something that we do not? All of a sudden, hedge funds are betting billions of dollars that the stock market is going to crash. If they are wrong, they will lose a ton of money, but if they are correct they will make absolutely enormous profits. So why are they feeling so confident that a stock market collapse is in our future? Without a doubt, the real economy has been moving in the wrong direction for quite some time, but for years there have been relentless efforts to keep the financial markets propped up. Could it be...

Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT) stock opened as much as 12% higher on Wednesday after the company announced it would expand into financial services, including cryptocurrency funds and other investment vehicles like customized exchange-traded funds. According to a press release, the company will invest as much as $250 million into the rollout, which will launch under the brand name Truth.Fi. That investment, which is less than a third of the company's total cash pile of $700 million, will be kept under the custody of Charles Schwab. Schwab will also "broadly advise" on investments and strategies. Trump Media, which operates...

Last month, during the thick of the holidays, I found myself in a rare though not totally unprecedented predicament: I wasn’t sure which way to bet on the stock market in the year ahead. In my December column, I told you there were three possible 2025 outcomes – all of them seemingly likely, and to a vexingly similar degree. I also told you that I’d come back to you when I could conclude which is, in fact, the most likely. Well, I’m back – and with an answer that has surprised me in more ways than one. Recall the three...

Some advocates hope he could be the X factor, after previous attempts have fallen short Rep. Zach Nunn’s military background tells him that success in any given mission requires an understanding of the battle-space — and in the fight to ban congressional stock trading, it will always “be stacked against” those urging change, the Iowa Republican and Air Force Reserve colonel said. Members of Congress who trade stocks may not be eager to stop, but with Donald Trump coming back to the White House, Nunn hopes momentum could shift.“We are now working on building a bipartisan coalition of members. But...

Congressional Democrats appeared to greatly enhance their wealth in 2024, despite only earning a yearly salary of $174,000. Democrat stock portfolios in 2024 far outpaced the S&P 500, a study by Unusual Whales found Tuesday, spiking on average 31 percent, seven points higher than the S&P 500 (24 percent) and five points higher than Republican colleagues (26 percent). Unusual Whales estimated each member’s stock portfolio performance by calculating the value of each stock from the beginning of 2024 to the end of 2024. The biggest Democrat offender was Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), whose portfolio spiked 142 percent, the report...

President Biden has declared his support for banning sitting members of Congress from trading stock — an eleventh-hour pivot after four years of silence over the controversy. “Nobody in the Congress should be able to make money in the stock market while they’re in the Congress,” Biden told the “More Perfect Union” podcast. “I don’t know how you look your constituents in the eye and know because of the job they gave you, gave you an inside track to make more money,” Biden said, adding: “I think we should be changing the law.” .....

Stock futures surged and Treasury yields climbed sharply after Donald Trump’s decisive election victory, as traders piled into trades that are seen as aligning with the former president and president-elect’s economic agenda. Investors scrambled to position themselves for new tariffs, tax cuts, and big shifts in energy and regulatory policy. Futures on all three major indexes advanced in premarket trading. S&P 500 futures rose over 2 percent, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average futures gained close to 3 percent and the Nasdaq Composite climbed 1.3 percent. The Russell 2000—a barometer for smaller, economically sensitive companies—rallied nearly 6 percent, reflecting optimism...

The massive run up in shares of DJT, the stock symbol for Donald J. Trump’s social media company Truth Social, has been described by me and others as a meme-induced phenomenon. The stock is buoyed by what some might say is an irrational degree of exuberance that Trump will win the presidential election – which in turn would, somehow, be great for the bottom line of a money-losing platform that will face stiff competition and a difficult business environment whether or not Trump takes the White House But there definitely is talk swirling around Trump World, including people who hang...

Stock Chart - Five week performance - $12 to $46 - Somebody thinks Donald J. Trump is going to win the election?

Paul Pelosi, the husband of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), sold between $500,000 and $1 million worth of Visa stock, according to public records, just weeks before the Justice Department launched a lawsuit against the credit card company on Tuesday. The finding raises concerns that many members of Congress trade stocks based on information unavailable to the public. Seventy-six percent of voters believe congressional members and their spouses have an “unfair advantage” in trading stocks. Paul Pelosi traded the stock before the DOJ launched a probe into Visa for allegedly monopolizing the debit card market, Bloomberg reported. The New York Post...