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When I began Schwartzreport my purpose was to produce an entirely fact-based daily publication in favor of the earth, the inter-connectedness and interdependence of all life, democracy, equality for all, liberty, and things that are life-affirming. Also, to warn my readers about actions, events, and trends that threaten those values. Our country now stands at a crossroads, indeed, the world stands at a crossroads where those values are very much at risk and it is up to each of us who care about wellbeing to do what we can to defend those principles. I want to thank all of you who have contributed to SR, particularly those of you who have scheduled an ongoing monthly contribution. It makes a big difference and is much appreciated. It is one thing to put in the hours each day and to do the work for free, but another to have to cover the rising out-of-pocket costs. For those of you who haven’t done so, but read SR regularly, I ask that you consider supporting it.
I warned you it was going to happen, and two months into this nightmare it is happening. And “king” Trump is admitting the reality. All the men and women who voted for this psychopath I now expect to begin whining because of what is happening to their wellbeing.
Stocks have been hammered so far this month amid uncertainty around President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again tariff policy. Credit: Spencer Platt / Getty
NEW YORK, NEW YORK — US stocks plunged, bitcoin stumbled and Wall Street’s fear gauge hit its highest level this year as concerns about President Donald Trump’s economic policy led to a widespread market selloff on Monday.
The rout on Wall Street started early, with all three major indexes opening sharply in the red. US stocks slid throughout the day and, despite a brief afternoon rally, closed in the red.
The Dow closed lower by 890 points, or 2.08%, pulling back from a loss of more than 1,100 points at one point.
The broader S&P 500 also plunged, dropping by 2.7%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite plummeted 4%.
The Dow and S&P 500 each posted their worst day of the year. The Nasdaq posted its biggest single-day decline since September 2022.
The rout extended a miserable month for markets that has seen all three major indexes wipe out their gains since the US presidential election in November.
John Biers, Staff Writer - Agence France-Presse (France) | Raw Story
Stephan:
Well, just as I predicted would happen, now it has been made official. Psychopath Trump has told his flying monkeys that his administration should do nothing to prepare for climate change. and should emphasize carbon energy. We can therefore conclude that because Trump and his Frankenstein have gutted the training of wild fire fire fighters, doing nothing about sea rise, and dismantling healthcare, the misery, suffering, and death that will result from these policies will greatly increase. What really stands out for me is how many Americans really seem to lack a spine, and have no sense of honor and ethics. Energy Secretary Chris Wright being today’s number one example.
Industry experts are skeptical that oil companies will significantly ramp up drilling in spite of Donald Trump’s calls for more production. Credit: AFP
The US Energy Secretary vowed Monday to reset federal energy policy to favor fossil fuels and deprioritize climate change as industry leaders gathered at their biggest event since President Donald Trump returned to office.
In the conference’s opening session, Energy Secretary Chris Wright cited the Trump administration’s moves to cut red tape delaying oil projects and promote liquefied natural gas exports (LNG) as examples of a pivot away from policies pursued under former president Joe Biden.
“The Trump administration will end the Biden administration’s irrational quasi-religious policies on climate change that imposed endless sacrifices on our citizens,” Wright told a packed auditorium for the annual Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) conference.
Since returning to Washington less than two months ago, Trump and his team have overhauled the existing economic order at a dizzying pace, launching trade wars against allies and hollowing government agencies the president and his allies dislike.
Once again, the corrupt majority on the Supreme Court has decided against wellbeing. Depending on where you live, and you will have to check, your local water supplies may become more polluted.
A discharge drain pipe at the Los Angeles River in 2013. Photograph: Education Images/Universal Credit: Group / Getty
The US supreme court has weakened rules on the discharge of raw sewage into water supplies in a 5-4 ruling that undermines the 1972 Clean Water Act.
The CWA is the principle law governing pollution control and water quality of the nation’s waterways.
The Republican super majority court ruled on Tuesday that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cannot employ generic, water body-focused pollution discharge limits to Clean Water Act permit holders, and must provide specific limitations to pollution permittees.
The ruling is a win for San Francisco, which challenged nonspecific, or “narrative,” wastewater permits that the EPA issues to protect the quality of surface water sources like rivers and streams relied upon for drinking water.
In a 5-4 ruling written by Justice Samuel Alito, the court blocked the EPA from issuing permits that make a permittee responsible for surface water quality, or “end result” permits – a new term coined by the court.
“The agency has adequate tools to obtain needed information from permittees without resorting to end-result […]
ELLEN KNICKMEYER, Foreign Policy and National Security Reporter - Associated Press
Stephan:
I have always found Marco Rubio loathsome. However, it was not until I have seen his behavior and words as Secretary of State that I have fully comprehended how loathsome he really is. The closing of USAID means that millions of people, especially children, who depended on USAID support and food are going to suffer and die. This is just one of the many facets of the Trumpian destruction of America’s reputation as a country to be admired and respected.
Secretary of State and Trump Flying Monkey Marco Rubio Credit: AP
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday the Trump administration had finished its six-week purge of programs of the six-decade-old U.S. Agency for International Development and he would move the 18% of aid and development programs that survived under the State Department.
Rubio made the announcement in a post on X, in one of his relatively few public comments on what has been a historic shift away from U.S. foreign aid and development, executed by Trump political appointees at State and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency teams.
Rubio in the post thanked DOGE and “our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform” in foreign aid.
President Donald Trump on Jan. 20 issued an executive order directing a freeze of foreign assistance funding and a review of all of the tens of billions of dollars of U.S. aid and development work abroad. Trump charged that much of foreign assistance was wasteful and advanced a liberal agenda.
