What is making Paxton think that fighting over the filibuster is a good issue for him?
Has something come up that tells him he's going to lose, and so this is a Hail Mary of some kind?
Is this his claim to Über MAGA status?
Paxton offers conditions for potential exit from Texas Senate race
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) suggested Thursday that he would be open to dropping out of the hotly contested Texas Senate primary against Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) if Senate Republicans met several conditions.
Paxton said on Thursday he would consider exiting the race if Senate leadership eliminated the filibuster — the 60-vote threshold needed to clear most legislation in the upper chamber — and passed a bill that would require voters to show proof of citizenship to register to vote.
The shift from Paxton comes after President Trump on Wednesday said he plans to endorse in the Senate GOP primary “soon” and called for whomever he doesn’t endorse to drop out of the race.
“John Cornyn is a coward who has refused to support abolishing the filibuster to pass this bill. Now, Fake News reporters and the establishment are trying to destroy me with misinformation,” Paxton wrote on the social media platform X.
“The truth is clear: No one has been more loyal to Donald Trump than me—fighting the stolen 2020 election, being in Mar-a-Lago when he announced his 2024 campaign, and standing with him in NY in the face of lawfare,” he added. “For the good of our country and for the good of passing President Trump’s agenda, I am determined to help him get this done.”
Cornyn responded to Paxton’s statement and argued he’s been supportive of getting the voter registration legislation passed.
“I repeat what I have consistently said: I support the bill and have encouraged Senate Republicans to get it done,” Cornyn wrote on X.
However, Paxton’s conditions were quickly shot down by Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.).
“You guys know where the votes are on the filibuster. That’s not going to happen,” he told reporters on Thursday.
Cornyn has expressed some openness to changing the filibuster rules — which Trump backed as lawmakers looked to reopen the government during its shutdown last year. However, Cornyn also expressed concern that eliminating the 60-vote threshold rule could be abused by Democrats if they were to return to power.
The incumbent senator has also supported the SAVE America Act, the legislation that would require voters to show proof of citizenship in order to vote in addition to a photo ID requirement to cast a ballot.
The legislation has passed the House but has stalled in the Senate as Republicans don’t have the 60 votes needed to pass the bill. Some Republicans have floated a “talking filibuster,” which would require Democrats to continue talking on the floor in order to halt its passage. The talking filibuster would only require 51 votes in order to pass legislation once Democrats finished on the floor.
Senate GOP leadership has pressed Trump to endorse Cornyn in the May 26 runoff in an effort to avoid an ugly contest against Paxton.
If Markwayne Mullin takes the gig at DHS, he'll assume the office on April 1st.
And there's nothing more on-brand than that for this stupidly fucked up "administration".
Trump ousts DHS secretary Kristi Noem and replaces her with Republican senator
Noem’s tenure was marked by killings of US citizens by federal agents, a rumored affair and $220m spent on ads
Donald Trump on Thursday announced he was replacing Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary, after the killing of two US citizens by immigration agents and mounting reports of her questionable personal conduct attracted bipartisan criticism.
It was the first major personnel shakeup of Trump’s second term, and in a post on Truth Social, the president said Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma senator, would take over from Noem starting on 31 March. The secretary, who he said “has served us well, and has had numerous and spectacular results (especially on the Border!)” would become special envoy for “the Shield of the Americas”, a security initiative Trump said he planned to launch over the weekend.
A Republican former congresswoman and governor of South Dakota, Noem was considered a potential running mate for Trump as he sought re-election in 2024, but ultimately passed over after she admitted in a memoir to killing a dog she owned. The president instead nominated her to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the border patrol and other agencies that took to the streets of major US cities during Trump’s second term to carry out his mass deportation agenda.
Noem became a public face of the crackdown, which ensnared immigrants with documentation and without as well as US citizens, appearing regularly on conservative television networks as well as in promotional material on DHS social media accounts.
After federal agents deployed to Minneapolis killed Renee Good and then, weeks later, Alex Pretti, Noem accused both US citizens of being involved in “domestic terrorism”. But the allegation appeared to fly in the face of what was known about both’s participation in anti-ICE protests, and Democrats along with some Republicans called for Noem to resign after Pretti’s death.
