10 Items from the week | 23 Feb 25
News from the past week, and a few other things.
👋 Hello Reader, I hope you had a great week.
I got caught up after a busy couple of weeks. So, lots in this newsletter. A little heavy Ukraine and education in the top 10 on this one, but lots of maps, charts, and graphs with colors to keep your attention. :-)
1. Patterns and Trends in County-Level Sex Ratios
The ratio of men to women in a population, known as the sex ratio, is associated with many social trends, including family formation. The overall U.S. sex ratio skews female, but counties in the South tend to have more women, while counties in the West and Midwest have more men. Over the last twenty years, the share of counties which are majority-male has doubled, from 24% to 48%. There are many potential reasons for this trend, but one likely cause is more women leaving rural counties for educational and employment opportunities in cities.
NOTE: Article contains county-level data. Here are just a couple of charts:
2. Rapid Fertility Decline Is an Existential Crisis
Humanity has entered a new era of rapid population decline. Globally, the total fertility rate is likely already below replacement—that is, below the level needed to sustain the population in the long run, approximately 2.18 children per woman. In the US, it’s around 1.6 – without immigration, our population would have already begun to decline. If we are unable to address our fertility crisis, the US will face an existential economic crisis driven by a steep decline in fertility rates—one that could have an impact measured in the quadrillions of dollars. Being “below replacement” does not mean global population will immediately stagnate. Due to a phenomenon known as population momentum, growth will continue for approximately 30 more years. Current world births are temporarily high because large cohorts of women born in the late 1990s and early 2000s are now having children while their parents are still alive. However, all of today’s global population growth is a solely a result of this momentum. Few countries remain above replacement—except for those in sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia. Furthermore, fertility rates are declining more significantly and, importantly, at a faster pace than anyone anticipated a few years ago. This trend is evident in both wealthy and poor nations, in religious and secular states, in countries with right-wing governments, as well as those with left-wing governments, and in nations with free abortion access and those with restrictive abortion laws. Pick any country at random from a world map, and the chances are high that its fertility rate is falling rapidly. In Asia, countries like China, India, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Turkey, Iran, and South Korea—among many others—are all significantly below replacement levels. In China, Japan, South Korea, and Thailand, deaths currently outnumber births; these countries have exhausted their momentum, resulting in population decline. At the present rate, China could lose as many as 600 million inhabitants by the end of the century.
3. Russia’s Advance in Ukraine Is Slowing. Here’s What’s Happening and Why.
The Russian army’s advance in Ukraine is slowing, just as President Trump is pressing for talks. The slowdown comes at a critical time for both sides. Russia wants to trade gains on the battlefield—and the impression that further advances are inevitable—for a favorable deal in peace talks proposed by Trump. Ukraine, meanwhile, wants to show that it can still fend off its giant neighbor. In the first month of 2025, Russia was taking on average nearly six days to occupy an area the size of Manhattan, according to data from DeepState, a Ukrainian group that monitors the front lines. That is more than twice as long as in November. Gains in February have slowed further. The heavy losses for small geographical gains set up the brutal arm-wrestle that will most likely characterize Russia’s war in Ukraine this year: Can the Russians sustain or even accelerate their assaults and gain enough ground to force Ukraine, struggling with a lack of manpower, and its allies to seek an accommodation? Or will the offensives peter out in the face of Ukraine’s dogged resistance? These five maps and charts show where Russia has gained momentum on the battlefield, but how it could struggle to sustain it.
4. White House and Ukraine Close In on Deal for Mineral Rights
The U.S. and Ukraine are nearing a deal that would hand valuable mineral rights to the U.S., an agreement that the Trump administration has sought as compensation for military aid to fight off Russia’s invasion, people familiar with the matter said. Ukraine had refused to sign such a deal earlier this week, sparking a war of words between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and fears of a break in relations between Washington and Kyiv. In an apparent nod to an impending deal, Zelensky said in a nightly video address Friday that teams of U.S. and Ukrainian negotiators were working on a draft agreement.
5. Securing Ukraine’s Future: What Should the United States Do?
President Donald Trump will find that it will take much time and effort to negotiate an end to the Russia-Ukraine war that advances U.S. interests and burnishes his reputation as a peacemaker. Because Kyiv faces deteriorating conditions, it should be easier to persuade it to negotiate seriously than it will be Russian President Vladimir Putin, who believes he is making progress toward achieving his maximal goals. The key to getting him to think otherwise is to convince him that time is not on his side. That requires action in four areas: articulation of a shared Western and Ukrainian vision of success; continued support for Ukraine’s war effort and its integration into the Euro-Atlantic community; resistance to Russia, including targeted sanctions, ramped-up weapons production, and pressure on its partners; and incentives for Russia such as an offer to restore more normal diplomatic relations.
