All posts tagged "economy"

Trump draws 'MAGA Saddam' mockery over gaudy pet project: 'It's a running joke'

An analyst on Monday ripped President Donald Trump, calling him "MAGA Saddam" and "Donald Antoinette" as he blasted Trump's recent moves to fund his ballroom as "legalized bribery."

In a conversation between Zeteo founder Mehdi Hasan and Aswin Soobsang, senior political correspondent, the two discussed whether Americans actually care about the construction of the White House ballroom and the destruction of the East Wing, as well as how taxpayers will ultimately foot the bill.

"I think this story is breaking through, and it's not that it's a ballroom being built or not being built. Like you said earlier, what the f--- do we care if the White House has a ballroom? Right now. It's like it's the White House. It's the American presidential palace. Maybe it should have a ballroom. Maybe it shouldn't," Soobsang said.

A Trump official once even said that "Trump wanted a Saddam-style, what would look like a Saddam-style ballroom," Hasan said.

And although the look is something to laugh at, the two point out that there's something more revealing to consider.

"It's a running joke inside the Trump West Wing right now that he is erecting the palace of quote unquote 'MAGA Saddam'," Soobsang said. "If you look at how garish and gold it looks right now. But the bigger story here is that he is devoting a ton of energy, manpower, resources, like everybody in the government who is working on this right now and fixated on it for weeks and soon to be many weeks going forward is doing it on the taxpayer dime."

Trump and his administration claim it's paid for by donors, but that's not the full picture.

"...The broader governmental effort is a taxpayer-funded one. Karoline Levitt claiming it's his big priority last week is what he's focused on. And of course, even if it's donor-funded, how corrupt is that? You can now apparently — you can anonymously donate to the ballroom fund," Hasan said.

"I mean, this man has worked out how to milk people in every possible way," Hasan said. "We now have a presidency where legalized bribery is available to not just domestic donors, but foreign donors, whether it's giving money to Trump's crypto company, whether it's giving money to Trump's presidential library that he's already getting lawsuits to pay out to. Good luck... It's all just a way of shaking people down."

While Americans are suffering amid the government shutdown, a volatile economy, and rising prices for cost of living and health care — Trump is focused on construction, he added.

"And this is all happening against the background that if you're a John Q or Jane Q citizen watching this or hearing about it, and you're because of, largely speaking, the way the federal government and Donald Trump's government is approaching these issues, you might have your health care premium spiking dramatically soon," Soobsang said.

"You might be about to lose your food stamps. The economy is still slowly, ever presently imploding in on itself. And the president of the United States is party planning. Yeah, that's what he's doing. This isn't a nothing issue for any other leader of the free world. This would be how out of touch this guy is when inflation and everything else that's wrong about the economy is putting the screws to you," Soobsang added.

"You should have more Donald Antoinette headlines at this moment," Hasan joked.

CNN and Washington Post Roll Over for ‘Donald Antoinette’s’ Ridiculous Ballroom by Mehdi Hasan

On ‘Ask the Editor’, Mehdi and Swin dissect the mainstream media’s Trump-pandering, from the Epstein files to his MAGA-Saddam ballroom. Plus: ICE arresting Sami Hamdi, war with Venezuela, and Mamdani.

Read on Substack

'It won’t work': Analyst warns Trump repeating major mistake from ex-president

An analyst warns the "Trump-inflicted damage" to the U.S. economy will backfire on the Republican Party because "Americans are not fooled."

In an opinion piece for MSNBC, Helaine R. Olen, author of "Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry," outlines how President Donald Trump's campaign promises to bring prices down and improve the economy hasn't happened.

"Now that Trump is in the White House, Republicans are making the same mistake as Democrats during Joe Biden’s presidency: trying to convince voters that the economy is better than it is. It didn’t work for Democrats, and it won’t work for Republicans and Trump," Olen writes.

Hiring rates are down, beef prices are increased and health insurance costs are climbing — and voters are still feeling the sting of inflation. But that's not the only problem.

