Democratic lawmakers who participated in a video warning US military personnel against following unlawful orders issued by President Donald Trump remained defiant after being contacted by the FBI.

As reported by Reuters on Tuesday, the FBI has requested interviews with Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), as well as Reps. Chris Deluzio (D-Penn.), Maggie Goodlander (D-NH), Chrissy Houlahan (D-Md.), and Jason Crow (D-Colo.), just days after Trump demanded their imprisonment or even death for supposed “sedition.”

One US Department of Justice official told Reuters that the FBI interviews are to determine if the Democratic lawmakers engaged in “any wrongdoing” when they spoke out against the president potentially giving unlawful orders that pit the US military against American civilians.

The Democrats, however, vowed that they would not be intimidated by any FBI investigation.

In a social media post, Slotkin said that Trump’s push to jail the Democrats for exercising their First Amendment rights demonstrated the reason why they decided to participate in the video in the first place. Slotkin accused Trump of “weaponizing the federal government against his perceived enemies,” while adding that he “does not believe laws apply to him or his Cabinet.”

“This is not the America I know,” added Slotkin, a former CIA analyst. “I’m not going to let this next step from the FBI stop me from speaking up for my country and our Constitution.”

Houlahan, Crow, Goodlander, and Deluzio issued a joint statement accusing Trump of “using the FBI as a tool to intimidate and harass members of Congress,” and vowed that “no amount of intimidation or harassment will ever stop us from doing our jobs and honoring our Constitution.”

“We swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States,” they emphasized. “That oath lasts a lifetime, and we intend to keep it. We will not be bullied. We will never give up the ship.”

The FBI interview requests came just a day after the US Department of Defense (DOD) said it had “received serious allegations of misconduct” against Kelly, who is a retired US Navy captain, and was launching an investigation that could result in him being recalled to active duty to face court-martial hearings for violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).

In a separate social media post, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attacked all the Democrats who participated in the video as the “seditious six” and said that Kelly had been singled out for DOD investigation because he was the only member who was still subject to UCMJ given his status as a retired naval officer.

The US Department of Defense on Monday announced it was launching an investigation into a Democratic senator who had participating in a video warning active-duty troops to not follow illegal orders given by President Donald Trump.

In a social media post, the DoD said it had “received serious allegations of misconduct” against Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a retired US Navy captain who was one of several Democrats with backgrounds in national defense to speak out against the president potentially giving unlawful orders that pit the US military against American civilians.

As a result of the investigation, the DoD said that Kelly could be recalled to active duty to face potential court-martial proceedings for violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).

“All servicemembers are reminded that they have a legal obligation under the UCMJ to obey lawful orders and that orders are presumed to be lawful,” the DoD said. “A servicemember’s personal philosophy does not justify or excuse the disobedience of an otherwise lawful order.”

In addition to Kelly, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) and Reps. Chris Deluzio (D-Penn.), Maggie Goodlander (D-NH), Chrissy Houlahan (D-Md.), and Jason Crow (D-Colo.) appeared in the video.

In a follow-up social media post, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attacked the Democrats in the video as the “seditious six” and said that Kelly had been singled out for investigation because he was the only member who was still subject to UCMJ given his status as a retired Naval officer.

“As was announced, the Department is reviewing his statements and actions, which were addressed directly to all troops while explicitly using his rank and service affiliation—lending the appearance of authority to his words,” wrote Hegseth. “Kelly’s conduct brings discredit upon the armed forces and will be addressed appropriately.”

Trump has been calling for the prosecution of the six Democrats who appeared in the video for the last several days, and he even went so far as to say in one Truth Social post they deserve to be executed for “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

Shortly after the Pentagon announced its investigation into Kelly, he responded with a lengthy social media post in which he defended his service record and vowed not to back down despite threats from the Trump administration.

“If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work,” he said. “I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution.”

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) responded on X with a much shorter five-word post that read, “F--- you and your investigation.”

Legal experts and reporters reacted with shock on Wednesday after Trump-appointed interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan acknowledged that a grand jury never voted on the operative indictment filed against former FBI Director James Comey.

Politico reports that the admission appears to have put the Comey prosecution “in serious jeopardy,” as Halligan told US District Judge Michael Nachmanoff the grand jury never saw the final indictment that was handed down in September that charged Comey with one count of making a false statement to Congress and one count of obstructing a congressional proceeding.

The final indictment was a revised version of an originally proposed three-count indictment that needed to be changed after the grand jury rejected one of the proposed charges against Comey.

Former federal prosecutor Ken White attempted to piece together exactly what Halligan did in a post on Bluesky.

“So here’s what apparently happened: they tried to indict Comey on the last day of the statute with a three-count indictment,” he explained. “The grand jury rejected one. Rather than cross it out or indicate on the indictment that only two of the three counts were voted upon, Halligan creates a new indictment, which shows only the two counts they true billed, and has the foreperson sign it without presenting it to the grand jury.”

Assistant US Attorney Tyler Lemons told Nachmanoff that it was necessary to revise the indictment on short notice after grand jurors no-billed one of the charges since the statute of limitations for Comey’s alleged crimes was set to expire within mere hours.

“They really had no other way to return it,” he told the court.

Nonetheless, many observers expressed shock that Halligan could make such an elementary error that could singlehandedly get the entire case against Comey dismissed.

“Lindsey Halligan should be immediately disbarred,” wrote Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at the Georgia State College School of Law, in a post on X.

Political and leadership consultant Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin, a former human rights attorney, also believed that Hallingan should face severe consequences for pushing forward with an indictment that had not been voted on by a full grand jury.

“This should result in the interim US Attorney losing her bar license,” she wrote on Bluesky. “Never, in almost 30 years as an attorney, have I heard of this big of an intentional fuck up before a grand jury.”

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) argued that Halligan’s actions were enough to justify her termination as interim US attorney.

“In a normal Department of Justice not run by hacks and sycophants and malicious clowns,” he wrote, “Lindsey Halligan would resign and the indictment against James Comey would be dismissed.”

