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The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan do it all for Damien by rewatching Richard Donner’s 1976 horror classic, The Omen, starring Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, and Harvey Spencer Stephens.
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Bill Simmons
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The Ringer’s Bill Simmons remembers Matthew Perry (1:21), before he is joined by Cousin Sal to draft the 12 worst NFL QBs after some truly poor Week 8 quarterback play (11:30), and answer some NFL burning questions like: “Do you believe in Will Levis,” “Are the Bengals officially back,” “Who will be the NFC 7-seed,” and more (25:30). Then they guess the lines for NFL Week 9 (57:49), and close the show with Parent Corner (1:26:19).
Host: Bill Simmons
Guest: Cousin Sal
Producer: Kyle Crichton
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Bill Simmons
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Former Vice President Mike Pence is dropping his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, ending his campaign for the White House after struggling to raise money and gain traction in the polls.
“After much prayer and deliberation, I have decided to suspend my campaign for president effective today,” Pence said at the Republican Jewish Coalition gathering in Las Vegas. “We always knew this would be an uphill battle, but I have no regrets,” he said.
Pence becomes the first major candidate to leave a race that has been dominated by his former boss-turned-rival, Donald Trump.
The decision, more than two months before the Iowa caucuses that he had staked his campaign on, saves Pence from the embarrassment of failing to qualify for the third Republican primary debate, Nov. 8 in Miami.
But the withdrawal is a huge blow for a politician who spent years biding his time as Trump’s most loyal lieutenant, only to be scapegoated during their final days in office when Trump became convinced that Pence somehow had the power to overturn the results of the 2020 election and keep both men in office — not something a vice president could do.
While Pence averted a constitutional crisis by rejecting the scheme, he drew Trump’s fury, as well as the wrath of many of Trump’s supporters who believed his lies and still see Pence as a traitor.
Among Trump critics, meanwhile, Pence was seen as an enabler who defended the former president at every turn and refused to criticize even Trump’s most indefensible actions time and again.
As a result, an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research from August found that the majority of U.S. adults, 57%, viewed Pence negatively, with only 28% having a positive view.
Throughout his campaign, the former Indiana governor and congressman had insisted that while he was well-known by voters, he was not “known well” and set out to change that with an aggressive schedule that included numerous stops at diners and Pizza Ranch restaurants.
Pence had been betting on Iowa, a state with a large white Evangelical population that has a long history of elevating religious and socially conservative candidates such as former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania Rick Santorum.
Pence often campaigned with his wife, Karen, a Christian school teacher, and emphasized his hard-line views on issues such as abortion, which he opposes even in cases when a pregnancy is unviable.
He repeatedly called on his fellow candidates to support a minimum 15-week national ban and he pushed to ban drugs used as alternatives to surgical procedures.
He tried to confront head-on his actions on Jan. 6, 2021 , explaining to voters over and over that he had done his constitutional duty that day, knowing full well the political consequences. It was a strategy that aides believed would help defuse the issue and earn Pence the respect of a majority of Republicans, whom they were were convinced did not agree with Trump’s actions.
But even in Iowa, Pence struggled to gain traction.
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Marvel comics, TV shows, and especially movies seem to have a requirement to emphasize the “what’s next” of it all, where the end of everything is also a tease for something else. Well, folks, Insomniac Games took that assignment, ran with it, and took a few extra laps just for good measure.
Spider-Man 2, the triumphant sequel of one of the best games of 2018, is packed with teases and Easter eggs, all of which could be spun off into new games, half-sequels, or the ultimate finale of Spider-Man 3. We’ve got evil brothers hidden in plain sight, a mysterious bartender rendered in PlayStation 1-style graphics, and more symbiote threats than we initially thought. Let’s tuck into it.
[Ed. note: This post contains major spoilers for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. If you haven’t beaten the campaign of the PlayStation 5 game and cleared every side mission, you will probably be spoiled by something in here.]
Image: Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment via Polygon
There are a lot of teases for the future of Insomniac’s Marvel games, and several of them come at the very end of side missions or are a bit obscure if you’re not a comics reader.
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Image: Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment via ScereBro PSNU/YouTube
In one of the post-credits scenes for Spider-Man 2, Norman Osborn visits his old frenemy Otto Octavius. Otto is, of course, imprisoned in the Raft penitentiary because of all those crimes he committed as Doctor Octopus back in the first game.
Norman wants Otto to tell him the identity of the Spider-Mans so that he can seek revenge against them for putting Harry in a coma. Otto, who used to be lab partners with Norman but now hates his guts, revels in Osborn’s suffering and refuses to help, and he just keeps working on his manifesto. When Norman asks what Octavius is writing, he simply responds, “The final chapter,” as he limps toward the camera.
The tease here is really just that Otto is clearly going to be back in some capacity in a potential Spider-Man 3. Although with his physical condition worsening (it’s established in Marvel’s Spider-Man that Otto has some kind of degenerative brain disorder that’s causing him to lose his fine motor skills), it’s unclear whether he’ll be fighting on the front lines or playing the role of master tactician.
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Image: Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment via Dan Allen Gaming/YouTube
After Miles’ mom, Rio, spends the entire game asking him to meet her new boyfriend, Miles finally opens the door to meet Albert in one of the post-credits scenes. But Albert isn’t really the tease here, as it’s quickly revealed that Albert has brought his daughter Cindy with him to the family dinner.
Cindy Moon is better known as Silk, yet another Spider-person who fights baddies and protects New York. In some versions she has a rather traumatic upbringing and isn’t particularly close with her father. Insomniac is clearly looking to twist this origin, although we’re not quite sure how just yet.
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Image: Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment via Dan Allen Gaming/YouTube
After the Spider-Mans and MJ defeat him, Venom reverts back to Harry, who, as we said earlier, is in a coma. In a fit of rage over his son’s condition, Norman calls someone to ask for the G-Serum.
Now, it’s never explicitly stated, but this is about as on the nose as you can get for a Green Goblin tease. In the moment, it seems like Norman wants the G-Serum for Harry, but we have no doubt it’ll end up in the disgraced former mayor eventually.
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Image: Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment via Zanar Aesthetics/YouTube
During the campaign, it’s revealed that the symbiote came to Earth via a meteor, and that meteor has a big, red spiral on the front of it, which is most often associated with Knull, aka the King in Black, the tyrant god of symbiotes.
Interestingly, the game never mentions Knull by name, or even really alludes to an additional cosmic presence outside of the meteor itself, which Miles, Pete, and MJ destroy at the end of the story. This could be just a nod to comics fans, but it could also be a seed that might blossom into a full symbiote invasion led by the king himself.
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Image: Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment via HD Playground/YouTube
Peter works to take down a cult called The Flame over the course of Spider-Man 2, And in the final quest, Insomniac reveals the cult’s leader to be none other than Cletus Kasady, everyone’s favorite serial murderer.
Cletus is the symbiote host for Carnage, the red-tinged symbiote villain who has given both Venom and Peter a lot of trouble over the years. With Kasady uncaptured at the end of Spider-Man 2 and in possession of a healthy symbiote, the rise of Carnage is all but assured.
