Le Journal

While there may be hopes in Beijing that Washington’s attempt to acquire Greenland has strained transatlantic ties and might draw European countries closer to China, a veteran US diplomat said such a fundamental realignment was unlikely. The core task of the European Union’s foreign policy will remain navigating intensifying US-China rivalry while seeking a workable balance between the two, according to William Klein, a former charge d’affaires at the US embassy in China. Addressing a seminar at...

Shanghai has laid out a full spectrum of goals on finance for the next five years and beyond, following an unequivocal push by China’s central leadership to grow the city into an international financial centre. China’s largest city-level economy aims to evolve into a world-class, socialist metropolis by 2035, with an intensified focus on innovation and manufacturing, according to a local document released on Monday. Shanghai unveiled its proposals for the drafting of its own 15th five-year plan,...

At the end of 2025, Japanese auto manufacturer Nissan announced, to relatively little fanfare, that after almost 20 years in production it was discontinuing its smallest and most affordable model of sedan, the Nissan Versa. It was not exactly mourned by the types of auto hobbyists who read car magazines: If you’d ever driven a Versa rental car, you’d probably understand. It was a tiny thing even by subcompact standards, and not rich in features, style or horsepower. But what it was, was a relatively cheap and affordable new sedan you could purchase in the United States. And that has now become an essentially extinct thing. With the death of the Nissan Versa, there is now not a single new car in the U.S. that has a sticker price—even for a base model, with no frills—of less than $20,000. The Versa was the last, with its $18,585 base price for the 2025 model clocking in notably lower than any other vehicle positioned at the value side of the market. The next cheapest cars from Nissan, for instance, are the Sentra sedan or the Kicks compact SUV, and you can expect to pay at least $23,000, if not more, for a new one of either. The result is a market where new, cheap cars intended for value-conscious consumers have ceased to exist, replaced by a constant drive toward premiumization. If that feels like a familiar thing to be witnessing, then your sense of déjà vu is warranted—it’s the basis of the K-shaped economic recovery theory. We’ve discussed the idea of the K-shaped economy before, in greater detail than I’ll go into here, in pieces like Jacob Weindling’s astute analysis of economic sentiment and the “vibecession.” In short, it describes the concept of an economic recovery where two different groups—high-earners and low-earners in America—experience very different senses of “recovery.” The high-earning group, which has the advantage of say, having money invested in the stock market and assets to appreciate, finds themselves lifted upward into greater prosperity during the economic recovery. The lower-earning masses, meanwhile, find themselves with less spending power, unable to build wealth and generally feeling hopeless about the prospect of affording everyday necessities. And in America, a nation that is by and large the antithesis of “walkable,” where the ideal scenario of having all your necessary services and businesses within walking distance somehow gets turned into a MAGA conspiracy theory about the horrors of “15 minute cities,” a car is sadly one of those necessities. And cars, like so many other things, just continue to get more expensive: Kelley Blue Book reports that new car buyers paid an average of $50,326 for their vehicles in December, which was an all-time record high. This is reflective of the sticker prices on those new cars rising, but also the fact that cheaper new car options just keep being discontinued. Before the axing of the Versa, both the Mitsubishi Mirage and Kia Forte were discontinued in 2024. Both retailed new for less than $20,000. Raising car prices. Tariff the cheap car to death, leaving more expensive cars for sale. #Tariffs #Trumpflation --> [image or embed] — rgbose.bsky.social (@rgbose.bsky.social) Jan 16, 2026 at 12:05 PM The obvious move is that consumers trying to save money will pivot to buying used cars instead of new ones, but even used car prices will inevitably rise when, over time, the pool of used cars is made up exclusively of brands that started out with higher MSRPs. Ask anyone who’s bought a used SUV for $25,000 or $30,000. This pushes the more cash-strapped consumer—who represents the vast majority of Americans, by the way—toward ever older, junkier, less reliable vehicles, because none of the manufacturers are producing vehicles actually aimed at this massive demographic. One might wonder, why is it not worthwhile for the auto manufacturers to continue producing these higher value models? Why leave money on the table and ignore a large percentage of the market? On some…