6. How Much U.S. Aid Is Going to Ukraine?
Every year, the United States sends billions of dollars in aid—much more than any other country—to beneficiaries around the world in pursuit of its security, economic, and humanitarian interests. Since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has become far and away the top recipient of U.S. foreign aid. This marks the first time that a European country has held the top spot since the Harry S. Truman administration directed vast sums into rebuilding the continent through the Marshall Plan after World War II.
NOTE: Article from Sept 2024.
7. Pivoting from Pandemic Recovery to Long-Term Reform: A District-Level Analysis
In this third iteration of the Education Recovery Scorecard, we provide a high resolution picture of academic recovery as of Spring 2024 for individual school districts across 43 states. To do so, we combine the recently released NAEP results with state test scores for roughly 35 million students in 2019, 2022, and 2024 to look more closely at district-level changes in achievement for communities across the country. In addition to comparing trends in recovery by district characteristics and by subgroup, we update our initial estimates of the impact of the federal pandemic relief aid (which we released last summer). We also describe the rise in chronic absenteeism and provide initial evidenceof the effect of absenteeism in slowing the recovery.
NOTE: A report from Harvard and Stanford.
NOTE: Additionally, the NYT has these charts on the data:
NOTE: And another advisory group shared these charts below on the NAEP data. 8th grade math is shown below, followed by 8th grade reading proficiency. The website also allows you to drill down to certain cities. Most notable is that Cleveland and Detroit had reading proficiency of 8% and 6%, respectively. Coming in third lowest (of the cities they showed) was Fort Worth at 12%. Austin, on the other hand was, second highest on the list at 31%.
Here’s 8th grade math:
NOTE: And here’s 8th Grade Reading:
8. How American Educators Are Conning Kids
“We should have the best education system in the world. We should have an education system that reflects us being a superpower. But there is no one with a straight face who can say that the United States has a world-class education system.” That damning verdict comes from Pete Shulman, the former deputy commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Education. Shulman, who worked for the Miami-Dade County school system for five years before helping lead New Jersey’s public schools, recently launched “Wake Up Call NJ,” a campaign alerting parents to the crisis in our nation’s schoolrooms. And that crisis, according to the latest Nation’s Report Card, is bleak: U.S. students are further behind in reading and math than they were in 2012. What’s more, American students in the bottom 10th and 25th percentiles “are performing lower than they did in the early 1990s,” said Martin West, the dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a member of the National Assessment Governing Board. This disparity between the highest- and lowest-achieving students is known as the “achievement gap”—and the U.S. now appears to have one of the largest in the world, compared to other wealthy nations. There are a number of theories as to why proficiency rates are declining. The pandemic lockdowns that started in 2020 and the omnipresence of cell phones in schools haven’t helped. But instead of trying to solve the problem, a number of educators are actually covering it up—by lowering the educational standards in their states. In 2024, Oklahoma schools seemed to perform a miracle. In 2022, the Nation’s Report Card scored only 24 percent of the state’s fourth graders as “proficient” in reading. But in 2024 the state reported that 47 percent of its fourth graders were reading at grade level—almost doubling the previous figure. If that sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is. In the last year, Oklahoma lowered its “cut scores”—which is the score a student needs to hit on a test to be considered proficient. This happened quietly, without a formal announcement of the move, meaning many Oklahoman parents assumed their kids had vastly improved at math and reading when, more likely, nothing had changed. This trend is also happening in New York State. After not a single eighth grader in the upstate city of Schenectady (population 68,000) tested “proficient” in math in 2022, state officials lowered cut scores the following year. “We don’t want to keep going backwards,” the co-chair of an advisory committee told a local outlet, justifying the change. “We’re at this new normal.”
A High Schooler Graduated with a 3.4 GPA. He Couldn’t Even Read.
When William graduated high school in 2024 in Clarksville, Tennessee, he couldn’t read the words on his diploma. Despite ending the school year with a 3.4 GPA, he couldn’t even spell his own name. That’s why William sued his school district, claiming it had left him “illiterate” and that he was denied the “free appropriate public education” guaranteed to all students by federal law. On February 3, a federal appeals court sided with William, concluding that he was “capable of learning to read,” and agreeing with his claim that his lack of education had caused him “broad irreparable harm.” William, whose last name is listed only as A. in the suit, first enrolled in the Clarksville-Montgomery County school district in 2016 when he was in the fifth grade. For the next seven years, he scored mostly in the bottom first, second, or third percentiles of his reading fluency assessment tests compared to national standards. In 2019 and 2020, he scored in the bottom ninth and sixth percentiles, respectively. But, a year before he graduated, his reading had regressed so much he was scoring below the first percentile. That same year, William took a simple writing test asking him to spell 31 words in three minutes. According to his suit, he couldn’t spell half of them, including the word school, which he wrote as shcool.
NOTE: Anecdotal, but I’m sure there are more examples like this one.
9. Which states get more federal money than they send
Only 13 U.S. states send more money to federal government coffers than they receive, a recent analysis found. The Trump administration's push for states to be more financially independent brushes up against the reality that many depend on federal money for everything from disaster relief to food aid. Each state's balance of payments reflect how much federal money is distributed there (in the form of programs like Medicaid and SNAP, for example) versus how much money residents and businesses send to the federal government (via income or employment taxes, for instance). "States with large defense-contracting sectors and more military bases receive more federal defense spending, while federal wages are disproportionately concentrated within states with a large federal employee presence," the report notes.
10. OpenAI researcher on why soft skills are the future of work | Karina Nguyen (Research at OpenAI, ex-Anthropic)
Karina Nguyen leads research at OpenAI, where she’s been pivotal in developing groundbreaking products like Canvas, Tasks, and the o1 language model. Before OpenAI, Karina was at Anthropic, where she led post-training and evaluation work for Claude 3 models, created a document upload feature with 100,000 context windows, and contributed to numerous other innovations. With experience as an engineer at the New York Times and as a designer at Dropbox and Square, Karina has a rare firsthand perspective on the cutting edge of AI and large language models. Some takeaways: 1) AI’s rapidly improving capabilities mean that the cost of reasoning and intelligence is dropping. This opens up opportunities to integrate smarter, smaller models into products. Whether you’re building for health care, education, or another industry, think about how your product could benefit from these advancements. 2) While AI models will continue to improve, the real “moat” around your product lies in your ability to listen to users and iterate quickly. Don’t just build the best product; build the product that resonates most with your users. Create mechanisms for continuous feedback, and make rapid iteration a core part of your development cycle. 3) The most valuable future skills will be the soft skills that AI struggles with: a. Creativity in generating novel solutions, b) Empathy and emotional intelligence, c) Leadership and people management, d) Effective prioritization, e) Active listening and user understanding. 4) Model training requires careful attention to data quality and understanding complex interactions between datasets. Success comes from: a) Balancing contradictory training data, b) Managing model behavior across diverse scenarios, c) Using synthetic data for rapid iteration, d) Building robust evaluation frameworks.
And a few more…
A few other items that crossed my desk.
World
Trump Orders Federal Agencies to Study Reciprocal Tariffs
President Trump ordered federal agencies on Thursday to explore how to adjust U.S. tariffs to match those of other countries, a move that threatens international rules in place for decades. The order stops short of actually imposing the tariffs immediately, as many foreign capitals feared, and instead directs the Commerce Department and the U.S. trade representative to deliver reports on the steps to be taken to achieve reciprocal trading status. Commerce Secretary nominee Howard Lutnick said those studies should be completed by April 1. “On trade, I have decided, for purposes of fairness, that I will charge a reciprocal tariff, meaning whatever countries charge the United States of America, we will charge them—no more, no less,” Trump said in the Oval Office.
See How Xi and Putin Are Ramping Up Joint Military Drills
The militaries of China and Russia, America’s top two global adversaries, are working together as never before in their long partnership, probing the defenses of the U.S. and its allies. The message to America from the growing partnership is that, if drawn into a military conflict, U.S. forces could find themselves confronting both countries. Chinese-Russian joint patrols and military exercises have become more frequent and increasingly assertive, a review of recent activity shows—and the U.S. and its allies have been forced to respond more frequently as well, scrambling jet fighters and other assets to safeguard territory. Beijing and Moscow have been displaying close cooperation near Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, nations that the U.S. has pledged to defend, and Taiwan, to which the U.S. sells weapons and provides training. Washington has maintained a policy of ambiguity as to whether it would defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion.
Trump’s Vow to “Stop Wars” Is Easier Said than Done
In his Nov. 7 victory speech, President-elect Donald Trump vowed to “stop wars,” and he’s already shaping US policy in two major hot spots: Israel and Ukraine. But history tells us that modern wars rarely end easily, if at all. Since World War Two, over 500 wars have ended, according to the UCDP Conflict Termination Dataset of armed conflicts with over 25 deaths per year between 1946 and 2019. In the 2010s, almost two thirds of terminated wars ‘ended’ with battle-related deaths dropping below 25 per year, transforming them into low-level, long-term conflicts. Even when wars end, peace doesn’t always last — 118 conflicts had resumed after a spell of amity. Long-term peace persisted more often when governments were the victors or peacekeepers were deployed. If the conflict involved warring ethnicities though, violence was more likely to begin again in the aftermath, according to the UCDP. Trump may be focused on stopping the wars, but creating and maintaining sustainable peace is a whole other battle.