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Image: Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment via GameClips/YouTube
After chasing down all of Kraven’s drones, the two Spider-Mans eventually stumble upon a beautiful penthouse apartment with a secret basement. Turns out this place belongs to Chameleon, a master of disguise. (Fun fact: He was the first villain Spider-Man ever faced in the original comics.) Oh, and the Chameleon is also Kraven’s brother.
As the Spider-Mans swing away from the apartment, we see a man in disguise looking toward the rooftops, indicating that the Chameleon was watching as the heroes ransacked his apartment. Chameleon has clearly been set up in the city for a while, and this tease seems to indicate that he’ll appear in a Spider-Man sequel.
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Image: Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment via PerfectParadox/YouTube
Once you’ve collected all the Spider-Bots in the game, you’ll get a signal that leads you to an alleyway. When you get there, a portal opens, and you see a bartender named Delilah standing behind a bar. Delilah is the operator of the Bar With No Name, a secret bar for villains in the Marvel universe. After a cryptic chat, she opens a box and steals all the Spider-Bots you spent so long collecting. She then name-drops Miguel (O’Hara) before shutting the portal.
This is a weird little Easter egg that doesn’t exactly have a clear tease. But with the nature of the Spider-Bots all being based on Spider-Man characters and villains from other universes, and Delilah’s style being that of a PlayStation 1 game, this seems to be teasing a multiversal story or some kind of crossover. It’s very unclear what this could be leading to or what it has to do with Miguel O’Hara, aka Spider-Man 2099.
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Image: Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment via DVESF/YouTube
Pete hangs up his tights at the end of Spider-Man 2, letting Miles handle the city while the original Spider-Man gets a well-earned break. But this seems more like a Spidey-hiatus than full-on Spidey-retirement. We’d wager we’ll see a decent time skip between Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3, and that Pete will be married and potentially a father before he dons the suit again.
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Spider-Man: Miles Morales was a big hit with fans, and took the massive, sprawling Marvel’s Spider-Man and condensed it down to just a handful of hours. It told a great little tale, introduced us more completely to Miles as a hero, and, crucially, did a lot of legwork to set up Spider-Man 2.
Based on the reception of Miles Morales, it seems extremely unlikely that we won’t see another half-sequel that bridges the gap between Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3. The real question, then, is who that half-sequel will be about. We have a handful of ideas on that.
Venom is the clear candidate for a spinoff game. Not only is he briefly playable in Spider-Man 2 already (we’re not game designers, but we have to imagine at least some of that hard dev work will transfer over to a new game), but it seems like Insomniac’s developers have at least thought about it.
In a recent interview, Spider-Man 2’s narrative director, Jon Paquette, told Insider that the team is waiting to see how fans react and what they want before committing to any spinoffs. This was in direct response to a question about a Venom game, so most people (ourselves included) are taking this as at least soft confirmation that Insomniac is toying with a Venom spinoff, and that the answer basically amounts to “we’re not not making a Venom game (*wink*).”
But you may be asking yourself, “Wait, isn’t Harry in a coma, and wasn’t the Venom symbiote destroyed?” The answer to both of those questions is technically yes, but there’s a Venom-sized “but” that follows. Spider-Man 2 very clearly establishes that symbiotes remain inactive inside the host even after they’ve separated themselves from the original parasite.
Just like how Mister Negative was able to harness Pete’s latent symbiote to turn him into Anti-Venom, it seems very easy to explain how someone with a very powerful connection to their symbiote (like Harry) could have their alter ego reawaken despite the host symbiote being “dead.” This could be especially fun with Harry’s current predicament, as it means we could spend the first bit of a Venom game piloting around a comatose Harry, wreaking havoc and getting into scrapes with Miles.
Silk is another strong possibility for a spinoff, as it’s essentially the same setup that led from Spider-Man into Miles Morales. However, Miles plays a major role in the first Spider-Man before getting any powers. All we see of Cindy is the back of her head, and we learn nothing about her character in Spider-Man 2.
With Silk just being a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it tease, it seems much more likely that she’ll feature heavily in whatever half-sequel we end up getting before being playable in Spider-Man 3.
Our final guess for a half-sequel is just a straight-up sequel to Miles Morales. This makes some sense, but is also just boring in comparison to the other two options — no offense to Miles, but we already have two full games where we can play as him whenever we want!
Still, a Miles sequel would allow Insomniac to explore a New York where Miles is the only Spider-Man, and even bring Cindy in as his trainee. This would be a poetic handoff after the tutelage Miles received from Peter in Miles Morales and Spider-Man 2, and a great setup for a third game. I mean, who doesn’t want to hear Pete refer to himself as Silk’s “Spider-Grandpa”?
But a Miles Morales sequel in that fashion is still retread ground, and Insomniac seems hell-bent on delivering new experiences each time it puts out a Spidey product.
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Image: Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment via Polygon
Insomniac Games has clearly left itself a lot of wiggle room when it comes to the future of its Spider-Man. Will Carnage show up in Spider-Man 3, or will he take center stage in a Venom game? Is that Miguel teaser an offhand tease of another spinoff we don’t know about, or just another side activity in a sequel that’s probably five years off? We don’t know the answers to either of those questions, and it’s entirely possible that Insomniac doesn’t have them 100% pinned down yet, either.
So what do we know for sure about the next game? Well, Norman’s Green Goblin will be a pretty big deal. That’s a very safe bet — the free space on all your Spider-Man 3 bingo cards at home. We also know that Otto will play some kind of role as well, likely as a third party warring against both Green Goblin and Spider-Man.
And we know we’ll have no shortage of heroes for us to embody, with Miles, Cindy, Peter, and (probably) Harry all on the bench and ready to take on whatever Insomniac has in store for New York.
We’re still at least two or three years (and a whole-ass Wolverine game) away from learning what’s next for Insomniac’s New York. But the studio has certainly given us plenty to ponder in our time away from the web-head and his crew of friends and enemies.
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Ryan Gilliam
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Welcome back to Town Hall! Matt and Craig answer a slew of listener questions about why Hasan Minhaj lost the Daily Show job, stories from inside the strike negotiation rooms, whether Hollywood would ramp up during the holidays if SAG-AFTRA reaches a deal in the next few weeks, consolidation in the entertainment industry, and Taylor Swift’s Argylle rumor. Later, they give a prediction for Five Nights at Freddy’s.
For a 20 percent discount on Matt’s Hollywood insider newsletter, What I’m Hearing …, click here.
Email us your thoughts! thetown@spotify.com
Host: Matt Belloni
Producer: Craig Horlbeck and Jessie Lopez
Theme Song: Devon Renaldo
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Matthew Belloni
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Rachel Lindsay and Zack Peter kick off today’s Morally Corrupt by discussing the tea about two Bravo marriages (1:00) before launching into a recap of Southern Charm Season 9, Episode 7 (8:08). Then, Rachel is joined by Jodi Walker to dish about the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Season 13 premiere (15:55). Finally, Jodi talks with Erin Lichy from The Real Housewives of New York about her reunion experience, season regrets, and more (44:23)!