Simultaneously, reports began to emerge of Noem and Corey Lewandowski, a former Trump campaign manager who was her senior adviser, engaging in a personal relationship, despite both being married, amid turmoil at the department.
In February, the Wall Street Journal published a lengthy report into her leadership of the DHS that found Noem and Lewandowski had done little to obfuscate their personal relationship, while berating staff and administering polygraph tests to those they did not trust.
The pair had been traveling on a luxury 737 Max jet equipped with a private cabin, which the department has been seeking to acquire for around $70M for “high-profile deportations”. In one instance, Lewandowski fired a US Coast Guard pilot who left a blanket belonging to Noem on a plane, but then reinstated him because there was no one else to fly them back.
Democrats excoriated Noem when she appeared before the House and Senate judiciary committees in early March. She refused to retract her comments calling the US citizens killed in Minneapolis “domestic terrorists” while dismissing a question about whether she was having “sexual relations” with Lewandowski as “tabloid garbage”.
But even some Republicans signaled concerns with her leadership, with Louisiana senator John Kennedy questioning why the DHS gave $220M to a firm linked to Noem’s former spokesperson to produce advertisements in which the secretary was featured prominently.
Thom Tillis of North Carolina, one of the few Republicans who had called for Noem’s resignation, threatened to hold up Senate business if he did not get responses from her to a slew of questions, while accusing her of obstructing investigations by the department’s inspector general.
He also took her to task for killing both a dog and a goat, as she documented in her book, saying: “Those are bad decisions made in the heat of the moment, not unlike what happened in Minneapolis.”
If it blows up, then yes - it's about as black as it appears.
Seems like we've been here before.
Big Lenders’ Risky Loans Are Rattling Wall Street
Lending troubles at Blue Owl Capital and other so-called private credit behemoths are setting off fears of a “bank run,” as one hedge fund put it.
Blue Owl Capital, a giant Wall Street lender, used to do just about anything for attention. It hosted investment advisers at five-star resorts, advertised on digital billboards, slapped its logo on professional tennis players and hosted a pickleball tournament in Central Park.
But for the past few weeks, Blue Owl has been the talk of Wall Street for an altogether different reason. It has been trying to convince investors that its $300 billion portfolio of investments and loans is actually worth what Blue Owl says.
Despite a blitz of conference calls, media interviews and news releases, Blue Owl appears not to have resolved the miasma surrounding the firm. Rather, its efforts to calm many investor jitters may have contributed to worries that Wall Street is on the precipice of a broad, new credit crisis. On Tuesday, Blue Owl stock was down as much as 9 percent, nearing its lowest point as a public company. The share prices of other large lenders also fell.
The uncertainty centers on whether Blue Owl and other colossal “private credit” lenders have been far too optimistic in their assessments of multiyear, privately traded loans tied to risky companies and industries that may now be threatened by advancements in artificial intelligence. If so, these lenders may soon face the unpleasant reality of having to mark down the value of loans to these vulnerable companies or, worse, sell the loans under duress.
Blue Owl has continued to publicly emphasize that its metrics show only 1 percent of its loans are at risk of default, and that it does not foresee more weakening anytime soon. Craig Packer, Blue Owl’s co-president, said in a statement that its portfolio was “attractive and well-diversified.”
Yet the firm’s hand was essentially forced two weeks ago when investors in one of its funds demanded some of their money back. Partly to satisfy those requests, Blue Owl sold $1.4 billion worth of loans, including some to a closely affiliated insurer that Blue Owl did not initially disclose.
Another lender, New Mountain Capital, followed last week, unloading a set of loans at lower prices than it had valued them previously, freeing up cash to repay backers. And late Monday, the investing colossus Blackstone said that it would pay out record withdrawal requests for its biggest lending fund.
Now Wall Street is engaged in a grim guessing game as just about everyone — private-equity giants, investment bankers, hedge fund managers — speculates about who might be forced to the market next, and at what prices. The conflict in Iran could only complicate the calculus, as market volatility typically reaches the weakest recesses of Wall Street first, and the largest private lenders have relied on money from Middle Eastern governments to grow.