"There is other Trump-inflicted damage that will likely come home to roost," she writes. "Medicaid cutbacks to the states will filter downward. And his campaign promise to bring down utility bills was no match for his determination to stick it to environmentalists. White House rollbacks of clean energy initiatives are a factor in the nation’s surging household utility bills, up 10 percent since he took office, while Trump has studiously ignored the issue of Americans getting stuck with the bill for the vast amounts of electricity used by artificial intelligence data centers."

And although overall spending has risen, it's clear the Republican strategy of trying to persuade Americans that the economy is better than it is doesn't work, she explains.

"Trump, our wealthiest president ever, appears all but blind to that truth," Olen writes. "When the economy finally goes wrong — whether the AI bubble finally collapses, or private credit defaults eat away at the stock market, or something else entirely — it will mean political pain for the GOP. Yet the real pain will be felt not by politicians, but average Americans."

'Disappointed': Analyst says public rejecting Trump's 'demonstrably absurd' economy claims

The public is rejecting President Donald Trump's "make-believe" approach to the current economy — and he's "going to be disappointed," according to a new report.

Americans are not convinced by the president's claims of an "economic renaissance," Steve Benen, producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show" writes on the MaddowBlog Friday.

In his post, Benen points to the results from the CBS News/YouGov poll released this week that reports 60% of Americans disapprove of Donald Trump’s handling of the economy, as 51% say the president's economic agenda has left them worse off. Other polls and surveys indicate a similar tone, he adds.

"And yet, he acts as if he can bully Americans’ economic attitudes into submission through constant, reality-defying repetition," Benen writes.

During his White House cabinet meeting this week, Trump said "we have the best economy we've ever had."

Benen argues that things are not good — and 22 states could be heading to recession and economic downturn following the Trump tariff policies and aggressive immigration tactics, according to a new report this week from Axios.

"The idea that Trump, during his first term, delivered the greatest economy ever seen by human eyes is demonstrably absurd," Benen writes. "But the idea that our current economy has reached heights without precedent in the history of the United States is every bit as ridiculous."

The White House might not want to hear it, he adds, but Americans aren't happy.

"I don’t know whether Trump has genuinely convinced himself that Americans now have 'the best economy we’ve ever had,' or whether he was just peddling the latest in a series of lies. Either way, if he thinks such nonsense is persuading a frustrated public, he’s going to be disappointed," he writes.

These brutal firings and closures mean Trump is flying blind — and heading for a crash

Flying blind is dangerous, but it’s what Trump and his lackeys are forcing America to do.

For starters, the current government shutdown means that critical economic statistics — such as job numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that normally would have appeared last Friday — are delayed. No one knows when they’ll appear.

The BLS also produces data on inflation and wages — also delayed.

At a time when there’s reason to worry that the American economy is weakening — when Trump’s tariffs (import taxes) are pushing prices higher, his ICE dragnet is causing labor shortages, and he is asserting control over the Fed’s interest-rate decisions — turning the lights off on the economy is a particularly bad idea.

But even if the government weren’t shuttered, Trump is still turning out the lights.

His firing of Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, on the basis of a jobs report showing a dramatic slowdown in the number of new jobs created under Trump’s watch, has caused many to wonder whether Americans will ever know the truth about how the economy is doing.

Once Trump completes his takeover of the Fed, there will be no inflation cop on the beat, with the result that no one can have any confidence that inflation will be controlled in the future.

Trump intends to replace quarterly earnings reports by publicly traded companies with twice-annual updates. This would put investors in the dark.

Trump and the sycophants surrounding him don’t mind turning the lights off on the economy because they’d rather Americans not know how badly it’s doing under Trump.

Besides, Trump doesn’t like data. He eschews facts. He wants investors and consumers — and everyone else — to be in the dark, because then he can lie without fear of factual contradiction. He can create even more of a fantasy world. He can pretend that he’s been wildly successful even when he’s been a terrible failure.

Trump’s concealment extends beyond the economy. He’s been misrepresenting evidence on vaccines. He’s slowing or stopping data collection on climate change and on bird flu.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently announced it was defunding its annual survey on food security. This is the nation’s longest-running and most consistent measurement of whether American families are meeting their basic nutritional needs.