Host: Rachel Lindsay
Guests: Zack Peter, Jodi Walker, and Erin Lichy
Producer: Devon Manze
Theme Song: Devon Renaldo
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Rachel Lindsay
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CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — For months, Dean Phillips has been calling for a Democratic primary challenge to President Joe Biden. He’s drawn no public interest from governors, lawmakers, and other would-be alternatives.
The Minnesota congressman is finally entering the race himself.
The 54-year-old Phillips has scheduled a campaign announcement Friday at the New Hampshire statehouse in Concord. Asked during an interview by CBS if he was running for president, Phillips responded: “I am. I have to.”
“I think President Biden has done a spectacular job for our country,” he said. “But it’s not about the past. This is an election about the future.”
While Phillips is highly unlikely to beat Biden, a run would offer a symbolic challenge to national Democrats trying to project the idea that there is no reason to doubt the president’s electability — even as many Americans question whether the 80-year-old Biden should serve another term.
Phillips may also benefit from New Hampshire Democrats angry at Biden for diluting their state’s influence on the 2024 Democratic primary calendar, a change that state party chairman Ray Buckley has warned could create a “potential embarrassment” by “an insurgent candidate, serious or not.”
Biden’s reelection campaign and the Democratic National Committee have declined to address Phillips’ possible run. But White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre noted Phillips’ voting record and said, “We appreciate the congressman’s almost 100% support of this president.”
Buckley was far more upbeat about Biden this week, saying the president would easily clinch his state’s primary even though he won’t officially run in it, requiring a write-in campaign. And Biden is planning to head next week to Phillips’ home state for an official event and fundraiser.
The president has long cast himself as uniquely qualified to beat Donald Trump again after his 2020 win, and top Democrats have lined up behind him while also positioning themselves for a future primary run.
Phillips has already missed the deadline to enter Nevada’s primary and is little known nationally. But he argues Biden may not be able to beat Trump again, telling CBS News that polling suggests “we’re going to be facing an emergency next November.”
“I think it’s time for a new generation,” he told the network. “I think it’s time to pass the torch.”
New Hampshire primary challenges have a history of wounding incumbent presidents.
In 1968, another Minnesotan, Democratic Sen. Eugene McCarthy, built his campaign around opposing the Vietnam War and finished second in New Hampshire’s primary, helping push President Lyndon Johnson into forgoing a second term. Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy’s challenge of President Jimmy Carter and Pat Buchanan’s run against President George H.W. Bush both failed, but Carter and Bush ultimately lost their reelection bids.
The state’s influence on Democrats was curtailed this year by changes engineered by the DNC at Biden’s behest.
A new Democratic calendar has South Carolina leading off presidential primary voting on Feb. 3 and Nevada going three days later. New Hampshire has refused to comply, citing state laws saying its primary must go first, and plans a primary before South Carolina’s. The DNC could, in turn, strip the state of its nominating delegates.
Steve Shurtleff, a former speaker of the New Hampshire House who has distanced himself from Biden, said he has spoken twice with Phillips and believed the congressman might appeal to some Democrats and independents who can choose to vote in the primary.
“I like Biden and have a lot of respect for him. But I’m disappointed that he and the DNC have tried to take away our primary,” Shurtleff said. “It’s not that I want to see Joe lose. It’s that I want to see our primary win.”
But Terry Shumaker, a former DNC member from New Hampshire and longtime Biden supporter, said he expects the president to easily clinch the state as a write-in option. Shumaker recalled going door to door for McCarthy in 1968, but doesn’t see Phillips gaining similar traction.
“I’m not aware of what his message is,” he said. “To do well in the New Hampshire primary, you have to have a message.”
There are no primary debates scheduled, according to the DNC. The only other Democrat running in the 2024 primary is self-help author Marianne Williamson. Anti-vaccine activist Robert Kennedy Jr. announced this month that he’s running as an independent.
Phillips is one of the wealthiest members of Congress and heir to his stepfather’s Phillips Distilling Company empire, which holds major vodka and schnapps brands. He once served as that company’s president but also ran the gelato maker Talenti. His grandmother was the late Pauline Phillips, better known as the advice columnist “Dear Abby.”
Driving a gelato truck was a centerpiece of his first House campaign in 2018, when Phillips unseated five-term Republican Erik Paulsen. While his district in mostly affluent greater Minneapolis has become more Democratic-leaning, Phillips has stressed that he is a moderate focused on his suburban constituents. He is a member of the centrist Problem Solvers Caucus in Congress.
Phillips has been suggesting since the summer that top Democrats challenge Biden for their party’s nomination but has been ignored by governors and other top elected officials. He told CBS in the interview on Friday that he hoped his announcing would encourage other primary challengers saying of competition “we need it.”
Challenging his party’s leadership isn’t new for Phillips. When he first got to Congress, he spoke of the need for a “new generation” of Democrats to replace then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and was frustrated when no one emerged. He later praised Pelosi as “one of the most successful speakers of all time.”
Still, he’s not the only one voicing concerns now. An AP-NORC poll released in August found that the top words associated with Biden were “old” and “confused.” Nearly 70% of Democrats and 77% of U.S. adults said they thought Biden was too old to be effective for four more years. The same poll found that respondents most frequently described Trump as “corrupt” and “dishonest.”
Leslie Blanding, a retired teacher and Democrat from Bow, New Hampshire, said she did not know Phillips but was “thoroughly conflicted” over whether Biden should face a primary challenger.
“I think Biden is too old. I think from the outset, he should’ve been looking to groom someone to succeed him, and he didn’t do that,” said Blanding, 75. “But I think he seems to be the only one positioned to have a strong chance of defeating Trump or whomever.”
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Wall Street said goodbye to a legendary figure on Thursday when news broke that Byron Wien had died at the age of 90, according to news reports.
For those who are unfamiliar, Wien gained a large following in global finance for his annual lists of “10 surprises” for the coming year.
He started publishing the list, which tried to anticipate developments that could blindside investors, in 1986 while working at Morgan Stanley.
He carried on the tradition after joining Blackstone 14 years ago, following a stint at Pequot Capital.
Thanks to his penchant for highlighting ideas and possibilities that often weren’t on the radar of most investment strategists, Wien’s lists were widely read.
But earlier this year, Wien released another list that was published on Blackstone’s website. The title? “Byron Wien’s 20 Life Lessons.”
To enjoy a successful life, Wien recommended networking intensely, reading all the time, getting enough sleep and — last on the list — never retiring.
Here’s the list in full, courtesy of Blackstone:
Wien released his final “10 surprises” list, for the year 2023, in January. Few of this year’s predictions panned out, save for Wien’s expectations for a hawkish Federal Reserve and a stronger U.S. dollar creating a buying opportunity for Japanese stocks.
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Kingdom opens ominously, with two attendants walking across a Joseon-era Korean palace’s courtyard to bring the king his meal. Once inside, the older attendant warns his young companion not to look into the king’s bedchambers while passing the food underneath the curtain. The young attendant can’t resist, and when he opens his eyes he’s dragged under the curtain by a snarling beast. It’s a dread-filled scene that grabs your attention, but Kingdom also uses that moment to set itself apart. Most zombie shows are centered around characters thrust into survival mode without knowing what caused the outbreak in the first place. In Kingdom, the original zombie is not just a known entity, he’s also being tended to by a royal staff.