Quinta Jurecic, a longtime legal journalist who writes for The Atlantic, said that she found Halligan’s error to be “impressive” because “I honestly didn’t even know this was a mistake you could make.”

Anti-Trump attorney George Conway, meanwhile, encouraged his followers on X to “please remember to give thanks to the Lord that Trump and his people are so unbelievably incompetent.”

Maya Sen, a political scientist at the Harvard Kennedy School, drew a line between the quality of legal competence in the Comey case and a three-judge panel in Texas shooting down the administration’s efforts to redraw Texas’ congressional map as part of a mid-decade gerrymandering scheme.

“High levels of incompetence between this and the DOJ-TX gerrymandering situation,” she wrote on X. “It’s hard to find people with high levels of competence and expertise when maximizing on ideological and personal loyalty, and this is a problem for [Republicans] in the age of educational polarization.”

Dozens of former US Department of Justice attorneys have now gone on record to describe the unprecedented corruption of federal law enforcement taking place during President Donald Trump’s second term.

In a lengthy story published on Sunday by the New York Times, the former DOJ attorneys described rampant politicization of prosecutions, directives to dig up evidence on Trump’s political foes, and orders to drop investigations into potential terrorist plots and white-collar crimes.

Several attorneys told the paper that the corruption of the DOJ began on Trump’s very first day in office when he issued a blanket pardon to everyone who had been convicted of rioting at the US Capitol building on his behalf on January 6, 2021, in a last-ditch effort to prevent the certification of former President Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

Gregory Rosen, who oversaw the unit at the DOJ that prosecuted January 6 rioters, told the Times that he felt “numb” seeing the pardons of the rioters, but he nonetheless facilitated the pardons because he understood they were within the president’s constitutional powers.

Mike Romano, a prosecutor who worked on January 6 cases, said that he had to resign as soon as he saw the broad scope of the pardons, which included rioters who were guilty of assaulting police officers.

“It’s incredibly demoralizing to see something you worked on for four years wiped away by a lie—I mean the idea that prosecution of the rioters was a grave national injustice,” he said. “We had strong evidence against every person we prosecuted.”

The mass pardon of the Capitol rioters was only the beginning, as prosecutors said that this politicization soon swept over the entire department.

In early March, for instance, Trump signed an executive order targeting law firms that had in the past represented prominent Democrats. Among other things, the order demanded federal agencies cancel government contracts with the firms and strip the firms’ employees of their security clearances.

The orders also accused some of the firms in engaging in supposed racial discrimination for maintaining policies related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

Dena Robinson, a former attorney at the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, told the Times that the DEI investigation into law firm Perkins Coie was a particularly extreme example of the department’s politicization under Trump.

“The idea of the investigation was that Perkins Coie supposedly engaged in illegal discrimination against white men,” she explained. “But Perkins Coie is an extremely white firm—only 3% of the partners are Black. When my colleague pointed that out, the leadership didn’t care. They’d already reached their conclusion.”

Robinson said that this attitude was emblematic of how Trump appointees conducted investigations: They begin with desired conclusions and systematically ignore evidence that undermines them.

“I wouldn’t even call it the Justice Department anymore,” she said. “It’s become Trump’s personal law firm. I think Americans should be enraged.”

Another aspect of the DOJ under Trump that has drawn scrutiny has been his use of pardons for political allies, including his decision last month to pardon Changpeng Zhao, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, who pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges in 2023, and who had helped boost the value of the Trump family’s own cryptocurrency venture.

A new investigation from ProPublica found that Trump’s use of the pardon hasn’t just been relegated to prosecutions that took place during Democratic administrations.

The ProPublica report found Trump had wiped out convictions in “at least a dozen criminal cases that originated during his first term,” many of which involved politicians convicted of taking bribes or engaging in kickback schemes.

Frank O. Bowman III, a professor emeritus of law at the University of Missouri, told Pro Publica that the Trump pardons taken together are part of what he described as “the systematic destruction of the Justice Department as an objective agency that seeks to uphold the law and fight crime.”

In addition to this, Joseph Tirrell, former director of the Departmental Ethics Office, told the Times that the Trump DOJ has been hacking away at rules that bar law-enforcement officials from accepting gifts.

In one instance, Tirrell said he tried to intervene to stop DOJ employees from accepting cigars given by mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor and a soccer ball from the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA).

“I felt like I really had to go to the mattress to convince the AG’s office: You can pay for the item or you can return the item or you can throw the item away,” he said. “There’s no other way to do this.”

Shortly after this, Tirrell said he got a call from the FBI general counsel inquiring “about changing exceptions to the gift rules because his boss, [FBI Director] Kash Patel, felt like he should be able to accept more expensive gifts.”

Tirrell said that he then reminded the counsel that “his client was not Mr. Patel, but the United States.”

Patel in recent weeks has come under scrutiny for some of the perks he’s taken during his time as FBI director, including using the FBI’s private jet to fly to a wrestling event where his girlfriend, country music singer Alexis Wilkins, was performing the national anthem.

MS NOW reported on Monday that Patel has also given Wilkins “a security detail made up of elite FBI agents usually assigned to a SWAT team in the FBI field office in Nashville,” an unprecedented arrangement for the girlfriend of the FBI director.

Christopher O’Leary, a former senior FBI agent and MS NOW law enforcement contributor, said that there is “no legitimate justification” for granting Wilkins this level of security.

“This is a clear abuse of position and misuse of government resources,” he said. “She is not his spouse, does not live in the same house or even the same city.”

As poll numbers on his handling of the US economy have continued to sink in recent weeks, President Donald Trump has floated sending Americans a $2,000 check that he has claimed will be funded with revenue collected from his tariffs on imported products.

However, economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) on Tuesday crunched some numbers and found that Trump’s proposed tariff “dividend” simply doesn’t add up.

In particular, Baker found that the revenue being generated by the tariffs is less than half of the total cost of sending nearly every US citizen a $2,000 check.

“At $2,000 a piece it would come to $600 billion, more than twice what Trump is collecting from us with his import taxes,” Baker explained. “Since he’s already $330 billion short, how can Trump think he has money to pay down the national debt?”