North America
The Trump Tracker: 37 Notable Moves in 30 Days
President Trump started his second term by rapidly deploying executive orders, memos and presidential actions to deliver on campaign promises and reverse policies from previous administrations. The Wall Street Journal is tracking his biggest moves to reshape the federal government.
NOTE: Good tracker of things coming out of the White House.
Illegal Border Crossings Continue to Fall in Early Weeks of Trump Administration
Illegal border crossings plummeted even further in the first weeks of the Trump administration, accelerating a trend that started under former President Joe Biden. The Border Patrol made roughly 29,000 arrests in January, according to newly released government data, down from about 47,000 in December. Border Patrol officials have said that the administration’s new policy of completely ignoring asylum claims—the legality of which is being challenged in court—has meant that migrants, no matter their circumstance, can be quickly deported back to Mexico or loaded onto removal flights. The administration has opened several new deportation avenues, including striking a deal with the Venezuelan government to return some of its citizens and persuading countries including Panama and Costa Rica to at least temporarily take on migrants from third countries in the Middle East and Asia.
Europe
Why Germany’s Confidence Is Shattered and Its Economy Is Kaput
A decade ago, Germany was the model nation. Its economy hadn’t just withstood the ascendance of China; it was thriving in its wake. Its balanced public finances stood out in a world of huge government debt. And while British and U.S. lawmakers were caught up in the culture wars, German politicians continued to practice the art of compromise. Today, Germany has gone from paragon to pariah. Its economic model is broken, its self-confidence shattered and its political landscape fractured. Europe’s former growth engine has shrunk for two years in a row, erasing any recovery made since the Covid-19 pandemic. Its manufacturing output is down about 10% over the same period and its companies, squeezed between rising costs and falling exports, are shedding thousands of jobs a month.
Vance Accuses European Allies of Ignoring Voters, Suppressing Speech
Vice President JD Vance blasted European allies Friday, accusing them of repressing free speech and ignoring the will of voters on issues such as mass migration. Vance, in an unorthodox address at a global security forum, said growing censorship, isolation of populist parties and the erosion of democracy posed a greater threat to Europe than Russia or China. “I can tell you plainly: There can be no security if you are afraid of the voices, the opinions, and the conscience that guide your very own people,” he said at the Munich Security Conference. “Europe faces many challenges, but the crisis this continent faces right now—the crisis you face right now—is one of your own making.” Vance recited a list of complaints about the behavior of authorities in countries such as the U.K., Germany and Sweden. He said conservatives have been investigated, arrested, prosecuted or fined for protesting abortion and expressing their views on social media.
Nonstop Quakes Leave a Tourist Island Empty and Its Residents on Edge
February is a slow time on the Greek island of Santorini, which draws more than three million visitors annually. But after another week of near-constant earthquakes, the island has taken on an unusual quiet. At least 13,000 of the island’s 15,500 residents, unnerved by the frequent shaking, have left in the past week. The streets are mostly deserted, except for the occasional tourists, most of them from Asia. Thousands of tremors, sometimes every few minutes, have jolted Santorini, about 150 miles southeast of Athens, and nearby islands since Jan. 25. The shaking initially peaked with a magnitude-5.2 earthquake on Wednesday northeast of Santorini. A magnitude-5 quake was felt in Athens on Sunday night, and then a 5.3-quake struck the same area late Monday.
Africa
South African president signs controversial land seizure law
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has signed into law a bill allowing land seizures by the state without compensation - a move that has put him at odds with some members of his government. Black people only own a small fraction of farmland nationwide more than 30 years after the end of the racist system of apartheid - the majority remains with the white minority. This has led to frustration and anger over the slow pace of reform.
South Africa Fires Back at Trump’s False Claim of Land Seizures
South Africa’s president fired back at President Trump on Monday after the American leader accused the South African government of “confiscating land” and “doing some terrible things, horrible things.” President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa said in a statement that his country had not seized land. Rather, he said that a law he recently signed on land expropriation struck a careful balance between using land for public good and protecting private property rights.
Egypt announces first discovery of a royal tomb since King Tutankhamun's was found over a century ago
Egyptian officials announced Tuesday the discovery of the tomb of King Thutmose II, the last of the lost tombs of the kings of ancient Egypt's Eighteenth Dynasty, which reigned for over two centuries between about 1550 BC and 1292 BC. It's the first royal Egyptian tomb to be discovered since King Tutankhamun's final resting place was found in 1922.