The rest of the intro reveals a lot of information in a short amount of time. A group of scholars has been posting flyers that the king is dead and it’s time for Crown Prince Lee Chang to ascend to the throne. But there’s an issue: Prince Chang’s mother was a concubine, and his current stepmother, Queen Consort Cho, is very pregnant. Her family has seized power with their new royal status, and they’ve rounded up and tortured these scholars to find out who’s behind their support of the prince. Meanwhile, Prince Chang has grown suspicious, and decides to find out the truth about his father’s mysterious recovery from smallpox.
If that sounds more like a Game of Thrones plot than a zombie show, well, you’re right. Kingdom is really, at its core, a political thriller set in medieval times. The zombie stuff, well, that’s just part of the politics — until, you know, it isn’t.
Photo: Juhan Noh/Netflix
The brilliance of Kingdom is that it doesn’t rely on twists and aggressive plot machinations to drive the show forward. The core conflict is laid out in 15 minutes flat: The king is a zombie, the queen is pregnant with his baby, and the queen’s family has seized power that would be threatened if the crown prince were anointed as the new king.
It doesn’t take much to realize who’s behind the zombification of the region’s ruler — but knowing the truth isn’t the same as proving it. Kingdom follows Prince Chang as he tries to collect evidence that he’s the rightful heir while avoiding the Cho clan’s guards, who are actively pursuing him. That alone would make for an exciting show. And then, of course, there are the zombies. As Prince Chang leaves the palace to find the doctor who treated his father, he discovers something even more terrifying: The king bit one of the doctor’s young assistants. We all know how that goes.
With a tight two-season story written and directed by Kim Eun-hee, Kingdom plays out its political games in conjunction with a growing zombie threat. It’s gripping, smart, and subtle, pacing its story in snippets of dialogue for viewers to stitch together. It’s also full of incredible action, painful suspense (characters in the daytime walking over dormant nocturnal zombies under floorboards, etc.), and truly terrifying horror: Victim by victim falls to brutal isolated zombie attacks, until a proper horde grows big enough to assault the entire royal city. Kingdom is truly an equal mashup of two different genres, and the fact that it’s done so well feels like a miracle. Just be prepared for things to get gnarly — two guards are beheaded in the opening sequence for being traitors, and if that’s the sort of violence that’s unleashed in a human-to-human conflict, just wait until the undead come into the picture.
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Jesse Raub
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The U.S. economy has not only defied widespread predictions of a sharp slowdown. It’s grown even faster.
But that doesn’t mean a recession is far away. The U.S. has often experienced fast growth shortly before the bottom fell out.
Let’s start with the good news.
Gross domestic product, the official scorecard of the economy, looks likely to top 4% or even 5% annual growth in the third quarter. The government will release its preliminary estimate on Thursday morning.
Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal predict 4.7% GDP in the third quarter.
Other top forecasters see even faster growth. S&P Global estimates 5.6% GDP and the Atlanta Federal Reserve GDPNow forecast projects 5.4%.
How fast is that? GDP only topped 5% once from 2010 to the start of the pandemic in early 2020.
This is not what was supposed to happen.
After solid 2%-plus growth in the first and second quarters, the economy was widely expected to slow down in response to rapidly rising interest rates.
The Federal Reserve has jacked up borrowing costs in the past year and a half to try to tame inflation, a strategy that typical depresses consumer spending and business investment. Those are the dual engines of the economy.
To some extent the Fed has succeeded. Home sales and construction, for instance, have tumbled due to the highest mortgage rates in decades. And manufacturers have taken a hit as customers curtailed purchases of goods and big-ticket items.
The annual rate of inflation, meanwhile, has tapered to 3.7% as of September from a 40-year high of 9.1% in 2022.
Still, spending and investment have not dropped off nearly as much as expected. And there are two reasons for that.
The first is a strong and ultra-tight labor market, with unemployment hovering just below 4%. Most Americans who want a job have one, and as a result, they have been able to keep spending. Travel, recreation, leisure and hospitality have been the big winners.
S&P Global estimates a flush of consumer spending in the third quarter will account for just over half of the growth.
The industrial side of the economy, for its part, has been the beneficiary of tens of billions of dollars in subsidies from the Biden administration to support green energy and bring home more manufacturing.
The U.S. has also ramped up military aid to Ukraine and has to replace outgoing equipment, weapons and ammunition.
All the government money has helped to keep manufacturers from falling too far down the well. Government outlays could add as much as 0.6 percentage points to third-quarter GDP.
Making the third quarter look even better, the U.S. trade deficit fell sharply and is likely to add 1.0 percentage point or more to GDP.
A small rebound in the production of inventories, or unsold goods, would be the icing on the cake.
So the economy is doing great, right? Maybe not.
Consumers probably can’t keep spending at their current pace since their incomes are barely rising faster than inflation. Businesses are proceeding cautiously because of higher borrowing costs. And banks are more reluctance to lend.
Other restraints on the economy include higher gasoline prices and a surge in long-term interest rates that make it far more expensive to buy houses, cars, appliances and the like.
That’s why many forecasters believe the economy start to soften in final months of 2023. S&P Global, for instance, initially projects 1.7% growth in the fourth quarter.
Nor does the third quarter’s heady growth rate suggest there is no reason to worry about a recession. The economy has expanded rapidly just before the onset of prior recessions.
The economy grew at solid 2.5% pace right before the 2007-2009 Great Recession, for example. And GDP grew a frothy 4.4% in the first quarter of 1990 just several months before a recession started.
Many of the same economic headwinds, it turns out, are still in place that led to widespread Wall Street predictions of recession earlier in the year.
Indeed, some forecasters such as the Conference Board still insist a short recession is likely in 2024. Other economists are also on guard.
“I still believe a recession is coming — though far less severe than the 2008-2009 event,” said chief economist Steve Blitz of TS Lombard.
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Bill Ackman isn’t the only boldfaced Wall Street name who believes the U.S. economy is in worse shape than the official data suggest.
See: Bill Ackman cashes out bet against Treasury bonds as yields hit 16-year highs
Bill Gross, a co-founder of fixed-income investing giant Pacific Investment Management Co., said Monday in a post on social-media platform X that the U.S. economy is likely headed for a recession by year’s end.
“Regional bank carnage and recent rise in auto delinquencies to long-term historical highs indicate U.S. economy slowing significantly. Recession in 4th quarter,” Gross said.
Such an outcome would represent a remarkable turnaround, considering the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s GDP Now real-time indicator shows the U.S. economy expanding at a 5.4% annualized clip during the third quarter. Official GDP data is due Thursday, with economists polled by The Wall Street Journal looking, on average, for a 4.5% annualized growth figure.
Many Wall Street economists had anticipated that the U.S. recession would slide into recession earlier this year. However, strength in construction, consumer spending and other areas has helped it defy expectations, as data show it has instead continued to expand at a solid pace.