Rubio’s social media post Monday said that review was […]
Holly Otterbein, Lisa Kashinsky, Brakkton Booker and Myah Ward, Staff Writers - Politico
Stephan:
I agree with this article and the poll it reports on. I think the Democratic Party is a disaster, and I don’t understand why its leaders do not seem to understand why they are failing. What I think the Democratic Party should be doing is putting forward leaders in their 30s and 40s, who are good public speakers who can stand before audiences and say the Party has decided that what they are going to do and focus on is fostering wellbeing at every level of life on planet Earth, and explain what that means and how they are going to do it, in clear explanations that everyone, regardless of IQ can understand. This is not complicated; I could do it, in fact, have done it on dozens of podcasts and conference presentations (Go to my website www.stephanaschwartz.com and you can see some yourself.) The only way forward that is going to get us through what is coming in 2040 is for each American to make every decision they make of the options available the one that is the most compassionate, life affirming, and fostering of wellbeing, and that includes who you vote for.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries arrive to speak with reporters at the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 12, 2025. Credit: Francis Chung / Politico
Voters still have a sour view of Democrats six weeks after President Donald Trump and Republicans swept into Washington with control of all branches of the federal government, according to a new poll.
A plurality of voters — 40 percent — said the Democratic Party doesn’t have any strategy whatsoever for responding to Trump, according to the survey by the liberal firm Blueprint that was shared first with POLITICO. Another 24 percent said Democrats have a game plan, but it’s a bad one.
A paltry 10 percent said that the party has a solid technique for dealing with Trump. And that’s coming from a Democratic outfit’s survey.
The unsparing findings, issued by a group backed by mega-donor Reid Hoffman, amount to a major rebuke of the party’s approach to the dawn of Trump’s second term. And they come at […]
Psychopath Trump, by his actions and orders, makes it clear that he doesn’t believe climate change is real, and using his foying monkeys, he is doing everything in his power to cripple America’s response to this ongoing disaster. Here is the latest proof of what I am saying. If Trump remains President for the next four years, the country will be utterly unprepared so there is going to be years of self-inflicted misery, economic crisis, and death.
The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy assists a NASA shipborne investigation into climate change in the Chukchi Sea of the Arctic Ocean in 2011. Credit: Kathryn Hansen/NASA
The missions of the U.S. Coast Guard propel its members across changing and sometimes perilous waters, into neighborhoods damaged by ever-more-intense hurricanes and around the melting ice of the Arctic.
But the academy that trains most of the officers of the nation’s sea-going law enforcement and search and rescue force has eliminated “climate change” and related terminology from its curriculum in an effort to conform to President Donald Trump’s policies.
Amy Donahue, the provost and chief academic officer of the academy, confirmed the moves in a statement posted last week on the Coast Guard Academy alumni association’s website. The association said in an online post that it had reached out to her office after receiving “several letters of concern” on how climate policy was playing out at the New London, Connecticut, institution.
As wildfires consume forests across the United States, the resentful psychopath Americans chose for their President, has just closed the school that teaches fire fighters how to fight these fires (it is a difficult skill set). It is just another example of how the United States is a fundamentally different country than it was four months ago. It is going to take years, maybe decades, to restructure what this maniac and his flying monkeys have destroyed.
Firefighters work to control California fire Credit: npr
The country’s pre-eminent federal fire training academy canceled classes, effective immediately, on Saturday amid the ongoing flurry of funding freezes and staffing cuts by Donald Trump’s administration.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced that National Fire Academy (NFA) courses had been canceled amid a “process of evaluating agency programs and spending to ensure alignment with Administration priorities”, according to a notice sent to instructors, students and fire departments. Instructors were told to cancel all future travel until further notice.
Firefighters, emergency medical service providers and other first responders from across the country travel to the NFA’s Maryland campus for the federally funded institution’s free training programs.
“The NFA is a powerhouse for the fire service,” said Marc Bashoor, a former Maryland fire chief and West Virginia emergency services director with 44 years of fire safety experience. “It’s not a ‘nice to have’. It is the one avenue we have to bring people from all over the country to learn from and […]
, - Good Good Good | Case Western Reserve University
Stephan:
In American cities all over the country, homelessness is becoming a growing problem. In 2022, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the United States approximately 18 out of 10,000 Americans, or 582,000 people in total, were homeless.. From 2020 to 2022 in 27 out of 50 states, the number of homeless people rose, while in the remaining 23 states and the District of Columbia, it fell. Comparing the U.S. to European democracies, in 2024 the highest rates for lifetime literal homelessness were found in the UK (7.7%) and United States (6.2%), with the lowest rate in Germany (2.4%), and intermediate rates in Italy (4.0%) and Belgium (3.4%). The national survey of homelessness in Norway revealed that there were 3,325 homeless people in 2020. Given that Norway’s population is about 5,400,000 inhabitants, this is equivalent to 0.62 per 1,000 inhabitants.
Credit: Invisible People
A new study from Case Western Reserve University, a nonprofit research university in Ohio, is shedding light on a leading cause of homelessness in America.
She says the study challenges outdated assumptions about homelessness.
“We were asking people very broadly what life was like before they became homeless, and what we found is that the majority of the population had actually experienced some type of loss,” Ray-Novak told News 5 Cleveland — a local ABC News outlet.
“Some kind of death, divorce, separation, and caretaking responsibilities that had significantly impacted their ability to stay in their home.”
Ray-Novak went on to explain that the study didn’t just show that grief was a unifying theme for people who were chronically homeless (living unhoused for more than 12 […]