Baker declared Trump’s tariff math “crazy,” and then speculated that the president sincerely believes the false claims he’s been making about securing $18 trillion in investments from foreign countries. What’s more, Baker said that it appears that no one on the president’s economic policy team wants to tell him that this belief is purely delusional.

“People like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent or National Economic Adviser Kevin Hassett may not be brilliant intellects, but they know that Trump does not have trillions of dollars from foreign countries to play with, and that we are still running deficits that would ordinarily be considered very large,” he said. “But they are too scared of Donald Trump to explain this to him.”

Erica York, vice president of federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation, said in an interview with CNN published on Tuesday that Trump could also reignite inflation by sending out $2,000 checks to everyone, as this would likely increase demand for goods and services without a corresponding increase in supply.

“All of this is exactly the wrong recipe if you want to get inflation under control and make things feel more affordable,” she said.

York also said in a separate interview with the Associated Press that it makes little sense to cut Americans a check when one of the main reasons they’re paying more for so many products has been the president’s tariffs.

“If the goal is relief for Americans, just get rid of the tariffs,” she said.

Michael Pearce, deputy chief US economist at Oxford Economics, echoed York’s concern about the dividend checks worsening inflation, and he told CNN that the risk with Trump’s plan is “if you add a stimulus check on top of a tax cut refund, you’re going to overheat the economy.”

University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers was even more blunt in his take on Trump’s tariff dividend idea, which he labeled, “insane, unfair, pointless and dumb.”

“If tariffs are making Americans poorer,” Wolfers told CNN, “the simplest and fairest way to stop that is not to tariff.”

President Donald Trump's policy of bombing purported drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean, which multiple legal experts have decried as an illegal act extrajudicial murder, is now meeting resistance from a top US ally.

CNN reported on Tuesday that the UK has now stopped sharing intelligence related to suspected drug-trafficking vessels with the US because the country does not want to be complicit in strikes that it believes violate international law.

CNN's sources say that the UK stopped giving the US information about boats in the region roughly a month ago, shortly after Trump began authorizing drone strikes against them in a campaign that so far has killed at least 76 people.

"Before the US military began blowing up boats in September, countering illicit drug trafficking was handled by law enforcement and the US Coast Guard, [and] cartel members and drug smugglers were treated as criminals with due process rights," explained CNN.

Last month, after his administration had already launched several strikes, Trump declared drug cartels enemy combatants and claimed he has the right to launch military strikes against suspected drug-trafficking boats.

Appearing on CNN on Tuesday to discuss the story, reporter Natasha Bertrand described the decision to stop sharing intelligence as "a really significant rupture" between the US and its closest ally.

"We're told that the UK is deeply uncomfortable with [the boat strikes], and they believe that it is pretty blatantly illegal," Bertrand explained. "It really underscores the continued questions surrounding the legality of this US military campaign."

The US military began its boat attacks in the Caribbean in September, and has since expanded them to purported drug boats operating in the Pacific Ocean.

Reporting last month from the Wall Street Journal indicated that the administration was also preparing to attack a variety of targets inside Venezuela, whose government Trump has baselessly accused of running drug cartels. Potential targets include “ports and airports controlled by the military that are allegedly used to traffic drugs, including naval facilities and airstrips.”

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier has now arrived off the coast of Latin America, in a move that the paper notes "has fueled speculation the Trump administration intends to dramatically escalate its deadly counternarcotics campaign there, possibly through direct attacks on Venezuela."

Reports from the US government and the United Nations have not identified Venezuela as a significant source of drugs that enter the United States, and the country plays virtually no role in the trafficking of fentanyl, the primary cause of drug overdoses in the US.

The administration's military aggression in Latin America has also sparked a fierce backlash in the region, where dozens of political leaders last month condemned the boat attacks, while also warning that they could just be the start of a regime change war reminiscent of Cold War-era US-backed coups like ones that occurred in Chile, Brazil, and other nations.

President Donald Trump’s push for mid-decade redistricting to prevent Republicans from losing control of the US House of Representatives appears to be on the verge of backfiring.

The latest blow to Trump’s nationwide redistricting efforts came in Utah, where District Court Judge Dianna Gibson shot down a proposed map drawn by Utah Republicans because it failed to abide by a 2018 ballot measure that restricted partisan gerrymandering in the state.

As reported by NBC News, Gibson instead approved a map that created “a solidly Democratic seat ahead of next year’s midterm elections,” thus giving Democrats a likely net gain of one seat in the US House.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin hailed Gibson’s ruling and vowed that Democrats weren’t finished fighting Trump’s efforts to rig next year’s elections in his favor.

“Utah Republicans gerrymandered the maps because they knew they were losing power in the state,” he said. “Republicans doubled down when they chose to submit another gerrymandered map, but today, they were once again thwarted by impartial Courts. Democrats will continue to fight for fair maps in Utah, regardless of what Donald Trump and Utah Republicans try next. Every seat counts, and Democrats everywhere are fired up and ready to take back the House in the midterms in 2026.”

Dave Wasserman, a senior elections analyst at Cook Political Report, wrote in a post on X that the Democrats’ Utah victory, along with California voters’ approval of newly gerrymandered maps and reported plans to redraw maps in Virginia, have “pushed the mid-decade redistricting war closer to a draw.”

In a lengthy analysis published in Bloomberg on Tuesday, columnist Mary Ellen Klas argued that Republicans should take a deep breath before going all-in on Trump’s unprecedented mid-decade redistricting crusade, which began in Texas and subsequently spread to Missouri and North Carolina.

The issue, Klas explained, is that Republicans in those states have carved out more GOP-friendly districts based on assumptions that Republican gains among Latino voters and young men would hold in 2026. As last week’s sweeping Democratic victories showed, however, the GOP now appears to be hemorrhaging support among these two demographics.

“In New Jersey, 68% of Latino voters broke for Democrat Mikie Sherrill,” wrote Klas. “So did 56% of men under the age of 30. In Virginia, 67% of Latino voters went for Democrat Abigail Spanberger. So did 57% of men under 30. Many of these voters had voted for Trump last year. The exit polls show that both Sherrill and Spanberger won 7% of Trump’s 2024 voters, with Sherrill getting a whopping 18% of Trump’s Hispanic support in the state.”