“You’re seeing a crisis of confidence,” said Victor Hong, a former investment banking risk executive.
“Anytime somebody hears that other people are getting out, you don’t want to be last,” said Steve Curley, investor and co-managing principal at 55 North Private Wealth.
What is happening represents the first major test for private credit, a catchall term to describe private equity funds run by Blue Owl, Blackstone, Ares and others that now act as lightly regulated banks that loan directly to companies large and small. Unlike stocks, government bonds or, say, oil, these investments are not traded publicly.
Historically, the money that these funds lend out has come from so-called institutional investors such as pension funds that agree to keep their investments in place for years or even a decade.
As the industry has boomed to more than $3 trillion, however, that spigot is running dry. Private credit lenders have shifted to raising money from individuals via mutual funds and other products with complicated-sounding categories such as “business development companies” and “interval funds.”
They all do basically the same thing: collect money from wealthy investors and invest it en masse in private-credit firms and individual loans for a fee.
The rub is that these newer funds have told their investors that they can ask for their money relatively quickly, as often as every quarter. That wasn’t a problem as long as new investments kept flowing in. But now that it isn’t a guarantee, the funds hold multiyear investments that must be liquidated more quickly to pay skittish individuals who want their money back fast.
If too many such investors try to yank their money at once, the funds may elect not to pay back all of them.
Not all are necessarily alarmed — one private credit investor, Hightower Advisors’s Robert Picard, who spoke at the suggestion of Blue Owl, said he was comfortable because many of the loans in question are long-term.
He called firms like Blue Owl some of the “best money managers and lenders that we have in the current U.S. economy.”
Of course, moments of uncertainty on Wall Street also bring opportunity, and opportunists are now circling private credit for a chance to profit from its troubles.
Boaz Weinstein, a hedge fund manager famous for helping bring down JPMorgan Chase’s infamous “whale” trader 14 years ago, is predicting that Blue Owl’s funds will have such trouble meeting redemption requests that he’s offering as little as 65 cents on the dollar to investors who want their money now.
“All you need is the snowball to start going down the hill, and it's started,” Mr. Weinstein said recently at an investment conference, where he was also trying to raise money for his own hedge fund, which places bets against loans it hopes will drop in value.
Another hedge fund, Rubric Capital, in a private note to investors passed around widely on Wall Street, predicted a cascading series of private credit defaults that would partly result from a “mismatch between assets and liabilities,” according to two people who read the letter.
It called out Cliffwater, the biggest operator of interval funds and an aggressive player in selling private credit to individual investors.
Cliffwater’s largest fund, started in June 2019, has since reported a total of just three negative months of investment performance. It now manages $33 billion. The first opportunity this year for investors to ask for their money back is next week.
The note surmised that Cliffwater could be “a canary in a coal mine.” Rubric, founded by a former deputy of the New York Mets owner Steven A. Cohen, predicts that Cliffwater will be “the first domino in the bank run we foresee.”
Cliffwater declined to answer questions for this article. In a note to its clients after The New York Times reached out for comment, the firm described Rubric’s concerns as “overcited and belabored,” and said Rubric had never contacted the firm before disseminating its analysis.
Stephen Nesbitt, Cliffwater’s chief executive, said in a separate statement that there was no asset-liability mismatch; that the fund had earned an A rating from Standard & Poor’s (the second lowest on the investment-grade scale); and that it had sufficient “liquidity” to pay out more than a year of potential redemption requests.
That liquidity, according to public filings, would be achieved by borrowing more money.
The biggest spotlight remains on Blue Owl, whose executives once liked to describe its business as “boring.” Established in 2016 to lend to “junk” rated companies, which are seen as too risky for traditional banks, it listed its stock publicly in 2021 for $10 a share.
Blue Owl’s shares are now down 60 percent from their peak in January 2025.
Last week, under the spotlight for offloading loans to pay out redeeming investors in one fund, the firm held two packed calls with financial advisers to urge them to stick with the firm.
Mr. Packer of Blue Owl said that the loan sale was conducted as an “arms length transaction” and allowed for investors to be repaid more quickly than would otherwise have been possible.