Without this information, policymakers and researchers can’t track how many Americans are hungry and how many children are failing to receive adequate nutrition.

Trump doesn’t mind, because he and his Republican enablers in Congress just enacted the largest cuts to food assistance ever to hit American families. Meanwhile, his tariffs — combined with lack of antitrust enforcement — are making food prices soar.

In April, the Trump administration laid off all the analysts at the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) responsible for updating the federal poverty guidelines used to calculate eligibility for more than 40 programs, such as the National School Lunch Program and Low-Income Home Energy Assistance and parts of Medicaid and Medicare.

I doubt Trump wants Americans to know that poverty is rising on his watch, as it surely is. Nor is he especially concerned about updating eligibility for programs that keep Americans out of poverty — programs he’s actively and illegally cutting.

In March, DHHS suspended data collection for the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, a database on maternal mortality. In April, the full PRAMS team was put on administrative leave.

Trump doesn’t want Americans to know that women are very likely getting sicker and dying at higher rates due to his (and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s) absurd policies limiting access to drugs and vaccines, his bonkers announcement that pregnant women shouldn’t take Tylenol (even if they’re running a fever), and policies denying women abortions — such as ending Medicaid payments to reproductive health care clinics that offer abortions.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced in May that it will no longer be updating its Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters data, which tracks major weather and climate disasters that have total damages or costs of $1 billion or more.

I’m sure Trump is fine with this because he believes climate change is a “hoax.” He’s stopped funding wind and solar energy and instead given carte blanche to the oil companies. Of course he doesn’t want to track large climate disasters.

The lights are going out across America.

The problems that we as a nation have sought to illuminate, so that we can remedy them, are disappearing — not because the problems are disappearing or have been remedied, but because we will no longer know about them.

It is impossible to protect American consumers, workers, investors, families, and children without adequate data. Trump and his lackeys have little or no interest in protecting them — and even less in allowing Americans to know how little they care.

When this Trump daymare is over, one of our first priorities must be to restore all the ways of knowing what’s happening to Americans — and dedicate ourselves and the nation to sharing the truth.

Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/
Robert Reich's new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org.

These forgotten Americans hold the key to Trump's downfall — and they'll use it soon

Even at the absolute highest level, at some point, just getting the basic job done — sawing wood, blocking and tackling — is the only means to sway critical elements of the American electorate toward support or disdain for this or most other administrations.

For that reason, and precious few others, it is only a matter of time until the floor drops out from under Trump's MAGA express and its adolescent scorched-earth second run.

Such a low-key, mealy-mouthed pronouncement kind of sounds absurd at first.

After all, at any given point, 35 percent of this country is in a cold civil war with the opposite 35 percent. The red side of that equation believes that Trump's Department of Justice is about to deliver Obama and Hillary's Q-inspired imprisonment, all while they cheer the deployment of troops to Portland. Probably Portland, Maine, given this administration's incompetence.

Meanwhile, many of us on the blue side believe we're a day or two away from Trump passing out on the podium as the Epstein files prove that he played a major role in the most notorious teen sex-trafficking scheme in modern history. (And don't think that he doesn't love the government shutdown as a diversion.)

The reality is likely more in the middle — though that's one hell of a middle, to be sure.

Real hope for moderating or deflating Trump and company will likely spring more from that middle 30 percent, the kind that don't believe that pitchforks are warranted yet, so long as someone answers the damned phone when they call Social Security, gets their tax rebate before Memorial Day, wants FEMA positioned before the storm, and prefers hamburger that is at least cheaper than Bitcoin.

Because Trump et. al. can implement Project 2025 in all its horror, putting troops in American cities, deporting actual American citizens, firing women and POC as presumptive "DEI hires," all of it, with the 35-35 dynamic and a "thirtyish" middle that is practically asleep, just wanting American s––– to work.

To deal with an obvious issue, no, that middle should not be forgiven for being asleep at the wheel as Trump steals American democracy, but that's a topic for another day.

There is reason to believe, however, that the middle is about to lose its precarious tolerance of Trump as his regime continues its nosedive into banana republic despot despair.

