April 20, 2026

06 Market

In a sure sign that even the far-left is about to go all-in on the AI brain race, Progmerican Governor of Illinois J.B. Pritzker has signed legislation that ends a decades-long ban on new construction of large-scale nuclear power plants in the state. The move should be seen as a telegraph the left’s Green Deal may be over in favor of AI Justice

Blurb:

Illinois Governor Signs Legislation Ending Moratorium On New Large-Scale Nuclear Plants  NucNet
from news.google.com

Illinois governor J. B. Pritzker has signed into law a wide-ranging energy reform package that includes the lifting of a longtime ban on new large-scale nuclear power plants in the state.

The financial industry is already pushing back against President Trump’s calls to put a 1-year cap on credit card interest rates at 10%. The President declared on Truth Social, “Please be informed that we will no longer let the American Public be ‘ripped off’ by Credit Card Companies that are charging Interest Rates of 20 to 30%, and even more, which festered unimpeded during the Sleepy Joe Biden Administration. AFFORDABILITY!

Effective January 20, 2026, I, as President of the United States, am calling for a one year cap on Credit Card Interest Rates of 10%. Coincidentally, the January 20th date will coincide with the one year anniversary of the historic and very successful Trump Administration.”

Blurb:

“I, as President of the United States, am calling for a one year cap on Credit Card Interest Rates of 10%.”

In what will surely be hailed as a massive gift to America, President Donald Trump announced Friday night that all credit card interest rates will be capped at 10% for one year. This would lift the burden for many Americans who have been struggling under the weight of high-interest rate debt.

The Anti-ICE States of California, Washington, New York, and the far-left city-state Washington D.C. are seeing its tourist numbers drop precipitously as the violence they continue to foment and protect drives both domestic and international tourists away. Losses vary, but the numbers across the board start at 15% reductions in every major tourist market. Here is the full breakdown from Travel and Tour World.

Blurb:

California Joins Washington, New York, Oregon, Washington DC and More US States Facing Deep Tourism Crisis Amid Political Tension in American Skies, New Update is Here  Travel And Tour World
from news.google.com

California, Washington, New York, Oregon, Washington D.C., and several other key US states are now facing an alarming tourism crisis, as political tensions continue to shake the very foundation of their once-thriving tourism industries. Political unrest, border issues, and immigration disputes have triggered a significant decline in tourist arrivals, affecting local economies across the nation. California, traditionally a major draw for international tourists, is seeing its visitor numbers plummet as political instability spreads like wildfire.

US States like Washington, New York, and Oregon are not far behind, with federal policies making their mark on the travel sector. Major tourist destinations in Washington D.C., including historical landmarks, are also suffering as visitors steer clear, unsure about the safety of traveling during these turbulent times. The ripple effect is undeniable, with businesses across tourism-dependent regions feeling the strain. Washington D.C., New York, and Oregon are all facing the same grim reality: a deep tourism crisis that shows no sign of improving.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has unveiled the department’s update to the previous food pyramid. The pyramid is replaced with a 10-page guide. The Secretary said of the guide, “The new guidelines recognize that whole, nutrient-dense food is the most effective path to better health and lower health care cost.”

Blurb:

President Donald Trump’s administration has released a new set of federal dietary guidelines that will influence meals served to millions of Americans across government programs, schools, and federal institutions.

The new guidelines were revealed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and are designed to align with the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda.

The 10-page guidance document emphasizes protein, dairy, “healthy fats,” fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, with Kennedy and Rollins describing the approach as a return to whole, nutrient-dense food.

“The new guidelines recognize that whole, nutrient-dense food is the most effective path to better health and lower health care costs,” Kennedy said at a press conference in Washington.

President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have officially reconciled their once-vitriolic differences, demonstrating that reconciliation ceremoniously at a Mar a Largo event. Musk said of the event, “Had a lovely dinner last night with @POTUS and @FLOTUS. 2026 is going to be amazing!”

This moment followed a post on X by Musk that telegraphed his position for the 2026 election, “America is toast if the radical left wins. They will open the floodgates to illegal immigration and fraud. Won’t be America anymore.”

Blurb:

Elon Musk Reunites With Donald and Melania Trump at Mar-a-Lago Dinner  TheWrap
from news.google.com

Elon Musk appears to have reunited with Donald and Melania Trump, per a post shared on X on Sunday.

“Had a lovely dinner last night with @POTUS and @FLOTUS,” Musk wrote on the platform. “2026 is going to be amazing!”

President Donald Trump is touting the $18 trillion in foreign investments in America, calling it America’s Martial plan. As The Federalist pointed out, that’s equivalent to 120 Marshall Plans. The Federalist also contrasted this “Marshall Plan” with the “Green” Martial plan that saw nation-states, including America, invest $20 trillion in a project to reduce carbon emissions that produced next to no substantive carbon emission reductions.