The Islamic State has regrouped in Somalia — and has global ambitions
The Somali branch has become the Islamic State’s new operational and financial hub, according to U.S. Africa Command (Africom), and local officials estimate there are as many as 1,000 militants under its command. Large numbers of foreign fighters have flowed into Somalia, establishing a formidable force that now threatens Western targets. The group has also become a key source of funding for other Islamic State affiliates around the world, which have killed thousands of people, including U.S. soldiers, according to U.N. investigators. The struggle to contain this rising threat has fallen to forces in Puntland, a remote, semiautonomous region in one of the world’s poorest, weakest nations. Puntland’s soldiers are now locked in a grinding fight — one with major international implications, but without Western support.
Space
Turkey is building a spaceport in Somalia
Alper Gezeravci’s first message from space was a patriotic one. “The future is in the skies,” he said from a Falcon 9 rocket on its 14-day mission in January 2024. The line is one of many attributed to Kemal Ataturk, Turkey’s founder, and Mr Gezeravci, Turkey’s first astronaut, is the poster boy for the space ambitions of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the current leader. The Turkish Space Agency was founded in 2018, and in 2021 the president announced a ten-year plan for space, including home-made satellites and a moon landing. Mr Gezeravci campaigned alongside Mr Erdogan’s AK Party after returning to Earth. State spending on space research and development has risen from $4.7m in 2013 to a still-tiny $140m in 2025, but it is increasing. In December the government began work on a spaceport in Somalia, a project that has been projected to cost $350m. Space is a matter of national prestige for Mr Erdogan, but it is also an important auxiliary to the booming Turkish defence industry. The government has confirmed that it also wants to use its spaceport as a place to test missiles; from Somalia they can safely be fired east. Last month Mr Erdogan announced that Turkey is developing a missile with a 2,000km range, more than twice that of its current Tayfun. Turkey’s domestic satellites are already integrated with its drones, which can be controlled anywhere in the world from the Turksat 5B, launched in 2021. Selcuk Bayraktar, chairman of Turkey’s biggest drone manufacturer Baykar (and Mr Erdogan’s son-in-law), founded a sister company, Fergani Space, in 2022 to develop space technology. Last month it launched its FGN-100-D1 positioning and communication satellite, one of a hundred it plans to put in orbit over the next five years to build a global-positioning system that can be used by the armed forces. Space is an arena where Turkey may annoy its Western allies: it has applied to join the International Lunar Research Station, a Chinese-Russian rival to America’s Artemis programme. Mr Erdogan has poured cash into the defence industry, even considering a tax on credit cards and car and property sales to support the sector. But his budget deficit may put a dampener on his plans; and the defence sector is not immune to the country’s brain drain, with many engineers leaving to work abroad for much better pay. Mr Erdogan may be looking to the stars, but Turkey’s talented youth are more likely to be looking at their pay cheques
What Do Satellites Do? Here’s What a Day Is Like Without Them
The world is also far more reliant on satellite technology today than ever before. While the 2009 collision might have only caused minor service outages, we may not be so lucky next time. Satellites are the backbone of global communication networks. They provide critical services, including: Data transmission, Internet access, Navigation assistance, Weather monitoring, Intelligence gathering. As countries and companies, such as SpaceX and its subsidiary, Starlink, have launched more and more satellites into outer space, Earth’s orbit has become increasingly crowded, elevating the risk of collisions. Any collisions could damage satellites, compromising the services they provide. And each collision creates more space debris—fragments of broken space objects that stay in orbit—which in turn increases the risk of subsequent collisions. This is a phenomenon known as the Kessler Syndrome.
Government
DOGE Is Searching for Wasteful Spending. It Isn’t Hard to Find.
It is one of Washington’s most persistent and challenging problems: The federal government misspends at least $100 billion each year out of its multitrillion-dollar budget. Identifying the wasteful outlays isn’t the hardest part; it is actually doing something about it. Every year, agency reports posted online document billions in improper payments, which include fraud but also underpayments, duplicate payments, payments to ineligible recipients or for ineligible goods or services. According to the Government Accountability Office, they can also include correctly paid amounts that didn’t follow regulations, such as a contract missing a required signature.
How Much the U.S. Spent on Foreign Aid—and Where It Went
The U.S. was the world’s largest funder of foreign aid for decades—propping up education, health services and human rights in developing countries and supporting the militaries of strategic allies. Programs often associated with foreign aid, such as humanitarian assistance, made up a large slice of the total. But significant funding also went to strengthening militaries in allied nations and helping governments phase out fossil fuels or contain the production of opioids that could end up in the U.S. President Trump ordered a freeze on much of that spending for 90 days. Then, on Jan. 28, Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed a waiver for lifesaving humanitarian assistance supposed to allow projects such as field hospitals in war zones to resume. Administration officials say they will assess whether the U.S. assistance is in line with the president’s “America First” agenda. The U.S. spent nearly $65 billion on foreign aid in 2023, the most recent year for which internationally comparable data is available. In dollar terms, that was more than any other rich country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. But as a percentage of its economy, the U.S. lagged behind countries such as Japan, the U.K. and France.