If those trends hold over the next year, it could wipe out advantages the GOP had hoped to gain with its Texas gerrymander, which assumed that Latino voters who swung to Trump in the state would remain loyal partisan soldiers.

“Republicans are hardly going to admit it, but they should evaluate whether Trump’s push to ignite a redistricting arms race may have made it easier for a blue wave to wipe out more Republicans than if they had left their maps alone,” argued Klass.

In fact, some Republican strategists are already fretting about Trump’s gerrymandering plan, as one anonymous GOP insider told NBC News that if the endgame of the plan was “to net one seat across the country, then it will not have been worth it.”

A second anonymous GOP insider told NBC that there was “some concern” about whether Texas Republicans may have made themselves more vulnerable to a blue wave next year.

“In Texas, I do think there is some sense those seats will be ours, but nothing is guaranteed, so some concern there,” they said.

As millions of families across the US are about to lose their access to food aid over the weekend, President Donald Trump on Friday decided to show off photos of a White House bathroom that he boasted had been refurbished in “highly polished, statuary marble.”

Trump posted photos of the bathroom on his Truth Social platform, and he explained that he decided to remodel it because he was dissatisfied with the “art deco green tile style” that had been implemented during a previous renovation, which he described as “totally inappropriate for the Lincoln Era.”“I did it in black and white polished Statuary marble,” Trump continued. “This was very appropriate for the time of Abraham Lincoln and, in fact, could be the marble that was originally there!”

Trump’s critics were quick to pan the remodeled bathroom, especially since it came at a time when Americans are suffering from numerous policies the president and the Republican Party are enacting, including tariffs that are raising the cost of food and clothing; expiring subsidies for Americans who buy health insurance through Affordable Care Act exchanges; and cuts to Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNAP) programs in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“Sure, you might not be able to eat or go to the doctor, but check out how nice Trump’s new marble shitter is,” remarked independent journalist Aaron Rupar on Bluesky.Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman who has become a critic of Trump, ripped the president for displaying such tone deafness in the middle of a federal government shutdown.

“Government still shutdown, Americans not getting paid, food assistance for low-income families and children about to be cut off, and this is what he cares about,” he wrote on X. “He’s a psychopath, humanly incapable of caring about anyone or anything but himself.”

Don Moynihan, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, expressed extreme skepticism that the White House bathroom during Abraham Lincoln’s tenure was decked out in marble and gold.

“Fact check based on no research but with a high degree of confidence: This is not the marble that was originally in the Lincoln Bedroom,” he wrote. “It is more likely to the be retrieved from a Trump casino before it was demolished.”

Fashion critic Derek Guy, meanwhile, mostly left politics out of his criticisms of the remodeled bathroom, instead simply observing that “White House renovations are currently being spearheaded by someone with famously bad interior design taste.”

Earlier this month, Trump sparked outrage when he demolished the entire East Wing of the White House to make way for a massive White House ballroom financed by donations from some of America’s wealthiest corporations—including several with government contracts and interests in deregulation—such as Apple, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Meta, Google, Amazon, and Palantir.

President Donald Trump’s family has long generated controversy and criticism for running a cryptocurrency business during his second term in office, and now they’re adding an online betting business to their portfolio.

The Financial Times on Tuesday reported that the president’s Truth Social platform is getting into the prediction market business to allow bettors to place wagers on the outcomes of elections, sports games, and other events.

The new “Truth Predict” betting market platform will be a partnership between the Trump Media and Technology Group and Crypto.com, a cryoptocurrency trading platform that in the past has donated millions to Trump causes.

According to the Financial Times, the Trump family in recent months has become more intertwined with the online betting industry, as Donald Trump Jr. has taken on “advisory roles at the two industry-leading prediction market companies, Kalshi and Polymarket.”

Additionally, Trump Jr.'s venture capital firm has invested in Polymarket, which Wired reports has not operated in the US since 2022 when it reached an agreement with the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission to settle allegations that it operated an unregistered derivatives trading market.

Mike Masnick, a journalist at Techdirt, pointed out the glaring conflict of interest posed by the most powerful person in the world owning his own prediction market platform.

“So the company the president currently owns is teaming up with a cryptocurrency company to create a prediction market, which will take bets... on things the president himself has quite a lot of control over?” he wrote in a post on Bluesky. “Gosh, I’m sure nothing bad will happen.”

The Trump family’s entrance into the online betting market came on the same day that Reuters published an extensive report showing how the Trump family has used its cryptocurrency business to generate a massive increase in wealth in a matter of mere months.

According to Reuters’ calculations, “the Trump Organization’s income soared 17-fold to $864 million from $51 million a year earlier,” with more than 90% of this income coming from the Trump-backed cryptocurrency venture. Reuters also reported that the $800 million is just the actual income the Trump Organization has taken in so far, and that it has billions more in unrealized gains from the crypto venture.

Washington University law professor Kathleen Clark, who specializes in teaching government ethics, told Reuters it was obvious that investors in the Trump crypto venture were hoping to get some kind of favor from the government in exchange.

“These people are not pouring money into coffers of the Trump family business because of the brothers’ acumen,” she said. “They are doing it because they want freedom from legal constraints and impunity that only the president can deliver.”

Trump last week sparked corruption accusations when he pardoned cryptocurrency magnate Changpeng Zhao, whose company Binance has been a major booster to the Trump family’s crypto business.

“Binance has been one of the main drivers of the growth of World Liberty’s dollar-pegged cryptocurrency, called USD1,”The Wall Street Journal reported at the time. “It delivered World Liberty’s first big break this spring when it accepted a $2 billion investment from an outside investor paid in USD1. Binance has also incentivized trading in USD1 across platforms it controls.”

House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chair James Comer (R-Tenn.), who for years investigated former President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, for his foreign business dealings, was asked by CNN host Jake Tapper if he would investigate the Trump family’s crypto venture.