Man, it’s always great when a beloved rockstar is actually, you know, a decent, good person. Rare, but great. I thank my lucky stars every day that Bruce Springsteen is one of them. The Boss, indeed. At a surprise weekend appearance at Light of Day Winterfest in Red Bank, New Jersey, America’s most reliable avatar of working-class decency very calmly torched the Trump administration’s ICE deployments. --> “We are living through incredibly critical times,” Springsteen told the crowd, before laying out a list of beliefs that apparently now qualify as radical: that no one stands above the law, that federal agents shouldn’t behave like an occupying force, and that you shouldn’t be murdered for exercising your right to protest. He went on to (correctly) describe ICE’s actions in Minneapolis as “Gestapo tactics,” echoed Mayor Jacob Frey’s now-viral directive for ICE to “get the fuck out,” and dedicated his song to Good, a mother of three and American citizen who was shot and killed earlier this month by an ICE agent. This is, to be clear, the kind of statement that should not be controversial. It was measured, specific, rooted in documented events, and delivered by a 76-year-old man whose entire artistic project has been about dignity, labor, and the ideal of America not humiliating itself. But since we are living under a President who, as of this morning, sent a pissy, middle-school text to the Norwegian Prime Minister saying that because Norway didn’t grant him the Nobel Peace Prize, he no longer cares about peace, and thus is all too down to resort to war and imperialism in his baffling quest to take over Greenland—well, it should not come as a surprise that the government did not take particularly well to Springsteen’s statements. Enter the White House, which decided the most effective rebuttal to Springsteen’s remarks was to announce that “no one cares about his bad political opinions.” This is always a fun move: insisting no one cares while very clearly caring enough to issue an official statement. The response went on to scold Springsteen for allegedly not believing in “the power of the law,” a claim that lands with particular irony given that he was criticizing a federal agency currently arguing that murder is legal when a woman turns her steering wheel away from an officer, because apparently that now constitutes “weaponizing her vehicle.” It’s hard not to marvel at the contrast here. On one side, you have Springsteen—who has spent decades writing songs about flawed systems, broken promises, and people crushed under institutional indifference—standing on a stage in his home state, speaking plainly about state violence and dedicating a song to a dead woman. On the other, you have a press office reflexively defending ICE by deploying the rhetorical equivalent of “actually, you’re wrong and also shut up” while, on the ground, peaceful protestors are being dragged from their cars, beaten to pulps, and arrested—while, in the White House itself, our President drafts juvenile letters that basically read “Give me Greenland or I will invade (Check here for Yes) (Check here for No).” This is not Springsteen’s first time calling Trump and his administration what they are, and it won’t be his last. He’s been doing this consistently, loudly, and without apology, whether that means calling Trump “the most dangerous candidate for president in my lifetime,” accusing his administration of trampling civil rights abroad, or releasing an EP that opens by describing the U.S. as being run by a “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.” And every time, like clockwork, the administration’s response manages to confirm his point with impressive efficiency. Just another day in the life, I suppose.

Much like their main characters in Nobody Wants This, Sara and Erin Foster are sisters who co-host a podcast. It’s called The World’s First Podcast (get it?!?!), has been on the air since 2021, and is mostly just the two gals gabbing, occasionally with other guests. It’s fairly unremarkable, as celebrity (and I use that term loosely here) podcasts go, though like all celebrity podcasts, it occasionally accidentally delivers a bit of goss. This was the case in the most recent episode, when Sara revealed a tidbit that Erin sounded somewhat taken aback by: Twenty years ago, Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber set Sara up with George Clooney, and it went terribly. --> “I just remember being like offended that they would set me up with him ‘cause he felt so old at the time,” Sara said, adding that she was 24 at the time (she is 44 now), which would have made George 44. (She also said this happened “like 30 years ago,” but I’m going to chalk that up to exaggeration, not Cindy and Rande getting extremely inappropriate.) Per People, this is why Sara “didn’t understand relationships with really large age gaps like a ‘19-year-old that’s into a 40-year-old.’” That’s pretty uncontroversial: Teenagers shouldn’t date adults twice their age. And I don’t want to get too deep into age gap discourse, but I feel confident saying that, depending on how large an age gap is, it can probably be awkward (at a minimum) even well into the younger partner’s adulthood. (That being said… ER-era George Clooney??? Sign me up.) Anyway, I’d like to dive into the second part of what Sara said on the subject, again per People: “She admitted ‘sometimes’ the age gap ‘makes sense.’” And what times might those be? Sara didn’t get into specifics, but you may recall that their dad is music producer David Foster, aged 76, who is married to Katharine McPhee, aged 41. Yes, that’s a 35-year age difference; if we’re exaggerating and rounding up, it’s double the gap between Sara and Mr. Clooney. Katharine and David apparently met on American Idol in 2006 when she was 22; he later played the piano at her first wedding. Then, sometime in 2017 or 2018, things turned romantic, and they got married in 2019. Sara and Erin have been open about how their dad’s absence from their childhood was difficult, but they’ve since seemed to patch things up. In 2020, they appeared in a feature in People (alongside their dad and their other sister, Jordan Foster) largely fawning over Katharine, but also going on a little bit too much about how “insane” her body is and how all the men in their family (including Jordan’s 2-year-old son??) “ogle” her when she’s in a bikini. The podcasting duo has clearly come to (weird) terms with their dad’s relationship (as they should; everyone involved is a consenting adult), but it does tickle me that, when speaking off the cuff, Sara’s knee-jerk reaction is still to go “ew” at a multi-decade-age difference. The glambot guy clarified that Jennifer Lopez actually wasn’t rude on the Golden Globes red carpet. [Instagram] Megan Thee Stallion has already announced her second fast food collab of the year: Dunkin’ Donuts. (Her Popeyes franchise opened earlier this month.) [People] Gracie Abrams on Paul Mescal: “Also I love him surprise.” Ughhhhhh. [Cosmopolitan] Mickey Rourke went jogging in jeans. [Daily Mail] Hudson Williams and Tom Blyth had a great time in Milan this weekend. [Just Jared] Ben Affleck went on Joe Rogan’s show (boo); gave a thoughtful answer critical of AI (yay!); and whined about “cancel culture” (boo). [Twitter/THR] Country singer Karley Scott Collins says rumors that she is dating Keith Urban are “RIDICULOUS.” [Page Six] Like what you just read? You’ve got great taste. Subscribe to Jezebel, and for $5 a month or $50 a year, you’ll get access to a bunch of subscriber benefits, including getting to read the next article (and all the ones after that) ad-free. Plus, you’ll be supporting independent journalism—which, can you even imagine not…