The crisis coming for our national parks, explained in two charts
America’s beloved national parks face a problem that could, in a matter of weeks, grow into a full-blown crisis. The number of people visiting areas managed by the National Park Service — which includes national parks, monuments, and other sites — is way up. In 2023, the most recent year for national data, parks had more than 325 million visits. That’s about a 16 percent bump relative to 2010. At least in some parks, visitation rates have continued to rise. Meanwhile, staffing at the National Park Service is down, having dropped about 13 percent over that same period, according to the National Parks Conservation Association, an advocacy group. Staffing specifically in parks has fallen even further in that time, the group said, as the agency’s budget has failed to keep pace with rising personnel costs. That means there are fewer employees to oversee more visitors and mitigate their impact on our public lands and ecosystems.
Defense
Trump removes Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. CQ Brown in purge of military leaders
President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced late Friday they are replacing several senior military officials that the Trump administration has linked to Biden-era diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. Among those targeted in the purge of military brass was Air Force Gen. CQ Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation’s most senior military officer. Trump announced he is nominating Air Force Lieutenant Gen. Dan Caine to replace Brown as Joint Chiefs chairman. "I want to thank General Charles “CQ” Brown for his over 40 years of service to our country, including as our current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff," Trump posted on social media. "He is a fine gentleman and an outstanding leader, and I wish a great future for him and his family. Hegseth then announced that he is replacing Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti and Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James Slife. "We thank them for their service and dedication to our country," Hegseth said in a statement. Hegseth also said he is replacing the judge advocates general for the Army, Navy and Air Force.
Hegseth’s proposed Pentagon cuts, firing of generals: What to know
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has directed senior Pentagon officials and military leaders to forge plans that would result in an 8 percent cut to the defense budget for each year over the next five years. The proposed cuts were outlined in a memo issued Tuesday, which ordered a reduction in the Middle East and Europe military commands. On the flip side, it would exempt 17 entities, including a program to modernize nuclear weapons, Virginia-class submarines, attack drones, surface ships, missile defense and cybersecurity, multiple outlets reported Wednesday. The acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Salesses said Wednesday that reduction, which is projected to slash $50 billion off of the defense budget, would help pay for President Trump’s administration’s defense priorities, including border security and the “Iron Dome for America” missile defense system.
Pentagon lays off 5,400 civilian workers, with tens of thousands more firings due
The Pentagon announced plans Friday to fire 5-8% of its civilian workforce, starting next week with layoffs of 5,400 probationary workers, a Department of Defense official said in a statement. The initial civilian layoffs will be followed by a Department of Defense hiring freeze to analyze the military’s personnel needs in compliance with Donald Trump’s political goals, Darin Selnick, the acting under-secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said in the statement
Economy
Powell Says Fed Doesn’t Need to Rush on Rate Cuts
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell delivered a simple message to Congress to start two days of testimony on Tuesday: Because the economy is doing well, the Fed can take its time to decide when and whether to lower interest rates. The central bank cut interest rates at its last three meetings of 2024 by a full percentage point after holding rates near a two-decade high. Powell defended last year’s rate cuts as a needed recalibration of the Fed’s policy stance to account for improvement on inflation and cooler labor market conditions.
Business
Why Is Warren Buffett Hoarding So Much Cash?
Warren Buffett is known for picking stocks. These days, he is increasingly picking cash. The mountain of cash and Treasury bills at the famed investor’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, rose above $300 billion in the third quarter—easily a record and its highest as a percentage of company assets in data going back to 1998, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Holding lots of cash is standard practice for Berkshire, but the scale of the recent buildup has raised eyebrows among some observers of the Omaha, Neb., conglomerate.
Real Estate
Mortgage Rates Trend Down
Mortgage rates decreased slightly this week. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage has stayed just under 7% for five consecutive weeks and in that time has fluctuated less than 20 basis points. This stability continues to bode well for potential buyers and sellers as the spring homebuying season approaches.
Home Sales Fell 4.9% in January, Extending Slump in Housing Market
U.S. existing-home sales declined 4.9% in January from the prior month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.08 million, the National Association of Realtors said Friday. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had estimated a monthly decrease of 2.6%. In 2024, home sales fell to the lowest level since 1995 for the second straight year.
Aging Boomers Are About to Rekindle the Senior-Housing Market
Senior housing has been one of the biggest disappointments for commercial real-estate investors. Now thanks to millions of aging baby boomers, that may be about to change. The oldest boomers turn 80 in less than a year. And by 2030, the U.S. population 80 years and older is expected to increase by more than four million people to 18.8 million. History suggests that a growing number of people conclude at that milestone age they can no longer live comfortably or safely at home and seek a senior facility. Many will find themselves on a wait list. Development of senior housing nearly ground to a halt during the pandemic hasn’t picked up much. The sector is expected to move from its former glut to a shortage in the next five years. More than 560,000 new units are needed to meet all the demand by 2030, but only 191,000 will be added at current development rates, according to data service NIC MAP.