Revised data released last month by the Commerce Department showed the U.S. economy grew by 2.1% during the second quarter. Typically, investors only become aware of recessions in hindsight after they’ve been officially declared by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Rising auto-loan delinquencies are an alarming portent of economic pain to come, Gross said, citing data from Fitch Ratings, reported by Bloomberg News on Friday, which showed the percentage of subprime auto loans more than 60 days delinquent surpassed 6% in September. At 6.1%, it’s the highest rate ever recorded by the data series going back to 1994.
As far as how investors might play this, Gross said he’s “seriously considering” investing in shares of regional banks, which have fallen substantially this year: the SPDR S&P Regional Banking ETF
KRE,
one popular exchange-traded fund tracking regional players down more than 30% year-to-date. He also touted some merger-arbitrage plays, a strategy he endorsed in a recent investment outlook.
He also recommended betting that the Treasury curve will continue steepening as it looks to break out of negative territory for the first time in more than a year. Rising long-term rates have nearly caught up with short term rates, with the 10-year yield
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within 30 basis points of the 2-year yield
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on Monday.
10-year yields have been lower than 2-year yields for 327 days, according to Dow Jones Market Data. That’s the longest stretch since the 444-trading day streak that ended May 1, 1980.
Gross is using interest-rate futures for his steepening trade. He expects the curve will re-enter positive territory before the end of the year as a slowing economy forces investors to adjust their expectations regarding the timing of Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts.
“’Higher for longer’ is yesterday’s mantra,” Gross said.
Following a decadeslong career on Wall Street, Gross announced his retirement a few years back after a stint at Janus Capital Group. He joined Janus after a contentious exit from Pimco.
Nevertheless, Gross has continued to share his views on markets in posts on X, as well as in investing outlook letters published to his website, and during interviews with the financial press.
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You may have felt it: Twitch, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube are all competing for an increasingly overlapping user base as social media platforms all introduce similar features.
But for streamers and influencers, these platforms have symbiotic relationships — one platform can be important for growth in another. Twitch and TikTok may seem antithetical, as one targets long-form, hourslong broadcasts over the other’s bite-sized clips, but Twitch streamers have realized that both platforms can be crucial for audience growth.
TikTok is an attention behemoth — Twitch’s user-base numbers don’t even come close — that can be essential to broader success on Twitch as a livestreaming platform. Twitch seems to recognize this relationship, having released new tools this year to make it easier to reuse Twitch content on TikTok. Twitch’s Clip Editor is a web-based application that lets streamers edit clips, including the ability to convert them into portrait mode. Twitch also has CapCut, a more in-depth editor, that makes editing more accessible. TikTok recently added a feature that lets users post to TikTok directly from Twitch and CapCut, closing the loop on the ease of creating short-form content. And earlier in October, Twitch itself introduced a new short-form “stories” feature.
Alex Labat, a Twitch streamer and TikTok creator, has seen exponential growth to his Twitch streams after using TikTok to promote “highlights” of his content, like his infamous Twitch Plays streams, where he gets Twitch Chat to use text commands to play games like World of Warcraft.
“Twitch is where you want to be to see those [unscripted] moments happen in real time,” Labat said. “The ‘you had to be there’ moments. TikTok, on the other hand, is where you go to highlight and/or showcase those moments. Being able to curate the highlights from your stream and feeding that into the TikTok algorithm is your chance for an entirely new audience to see you, for them to say, ‘OK. I have to see what this is about.’”
Some of Labat’s most popular TikToks only required editing Twitch clips into short-form videos; the effort, he says, feels low risk with the potential for high reward. TikTok videos can get tons of views on the platform itself, but the other crucial element that Labat says is often ignored is how often TikToks are reused and reposted on other social media platforms. “Instagram Reels, tweets… sometimes when things take off you aren’t even the arbiter of that growth because something you’ve produced has been shared/remixed on a platform you haven’t even touched,” he said.
Short-form content is also more likely to be viewed by other content creators doing reaction videos and the like; Labat credits a massive Twitch traffic spike to popular World of Warcraft streamer Asmongold viewing his Twitch Plays video on stream. “Very rarely will you ever see a streamer watching someone else’s stream while they’re live,” Labat added.
It’s hard to track whether TikTok audiences are sticking around for longer Twitch streams, but Labat said he does see TikTok users getting involved in the community. Some of his TikTok viewers even signed up for Twitch, after which he helped “onboard” new viewers.
“TikTok people will make it known,” Labat said. “‘Hey. I’m here from TikTok, sort of unsure how things work here.’ And I commend my community for this greatly, they welcome them with open arms.”
He said he even gets people regularly coming into his Twitch stream to ask about a shiny Pokémon stream — a conquest that included four Nintendo Switch consoles — that he did on TikTok in 2022.
Bringing another platform into the equation, Labat said Discord is the other crucial part of making all these different content avenues work. It bridges the gap between TikTok and Twitch, ultimately bringing his community together. “Discord provides that space so that people can find me and where I’ll be providing that content, regardless of said platform,” he added.
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Nicole Carpenter
Source link
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The S&P 500 index capped off a busy week for U.S. markets on Friday by breaking below its 200-day moving average for the first time in more than six months. It also erased the last of its gains from a summer advance that peaked in late July.
The index
SPX
fell 53.84 points, or 1.26%, on Friday to finish the week at 4,224.16 after falling for a fourth straight day, marking the lowest closing level for the index since June 1, and also the first close below its 200-day moving average — which stood at 4,233.17 — since March 17. The S&P 500 fell 2.4% this week, its worst week in a month, and has now finished lower during five of the past seven weeks.
The index has fallen 6.8% from its July 31 closing high, FactSet data show but remains up 10% year to date.
Although a break below the moving average is usually seen as a bearish signal, other indicators suggest that the S&P 500 has fallen into oversold territory which could portend a fresh turn higher beginning as soon as next week, technical analysts said.
“From my perspective, this market has gotten to be pretty oversold,” said Craig Johnson, chief market technician at Piper Sandler, during a phone interview with MarketWatch.
A proprietary Piper Sandler database of all U.S. traded stocks with a market capitalization greater than $25 million and a share price above $2 showed that just 18% of stocks were trading above a 40-week moving average, a level that’s only been reached 10 times since 1987, Johnson said. Often, when so many stocks are trading at such low levels relative to their recent performance, it signals that a turnaround could be near.
“It’s really rare to see readings this low,” Johnson added.
Furthermore, more than 65% of S&P 500 stocks were trading below their 200-day moving average as of Friday’s close, the highest reading in a year, FactSet data show. All of this is consistent with what Johnson and others have described as a “washout” for stocks.
Back in March, when the index last closed below its 200-day moving average, it only remained below it for six sessions. Dow Jones data showed that the S&P 500 closed below its 200-day moving average for five straight days from March 9 to March 15, then closed below the average again for a single day on March 17.
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Rep. Jim Jordan continued to face resistance Friday in his bid to become the next speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, with the number of fellow Republicans voting against the Ohio congressman rising to 25 in a third ballot, up from 22 in the prior ballot.