Blurb:

Trump’s Foreign Policy Is Delivering 120 ‘Marshall Plans’ To U.S. – thefederalist.com

$20 trillion is a lot of money.

One would expect a big bang to follow the spending of twenty-thousand billion dollars. It’s a lot of money! It’s pretty much the total present value of America’s GDP.

This is the estimated sum that was globally spent — largely by Europe and the United States — in a coordinated effort by the developed world to decarbonize the global economy. China, in contrast, sold the world windmills and solar panels while it opened a new coal-fired power plant per month.

What was the net effect of this “green” Marshall Plan? Consumption of hydrocarbons, also known as “fossil fuels,” continued to increase anyway. All that was achieved was a tiny reduction, just 2 percent, in the share of overall energy supplied by hydrocarbons. Put simply, as the energy pie got bigger and all forms of energy supply increased, hydrocarbons ended up with a slightly smaller share of a larger pie.

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One of the biggest problems — of many — that President Donald Trump identified under his predecessor’s regime involved the soaring cost of living to which many Americans were subjected.

By that same token, Trump also appears cognizant that one of the initiatives he supports, the investment in and proliferation of artificial intelligence, could very well lead to Americans feeling the same sort of squeeze they felt under former President Joe Biden.

Aware of that, the president took to Truth Social to issue a mandate to tech companies, saying they will not be allowed to jack up American utility bills.

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The following content is sponsored by Americans for Limited Government.

After years of Washington politicians lining the pockets of insurance companies and anointing them “essential partners,” President Trump has called out the insurance monopoly for what it is. “Let the money go not to the big fat cats and the insurance companies that made 1,700 percent over a short period of time,” President Trump said.

“Let the money go directly to the people, where they can buy their own health care.”

The big health insurance companies that have gorged themselves at the Obamacare trough are finally being put under the spotlight and held to account. While these companies have grown richer, patients have been left paying ever-increasing premiums and deductibles with steadily decreasing care in return.

Blurb:

Eleven House Democrats jumped party lines to vote with their Republican counterparts in a bid to overturn regulations pushed during former President Joe Biden’s tenure.

According to Fox News, the House of Representatives voted 226-197 to overturn Biden-era regulations effectively aimed at restricting how strong shower heads could be.

Federal law already caps how much water a shower head is allowed to emit.

During the Biden administration, regulators took a broader view of that rule. They concluded that showers equipped with multiple nozzles had to be treated as a single unit, meaning the total water flow across all heads could not exceed the legal maximum.

Blurb:

NEW YORK — Up until this week, Wall Street has generally benefited from the Trump administration’s policies and has been supportive of the president. That relationship has suddenly soured.

When President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill into law in July, it pushed another significant round of tax cuts and also cut the budget of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, at times the banking industry’s nemesis, by nearly half. Trump’s bank regulators have also been pushing a deregulatory agenda that both banks and large corporations have embraced.

But now the president has proposed a one-year, 10% cap on the interest rate on credit cards, a lucrative business for many financial institutions, and his Department of Justice has launched an investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell that many say threatens the institution that is supposed to set interest rates free of political interference.

Blurb:

Former President Bill Clinton defied a House Republican committee’s subpoena Tuesday in an escalating battle over Congress’s handling of an investigation of disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer threatened the former president with a contempt prosecution, while Clinton accused the Republican of mounting a partisan campaign to hide, rather than reveal, the truth about Epstein and his powerful connections.

Clinton failed to appear at a deposition for Comer’s panel Tuesday. Instead, the former president posted a letter to the chairman on social media denouncing his investigation and condemning him for resisting successful legislation to force disclosure of Justice Department files on Epstein’s sex trafficking operation.

“If the government didn’t do all it could to investigate and prosecute these crimes, for whatever reason, that should be the focus of your work – to learn why and to prevent that from happening ever again. There is no evidence that you are doing so,” Clinton wrote in a letter co-signed by his wife, former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who has also been subpoenaed by the panel.

Blurb:

Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson voiced skepticism Tuesday on President Donald Trump’s move to temporarily cap credit card interest rates.

“I think that would probably deprive an awful lot of people of access to credit around the country,” Thune told reporters. “Credit cards would probably become debit cards.”

“That’s not something I’m out there advocating for — let’s put it that way,” he added.

Thune’s comments come after Trump posted on Truth Social that he was calling for a one-year cap of 10 percent interest on credit cards starting Jan. 20.

Blurb:

President Donald Trump announced Monday, January 12, that Iran’s primary trading partners will be met with 25 percent tariffs on most goods. The announcement comes amid several days of sustained unrest across the country, which has left dozens of anti-regime protesters dead, according to figures from several human rights organizations.