Forget Office Conversions. Cities Are Turning Old Hospitals Into Residential Housing.
Across the country, closed hospitals and their land are becoming a prime target for towns looking to boost limited housing stock. Hospitals offer features that make them readily adaptable to homes, such as tall ceilings, broad hallways and abundant natural light. That is a notable advantage over hulking office towers with large floors that often face financial or logistical challenges to residential conversion efforts. Hospitals are also typically located on prime real estate near city infrastructure, ideal locations for residences. The U.S. government is incentivizing the process, too. Federal historic tax credits to these conversions are skyrocketing while demand for housing stays high. In 2023 alone, spending on these projects eligible for a 20% federal historic tax credit totaled more than $225 million, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data compiled by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Personal Finance
Household Debt Hits $18.04 Trillion; Auto and Credit Card Delinquency Transition Rates Remain Elevated
Total household debt increased by $93 billion to reach $18.04 trillion in the fourth quarter, according to the latest Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit. Aggregate delinquency rates ticked up 0.1 percentage point (ppt) from the previous quarter to 3.6 percent of outstanding debt in some stage of delinquency. Mortgage balances rose by $11 billion to stand at $12.61 trillion at the end of December. Transition into serious delinquency, defined as 90 or more days past due, remained stable for mortgages, but edged up for auto loans, credit cards, and HELOC balances. Auto loan balances saw an $11 billion increase to $1.66 trillion in the fourth quarter, while credit card balances increased by $45 billion from the previous quarter to reach $1.21 trillion at the end of December.
Cyber
Meta Will Build the World’s Longest Undersea Cable
Meta has presented the Waterworth Project, an initiative aimed at building a 50,000-kilometer undersea cable that will provide internet connectivity in five continents. The company seeks to strengthen control over the management of its services and guarantee the necessary infrastructure for the development of its products, especially those based in artificial intelligence.
When Your Last Name Is Null, Nothing Works
Nontra Yantaprasert couldn’t wait to take her husband’s shorter and easier-to-pronounce last name. She didn’t know what kinds of problems it would cause. His last name is Null, the same word used by computer scientists to mean “no value” or “invalid value.” The Nulls of the world, it turns out, endure a lifetime of website bouncebacks, processing errors and declarations by customer-service representatives that their accounts don’t exist. Null was first programmed 60 years ago by a British computer scientist named Tony Hoare. It has since been incorporated into many of the systems that make American commerce run, from hotel reservation sites to government agency forms. Some progress has been made toward addressing the long-running glitch, but Nulls still face challenges. Just last year, officials learned that the revamped Free Application for Federal Student Aid couldn’t process applications for people with the last name Null. The issue was fixed in October. In some computer systems, blocking the word is a security feature, says Vahid Behzadan, a computer science professor at the University of New Haven. In these cases, the system perceives the word as a potential attack or attempt at sabotage and will block its entry, he said. For the user, this could look like an error warning or not being able to progress past the first step of a form.
Artificial Intelligence
Google Lifts a Ban on Using Its AI for Weapons and Surveillance
Google announced [4 Feb] that it is overhauling the principles governing how it uses artificial intelligence and other advanced technology. The company removed language promising not to pursue “technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm,” “weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people,” “technologies that gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms,” and “technologies whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.” The changes were disclosed in a note appended to the top of a 2018 blog post unveiling the guidelines. “We’ve made updates to our AI Principles. Visit AI.Google for the latest,” the note reads. In a blog post on Tuesday, a pair of Google executives cited the increasingly widespread use of AI, evolving standards, and geopolitical battles over AI as the “backdrop” to why Google’s principals needed to be overhauled.
Life
We Live Like Royalty and Don’t Know It
Jefferson believed that an informed citizenry was necessary to democratic self-rule — a mandate that extends all the way out to understanding the systems that envelop us. It’s easy to see why he believed this: Voters who understand how we are entwined with these systems will support maintaining and expanding them for our children and grandchildren. Food, electricity, water, and public-health systems obviously make our individual lives more comfortable. But they are also essential to our collective economic prosperity. Failed infrastructure is one big reason why so many poor countries remain poor. As a citizen and a parent, I don’t want our country to get anywhere near that territory. There’s another, equally important reason for thinking about the systems around us. Water, food, energy, public health — these embody a gloriously egalitarian and democratic vision of our society. Americans may fight over red and blue, but everyone benefits in the same way from the electric grid. Water troubles and food contamination are afflictions for rich and poor alike. These systems are powerful reminders of our common purpose as a society — a source of inspiration when one seems badly needed. Every American stands at the end of a continuing, decades-long effort to build and maintain the systems that support our lives. Schools should be, but are not, teaching students why it is imperative to join this effort. Imagine a course devoted to how our country functions at its most basic level. I am a journalist who has been lucky enough to have learned something about the extraordinary mechanisms we have built since Jefferson’s day. In this series of four articles, I want to share some of the highlights of that imaginary course, which I have taken to calling “How the System Works.”
