On the night of Sept. 12, Ukrainian drones attacked Taganrog. Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) reported hits on an FPV drone production facility, two drone storage sites, a Pantsir air defense system, and a radar.
Local authorities, as usual, listed something else: 16 commercial buildings, five cars, a football
Shortly after starting his second term, President Donald Trump urged the American auto industry to help realize his dream of a domestic manufacturing revival.
He began by promising untold riches from tariffs on foreign automakers.
“Congratulations, if you make your car in the United States, you’re going to make a lot of money,” Trump told NBC News in March 2025. “If you don’t, you’re going to have to probably come to the United States, because if you make your car in the United States, there is no tariff.”
Trump cast himself as a friend to American carmakers. But it didn’t take long for him to show how unpredictable that friendship could be — and how much it could threaten their bottom line.
In less than two years, three major policy decisions from the Trump administration have left the American auto industry in a worse position than it had been in 2024, struggling to keep pace with Chinese electric-vehicle makers, paying more for materials and facing weaker demand for traditional gasoline-powered vehicles.
The shift toward electric cars was already underway when President Joe Biden took office, but he helped nudge it along.
The Biden administration encouraged automakers to build EVs by imposing stricter fuel economy standards for gas-powered cars and creating a $7,500 tax credit to help consumers buy electric.
Foreign automakers were gaining ground in the U.S. market, and Detroit’s Big Three saw affordable EVs as a chance to win customers back. They bet heavily on that future, building battery factories and rolling out scores of new models. For a while, sales surged.
The transition proved harder than automakers had hoped. As Biden left office, EVs remained too expensive for many buyers, and demand was not growing fast enough to justify the industry’s ambitious plans. Still, American automakers were willing to wait. Before Trump returned to the White House, Ford, Stellantis and General Motors asked him to keep the EV mandates in place.
Trump ignored the request, pulling away the supports that had helped the market grow. His administration paused $3 billion in federal funding for a program to expand charging stations. Then, in the summer of 2025, Republicans scrapped the $7,500 tax credit for EV buyers.
The president, however, threw his support behind Tesla, the EV automaker run by billionaire Elon Musk, who served as the chief architect of the chaotic Trump-backed effort to downsize the federal government. At one point in March 2025, Trump turned the White House grounds into a makeshift showroom featuring Tesla vehicles and bought a red Model S at market price. The presidential stamp of approval though did nothing to end the 40% freefall in Tesla’s share prices through the spring.
Meanwhile, Detroit’s automakers were left scrambling to change course. They took $52 billion in losses on their short-lived push toward an electric future. Stellantis, the maker of Jeep, accounted for about half the total. Ford discontinued its all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup — the same truck Biden had once taken for a spin.
“Instead of plowing billions into the future knowing these large EVs will never make money, we are pivoting,” Ford CEO Jim Farley told The Wall Street Journal in December.
Next came the tariffs. Trump quickly revived the trade wars from his first term, imposing taxes on imported cars starting in March 2025.
Some auto parts qualified for an exemption under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement his first administration negotiated in 2020. But the tariffs still raised costs for American-made cars, which rely on imported parts and raw materials. Steel and aluminum — two essentials of carmaking — were hit with steep tariffs too.
Trump seemed to focus on the promised benefits while overlooking the bill his policies were handing automakers.
“They’ve come a long way. It’s amazing what tariffs will do for GM and what the [2024] election has done,” Trump said in late July, standing alongside General Motors CEO Mary Barra and other executives at a company proving ground in Michigan. “General Motors is doing fantastic … we’ve been very good to General Motors.”
GM’s own financial disclosures told a less triumphant story. The company reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission that tariffs could cost it as much as $3.5 billion in 2025. GM also pulled back on its EV manufacturing plans, though it continued to offer a dozen electrified models.
The final link in the chain was the war with Iran. The conflict disrupted oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, pushing Brent crude past the dreaded $100 a barrel. As gas prices climbed, more drivers began looking again at electric vehicles — the very market Detroit’s automakers had scaled back.
The shift is happening around much of the world. Ember, a clean-energy think tank, reported record EV sales this year in 49 countries, including Germany, New Zealand, Chile and Uruguay. The contrast with the United States is stark: U.S. EV sales fell about 31% in the first eight months of 2026, according to Reuters.
China, meanwhile, has made major strides in the global shift to electric vehicles. Its automakers are expanding into new markets, including Canada, where Prime Minister Mark Carney struck a deal with Chinese leader Xi Jinping earlier this year to open the market to Chinese EVs.
The American auto industry wanted an ally in Trump. Instead it got tariffs that raised costs, a weakened domestic EV supply and a future outlook clouded by uncertainty.