House GOP lawmakers were slated to hold a meeting around 1 p.m. Eastern Friday, and there were expectations they would vote on whether Jordan should continue to be their nominee for speaker.
Jordan hasn’t sounded like he’s close to throwing in the towel, as he indicated at a news conference before the third round of voting that he planned to keep pushing.
“There’s been multiple rounds of votes for speaker before,” he said during the news conference, referring to how former Speaker Kevin McCarthy needed 15 ballots to secure the job in January.
“Our plan this weekend is to get a speaker elected to the House of Representatives as soon as possible so we can help the American people,” he also said.
Jordan — an ally of former President Donald Trump and co-founder of the hardline House Freedom Caucus — had 22 GOP lawmakers vote against him in a second ballot on Wednesday. On Tuesday, 20 fellow Republicans backed other candidates in an initial round of voting.
Jordan needs a simple majority of House lawmakers to back him in order to become speaker of the narrowly divided chamber, which has 221 Republicans and 212 Democrats, with two vacancies. That would have been 215 votes in the third ballot as there were some absences Friday.
All 210 Democrats present Friday voted for their nominee, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, while 194 Republicans backed Jordan and 25 GOP lawmakers supported other candidates.
Analysts have been warning that the process of picking a new speaker is preventing the Republican-run House from addressing crucial matters, such as supporting Israel and passing a budget to avoid a government shutdown next month that could rattle markets.
Related: Israel, Ukraine aid could run up against House dysfunction, making for ‘tragedy,’ analyst says
And see: Biden seeks $14 billion for Israel, $61 billion for Ukraine in request to Congress
With the House looking rudderless for more than two weeks, the chamber’s temporary speaker, GOP Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, has drawn calls to take on the job more permanently. But a measure that would have McHenry serve in the post until January stalled on Thursday afternoon due to objections from a number of Republicans, even as Jordan offered his support for it.
“This resolution is really dangerous. We need to have a NORMAL election for speaker. @Jim_Jordan, I respect you but it is a massive mistake to back this,” GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida said Thursday in a post on X as the measure lost momentum.
Given the GOP opposition, the McHenry option would require some Democratic support. Jeffries, a New York Democrat, has continued to signal openness to it.
“Conversations hopefully will intensify today, perhaps continue throughout the weekend, and get us to a place where we can reopen the House no later than Monday of next week,” Jeffries told reporters on Friday after the third ballot.
The GOP opposition to Jordan stems from a range of concerns, including that his speakership could lead to cuts in defense
ITA
spending, as well as the view that he didn’t provide enough support for the speaker bid of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise. Jordan’s Republican opponents also have said they’ve faced death threats for their stance, with Rep. Drew Ferguson of Georgia saying Thursday that the House GOP “does not need a bully as the Speaker.”
Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, who led the drive to oust McCarthy from his post more than two weeks ago, said he and the other GOP lawmakers who opposed McCarthy have made an offer to their colleagues who aren’t supporting Jordan, in an effort to get them to switch their votes.
“The eight of us have said that we are willing to accept censure, sanction, suspension, removal from the Republican conference,” Gaetz told reporters after the third ballot, adding that the group will continue to vote with Republicans.
Another Jordan supporter, GOP Rep. Bob Good of Virginia, said the Ohioan should stick with his bid, noting McCarthy went through many rounds.
“We believe if we keep voting Jim Jordan will be elected speaker,” Good told reporters.
COMP
were losing ground Friday, as rising bond yields
BX:TMUBMUSD10Y
and geopolitical tensions continue to take a toll.
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As the anniversary of “Black Monday” approaches, some on Wall Street are observing it by swapping ominous-looking charts and speculating that one of the most terrifying days in markets history might recur.
One could even go as far to say that on social media, some seem eager to relive it, evidenced by a proliferation of viral markets charts, some comparing the stock market’s recent trading action to 1987. Here’s one example from The Market Ear which adheres to a template that caught on following the publication of a column by Bloomberg’s John Authers.
Authers pointed out that the Nasdaq in 2023 has followed a similar pattern to the Dow in 1987, and that this pattern has also played out in Treasury yields.
To be sure, there are plenty of differences between markets today and in 1987. For one, stock exchanges have strengthened circuit-breaker mechanisms in order to prevent major indexes from crashing by double digits during a single session.
Here is another: While the S&P 500
SPX
has climbed this year in spite of rising yields, the index’s gains have been concentrated in a handful of stocks. Outside of these lucky few, much of the market has lagged or has continued to slide following losses in 2022.
Skeptics contend fretful investors are hearing echoes of 1987, while ignoring important differences.
“In 1987, the market was more overbought, the October decline before the crash was far more pronounced, interest rates were higher, economic growth and inflation were accelerating, and cyclical sectors were stronger” — all in contrast with the current setup, noted Ed Clissold and Thanh Nguyen, strategists at Ned Davis Research, in a note last week.
That hasn’t daunted doomsayers on social media, eager to augur a crash ahead of this year’s anniversary, which falls on Thursday.
On Oct. 19, 1987, the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA
plunged 508 points, a decline of almost 23%, in a daylong selling frenzy that ricocheted around the world and tested the limits of the financial system. The S&P 500 dropped more than 20%. At current levels, an equivalent percentage drop would translate into a one-day loss of over 7,700 points. Circuit breakers make a drop of similar magnitude nearly impossible.
Even on Wall Street, some are using the anniversary as an opportunity to take another look at Treasury yields and the dark cloud they’re casting over stocks.
Jefferies’ Global Head of Equity Strategy Christopher Wood recently shared a couple of charts comparing the relationship between stocks and bond yields in 2023 to 1987, driving home the point that stocks appeared resilient to higher yields in 1987 until they finally capitulated with an economy-shaking selloff.
“The potential similarity with what occurred in October 1987 is that the historic stock market crash was preceded by a big sell-off in the 10-year Treasury over the summer months,” Woods said in the report.
But suppose, for argument’s sake, that stocks did experience a 1987-style selloff. How then might the bond market react? Would yields tumble like they did in 1987, opening the door for stocks to bolt higher once again? Some on Wall Street have posited that a stock-market rout is necessary to stem the bleeding in bonds.
Woods delved into this line of thinking in his report.
“But the other salient point to note is that when the S&P 500 subsequently collapsed by 28.5% in four days, and by 20.5% on 19 October 1987 alone, the Treasury bond market staged a classic flight-to-safety rally in the context of a then dramatic decline in the 10-year Treasury bond yield,” Woods added.
Société Générale’s sharp-tongued strategist Albert Edwards has also warned about the possibility of a 1987-style crash.
But NDR’s Clissold and Nguyen argued that “while there are several high-level similarities, not enough line up to conclude that a crash-like event is likely.
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BRUSSELS (AP) — Police in Belgium on Tuesday shot dead a suspected Tunisian extremist accused of killing two Swedish soccer fans in a brazen shooting on a Brussels street before disappearing into the night.
Hours after a manhunt began in the Belgian capital, Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden told broadcaster VRT: “We have the good news that we found the individual.” She said that the weapon believed to have been used in the shooting was recovered.