First and foremost, there is the fact that no one can afford anything, whether it is groceries, a house, Amazon Prime, never mind health insurance. Trump is in the White House based on one issue — inflation, and not only has he failed spectacularly to bring it down, but there is every indication that it will only get worse. Prices alone will move that middle to disapproval faster than nearly any other factor.

But now watch what happens when air traffic control, or the lack thereof, makes Thanksgiving and next summer an utter nightmare. Yes, that's a "First World Problem" but we are or were "the First World," and very easily angered when such entitlements are threatened.

We got damned lucky this hurricane season. FEMA got "DOGE'd" but wasn't tested in August or September, and good thing too: We could have had a disaster on top of a disaster. But just because the trade winds favored us doesn't mean that a major upheaval, such as an earthquake, fire, or next year's hurricane season, won't expose the breathtaking incompetence we know to be in place.

There is a darker side, too. As the Trump administration fully politicizes the FBI, pulling agents into political conflicts and away from international attacks, all under the leadership of a former podcaster, we are terrifyingly more exposed to terrorist attacks, whether of the old variety, such as bombs, or the newer threats to our networks and grids. The political folly of the FBI, replacing so many honed-in apolitical veterans, can and likely will be exposed in something where minutes matter. It is more likely than not.

And then there is the relatively easy stuff that is already souring, as mentioned: Social Security calls going unanswered, VA appointments dropping off, SNAP dissolving, and Medicaid cuts closing hospitals, all of that toll takes only time — and the administration has lots of it remaining.

It is really easy to spend an hour on X and fully believe that the United States is about to start the Civil War 2.0 — and, no doubt, our democracy is being burgled by the hour, the post-Constitutional America may well be "here." But the administration still has to fear that middle because in this hyper-polarized climate, it takes only a good 15 percent sway in the electorate and very suddenly the administration has little room to move without serious risk.

There is a major, major difference in the authoritarian battlefield between a presidential approval rate of 45 percent versus a true 35 percent, and as has been written here before, Trump has never had to defend his "burn it all down" approach in a souring economy — never mind a wholly dysfunctional government.

This is not a call to sit back and wait. No. The dangers are present and clear, the agenda is damned dangerous, and its implementation is now weekly. Stand and resist, spread the word, don't give an inch, all that. But do not scroll the phone thinking that we're one big revelation away from MAGA implosion.

If we have learned one thing in the Trump era, it is that scandal doesn't touch him ... unless the economy sucks, the phones go unanswered, and a real bomb drops. He has never faced a major revelation with an angry middle.

It is coming. The incompetence can only remain hidden for so long. Just don't count on overwhelming shock about any one revelation, until such time as the middle gets miffed.

At some point, competence matters. The federal government, whether it is TSA, Social Security, the FBI, or FEMA, has actually "worked" fairly well, going back a generation. We have had legions of politically agnostic civil servants earn the expectation that they can be counted on. But most of them are gone, perhaps primarily because they kept politics out of the office, all to usher in just a few "true believers."

And their absence is about to be felt, month by intolerable month.

The somewhat perverted "good news" is that it is coming, and as the middle turns against Trumpism, some of his worst plans will be abated. The bad news is that it cannot come soon enough, and questions linger over whether there will be much left worth saving.

Fight now. Resist today. And know that replacements are coming. Whether they can be forgiven for waiting until abject incompetence set in is a question for history.

But it most certainly is coming — this administration has shown that it cannot be counted on to answer the phone, blocking and tackling, and that's on a nice day. Wait for a real storm and not the "Q" type.

The administration will soon find out that competence matters most.

Jason Miciak is a past Associate Editor of Occupy Democrats, American attorney, author, and can also be found on Politizoom. He can be reached at jasonmiciak@gmail.com

'Flashing troubling signals': CNN warns Americans 'pretty gloomy' about Trump's economy

A CNN anchor warned Tuesday that "the economy is flashing some troubling signals" as a looming government shutdown approaches and questions over upcoming jobs reports.

"The economy is flashing some troubling signals," CNN anchor Brianna Keilar told viewers. "Consumer confidence is at a five-month low, due in part to a slowing labor market. And with all eyes on jobs data, there's a lingering question: will this month's job report come out this Friday, as it routinely does? And that's because if the government shuts down, the report could be delayed."

