The Consumer Price Index rose 0.1% in May, for an annual rate of +2.4%, versus +2.3% in April, the Labor Department reported Wednesday. Food and shelter prices are up 2.9% for the year while energy prices have fallen 3.5%. [CHART: Bureau of Labor Statistics]
Vaxxed Out – Two days after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. removed all 17 prior members, he named eight new choices for the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, Wednesday, including prominent anti-vaxxers (The Wall Street Journal). The committee makes vaccine recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including when and how often children and adults should receive them. Kennedy says the new committee would review existing vaccine recommendations as well as make new ones.
“All of these individuals are committed to evidence-based medicine, gold-standard science, and common sense,” Kennedy posted on X-Twitter.
Kennedy had promised not to pick “ideological antivaxxers” for the committee.
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Stuck in the Middle of G7 – President Trump’s isolationist international policy is pushing four “middle powers” among the Group of Seven nations as allies together over such items as trade deals, joint sanctions against Israel and military agreements, while distancing themselves from the orbit of the United States, according to The New York Times.
Those four middle powers are the United Kingdom, France, Canada and Japan. That leaves the US, Italy and Germany outside that informal alliance.
All seven meet as the G7 in Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada Sunday through Tuesday. (This was the G8 until Russia was expelled for its invasion of Crimea in 2014.) We’ll likely to learn more about trade deals, sanctions against Israel and military agreements from closing news conferences, traditionally on the last day.
--TL
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WEDNESDAY 6/11/25
‘Fanning the Flames’? – California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) accused President Trump of “fanning the flames” and “traumatizing our communities purposely” in calling in the National Guard and the Marines to suppress protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Los Angeles, where Mayor Karen Bass imposed a curfew Tuesday night, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Bass’ curfew ran from Tuesday night to Wednesday morning for a one-square-mile portion of downtown L.A., NPR reports.
Meanwhile, ICE has expanded its immigrant raids into California’s agricultural heartland (which is much more conservative than coastal areas in the state). Still no word of whether there are ICE crackdowns on employers who have hired undocumented aliens.
TikTok target … The “world’s most popular TikTok star,” Khaby Lame, quickly left the US after immigration agents detained him in Las Vegas for overstaying his visa, which expired April 22, The Associated Press reports. The Senagalese-Italian influencer was detained at Harry Reid International Airport but was allowed to leave the US without a deportation order, which could have prevented him from being allowed back into the country for up to a decade.
Protests in your city? … Newsweek has published a list of cities where deportation protests are happening or are expected in the coming days. In addition to Los Angeles, New York City, Washington, D.C. and San Francisco, where protests have been going on for days, there’s Burlington, Vermont, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Raleigh-Durham and Charlotte, North Carolina, Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Seattle, Portland, Oregon and Sacramento, California.
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Is There a Taylor Swift Song for This? – Perhaps Elon Musk is worried about SpaceX federal contracts or whether Tesla will be able to offer driverless Robotaxis in all 50 states. Perhaps he doesn’t want President Trump to sell his Tesla Model S at a price that brings down the car’s residual values.
Whatever the case, Musk took to his X-Twitter at 3:40 a.m. Eastern Time Wednesday to apologize for some of his criticisms of the Trump administration (last year he contributed more than $275 million to the president’s campaign), according to Axios, which notes that the ex-Big DOGE did not specify precisely which comments were the subject of his apology.
“They went too far,” Musk tweeted.
--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa