president of end citizens united. we are so happy to be here today with this amazing panel. after the discussion we re going to open it up for questions and answers. and we look forward to your participation at that time. in the 2018 election we had a wave of candidates campaigning on reforming government and making our system work for the people. they were responding to a lack of faith voters have in our system and the anger voters feel about a system that works for the big money interests rather than for the everyday people. with so much more money flooding into our politics since the supreme court citizens united decision, americans have connected the dots. they understand that this impacts every aspect of their life, from healthcare prices to prescription drugs, to the opioid epidemic, to mass shootings and gun violence and so much more. they understand that a handful of wealthy special interest donors control access and influence to our system. and that s why we re here
japanese officials say at least 48 people have died and many others are trapped beneath rubble, after a powerful earthquake. ukraine suffers another intense night of russian bombardment, leaving at least five people dead. ukraine s air defence claims 35 drones were shot down. time for a look at the business news now. tesla, the elon musk controlled car maker which pioneered mass market electric vehicles, has been relegated to second position in the global league of electric car makers. its chinese rival, byd has reported that it sold 526,000 cars in the final quarter of last year compared to 480,000 for tesla making it the world s number one electric car brand for now at least. erin delmore is in new york for us. byd said it is the biggest car brand you have never heard of in a recent advert i saw, but we are hearing more about them and other chinese electric vehicle makers who are shaking up the market. it is true. this news might shaking up the market. it is true. this
this rally ever since the start of the day. we started in negative territory, but with green on the board you can see we are now at session highs, just coming off session highs right now. the s&p 500 up 0.75%. the dow pushing 1%. the nasdaq up a little more than 0.1%. this is all happening off of what happened, or really didn t happen, with the fed yesterday holding rates steady. positive economic data, jobs numbers coming out today also helping. let s look at what is happening at the dow year to date. have a positive push by 0.4% year-to-date here. a similar story, we also saw for the s&p. however, i think we were just coming off of those gains into positive territory. you can see we are down by just under 0.1% here. back-and-forth, but generally speaking a positive overall today. betty: positive. ramy, the weaker dollar created a positive move in commodities. ramy: let s take a look at what the weaker dollar is doing right here. it is down 1%. betty, with a weaker dollar, f