"The mood on Main Street remains pretty gloomy," CNN reporter Matt Egan reports.

In September, consumer confidence dropped by another 4% to a reading of just above 94.

"So for some context, that is the lowest since April, the month when financial markets were going haywire as investors freaked out over the president's tariff plans, consumer confidence is significantly lower than back in January, when the president started his second term," he said.

The downward trend is also showing a significant change among consumers.

"If you look back at this point in the calendar of the president's first term back in September of 2017, consumer confidence was clearly much higher. So why are people feeling down on this economy? Well, the consumer confidence report came up with a couple of different readings that were concerning, including present situation, how people are feeling about the current situation on the ground that fell significantly, also, how people are feeling about their family finances, in particular, how they're feeling about their current financial situation that fell sharply, as well as how available consumers believe jobs are right," Egan said.

Disappointing job reports over the last few months have also reflected how people feel about the economy. These factors can raise a concern, he added.

"Why do we care about consumer confidence? Because this economy is driven by consumer spending, and the worst people are feeling, the less likely they are to go out to eat, go buy a car or take a vacation. So that's why we got to pay very close attention to these low consumer confidence numbers," Egan said.

'Drag on growth': CBO warns Trump policies will kneecap the economy ahead of 2028 election

Republicans insist that the "Big, Beautiful Bill," plus President Donald Trump's tariff and immigration policies, could energize the U.S. economy. But a nonpartisan scorekeeper reports Friday that this claim is not true, calling it a "drag on growth" ahead of the 2028 elections.

A new report from the Congressional Budget Office predicts that "over the next three years, policies implemented this year by Trump and the Republican-led Congress will have little effect on growth before the 2028 election," Politico reports.

"In 2027 and 2028, the effects of reduced net immigration on the labor force and the waning of the reconciliation act’s near-term boost to demand act as a drag on growth," according to the report. "Partially offsetting those effects, an increase in domestic production, driven by higher tariffs, provides a boost to economic growth. As a result, real GDP growth in those years is roughly the same as it was in CBO’s January 2025 projections."

Elevated uncertainty over tariffs and substantial policy changes are estimated to have a ripple effect. And although the president's tariff policies could cool and later rev up, that boost could wane, the forecast expects.

"At the end of 2028, the level of real GDP is about 0.1 percent higher than it was in CBO’s January 2025 projections because of the economic effects of the reconciliation act, higher tariffs, and lower net immigration; the effects of interactions among those factors; and adjustments to reflect recently published data," according to the CBO report.

The agency plans to publish its economic projections for 2026 to 2036 as part of The Budget and Economic Outlook.

Trump's promised 'boom' is 'not happening' — and tariff impact is 'undeniable': expert

President Donald Trump's promise to bring back U.S. manufacturing jobs has backfired as tariff-exposed industries are losing jobs, CNN reports.

The "American manufacturing renaissance" Trump pledged has had the opposite result following the president's trade war, impacting manufacturing, construction, and transportation industries, according to new analysis by Apollo Global chief economist Torsten Slok.

Slock reviewed a three-month moving average of employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and found that these tariff-impacted sectors had job loss in recent years; however, this is the first time that payroll growth has been negative over a period of the last several months.

Hiring has weakened, and these tariff-exposed industries have had major layoffs. Crashing lumber prices and companies like John Deere have seen 'troubling' signs.

A new revision to jobs data released Tuesday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed a staggering 911,000 fewer jobs were added in the year leading up to March of this year.

“The tariff impact on hiring is now undeniable. The manufacturing renaissance, the hiring boom, is just not happening,” Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM, told CNN.

Tariff price increases for steel, copper, and aluminum, along with other materials, have hiked prices for manufacturers that were supposed to see a benefit from the changing trade agenda.

Economists say that the Trump administration's chaotic strategy has caused uncertainty and "paralyzed" manufacturers, which has prompted companies to pull back on hiring.

“It turns out the community of economists were correct that launching a trade war would result in slower growth and few jobs. That’s what is happening,” Brusuelas said.