The federal prosecutor’s office was more cautious, saying in a text message to The Associated Press: “There are strong presumptions but no certainties” that the man was the shooter. He was shot by police in the Schaerbeek neighborhood where the rampage had taken place.
Amateur videos posted on social media of Monday’s attack showed a man wearing an orange fluorescent vest pull up on a scooter, take out a large weapon and open fire on passersby before chasing them into a building to gun them down.
“Last night, three people left for what was supposed to be a wonderful soccer party. Two of them lost their lives in a brutal terrorist attack,” Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said at a news conference just before dawn. “Their lives were cut short in full flight, cut down by extreme brutality.”
De Croo said his thoughts were with the victims’ families and that he had sent his condolences to the Swedish prime minister. Security has been beefed up in the capital, particularly around places linked to the Swedish community in the city.
“The attack that was launched yesterday was committed with total cowardice,” De Croo said.
Not far from the scene of the shooting, the Belgium-Sweden soccer match in the Belgian national stadium was suspended at halftime and the 35,000 fans held inside as a precaution while the attacker was at large.
Prosecutor Eric Van Duyse said “security measures were urgently taken to protect the Swedish supporters” in the stadium. More than two hours after the game was suspended, a message flashed on the big stadium screen saying, “Fans, you can leave the stadium calmly.” Stand after stand emptied onto streets filled with police as the search for the attacker continued.
“Frustrated, confused, scared. I think everyone was quite scared,” said Caroline Lochs, a fan from Antwerp.
De Croo said the assailant was a Tunisian man living illegally in Belgium who used a military weapon to kill the two Swedes and shoot a third, who is being treated for ”severe injuries.”
Federal Prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw described how the suspect, a 45-year-old man who wasn’t identified, had posted a video online claiming to have killed three Swedish people.
The suspect is alleged to have said in the video that, for him, the Quran is “a red line for which he is ready to sacrifice himself.”
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TEL AVIV, Israel — President Joe Biden will travel to Israel and on to Jordan Wednesday to meet with both Israeli and Arab leadership, as concerns increase that the raging Israel-Hamas war could expand into a larger regional conflict.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Biden’s travel to Israel as the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip grows more dire and as Israel prepares for a possible ground attack on the 141-square-mile territory to root out Hamas militants responsible for what U.S. and Israeli officials say was the most lethal assault against Jews since the Holocaust.
Biden is looking to send the strongest message yet that the U.S. is behind Israel. His Democratic administration has pledged military support, sending U.S. carriers and aid to the region. Officials have said they would ask Congress for upward of $2 billion in additional aid for both Israel and Ukraine, which is fighting Russia’s invasion.
It’s a chance for Biden to burnish his national security credentials to U.S. voters with the 2024 election just over a year away. It’s also an opportunity to demonstrate that he’s making good on his campaign promise of exercising American leadership after four years of former President Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy.
But Biden’s presence could be seen as a provocative move by Hamas’ chief sponsor, Iran, or potentially viewed as tone-deaf by Arab nations as civilian casualties mount in Gaza. Blinken has already been traveling around the Mideast this past week trying to prevent the war with Hamas from igniting a broader regional conflict.
Blinken made the announcement early Tuesday after more than seven hours of talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top Israeli officials.
“He is coming here at a critical moment for Israel, for the region and for the world,” Blinken said.
Shortly after in Washington, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby announced that Biden would also go to Jordan to meet with King Abdullah II, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
“We’ve been crystal clear about the need for humanitarian aid to be able to continue to flow into Gaza,” Kirby said. “That has been a consistent call by President Biden and certainly by this entire administration.”
Truckloads of aid idled Monday at Egypt’s border with Gaza, barred from entry, as residents and humanitarian groups pleaded for water, food and fuel for dying generators, saying the tiny Palestinian territory sealed off by Israel after last week’s rampage by Hamas was near total collapse.
Biden had been scheduled to travel to Pueblo, Colorado, on Monday but decided to postpone the visit so he could consult with his aides and speak with fellow leaders about the unfolding situation in the Middle East.
The announcements came after Biden consulted with a trio of world leaders and his own national security team on Monday amid growing global concern about the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the Gaza Strip and fears that the Israel-Hamas war could metastasize into a broader regional conflict.
Biden spoke by phone with Egypt’s el-Sissi, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz about the fallout from Hamas militants’ surprise attacks on Israel that left 1,400 dead and retaliatory strikes that have killed at least 2,778 Palestinians.
European Union leaders will hold an emergency summit on Tuesday as concern mounts that the war between Israel and Hamas could fuel tensions in Europe and bring more refugees in search of sanctuary.
Biden’s call with the Egyptian leader came one day after el-Sissi met with Blinken in Cairo. Egypt’s state-run media said el-Sissi told Blinken that Israel’s Gaza operation has exceeded “the right of self-defense” and turned into “a collective punishment.”
Kirby declined to comment on el-Sissi’s concerns about how Israel is conducting the war.
“The humanitarian situation was high on the list of the discussion with President el-Sissi,” Kirby said.
Iran’s foreign minister warned Monday that “preemptive action is possible” if Israel moves closer to its looming ground offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Iran is a chief financial sponsor of Hamas militants in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The comments by Hossein Amirabdollahian follow a pattern of escalating rhetoric from Iran.
“Leaders of the resistance will not allow the Zionist regime to do whatever it wants in Gaza and then go after other resistance groups after it’s done with Gaza,” he told state television. “Therefore any preemptive action is possible in the coming hours.”
Kirby said the U.S. has not seen any signs that Iran might try to get directly involved in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
White House officials have said that U.S. intelligence shows that Iran has been broadly aware that Hamas had been preparing for a possible strike against Israel. But the U.S. says it has yet to uncover evidence of direct Iranian involvement in the Oct. 7 attack.
Israel is also preparing for the potential of a new front opening on its northern border with Lebanon, where it has exchanged fire repeatedly with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group. The military ordered residents of 28 Israeli communities near the border to evacuate.
Air raid sirens interrupted Blinken’s meetings with Israeli officials on three different occasions Monday, including twice as he huddled with Netanyahu and his war cabinet.
In Washington, Biden was briefed in the Oval Office by their national security team on the situation on the ground in Israel and Gaza. White House chief of staff Jeff Zients joined the briefing led by national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and Central Intelligence Agency Director Bill Burns, according to the White House.
Blinken was in Israel on Monday for his second visit in less than a week for talks with Israeli leaders. He has been crisscrossing the Middle East with stops in Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Blinken, in talks Monday with Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, carried back some of the feedback he received from Arab leaders. He also “underlined his firm support for Israel’s right to defend itself from Hamas’ terrorism and reaffirmed U.S. determination to provide the Israeli government with what it needs to protect its citizens,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.
White House officials said Biden’s talks with Arab leaders in Amman will largely focus on humanitarian concerns for Gaza’s 2.3 million people. He’ll also make clear that Hamas does not stand for the Palestinian people’s right to dignity and self-determination.
Still, White House officials bristled about whether Biden would ask Netanyahu and Israel officials to show restraint or set any conditions on any new U.S. military aid that could be in the pipeline.