NOTE: Great series so far! Here’s his first one on food: Breakfast for Eight Billion
Health
Health Insurers Deny 850 Million Claims a Year. The Few Who Appeal Often Win.
Health insurers process more than five billion payment claims annually, federal figures show. About 850 million are denied, according to calculations by appeals company Claimable, based on data from health-policy nonprofit KFF and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Less than 1% of patients appeal. Few people realize how worthwhile those labors can be: Up to three-quarters of claim appeals are granted, studies show. Patients who fight denied claims must marshal evidence from medical studies, navigate dense paperwork and spend hours on the phone during what is often one of the most difficult times of their lives. They debate insurers over whether a patient might ever recover from a stroke, or whether an expensive new treatment holds real promise.
Food & Drink
Americans are spending less on spirits... besides tequila
From the rise of celebrity brands like Casamigos to its place in modern bar culture, Americans have developed a taste for tequila in recent years, with stateside sales increasing fivefold across the last two decades… but, as Trump’s tariffs loom, the Mexican spirit’s future in the US market is uncertain. According to new data out yesterday from the US Distilled Spirits Council, the spirits category overall saw its first revenue slump in more than 20 years in 2024, as sales fell 1.1% year over year to $37.2 billion in total — marking a shift away from an average annual growth rate of ~5% observed since 2003. Still, the sector kept its lead over wine and beer for a third year in a row, capturing 42.2% of the market share.
NOTE: Distilled Sprits Council of the US Annual Economic Briefing report can be found here.
NOTE: And in related news:
Cocaine "no worse than whiskey," would be "sold like wine" if legalized worldwide, Colombia's president says
Cocaine "is no worse than whiskey" and is only illegal because it comes from Latin America, said Colombian President Gustavo Petro during a live broadcast of a government meeting. Colombia is the world's biggest cocaine producer and exporter, mainly to the United States and Europe, and has spent decades fighting against drug trafficking. During a six-hour ministerial meeting -- broadcast live for the first time ever -- the leftist president said "cocaine is illegal because it is made in Latin America, not because it is worse than whiskey."
Entertainment
Amazon MGM Studios Shelled Out An Extra $1 Billion-Plus To Take Control Of James Bond: What’s Next For The Franchise
It’s taking around $1 billion to have 007 stewards Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson cede creative oversight of their family’s storied James Bond franchise to Amazon MGM Studios, sources tell us. Amazon originally overpaid on its purchase of MGM in a deal orchestrated by then-MGM board chair Kevin Ulrich. Though valued between $3.5 billion-$4 billion, the legendary motion picture studio was absorbed by the streamer for $8.5 billion, the hefty sum propped up by the potential access of the 007 franchise. However, Amazon couldn’t fully freely develop Bond with Broccoli and Wilson in the mix. Hence, it took another $1 billion to ensure that they could fully steer and exploit the Ian Fleming IP.
He’s Been on ‘SNL’ for All 50 Years—and You’ve Never Heard of Him
When he walked into 30 Rockefeller Center to interview for a job on a TV show that didn’t exist yet, Leo Yoshimura had no idea what to expect. He hadn’t heard anything about this weekly series coming to NBC—and the young set designer wasn’t looking to work in comedy. “I don’t have a sense of humor,” he says. The funny thing is he didn’t need one. The interview for the job that he would keep for the rest of his career amounted to one question: When are you available? As it turned out, he was available the next week—and for the next 50 years. He’s been a crucial part of “Saturday Night Live” ever since. “SNL,” which celebrates its 50th anniversary with a blowout special this weekend, is one of the most successful television shows of all time, a true American institution that millions of people have been watching for a half-century—and lamenting that it’s not as good as it used to be for nearly as long. It takes hundreds of people to bring the show to life, but one person has been there the whole time. And it’s not Lorne Michaels. Leo Yoshimura is a production designer who has been drawing sets for the show—and occasionally appearing on the show—since the very first episode.
Have a great week!
The Curator
Two resources to help you be a more discerning reader:
AllSides - https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news
Media Bias Chart - https://www.adfontesmedia.com/
Caveat: Even these resources/charts are biased. Who says that the system they use to describe news sources is accurate? Still, hopefully you find them useful as a basic guide or for comparison.