The Trump administration denied on Tuesday that jobs and hiring are down in the United States. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt argued in a news conference that the economy Trump was handed as he entered office was "a mess" and blamed President Joe Biden's administration.

Americans are losing faith in finding new jobs. New data from the New York Federal Reserve shows consumers indicate there is only a 45% chance of finding a new job if they don't have one currently, and that was consumers who are “broad-based across age, education and income groups."

It was "most pronounced for those with at most a high school education,” the data showed. That is down from 51% in July — the lowest reading since the survey launched in 2013.

MAGA's 'real America' begs for help as Trump drives it to ruin

The numbers were bad. There were just 22,000 new jobs added to the economy. Here’s how the Washington Post summarized things:

“The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported fewer jobs in downward revisions to June job creation, in a warning sign about President Donald Trump’s tougher tariffs and immigration enforcement. In August, the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3 percent.”

Fox Business is interested in shielding Trump from the consequences of his terrible choices. So morning host Stuart Varney asked the US secretary of labor if Trump’s tariffs “have anything to do with this slowing job market?”

Unsurprisingly, Lori Chavez-DeRemer lied.

“Tariffs are working … How do I know this? Because companies are reinvesting in the American workforce. We’re seeing the consumer confidence up. We’re seeing real wages up. Blue-collar boom? I talk about it. It seems like something that is rhetoric but it’s not because that’s what we’re seeing on the ground blue-collar wages are up 1.4 percent. Unemployment is still holding steady. Statistically, it’s nonexistent. That’s the key to the American people is that we’re leaning in. We’re doing everything we can for this workforce and now this is one more thing that the Fed can do. And [Federal Reserve Chairman] Jerome Powell hasn’t done his job and .. that’s why [Trump has] been so vocal about this. We need those interest rates down.

As I said, Chavez-DeRemer lied, but she lied a lot.

Wages are not up, blue-collar or otherwise. Companies are not “reinvesting in the American workforce.” They are bribing Trump to be the exception to his import tax. Unemployment is not “nonexistent,” statistically or otherwise. It literally increased to its highest level since October 2021, when America was still in the throes of the pandemic.

If “tariffs are working,” they’re not working for men.

They were supposed to restore the former glory of the American working man by bringing back factory jobs. But “men have lost 56,000 jobs over the past four months, with women gaining 76 percent of the jobs in 2025 (compared to around 50 percent normally),” economist Mike Konczal said.

“Trump's effort to bring back men jobs with tariffs has backfired spectacularly, causing those industries to shrink.”

But of course the biggest lie is the one out in the open. Could tariffs possibly have something to do with a slowing job market? Yes! In fact, that’s exactly what everyone expected would happen after Trump imposed — without Congress and without law — a massive national sales tax. They would eat into profits and bring hiring to a crawl.

And since the president is the main cause of the slowdown, his administration has the incentive to hide that fact, especially to find someone else to blame for it. That’s why Chavez-DeRemer spends so much of her Fox time accusing Powell of dropping the ball.

Powell has already said an interest rate cut is likely. He said that before today’s job report. And he said a rate cut was needed because of the “downside risks to employment,” which I take to be bureaucratese for “Trump’s tariffs are killing off jobs so we gotta juice the economy.”

Point is that Powell was already signalling to do what the president has been demanding, but that’s inconvenient timing for Chavez-DeRemer, who was tasked with finding a scapegoat in order to hide from Trump’s supporters that he, and he alone, is the cause of the problem.

And because protecting Trump from the consequences of his terrible choices is the goal of his administration, no one is going to say boo after it’s clear a rate cut had practically no effect on jobs. Mike Konczal also said today that employers have been pricing a cut into their planning. By the time it happens, it may not make a lick of difference.

Our second item is a local news report by KATV reporter Andrew Mobley on the reason why Arkansas farmers are facing catastrophe.

The reason is Trump, but no one blames him. Here’s Mobley:

“Almost everything that could go wrong for Arkansas farmers did go wrong this year and it’s so bad that many are facing bankruptcy or even the closure of farms that have been passed down for generations.