“We are not putting conditions on the military assistance that we are providing to Israel,” Kirby said. “They have a right to defend themselves. They have a right to go after this terrorist threat.”
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President Joe Biden said Sunday the U.S. is doing “everything in its power” to find 14 Americans being held hostage by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
In excerpts from an interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” airing Sunday night, Biden called Hamas’s attack last week, which killed more than 1,400 Israelis, including at least 30 Americans, “pure barbarism.”
“I say we’re going to do everything in our power to find them,” Biden told CBS News’ Scott Pelley, about the American hostages. “Everything in our power. And I’m not going to go into the detail of that, but there’s — we’re working like hell on it.”
Biden also said the U.S. can easily handle supporting its allies in simultaneous wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
“We’re the United States of America for God’s sake, the most powerful nation in the history — not in the world, in the history of the world,” Biden said. “We can take care of both of these and still maintain our overall international defense. We have the capacity to do this and we have an obligation … to paraphrase the former secretary of state: If we don’t, who does?”
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WASHINGTON — Republican Steve Scalise ended his bid to become House speaker late Thursday after hardline holdouts refused to back the party’s nominee, throwing the GOP majority into deeper chaos with the chamber unable to function.
Scalise told GOP colleagues at a closed-door evening meeting of his decision and pointedly declined to announce backing for anyone else, including his chief rival, Rep. Jim Jordan, the far-right Judiciary Committee chairman backed by Donald Trump who had already told colleagues he no longer would seek the job.
Next steps are uncertain as the House is essentially closed while the Republican majority tries to elect a speaker after ousting Kevin McCarthy from the job.
“I just shared with my colleagues that I’m withdrawing my name as a candidate for speaker-designee,” Scalise said as he emerged from the closed-door meeting at the Capitol.
Scalise, R-La., said the Republican majority “still has to come together and is not there.”
He had been working furiously to secure the votes after being nominated by a majority of his colleagues, but after hours of private meetings over two days and late into the evening it was clear lawmakers were not budging from their refusal to support him.
Asked if he would throw his support behind Jordan, Scalise said, “It’s got to be people that aren’t doing it for themselves and their own personal interest.”
He said he would push quickly for a resolution. “But it wasn’t going to happen. It wasn’t going to happen today. It wasn’t going to happen tomorrow. It needs to happen soon, but I’ve withdrawn my name,” he said.
Frustrations have mounted as the political crisis spiraled and Republicans lost another day without a House speaker. Scalise was trying to peel off more than 100 votes, mostly from those who backed Jordan.
But many hard-liners taking their cues from Trump have dug in for a prolonged fight to replace McCarthy after his historic ouster from the job. They argued that Majority Leader Scalise was no better choice, that he should be focusing on his health as he battles cancer and that he was not the leader they would support. No House votes were scheduled.
McCarthy said afterward that Scalise would remain as majority leader but had no other advice for his colleagues. The California Republican had briefly flirted with a comeback bid but it’s unclear if he would try again.
“I just think the conference as a whole has to figure out their problems, solve it and select the leader,” he said.
The House is entering its second week without a speaker and is essentially unable to function during a time of turmoil in the U.S. and wars overseas, and the political pressure increasingly is on Republicans to reverse course, reassert majority control and govern in Congress.
Action is needed to fund the government or face the threat of a federal shutdown in a month. Lawmakers also want Congress to deliver a strong statement of support for Israel in the war with Hamas, but a bipartisan resolution has been sidelined by the stalemate in the House. The White House is expected to soon ask for money for Israel, Ukraine and the backfill of the U.S. weapons stockpile.
The situation is not fully different from the start of the year, when McCarthy faced a similar backlash from a different group of far-right holdouts who ultimately gave their votes to elect him speaker, then engineered his historic downfall.
But the math this time is even more daunting, and the problematic political dynamic only worsening.
Scalise, who is seen by some colleagues as hero for having survived a 2017 shooting on lawmakers at a congressional baseball game practice, won the closed-door Republican vote 113-99.
But Scalise would have needed 217 votes to reach a majority in a floor battle with Democrats. The chamber is narrowly split 221-212, with two vacancies, meaning Scalise could lose just a few Republicans in the face of opposition from Democrats who will most certainly back their own leader, New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries. Absences heading into the weekend could lower the majority threshold needed.
Jordan’s backers revived calls for party members to get behind the Ohio Republican, who is a founding leader of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus.
“Make him the speaker. Do it tonight,” said Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind. “He’s the only one who can unite our party. It’s time to get behind him.”
Other potential speaker nominees were being floated, including from the leadership team, but splitting the votes multiple ways would almost certainly only complicate the factional dynamics in the House majority.
Some Republicans simply want Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., who was appointed interim speaker pro tempore, to be given greater authority to lead the House. A proposal was floated for just that earlier Thursday by the conservative but pragmatic Republican Governance Group of lawmakers.
Rank-and-file Republicans left Thursday night’s meeting flummoxed about what to do next.
“I’m a freshman caught up in this maelstrom,” said Rep. Mark Alford, R-Mo. “We’re a ship without a rudder right now. And I’m thoroughly disappointed in the process. And I just pray to God that we find something.
Exasperated Democrats, who have been watching and waiting for the Republican majority to recover from McCarthy’s ouster, urged them to figure it out, warning the world is watching.
“The House Republicans need to end the GOP Civil War, now,” Jeffries said.
“The House Democrats have continued to make clear that we are ready, willing and able to find a bipartisan path forward,” he said, urging that the House reopen and change GOP-led rules that allowed a single lawmaker to put in motion the process to remove the speaker.
As Congress sat idle, the Republicans spent a second day behind closed doors, arguing and airing grievances but failing to follow their own party rules and unite behind the nominee.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, said the meetings had been marked by “emotional” objections to voting for Scalise.
Some Republicans simply took their Chick-fil-A lunches to go.
Jordan had given his most vocal endorsement yet to Scalise and announced he did not plan to continue running for the leadership position.
“We need to come together and support Steve,” Jordan, R-Ohio, told reporters before the midday closed session.
But it was not enough to sway the holdouts.
Handfuls of hard-liners announced they were sticking with Jordan, McCarthy or someone other than Scalise.
Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, reaffirmed his support for Trump as speaker; the position does not need to go to a member of Congress.
Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, repeatedly discussed Scalise’s health during a radio interview that aired Thursday.
“Well, I like Steve. I like both of them very much. But the problem, you know, Steve is a man that is in serious trouble, from the standpoint of his cancer,” Trump said on Fox News host Brian Kilmeade’s radio show.
Scalise has been diagnosed with a form of blood cancer known as multiple myeloma and is being treated.
“I think it’s going to be very hard, maybe in either case, for somebody to get,” Trump said. “And then you end up in one of these crazy stalemates. It’s a very interesting situation.”
Many Republicans want to prevent the spectacle of a messy House floor fight like the grueling January brawl when McCarthy became speaker.
But others said it was time for Republicans to get out from behind closed doors and vote.
“Stop dragging it out,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., on social media. “If Kevin McCarthy had to go 15 rounds then the next Speaker should be able to do the same or more if they have to.”
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