Author: News Room

On Sunday evening, as well-heeled guests trickled out of a screening of “Becoming Katharine Graham,” a documentary on the fabled former Washington Post publisher, they couldn’t help but remark on how much has changed at the paper, and in Washington.Under Ms. Graham, from 1963 to 1991, the publication transformed itself from a regional newspaper into one of the country’s leading journalistic institutions. The film traces her life, focusing on the period she is best known for: standing up to the Nixon administration and publishing the Pentagon Papers, which helped change public opinion about the Vietnam War, and Bob Woodward and…

Nobody knows how exactly how long ago a marbled and tender boneless short-loin steak came to be known across the United States as a New York strip. Everybody agrees, though, that the nomenclature wasn’t the least bit controversial until last Friday, when Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick of Texas proposed a new name: the Texas strip.Noting that Texas leads the nation in heads of cattle, Mr. Patrick announced in a post on X that he was working with the State Senate on a resolution that would officially rebrand the cut.Mr. Patrick was clear in his post that he hoped the Texas-centric…

Stocks fell sharply on Monday afternoon after President Trump affirmed tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, dashing investors’ hopes of a last-minute reprieve and intensifying concern that the sweeping tariffs could hit corporate profits and fuel inflation.The S&P 500 fell 1.8 percent, the index’s biggest daily drop this year. The technology-heavy Nasdaq fell 2.6 percent, nearly crossing the threshold for the index to be in a “correction,” defined as a sell-off of more than 10 percent from a recent peak. The Nasdaq is now just over 9 percent below its high in mid-December.The afternoon slump in the markets followed…

European defense stocks soared on Monday after the region’s leaders vowed to take on “the heavy lifting” of defending Ukraine from Russia. The rally comes as the three-year-old war appears set to move into a new stage after an Oval Office blowup on Friday put President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on the outs with President Trump.Shares in Europe’s defense giants — including the British defense contractor BAE Systems, the German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall and the Italian aerospace and defense specialist Leonardo — hit record highs on Monday. The sector’s surge has helped pushed the Stoxx Europe 600, a benchmark once…

President Trump campaigned on a promise to bring down interest rates. And he has fulfilled that pledge in one key way, with U.S. government bond yields falling sharply.But the reason for the drop is an unnerving one: Investors appear to be more on edge about the outlook for the economy.Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said the Trump administration considers the 10-year Treasury yield a benchmark of its success in lowering rates. The yield tracks the rate of interest the government pays to borrow from investors over 10 years and has dropped since mid-January, to around 4.2 percent from 4.8 percent.…

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has deleted hundreds more claims from its mistake-plagued “wall of receipts,” erasing $4 billion in additional savings that the group said it had made for U.S. taxpayers.Late Sunday night, the group erased or altered more than 1,000 contracts it had claimed to cancel, representing more than 40 percent of all the contracts listed on its site last week. The deleted items included five of the seven largest savings that it had claimed credit for just last week. At the same time, the group added about 1,000 additional canceled contracts, worth smaller total savings.It was…

At the biggest toy industry trade show in the Western Hemisphere this weekend, toy makers, as usual, displayed seemingly endless rows of stuffed animals, action figures and puzzles, hoping to entice retailers to pick their products.But this year, the chatter at Toy Fair New York was dominated not by the next Barbie, but a larger game, one of global tactics, that could make most toys more expensive for U.S. consumers.Almost 80 percent of toys sold in the United States are made in China. Last week, just as toy vendors from across the United States and dozens of other countries started…

There is the theory that President Trump is still bitter about his Canadian hotel ventures that went bust.Some, on social media, have speculated that a 2019 photograph in which Justin Trudeau appeared poised to kiss Melania Trump, the first lady, at a Group of 7 gathering in France, left Mr. Trump with a grudge against the dashing Canadian prime minister.And then there is the transactional view, that Mr. Trump sees the acquisition of Canada as the 51st state as the ultimate real estate deal that would seal his presidential legacy.As Mr. Trump prepares to push ahead with a new round…

The grocery chain Kroger said on Monday that its chief executive, Rodney McMullen, resigned after a board investigation of his personal conduct.Mr. McMullen’s conduct was not related to the company’s financial performance or its operations, Kroger said in a news release, but it was “inconsistent” with the company’s business ethics policy. His actions did not involve any Kroger workers, the company said.The management change comes as Kroger, which has headquarters in Cincinnati, has been dealing with the fallout from its collapsed merger with the grocery chain Albertsons.Kroger said its board learned about “certain personal conduct” of Mr. McMullen’s on Feb.…

Eugene Daniels didn’t plan on being the face of the White House press corps in the dawn of a new administration hostile to the news media.But because of a clause in the bylaws of the White House Correspondents’ Association, an 800-strong group of journalists who report on the president, he was next in line after Kaitlan Collins, the CNN star who was elected 2024-25 president of the association, had to step aside because of a move to New York.Mr. Daniels, 36, a co-author of Politico’s Playbook newsletter, has now emerged as a key figure in an escalating fight between the…