“A dismal global market, and plunging commodity prices, mean there’s little to no hope of breaking even for many farmers, even as sky high input cost rise, because of inflation and now tariffs” (my bolding).

“Though President Trump’s big beautiful bill provided them much-needed update to safety-net subsidies for farmers, they won’t see those federal dollars until late next year, by which time some have projected that as many as one-fourth or even one-third of Arkansas farmers will face bankruptcy or be forced to leave the business.”

Mobley’s report covers a meeting between farmers and their US representatives. Not one of the farmers states the obvious: that they are facing the wall because Trump put them against it, and he put them against it because they supported him, and they supported him despite knowing that his tariffs would put them against the wall.

And now, because Arkansas farmers cannot implicate the president, or the Republicans in the Congress, without also implicating themselves, they are reduced to pleading with them for some sort of federal bailout, which is to say, begging their kidnappers to pay ransom.

That said, it’s not often you see the most salient feature of American politics — whiteness — stand out so perfectly formed in the wild.

“Real Americans” (ie, white farmers “who put food on your table”) are transparently asking to be rescued from the dire consequences of their terrible choices by their savior, but instead of being held accountable for them, as anyone who is not white most certainly would be, they are portrayed as victims of circumstances to be pitied, not condemned.

“Until the federal government steps in to save them, they have had no one to turn to but God,” reporter Mobley said. “It’s hard not to be moved by the cries of the people who put food on your table.”

Actually, it’s not that hard.

And finally, and once again, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

I have talked about him a lot, but I wanted to end on this note: During three hours of testimony Thursday, before a Senate committee, that man fell to pieces under the slightest pressure.

This is not a small concern. Kennedy is the top public health official in the country. Boil down everything and the most important thing about him is that the public trusts him to act in everyone’s best interest.

Most people don’t know much about medicine, about science and about policy, but everyone can size up a man as trustworthy or not. And I don’t know how Kennedy didn’t fail that assessment in every way.

Kennedy could not be corrected on matters of fact, forget about matters of public health, without becoming defensive, petulant and emotional. He grunted. He groaned. He wiggled nervously in his chair. He rolled his eyes. He scowled at United States senators. I could go on.

Watch the clip between Kennedy and US Senator Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico. Pay attention to Lujan’s face.

Do you see a man who can be trusted?

'Troubling': Trump tariffs blamed as prices 'crash' in major industry

Crashing lumber prices are sending a "troubling" warning sign for the U.S. economy following uncertainty over President Donald Trump's tariffs and a "deteriorating housing market," the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

"Crashing wood prices are troubling because they have been a reliable leading indicator on the direction of the housing market as well as broader economic activity," according to the Journal.

Two U.S. sawyers last week said they will decelerate production and "curtail output, slowing the decline."

Trump tariffs and import taxes have caused unpredictable impacts on supply chains.

"During the Covid-19 lockdown, two-by-four prices nearly tripled the prepandemic record, an early sign of the inflation and broken supply chains that would bedevil the economic reopening," the Journal noted. "When the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates in 2022 to curb inflation, lumber was among the first assets to decline in value. Now, prices are signaling caution again."

Lumber prices have had a turbulent road. In anticipation of Trump's threatened higher duties on Canadian imports and tariffs on wood, a surplus of wood was set aside in the United States.

Wood prices climbed in the spring when the White House claimed "it was investigating national security aspects of imported lumber and Trump threatened steep tariffs on all Canadian goods."

The price plummeted when Trump let down tariff talk on Canada, and then prices surged again in May when buyers were looking ahead.

"In May, they started surging again as buyers began stocking up ahead of the scheduled hike in existing Canadian lumber duties and Trump’s threatened tariffs," according to WSJ.

The Trump administration is reportedly considering more tariffs — as it did with aluminum, steel and copper products — on imported wood, citing national security concerns.

Producers plan to continue cutting back on production.

In July, residential building permits slipped to just 1.4 million units, a seasonally adjusted annual rate, and the fewest units in construction since June 2020.

Construction spending in the U.S. dropped by 3.4% in July compared to the record amount set in May 2024.