February 6 2025

1. U.S. Economy Soars While Living Standards Lag, Report Finds
2. Trump’s Order Labeling Mexican Cartels as Terrorist Organizations Will Have To Navigate Tremendous Complexity, Interconnection
3. State Farm Seeks 22% Rate Hike After California Fires
4. Trump Order Blocks Federal Funds for Schools Allowing Trans Athletes in Women's Sports
5. Trump's Greenland Push Heralds New ‘Great Game’’
February 6, 1899: The Spanish-American War ends.

GET THE CITIZEN JOURNAL APP - FREE!

1. U.S. Economy Soars While Living Standards Lag, Report Finds

The American economy has grown faster than every other high-income economy over the past few decades. Today, the U.S. has the world’s second-largest economy, behind only China. [ PPP terms] But by many other measures of well-being — especially health and happiness — the U.S. fares worse than many other rich countries and has fallen further behind since the 1990s. A politically diverse group of scholars — who together have advised every president since Bill Clinton and who work at many of the country’s top think tanks — released a report card yesterday on American well-being. The scholars spent months debating which metrics best captured the state of the nation and ultimately agreed on 37. They then tracked those measures since the 1990s and compared the United States with dozens of other countries on economic performance, physical health, mental health, social trust and more. The group’s central finding is the one you can see in the charts above: The U.S. economy has outperformed most of its rivals in terms of productive might and innovation. But this success has not led to rapidly rising living standards for most Americans. “We’re so wealthy but so unhappy,” said Bradley Birzer, a historian at Hillsdale College, a Christian school in Michigan. “It seems like the central question of modernity.” Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, put it this way: “We are the richest country in the world, but we chronically fail to offer broad-based economic prosperity and security.”  

Report

Article Source: NYT

2. Trump’s Order Labeling Mexican Cartels as Terrorist Organizations Will Have To Navigate Tremendous Complexity, Interconnection

President Trump wants to deploy a blunt new tool to fight Mexican cartels that flood the U.S. with drugs, by adding them to a list of terrorist groups that includes the likes of al Qaeda and Hamas. The move, which the White House laid out in an executive order last month, could increase pressure on the cartels by directing more money to intelligence gathering. It also could lay the groundwork for going after cartel financiers and allied businesses—and for unilateral U.S. military action such as drone strikes on drug labs, according to officials and security experts In the U.S., gun manufacturers and gun shops whose products end up in the hands of cartel gunmen could face legal jeopardy. Banks and other companies that arrange for remittances to be sent from the U.S. to Mexico could also be affected. Cartels are deeply entwined with the Mexican economy. Many of the tomatoes, bell peppers and cucumbers consumed in the U.S. are grown in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, where many farmers pay the cartel for water for their fields. Businesses such as mining companies and avocado growers are widely believed to pay extortion money to cartels. “For better or for worse, this will likely force Mexican businesses and the Mexican government to confront pervasive cartel influence,” said Andrew Kaufman, an international lawyer who is counseling Mexican and multinational firms on the expected FTO designations. 

Article Source: WSJ

3. State Farm Seeks 22% Rate Hike After California Fires

State Farm, the largest insurance company in California, has asked regulators to let it raise property insurance rates by a staggering average of 22 percent, writing in a letter Monday that the recent fires in Los Angeles threaten its finances and are “the costliest in the history of the company.” As of Saturday, the company had received more than 8,700 claims stemming from the fires and had paid more than $1 billion to policyholders. But in a letter to California’s insurance commissioner, State Farm leaders said, “We know we will ultimately pay out significantly more.” They wrote that previous years’ losses from natural disasters had already weakened the company’s finances, causing its credit rating to be downgraded. Without more capital, State Farm’s rating could drop again, they said, warning that it could jeopardize the more than 2.8 million policies held by Californians.  

Editors note: this has the potential to become big national issue. CA will likely need federal money. Will Trump’s MAGA base want to pay for Hollywood millionaires homes? [how it will be framed]

Article Source: WaPo

4. Trump Order Blocks Federal Funds for Schools Allowing Trans Athletes in Women's Sports

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that aims to ban transgender athletes from competing on girls’ and women’s sports teams by denying federal funds for schools that allow it, delivering on another contentious culture war promise. The order directs the Education Department to inform schools that allowing transgender athletes to compete will put them in violation of Title IX, the federal law banning sex discrimination in schools. Under the law, schools that discriminate based on sex are not eligible for federal funding.

Article Source: WaPo

5. Trump's Greenland Push Heralds New ‘Great Game’’

US President Donald Trump’s renewed interest in taking control of Greenland has thrust this vast, frozen landmass of just 57,000 people into the geopolitical spotlight. Offers to buy Greenland are nothing new — Washington first made enquiries in 1867 — but this latest attempt, in which Trump has refused to rule out using military force against a Nato ally, has thrown Denmark and the EU into crisis. It also highlights the growing military, commercial and diplomatic interest in the region. A long period of so-called Arctic exceptionalism, during which major powers viewed the region as a low-tension area away from normal geopolitics where rival nations could attempt to find common ground over problems such as climate change, appears to be ending. Between Russia’s growing militarisation of its Arctic territory, China’s increasing ambitions for trade routes and Trump’s expansionist rhetoric about Greenland, the Arctic is quickly becoming a region of strategic competition. Some have likened it to the Great Game of the 19th century, when Britain and Russia vied for influence over central Asia. “This is a geopolitical machination,” says Klaus Dodds, an Arctic expert and professor of geopolitics at Royal Holloway, University of London. “It is rooted in the sense of ‘this is a great power struggle’. The US has to ensure at the very least that its western hemisphere is as secure as it can be.”

Article Source: FT

February 6, 1899: The Spanish-American War ends.

The Spanish-American War of 1898 was a brief but transformative conflict between the United States and Spain, driven by American support for Cuban independence, economic interests, and the explosion of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor. The war ended with the Treaty of Paris, in which Spain ceded Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the U.S., marking America’s emergence as a global power. The long-term implications included the expansion of U.S. territorial holdings, setting the stage for debates over imperialism, governance of overseas territories, and military presence in the Pacific. Puerto Rico remains a U.S. territory, Guam became a key military outpost, and the Philippines, after years of American rule and a bloody insurgency, gained independence in 1946. The war also reinforced U.S. interventionist policies in Latin America, shaping its foreign relations for decades.

See the Ad Astra Podcast! Released on Apple and Spotify around 10a CST.

Sponsors (click me!)

Sources

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/briefing/the-us-economy-is-racing-ahead-almost-everything-else-is-falling-behind.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

2. https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/trumps-next-fight-with-mexico-designating-drug-cartels-as-terrorists-a46aeb4c?st=obkhQH&reflink=article_copyURL_share

3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2025/02/03/state-farm-california-fires-property-insurance/

4. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/02/05/transgender-students-trump-executive-order/

5. https://on.ft.com/4hJlzQL