Comer indicated that he was fine with the Trump family’s potentially corrupt money-making schemes because they were being done out in the open.

“We... are reading about this, we’re trying to digest it,” he said. “The difference between the way the Trump family’s operating and the Biden family, is they’re admitting they’re doing this. The president campaigned as a business guy... as long as you disclose the income and disclose the sources, I think that’s acceptable.”

Critics of the president, however, said this hands-off approach to investigating the Trump family’s business dealings was unacceptable.

Democratic operative David Axelrod wrote in a post on X that it is “kind of incredible that the House Oversight Committee is spending its time on Biden’s auto pen but they won’t touch how Trump has doubled his wealth in a year.”

Axelrod also thought congressional investigators should be asking about “who’s buying his meme coins,” “the deals his kids are cutting all over the world,” and “the gifted jet from Qatar.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) argued that no president in US history has engaged in this level of corruption.

“Trump and his family’s crypto ventures are selling out our national security through sweetheart deals with money launderers, fraudsters, and foreign governments,” he wrote on X. “The scale of this corruption—reaping more than $800 million and pardons for business partners—is unprecedented.”

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) noted on Tuesday that Binance this week promoted sales of the Trump family’s meme coin mere days after the president pardoned its founder.

“The White House is a full-time, 24/7 corruption machine,” he said.

Even as they acknowledged that only the public opposition of people in power would rein in President Donald Trump’s attacks on democracy and the rule of law, a number of political, military, business, and academic elites made clear Friday that they “are scared of crossing” the president.

In a column published on Friday in the Financial Times, Edmundv Luce revealed that he has been talking with “dozens of figures, including lawmakers, private sector executives, retired senior military figures and intelligence chiefs, current and former Trump officials, Washington lawyers, and foreign government officials,” and he found that the vast majority asked to remain anonymous for fear of attacks from the president and his administration.

“Such is the fear of jail, bankruptcy, or professional reprisal, that most of these people insisted on anonymity,” Luce explained. “This was in spite of the fact that many of the same people also wanted to emphasize that Trump would only be restrained by powerful voices opposing him publicly.”

Trump’s revenge campaign against his foes has taken many forms, Luce found. The most high-profile examples have been instances in which the president has personally pushed for officials at the US Department of Justice to criminally indict many longtime adversaries, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI Director James Comey, and John Bolton, Trump’s own former national security adviser.

Luce also learned that the administration has been waging pressure campaigns on private employers to blacklist former Biden administration officials and other opponents from being offered jobs.

“Every employer says something along the lines of ‘We’d love to hire you but it’s not worth the risk,’” one former Biden White House staffer told Luce. “All they offer me is apologies.”

Former Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who is now a professor at Harvard University, told Luce that he spends much of his time “trying to help former colleagues find jobs” because so few employers are willing to chance angering the president.

Military officials who spoke with Luce expressed fears that the US armed forces will not resist Trump, as they did in his first term, were he to give them illegal orders. One retired four-star general said he worried that Dan Caine, the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would not refuse to carry out requests to have the military interfere with elections, as many officials did in 2020 when Trump tried to get the US Army to seize voting machines in swing states that he had lost to former President Joe Biden.

“Caine has the thinnest background to run the military at its most difficult stress test in modern history,” the general said.

Many Trump critics who read Luce’s reporting found it appalling that so many wealthy and powerful Americans were afraid to publicly criticize the president.

“When all this is over, we need to have a pretty serious conversation about the utter moral failure of the elite of this country,” remarked Leah Greenberg, co-founder and co-executive director of Indivisible, on Bluesky.

Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth, said that Luce’s reporting shows “how much opposition we never see or hear because people fear reprisal” from the president.

Bradley Moss, a national security attorney who was one of Luce’s few sources willing to speak on the record, wrote on Bluesky that more elites needed to start speaking out against the president and his authoritarian ambitions.

“I am disappointed in those who think keeping quiet will save them,” he said. “It will not.”

Ryan Enos, a political scientist at Harvard University, acknowledged the dangers outlined in Luce’s column but also pointed out reasons for hope.

“This wannabe dictator is also extremely unpopular and those of us with the courage to stand up have the American people on our side,” he argued. “It’ll take courage and focus, but democracy can win.”

The elites interviewed by Luce expressed their reticence to publicly speak out against Trump days after more than 7 million people gathered at thousands of “No Kings” protests condemning the president’s authoritarian agenda—despite the administration’s threats against protest movements. Residents in cities including Portland, Oregon and Chicago have also resisted federal agents carrying out Trump’s mass detention and deportation campaign.

President Donald Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to South Africa this week refused to say whether he would support or oppose repealing laws allowing Black Americans to vote.

During a Thursday Senate confirmation hearing, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) asked Trump nominee Brent Bozell, a right-wing media critic and founder of the conservative Media Research Center, about his support for Trump administration plans that limit refugee admissions almost exclusively to white Afrikaners.

“Senator, I don’t make that policy,” Bozell replied.

Murphy, however, did not accept this attempt at evasion.

“If I were to ask this question of virtually any nominee to be an ambassador, prior to this panel, that would be an easy layup answer: ‘No, no, of course we don’t support having a refugee policy where we only admit white people,’” said Murphy. “So why can’t you give me your personal view on that?”

“Because, senator, I am here to serve America and to do what the president is asking me to do,” Bozell said.

Murphy then asked him if he would support bringing back “laws in this country to only allow white people to vote.”

Bozell again refused to answer.

“Senator, I’m going to serve as ambassador to South Africa, and I’m going to focus on that,” he said.

“You will not share your personal views on whether it is right or wrong to reinstitute discriminatory policies in this country to prevent Black people from voting?” Murphy pressed.

“Senator, my personal views are irrelevant,” Bozell insisted. “I am serving here to do what the president is asking me to do in South Africa.”

Murphy rejected this premise, however, and informed Bozell that the entire point of the Senate confirmation process was to learn more about a nominee’s personal views so that senators can make informed decisions about their qualifications.