This is a preview of MS NOW’s Project 47 Newsletter. As President Trump continues implementing his ambitious agenda, get expert analysis on the administration’s latest actions and how others are pushing back sent straight to your inbox every Tuesday. Sign up now.
The post Trump’s three blows to American car companies appeared first on MS NOW.
A Christian couple who spent more than a decade caring for foster children is celebrating a major legal victory after Washington state agreed to change its licensing rules following a dispute over requirements that foster parents use children's preferred pronouns and comply with gender identity policies, even when those requirements conflicted with their religious beliefs.
Shane and Jennifer DeGross told Fox News Digital in an interview Wednesday that the dispute began in 2022, when they attempted to renew their foster care license and discovered the state had changed its requirements concerning gender identity.
The couple said they were willing to love and care for any child placed in their home but could not agree to certain state-imposed requirements they believed violated their Christian faith.
"We were made aware that the state had updated and changed some of their requirements," Jennifer DeGross told Fox News Digital. "While we agreed that we would love and care for any child in our home, they had specific things that we could not agree to as Christians."
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Shane DeGross said the state required them to affirm the state's views on gender identity and human sexuality.
"Those views directly conflict with the biblical worldview of human sexuality," Shane DeGross said. "So, as Christians, we just couldn't accept that. Our allegiance is to God and the truth of Scripture. And we just couldn't abide by what they were requiring us to affirm."
Washington's licensing policies required foster parents to affirm and support LGBTQ children, including expectations concerning gender identity and the use of preferred names and pronouns. The DeGross family challenged the requirements on religious freedom grounds. Jennifer said the state eventually partially reinstated their license but restricted the ages of children they could foster.
"We felt like even when they reinstated a partial license to us that they were still discriminating against us," she said.
"When a child reached 5, they had to be removed from our home," Jennifer said. "So not only was that upsetting to us, but that's not good for kids, right?"
Jennifer argued that such a restriction could disrupt a child's placement even if the child had already spent years living with a foster family.
"If we had had a child for a couple of years, and then they have to be removed just because they turned or reached a certain age, it's definitely not in the interest of children," she said.
The legal battle resulted in a settlement under which Washington agreed to revise its foster care licensing rules, addressing the conflict between the state's gender identity requirements and foster parents' religious freedom claims.
Johannes Widmalm-Delphonse, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, told Fox News Digital that the DeGross' case should serve as a lesson for the rest of the country.
"These foster care agencies, they have to respect the First Amendment rights of foster parents, as well as the children in the system and everyone that they work with," Widmalm-Delphonse said.
"So, states should be on notice from this settlement, as well as some of the other cases that we've seen like the Bates v. Pakseresht decision, that they have to respect First Amendment rights, they have to respect free speech rights, and the way you do that is you invite as many foster parents into the system as possible on the front end, and then you match at the back end according to children's individual needs or family's abilities, comfort level, things like that, which is what they've been doing for decades, and this settlement shows that they can continue doing that now," Widmalm-Delphonse added.
Widmalm-Delphonse said that since the settlement, Washington State has a new proposed regulation, WSR 26-20-103, currently undergoing the public notice and comment process which would in part give foster parents like Shane and Jennifer DeGross a religious exemption.
"This new rule, in part, would give foster parents like the DeGross's a religious exemption from any rule requiring them to violate their religious beliefs on gender or sexuality," Widmalm-Delphonse said.
Shane DeGross told Fox News Digital, "It's a great victory in the sense that more Christians can be available to love and care for foster kids without fear of being excluded because of their religious beliefs."
"It's a huge victory for kids that need a loving home," he added.
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"We are proud of the diversity of our foster parent and kinship caregiver community who have different cultures, religious beliefs, and lived experience," the Washington State Department of Children, Youth, and Families said in a news release on the settlement. "We are grateful that they all open their doors and provide a loving home to children and youth in foster care."
"This settlement agreement respects the religious beliefs of foster parents, while ensuring LGBTQIA+ youth are placed in an environment that is safe and supports their well-being," DCYF Secretary Tana Senn said.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Washington DCYF for further comment.
Iâm a retired military prosecutor, U.S. Air Force Academy instructor, and former Wind Cave National Park Ranger. I love the life that my wife and I have built in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Iâm running for Senate as an independent because Iâm tired of seeing Big Money overpower common sense. The values I learned growing up in a small rural town from my machinist fatherâthe same values that built this great countryâare being treated as though they matter less than a politicianâs personal ambition or a billionaireâs appetite.
More than at any time in my life, I believe our political system needs to be shaken up and that We the People need to overcome the corrupting influence of Big Money. Self-dealing is screwing hard-working, honorable South Dakotans out of their chance to live the American Dream.
