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Market Jitters: Wall Street on Edge After Trump Takes Aim at Credit Cards, Homebuying (Bloomberg)
Stocks of the biggest banks tumbled Monday
as the president
called for a 10% cap on credit-card rates. That came days after real estate investors were blindsided when he floated a ban on institutional buyers purchasing single-family homes.
Bank executives had been content to keep their heads down and quietly lobby to friendlier regulators on pet issues. Now, they face the choice of whether to publicly battle the president or give up billions in profit.
Banking Bulletin: Citi to Cut About 1,000 Jobs This Week as CEO Jane Fraser Trims Costs (Bloomberg)
Pentagon Pushback: Senator Mark Kelly Sues Hegseth Over Censure, Demotion Moves (Bloomberg)
US Senator Mark Kelly sued Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, asking a federal court to vacate the Pentagon chief’s letter censuring the Arizona Democrat and block a move to lower his military retirement rank.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in Washington, comes a week after Hegseth said he was taking action to demote Kelly, a former Navy pilot and astronaut who retired as a captain, and dock his pension over a video in which the senator told service members that they have a duty to disobey unlawful orders.
Kelly claims in his suit that the actions were an unprecedented violation of his right to free speech under the US Constitution’s First Amendment.
Euro Defense: Germany’s Growing Military Might Rekindles Old Fears in France (Bloomberg)
France is watching with both awe and unease as Germany pours resources into a historic rearmament, upending longstanding balances on the continent. Berlin is doing exactly what the North Atlantic Treaty Organization defense and security alliance agreed: It has committed to spending more than €500 billion ($586 billion) on defense by 2029, hitting NATO’s new goal of investing 3.5% of GDP in the military six years earlier than the alliance demanded.
War Paradox: Russia Killed Record Number of Ukraine Civilians Amid Peace Push (Bloomberg)
Russia accelerated its attacks on civilians after President Trump began his efforts to end the war in Ukraine, the first comprehensive assessment of 2025 casualties undertaken by European governments has found.
Some 2,400 Ukrainian civilians were killed in Russian attacks in 2025 with almost another 12,000 injured, according to an analysis seen by Bloomberg, which has not been made public but is in line with United Nations data published Monday. That amounts to an increase of nearly 30% on 2024.
While the assessment offers no insight into the Kremlin’s motivations, the timings show that the scale of the attacks increased whenever the Trump administration attempted to advance peace negotiations.
Mideast Watch: Iran Prepared for War but Ready to Negotiate, Foreign Minister Says (New York Times)
Iran’s foreign minister said
Monday that his country was prepared for war but also ready to negotiate after President Trump warned that the United States might intervene to stop the government’s increasingly deadly crackdown on opposition protests.
Iran
also said that communication channels were open between Abbas Aragchi, Iran's foreign minister, and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy.
Tariff Threats: Trump Risks Imploding China Trade Truce With Iran Tariff Vow (Bloomberg)
Oil Rift: Trump Says He’s Inclined to Exclude Exxon From Venezuela (Bloomberg)
President Trump signaled he’s leaning toward excluding Exxon Mobil Corp. from his push for US oil majors to rebuild Venezuela’s petroleum industry, saying he was displeased with the company’s response to his initiative.
Trump
appeared to be referring
to a White House meeting on Friday with almost 20 oil industry executives, where Exxon Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods expressed some of the strongest reservations and described Venezuela as “uninvestable.”
UK Politics: Reform Recruits Ex-Chancellor in Most Senior Tory Defection (Bloomberg)
Former Chancellor of the Exchequer Nadhim Zahawi joined Reform UK in the most senior defection yet from the Conservative Party to Nigel Farage’s poll-leading populist outfit.
Zahawi’s recruitment, announced by Farage at a press conference in London on Monday, adds to a slew of political figures including councilors and former and current Members of Parliament who have left the Tories to join Reform.
AI Power Play: Meta Taps Dina Powell McCormick, Executive Group to Drive AI Buildout (Bloomberg)
Meta has assembled a new team of senior executives to focus on the company’s growing list of expensive data center projects — a group that will help steward the hundreds of billions it plans to investment into artificial intelligence infrastructure as it pursues “superintelligence.”
Meta on Monday appointed Dina Powell McCormick, a former executive at Goldman Sachs and a former top adviser to Trump, to a newly created senior management role focused on partnering with governments and investors on AI.
Powell McCormick, who resigned from Meta’s board in
December, is joining the company this week as president and vice chairman. She will guide overall strategy with a particular focus on AI infrastructure efforts, according to a statement published Monday. The former Goldman Sachs executive will help build and maintain strategic capital partnerships, which Meta will rely on to fund massive data center projects. She’ll have a particular focus on “partnering with governments and sovereigns,” Zuckerberg said in a post.
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Apple Podcasts today.
Media Escalation: Paramount Launches Warner Bros. Proxy Fight; Files Suit (Bloomberg)
Paramount Skydance Corp. plans to nominate a new slate of directors to Warner Bros. Discovery Inc.’s board to thwart a planned merger with Netflix Inc., and filed suit to get more information about that deal.
Paramount Chief Executive Officer David Ellison said in a letter to the Warner Bros. board made public on Monday that he would challenge the Netflix deal either at the regular Warner Bros. annual meeting or a special meeting convened to approve the deal if Warner Bros. calls one.
Ellison said he had sued Warner Bros. in Delaware court to force the company to disclose information to help shareholders make an informed decision. Paramount accused Warner Bros of failing to disclose how it values the cable-TV assets that the company plans to spin off before selling the studios and streaming business to Netflix. Paramount said it would seek changes in the Warner Bros. bylaws so that shareholders can vote specifically on the spinoff.
Art Wins for France: A Rare, Mostly Unseen Collection of Matisse Is Headed to a Paris Museum (Time Out)
Calling all modern art fans: you might want to add visiting the Musée d’Art Moderne (MAM) in Paris to your 2026 to-do list, as the gallery has received a huge donation of mostly unseen Matisse artworks to add to its collection.
The French capital came out on top of Time Out’s list of the world’s best cities for culture in 2025, and it’s not slowing down this year.
Come summer, the Pont Neuf – Paris’s oldest bridge – will be encased in a cave-like immersive artwork in honor of the 40th anniversary of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Pont Neuf Wrapped, a once-in-a-lifetime experience Time named the best new thing to do in the world this year.
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