“We wouldn’t have this process if your personal views were not relevant,” Murphy said. “That is pretty stunning that you will not share your views, not only on whether we should have a refugee admissions process that is race-based, but you won’t share your personal views on whether we should reimpose discriminatory treatment against Black Americans. That is absolutely relevant to your qualifications to serve. And your refusal to answer it, I hope, is something that every member of this committee will think about.”

Commenting on the exchange afterward, Murphy wrote on Bluesky that Bozell’s answers to his questions offer “a window into the truly radical nature of the people Trump is nominating.”

Trump has falsely accused the South African government of committing “genocide” against its white citizens, and his administration has given white South Africans priority for resettlement in the US.

South Africa has a long history of racial injustice, as the apartheid system that lasted for more than four decades in the country brutally oppressed its majority Black population to ensure white minority rule.

Several wealthy Trump backers, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Palantir founder Peter Thiel, and venture capitalist David Sacks, were all either born in or spent time growing up in South Africa when it was still under the apartheid regime.

New research from investment bank Goldman Sachs affirms, as progressive advocates and economists warned, that US consumers are bearing the brunt of President Donald Trump’s trade wars.

As reported by Bloomberg on Monday, economists at Goldman released an analysis this week estimating that US consumers are shouldering up to 55% of the costs stemming from Trump’s tariffs, even though the president has repeatedly made false claims that the tariffs on imports exclusively tax foreigners.

Goldman’s research also found that US businesses will pay 22% of the cost of the tariffs, while foreign exporters will pay just 18% of the cost. Additionally, Goldman economists estimate that Trump’s tariffs “have raised core personal consumption expenditure prices by 0.44% so far this year, and will push up the closely watched inflation reading to 3% by December,” according to Bloomberg.

Despite all evidence that US consumers are shouldering the costs of the tariffs, the Trump administration has continued to insist that they are exclusively being paid by foreign countries.

During a segment on NBC‘s “Meet the Press” last month, host Kristen Welker cited an earlier Goldman estimate that 86% of the president’s tariffs were being paid by US businesses and consumers, and then asked US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent if he accepted that the tariffs were taxes on Americans.

“No, I don’t,” Bessent replied.

As Common Dreams reported in August, executives such as Walmart CEO Doug McMillon have explicitly told shareholders that while they are able to absorb the cost of tariffs, Trump’s policy would still “result in higher prices” for customers.

Goldman’s report comes as Trump is piling up even more tariffs on imported goods that will ultimately be paid by US consumers as companies raise prices.

According to The New York Times, tariffs on a wide range of products including lumber, furniture, and kitchen cabinets went into effect on Tuesday, and the Trump administration has also “started imposing fees on Chinese-owned ships docking in American ports.”

The administration has claimed that the tariffs on lumber are necessary for national security purposes, although some experts are scoffing at this rationale.

Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics at libertarian think tank the Cato Institute, told the Times that the administration’s justification for the lumber tariffs are “absurd.”

“If war broke out tomorrow, there would be zero concern about American ’dependence’ on foreign lumber or furniture, and domestic sources would be quickly and easily acquired,” he said.

Vice President JD Vance sparked alarm on Sunday when he said that President Donald Trump was considering invoking the Insurrection Act under the pretenses of combating violent crime in US cities.

During an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” host Kristen Welker asked Vance if Trump was “seriously considering” invoking the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to use the US military to carry out law enforcement operations.

Vance responded by saying Trump is “looking at all his options,” and added that he hasn’t felt the need to invoke it for the time being.

Vance proceeded to justify invoking the Insurrection Act, which he said could be necessary to protect the work of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials.

“We have to remember why we’re talking about this, Kristen,” he said. “Because crime has gotten out of control in our cities, because ICE agents, the people enforcing our immigration laws, have faced a 1,000% increase in violent attacks against them. We have people right now who are going out there, who are doing the job the president asked them to do, who are enforcing our immigration laws, they’re being assaulted.”

Welker countered by noting that a judge in Illinois found last week that the ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois has remained entirely open and operational despite being the target of protesters in recent weeks.

She also informed Vance that crime has been coming down significantly in both Chicago and Portland, two US cities where Trump has tried to deploy National Guard forces.

“Kristen, crime is down in Chicago and Portland often because they’re so overwhelmed at the local level, they’re not even keeping their statistics properly,” Vance replied, without providing any evidence to back up his claim.

Vance’s justifications for invoking the Insurrection Act on the grounds that he laid out drew alarmed reactions from many critics.

“This is a pretext to take over American cities by force,” wrote CNN political commentator Karen Finney in a post on X.

Shannon Watts, the founder of anti-gun violence organization Moms Demand Action, linked Vance’s comments to the current shutdown of the federal government and questioned whether the government deserved to be funded when its executive branch was threatening to unleash the military against its own citizens.

“Why should Democrats vote to open the government while this is still happening?” she asked.

Cornell William Brooks, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and former president of the NAACP, argued in a post on Bluesky that Vance’s comments show that the Trump administration “insults your intelligence.”

“The same administration that fired an economist for reporting statistics on the economy,” he wrote, “is asking you to not believe lower statistics on crime, not see safer streets, and accept the National Guard in your front yard.”

Democratic political strategist David Axelrod warned that the Trump administration seems genuinely eager to send troops into US cities.

“Believe them when they tell you what they’re planning, folks,” he wrote. “Trump wanted to use American troops against Americans in his first term, and was dissuaded by responsible civilian and military leaders. No more. The guardrails are gone.”

Attorney George Conway, a former Republican who left the party over its embrace of Trump, responded to Vance’s comments by posting a video of anti-ICE protesters in Chicago dancing in the streets to the classic Neil Diamond hit, “Sweet Caroline.”

Talk of invoking the Insurrection Act has ramped up in recent weeks, despite the fact that protests against ICE facilities in Illinois and Oregon have remained overwhelmingly peaceful and have featured impromptu dance parties carried out by people dressed in inflatable animal costumes.

A federal judge on Friday night released her full opinion justifying an earlier decision to block President Donald Trump from deploying Texas National Guard troops in Chicago, and she even went so far as to question his administration’s grasp on reality.