Iâm convinced that term limits are the best way to do it. Hereâs a good example of why I believe that. Last month it was reported that my opponent, Sen. Mike Rounds, allowed one of his top advisers â whoâs drawing a 6-figure taxpayer-funded salary â to simultaneously work as a lobbyist for Meta. This adviser, also a former Rounds campaign manager, has been pushing Big Money interests in the halls of the South Dakota state capitol, then advising our U.S. Senator on the very same issues, on the very same day.
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There ought to be a law prohibiting that sort of thing. That is why, when Iâm elected, the first bill Iâll introduce is to make ALL lobbying by congressional staff illegal. Iâve had enough. My second bill would be term limits. Washingtonâs culture is so corrupt and out of touch that the people who live there too long donât even realize it anymore.
It was also recently reported that Mike Rounds spends more taxpayer money on private jets than any other member of the Senate.
Iâm not trying to dump on Mike.
I believe Mike Rounds is a good man. Iâm not here to add to the name-calling and personal meanness that does nothing to solve the very serious problems our state and nation face. Iâm here to say that Washington, D.C. needs to change. Most of us can agree our local communities are the ones who pay the price when an elected official stays in Washington too long. We're paying a huge price now.
I agreed with President Donald Trump when he ran on "no new wars." As a patriot whoâs proud to have served in both the Navy and the Air Force, I believe commanders-in-chief have a duty to only send our fighting men and women into harmâs way when itâs absolutely necessary. I agreed with him when he said that we needed to fight to make life less expensive. Where I come from, a promise is a promise.
But now, every time I fill up my Ram 1500 at the Corner Pantry, Iâm paying over $4.00 a gallon. When I buy groceries for my family at Sonnyâs Super Foods, Iâm paying more all the timeâespecially when I buy beef grown by the best ranchers in the world, right here in South Dakota. They are now having to compete with imports from South America that arenât fairly labeled so that American consumers can know the difference.
The Indian motorcycles that my brother works to assemble are getting harder for Americans to buy because of tariffs that we were told would make American manufacturing stronger.
Sen. Rounds has voted in favor of the Iran war every time heâs had the opportunity. He voted for the tariffs that are hurting South Dakotaâs economy. He voted to make the biggest healthcare cuts weâve ever felt, just so that companies could get tax breaks to build data centers. Wired reports that Mike has now taken more campaign contributions from data center-tied interests than from all of South Dakota itself. Those corporate donors are literally getting our moneyâs worth.
Sen. Rounds has been in office so long that he voted for the law that made it so that grocery stores donât have to tell us which country their meat came from. Now he says he wants to bring those rules back. Weâve reached the point where career politicians have been in office so long theyâre running against the exact things they did.
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Iâm not running to be an anti-Trump Senator or a pro-Trump Senator. I have plenty of disagreements with the left. It scares the hell out of me that young people are feeling a pull towards socialism. As a former Air Force prosecutor, I think proposals to "defund the police" and "abolish prisons" are insane. As someone who spent decades working to make America more secure, I thought President Joe Bidenâs failure to keep our border secure was unacceptable and offensive.
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Iâm running to put South Dakota first, and to work with anyone, whatever their politics, when itâs in the interest of our state.
I was an ethics advisor in the Air Force. I know itâs not my job to judge people by their politics, but I do believe itâs my job to stand up against a system that isnât going to fix itself.
Se acuerdan del famoso “¿Por qué no te callas?” El rey Juan Carlos se lo gritó a Hugo Chávez en 2007 durante una Cumbre Iberoamericana. El entonces presidente de Venezuela había llamado “fascista” a José María Aznar. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, entonces jefe del Ejecutivo español, defendió a Aznar: “Se puede estar en las antípodas de una posición ideológica y no seré yo quien esté cerca de las ideas de Aznar, pero fue elegido por los españoles y exijo ese respeto”.
© Comunidad de Madrid (EFE)
Un destino turístico no se construye únicamente con paisajes, hoteles y visitantes. También necesita a las personas que lo gestionan, limpian las habitaciones y atienden los restaurantes. La falta de vivienda asequible para los trabajadores del Pirineo revela una contradicción: los lugares que generan riqueza gracias al turismo pueden acabar expulsando a quienes necesitan para seguir funcionando. No tiene sentido celebrar el éxito de una temporada si quienes la ponen en marcha deben compartir habitación o renunciar a vivir donde trabajan. Los balances analizan cuántos visitantes llegan y cuánto dinero dejan, pero hace falta preguntarse: ¿Qué condiciones de vida tienen quienes sostienen esa actividad? No se trata de enfrentar a residentes y visitantes, sino de entender que el turismo depende de las personas que lo hacen posible.
© Clara Margais (Getty Images)
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