For Blue Owl’s co-chief executive Doug Ostrover there has been time for levity.
Last year, he and Marc Lipschultz, Blue Owl’s other co-chief executive, used their then-skyrocketed shares in Blue Owl to take out personal loans and purchase a stake in the Tampa Bay Lightning of the National Hockey League.
Mr. Ostrover was in Tampa, Fla., on Saturday with his wife for the latest game, according to a video viewed by The Times. At a local bar beforehand, he posed for pictures with waitresses and others, and in a loud speech to dozens of fans offered to buy everyone a shot of alcohol.
UBS downgrades the U.S. stock market. Here’s what has the investment bank worried
UBS downgraded U.S. equities, saying factors that powered years of outperformance are starting to fade.
The dollar risk is a central concern as the firm sees “asymmetric structural downside risks” to the greenback.
Another pillar of U.S. stock strength — corporate buybacks — is also losing its edge, the bank said.
UBS’ top equity strategist dialed back his view on U.S. stocks, citing mounting risks from a weakening dollar, stretched valuations and policy turbulence in Washington.
Andrew Garthwaite, head of global equity strategy at the investment bank, downgraded American equities to “benchmark” in a fully invested global equity portfolio, arguing that the factors that powered years of outperformance are starting to fade.
The dollar risk is a central concern, Garthwaite wrote. UBS forecasts the euro climbing to $1.22 by the end of the first quarter and sees “asymmetric structural downside risks” to the greenback. Historically, when the dollar’s trade-weighted index falls 10%, U.S. equities underperform by roughly 4% in unhedged terms, according to the bank.
Foreign markets are trouncing the U.S. this year as a weaker dollar and cheaper valuations draw capital overseas. The MSCI World ex-US index has gained about 8% in 2026, compared with the little changed performance for the S&P 500. Japan’s Nikkei 225 has rallied 17% year to date, while the Stoxx Europe 600 is up 7%, underscoring a sharp rotation away from American equities. U.S. stocks struggled again Friday as investors fretted over the potential downsides of the artificial intelligence build-out and persistent inflation at home.
Another pillar of U.S. stock strength — corporate buybacks — is also losing its edge, the bank said. The buyback yield in the U.S. is now only roughly on par with global peers, eroding what had been a key support for earnings per share growth and investor flows, UBS said. The combined shareholder yield from dividends and buybacks in the U.S. is now about half that of Europe, the bank said.
“The buybacks yield is no longer exceptional and this had been an important driver of funds flow, EPS and valuation,” Garthwaite wrote.
Valuations add to the unease. UBS calculates that the sector-adjusted price-earnings ratio for U.S. stocks is 35% above international peers, versus an average premium of about 4% since 2010. Roughly 60% of sectors trade not only at higher multiples than their global counterparts but also above their own historical premium, the strategist wrote.
Policy volatility under President Donald Trump is another headwind. This year has brought shifts in tariff policy, proposals to cap credit card interest rates, potential limits on private equity investment in housing, renewed scrutiny of drug pricing, and suggestions to curb dividends and buybacks for defense companies, UBS said.
Still, the noted strategist stopped short of turning outright bearish. Garthwaite said the U.S. economy and equities tend to benefit more than peers when markets are in the early phases of a potential bubble. The bank also expects artificial intelligence adoption to outpace most other major regions, with the possible exception of China, helping sustain earnings growth across key industries.
UBS strategist Sean Simonds set a year-end target of 7,500 for the S&P 500, compared with an average forecast of 7,629 among 14 top strategists, according to CNBC Pro’s strategist survey.
The purpose of the separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.
--James Madison, in a letter objecting to the use of government land for churches, 1803
As someone who's been known to attempt an inappropriate joke at an inappropriate time, I get the Huckabee thing - but damn, son - I never did that shit
"...do no rely on the US government..." has become the entire world's motto
If the reporting on what you're doing is making you look bad, maybe you should be doing something that won't make you look bad when somebody reports on it
The price of oil needs to be over about $65 a barrel for America's Dirty Fuels Cartel to break even on domestic production, and between $80 and $90 to reach "Sustainability".