In her ruling, Judge April Perry began by citing a lengthy quote from the Federalist Papers in which Alexander Hamilton addressed concerns that a tyrannical US president would use a militia from one state to invade and occupy another state.

After giving the matter brief consideration, Hamilton dismissed fears about a would-be tyrant carrying out such a scheme on the grounds that “it is impossible to believe that they would employ such preposterous means to accomplish their designs.”

And yet, Perry noted, this exact scenario is one that the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago claim is happening right now, as they argue that “National Guard troops from both Illinois and Texas have been deployed to Illinois because the president of the United States wants to punish state elected officials whose policies are different from his own.”

Perry went on to consider circumstances in which the president may federalize the National Guard, and concluded that the administration’s case for sending the National Guard to Chicago did not meet any of them.

Perry noted that the president may federalize the National Guard if “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority” of the US government, but she argued there has historically been a “very high threshold for deployment” that is not justified by current circumstances.

“In the late 1800s and early 1900s, ‘rebellion’ was understood to mean a deliberate, organized resistance, openly and avowedly opposing the laws and authority of the government as a whole by means of armed opposition and violence,” she explained. “As an example, during the late 1800s, after the close of the Civil War, the Supreme Court and several statutes referred to the Civil War as constituting a ’rebellion.‘”

She then found that the administration itself has not claimed any Civil War-like rebellion is occurring in the US right now.

“In all of the memoranda actually deploying the National Guard to Illinois, the court does not see any factual determination by President Trump regarding a rebellion brewing here,” she wrote. “This is sensible, because the court cannot find reasonable support for a conclusion that there exists in Illinois a danger of rebellion.”

Elsewhere in the ruling, Perry examined the government’s claims that local law enforcement officials have been unable to contain demonstrations at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Broadview, Illinois, which has become a focal point for protests in recent weeks.

Although there have been incidents in which local law enforcement has had to intervene to keep protesters from getting too close to the facility, Perry said, there has never been a level of disorder that would justify the deployment of the National Guard.

“The ICE Processing Center has continuously remained open and operational throughout the protest activity,” she wrote. “Broadview Police are not aware of any occasion where an ICE vehicle was prevented from entering or exiting due to activity by protestors.”

This led her to remark upon a “troubling trend” of the Trump administration “equating protests with riots” and “a lack of appreciation for the wide spectrum that exists between citizens who are observing, questioning, and criticizing their government, and those who are obstructing, assaulting, or doing violence.”

“This indicates to the court both bias and lack of objectivity,” she wrote. “Ultimately, this court must conclude that defendants’... perceptions are not reliable.”

US President Donald Trump and his administration have been trying to depict the city of Portland, Oregon as a lawless apocalyptic wasteland in which roving bands of Antifa activists set fire to local businesses and terrorize federal immigration enforcement officials.

Local residents and elected officials, however, have been openly ridiculing Trump for making claims that are, according to CNN fact checker Daniel Dale, “detached from reality.”

Trump’s latest salvo against Portland came on Friday, when he said, “Every time I look at that place it’s burning down, there are fires all over the place.”

Trump went on to falsely claim that “when a store owner rebuilds a store they build it out of plywood, they don’t put up storefronts anymore, they just put wood up.”

These descriptions of Portland are are odds with the reality on the ground, where people dressed in inflatable animal costumes have been conducting peaceful protests and dance parties outside of a local Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) center for the last few weeks.

US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem appeared to recognize this discrepancy earlier in the week, and on Thursday she accused every public official in the city, including the chief of the Portland Police Department and the superintendent of the Oregon State Police Department, of trying to cover up the rampant lawlessness taking place there.

“They are all lying and disingenuous, dishonest people!” Noem claimed during a White House Cabinet meeting.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) responded to Noem’s claim with open ridicule, and he posted a video showing Portland to be a safe and vibrant city.

“Thoughts and prayers to Cosplay Cop Kristi who had to endure the dogs, farmer’s markets, capybaras, and marathon runners of Portland this week,” he wrote in a post on X.

Portland City Council member Angelita Morillo appeared on CNN Thursday night and also heaped scorn on Noem for her remarks about her city.

“I never thought that renowned puppy-killer Kristi Noem would be so afraid of protesters wearing frog costumes and chicken costumes, but here we are,” she said. “We’re not hiding anything. The reason she didn’t see anything on the ground is because everything here is under control. People are exercising their right to free speech, as they are allowed to under the Constitution... There is no terrorism happening here, I think that they are just a very scared people.

Portland resident Samuel Cosby also posted a video from Portland that showed people going about their daily lives peacefully and without incident.

”There are not ‘fires all over the place,’“ Cosby emphasized. ”Stop letting these buffoons lie to you.“

The Not Above the Law Coalition on Thursday released a report documenting how President Donald Trump’s administration has been corrupting every aspect of federal law enforcement.

The report, titled Trump’s “Crooked Cops”: The Corruption of Federal Law Enforcement, said that the president has “gone to extreme lengths to appoint top officials with no compunction about abusing their power to pervert justice to punish political enemies and favor political friends,” before showing how these appointees have swiftly eliminated their agencies’ independence from White House political pressure.

“Law enforcement that serves the political interests of the president rather than the public eliminates a core tenet of democracy, namely that we are a country of laws, not of men,” the report emphasizes.

The report begins by recounting how Attorney General Pam Bondi followed direct orders from the president to file criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey, while at the same time noting that she has overseen “a department-wide purge of career officials who were assigned to Trump’s criminal cases or who were suspected to be insufficiently loyal to Trump personally.”

Other Trump officials who feature prominently in the report include FBI Director Kash Patel, who is facing a lawsuit from former agents who have alleged they were fired as part of a “campaign of retribution”; Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who conducted an interview with convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, and then moved her “to more comfortable, low-security accommodations” after she told him that Trump had no involvement in her former partner Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal activities; and White House border czar Tom Homan, who was allegedly caught on video accepting a $50,000 cash bribe from undercover FBI agents.

The report also takes a swipe at Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, who publicly pressured ABC to take late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel off the air mere hours before the network decided to suspend him.