The measure targets nations such as China, India, Turkey, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates, which are among Iran’s primary trading partners. The White House stated that this policy applies to any goods imported into the United States from those countries, potentially increasing costs for American businesses and consumers.

“Effective immediately, any Country doing business with the Islamic Republic of Iran will pay a Tariff of 25% on any and all business being done with the United States of America. This Order is final and conclusive,” the president posted on Truth Social.

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ExxonMobil may see itself shut out of Venezuela.

President Trump hinted that ExxonMobil may find itself blocked from making investments in Venezuela after the CEO claimed the country was “inevitable.”

On Friday, the CEO of ExxonMobil, while at the White House, expressed doubts about whether investing in Venezuela will yield good returns for his company due to the current laws in the country.

In response to the CEO’s comments, Trump said Exxon Mobil is “playing cute.”

Blurb:

President Trump has made lowering prescription drug prices a clear priority, repeatedly arguing that Americans should not be forced to pay more for medicine than patients in other developed countries. Drugmakers have publicly welcomed that message. But their actions tell a more complicated story.

First reported by Reuters this week, pharmaceutical companies are raising list prices on more than 350 drugs for 2026. Many of the increases were small, but others were not, including sharp hikes on certain hospital-administered and specialty medicines that patients and providers rely on every day.

Blurb:

The U.S. labor market ended 2025 on a soft note, with job creation in December less than expected, according to a report Friday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Nonfarm payrolls rose a seasonally adjusted 50,000 for the month, lower than the downwardly revised 56,000 in November and short of the Dow Jones estimate for 73,000.

At the same time, the unemployment rate fell to 4.4%, compared to the forecast for 4.5%.

The report presented a muddy view of the labor market, with companies reporting a low level of hiring but households showing employment gains.

In addition, revisions brought totals down for the prior months. The November total saw a slight downward revision of 8,000 to the payrolls number, while October’s loss was even more than originally reported, now at 173,000 compared to the prior estimate of 105,000.

Blurb:

President Masoud Pezeshkian strikes conciliatory tone in interview broadcast on state TV but accuses US and Israel of fuelling unrest that has killed dozens.

President Masoud Pezeshkian has pledged to overhaul Iran’s struggling economy, saying his government is “ready to listen to its people” after two weeks of increasingly violent nationwide demonstrations.

Pezeshkian adopted a conciliatory approach during a televised interview on state television on Sunday, saying his embattled administration was determined to resolve the country’s economic problems while accusing the United States and Israel of fomenting deadly unrest.

Blurb:

President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that his administration is moving to ban major investors from buying up single-family homes in the U.S. in an attempt to lower housing prices.

Trump claimed in a Truth Social post that former President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats have caused “record high inflation,” which has caused the “American Dream” to become “increasingly out of reach for far too many people.”

“For a very long time, buying and owning a home was considered the pinnacle of the American Dream,” Trump wrote in the social media post. “I am immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, and I will be calling on Congress to codify it.”

“People live in homes, not corporations,” the president emphasized.

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President Trump said on Truth Social Wednesday that Venezuela will use the money that it draws from a recent oil sale deal with the U.S. on “ONLY American Made Products.”

Those purchases could include agricultural products, medicines, medical devices and equipment needed to fix the country’s beleaguered electrical grid, Mr. Trump wrote.

“In other words, Venezuela is committing to doing business with the United States of America as their principal partner – A wise choice, and a very good thing for the people of Venezuela, and the United States,” the president continued.

Since Maduro’s capture, Mr. Trump has focused on Venezuela’s oil industry, pressing U.S. companies to enter the country — a move he has suggested could help rebuild the oil-rich nation’s crumbling infrastructure.

Blurb:

 

As Venezuelan detainee Diógenes Angulo left a prison in San Francisco de Yare after a year and five months behind bars, his family appeared to be in shock.

He was detained two days before the 2024 presidential election after he posted a video of an opposition demonstration in Barinas, the home state of the late President Hugo Chávez.

As he emerged from the jail in San Francisco de Yare, approximately an hour’s drive south of the capital Caracas, he learned that former President Nicolás Maduro had been captured by U.S. forces Jan. 3 in a nighttime raid in the capital.

Angulo told The Associated Press that his faith gave him the strength to keep going during his detention.

Blurb:

The UK government says X limiting Grok AI image edits to users who pay a monthly fee is “insulting” to victims of misogyny and sexual violence.

It follows backlash after Elon Musk’s AI engine digitally changed images of people by undressing them – something it says it now can only do for those who pay a monthly instalment.

The BBC’s technology editor Zoe Kleinman explains what’s happened and why.

Blurb:

The UK government “wants any excuse for censorship”, Elon Musk has said, amid a growing backlash over deepfake sexual images produced by his social media site X’s artificial intelligence tool.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said X needed “to get a grip of” its AI chatbot Grok, and he had asked media regulator Ofcom for “all options to be on the table”.