Today's top stories in US news, politics, government, and world affairs:
Over the past few weeks Mar-A-Lago has been the center of the universe. It’s been the place where Trump’s transition team, Co-Chaired by Cantor Fitzgerald’s CEO Howard Lutnick, has met with hundreds of potential cabinet and administration nominees. It’s where Elon Musk has basically set up his mobile office, often eating all 3 meals a day alongside Trump. It’s where politicians from across the world have taken meetings with the President-Elect, from Argentina’s President Javier Milei, to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, to Sara Netanyahu, wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And of most note has been the pilgrimage that the world’s top business leaders have made to pay their new respects to Trump at his Florida home and his “Winter White House”. As Trump told reporters this week, “In the first term, everybody was fighting me. In this term, everybody wants to be my friend.” Of note is that this is an extraordinarily distinct departure from 2016 when then President-Elect Donald Trump had first taken office, where the nation’s top business leaders were decidedly opposed to Trump. Mark Zuckerberg made the trip to Mar-a-Lago, and his company Meta pledged to donate $1 Million to Trump’s Inaugural Fund. Jeff Bezos went to Mar-a-Lago and also brought his checkbook, telling Trump that Amazon would be donating $1 Million to Trump’s Inaugural Fund. Open AI’s CEO Sam Altman came to Mar-a-Lago and, yes, you might have guessed it, also pledged a $1 Million donation. Joining them was Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, who just this week paid his respects to Trump in Palm Beach. Even Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who protested Trump’s immigration policies in 2017, apparently dined at Mar-a-Lago with Trump. The rate at which these business leaders are tripping over one another to pay their respects to Trump and reverse their years-long course of bad blood between them is nothing short of stunning.
The U.S. national debt, which is the total sum of the money the United States owes on its existing obligations, is now $36.13 Trillion dollars. If you think this is an astonishing amount, you would be correct. Our national debt was not always out of control like it is now - in fact, when adjusted for inflation, over the past 100 years, the U.S. federal debt has increased from $394 Billion in 1924 to $35.46 Trillion in 2024. So how is the national debt calculated? How did we get here? And what does all of this mean for you? With the help of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, I explain all of it in this video. America faces many challenges including rising inequality, unaffordable healthcare, climate change, education affordability, and unpredictable security threats. To address these challenges we will need significant resources. Given the severity of the consequences of defaulting on the national debt, coupled with the dramatic increases in debt the United States owes, it’s incumbent on our lawmakers in Washington to get their acts together and start to pay the debt down. The future of our nation, of our democracy, and of the welfare of every single one of us, depends on it.
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