“This was by no means the first instance of Carr weaponizing his regulatory enforcement power for political ends,” the report says. “His threats have been all the more significant as many media companies have business interests pending before the administration.

During a conference call announcing the report, Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY) described the Trump administration’s actions as ”so distressing and so disturbing,“ and vowed that he was ”not going to stand by while the Department of Justice is used to subvert the rule of law.“

Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY), a former federal prosecutor, said on the call that it was ”personally devastating“ to watch the corruption of the Justice Department, and he vowed that House Democrats would be ready to go with oversight investigations should they return to the majority after the 2026 midterm elections.

”Trump is trying to turn this government into his own personal fiefdom,“ said Goldman, who later described the weaponization of the Department of Homeland Security as ”downright scary.“

”We’re losing the fabric of our country,“ he said.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker issued a new warning on Wednesday about President Donald Trump’s efforts to deploy the American military in US cities against the wishes of local elected officials.

Hours after Trump called for Pritzker’s imprisonment in a Wednesday morning Truth Social post, the Illinois governor claimed in an interview with MSNBC that the president’s ultimate goal with sending troops into US cities was to control the outcomes of future elections.

”He wants to militarize major cities across the United States, especially blue cities in blue states, because he wants us to get used to the idea of military on the streets,” he said. “2026 elections, I believe he’s going to post people outside ballot boxes and polling places, and, if he needs to in order to control those elections, he’ll assume control of the ballot boxes and count the votes himself.”

Pritzker pointed out that Trump considered ordering the military to seize ballot boxes after he lost the 2020 presidential election, but he was met with resistance from officials in his own administration.

However, Pritzker said that “I believe he would do it in 2026” to help Republicans maintain control of Congress.

Pritzker also struck a defiant tone when asked about Trump’s call to imprison him.

”This guy’s a convicted felon who’s threatening to jail me!” he exclaimed. “This guy is unhinged. He’s insecure. He’s a wannabe dictator. And there’s one thing I really want to say to Donald Trump: If you come for my people, you come through me. So come and get me.”

Pritzker’s remarks come as Trump and his administration have deployed Texas National Guard soldiers to Chicago over the objections of both Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. The state and city are challenging the deployment in court.

Federal immigration officials have been employing increasingly aggressive and violent tactics in the Chicago area in recent weeks, including attacking a journalist and a protesting priest with pepper balls outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility; slamming a congressional candidate to the ground; dragging US citizens, including children, out of their homes during a raid in the middle of the night; and fatally shooting a man during a traffic stop.

Ian Roberts, the superintendent of Des Moines Public Schools, has been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

The Des Moines Register reports that Roberts, who has served as superintendent in the Iowa district since 2023, was taken into custody by ICE agents on Friday morning.

The Des Moines Register has confirmed that Roberts is currently being held at the Pottawattamie County Jail, which the paper noted would put him in close proximity to the Omaha Immigration Court.

According to local news station KCCI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claims that that Roberts was been taken into custody as part of a “targeted enforcement operation.”

DHS said that after ICE officers approached Roberts’ vehicle on Friday, he sped away and tried to escape. They eventually apprehended him and found a loaded handgun, $3,000 in cash and a fixed-blade hunting knife inside his vehicle.

DHS also claimed that Roberts had been ordered to be removed from the US in May 2024, and that he had an existing weapons possession charge dating from 2020.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, put out a brief statement on Friday saying she was “made aware this morning that Ian Roberts was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and is in contact with the Iowa Department of Public Safety and federal authorities.”

Reynolds last year touted a meeting she’d held with Roberts in which she said the two discussed “our shared goal of providing all Iowa students a world-class education.”

Local residents who spoke with The Des Moines Register were stunned by news of Roberts’ detention. Alison Hoeman, founder of the local nonprofit Des Moines Refugees Support, told the paper that her phone “blew up” from concerned parents as soon as they heard the news about Roberts’ arrest.

“You know it’s the Black and brown kids who are worried,” she said. “If it’s Ian Roberts who’s in trouble, what does that mean for them?”

Roberts was born to parents who immigrated to the US from Guyana, and he told local news station WHO 13 last year that he spent considerable time in both countries growing up.

Prior to pursuing a career in education, Roberts competed in the 2000 Summer Olympics as a middle-distance runner for the Guyana team.

Late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel will be back on the air this week after his suspension last week raised alarms about the Trump administration using the power of the federal government to silence critics.

ABC parent company Disney announced in a Monday statement that Kimmel, a little more than a week after he was suspended following a pressure campaign from Trump-appointed Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr.

“Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country,” Disney explained. “It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”

Kimmel was suspended last Wednesday over remarks he’d made two days earlier about slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. In his opening monologue, Kimmel accused US President Donald Trump and his allies of trying “to score political points,” while also suggesting that Kirk’s alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, could belong to the far right.

Following the monologue, Carr appeared on a right-wing podcast and said that ABC stations could have their licenses revoked unless they stopped showing Kimmel.

“There’s actions we can take on licensed broadcasters,” Carr said. “And frankly, I think that it’s sort of really past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney and say... we are not going to run Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out because we licensed broadcasters are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of these distortions.”

The decision to suspend Kimmel after threats from a Trump official sparked protests against Disney, and several prominent artists on Monday signed a letter organized by the ACLU that slammed the company for apparently caving to government demands for censorship.

“Jimmy Kimmel was taken off the air after our government threatened a private company with retaliation for Kimmel’s remarks. This is a dark moment for freedom of speech in our nation,” the letter stated. “This is unconstitutional and un-American. The government is threatening private companies and individuals that the president disagrees with. We can’t let this threat to our freedom of speech go unanswered.”

Trump-appointed Social Security Administration Commissioner Frank Bisignano on Friday drew immediate fire from many progressives after he said raising the retirement age for American workers was on the table.

During an interview on Fox Business, host Maria Bartiromo asked Bisignano if he would “consider raising the retirement age” to shore up Social Security’s finances.“I think everything’s being considered,” he replied.

He said that he would need Congress’ help to officially raise the retirement age and acknowledged, “That will take a while,” before adding, “But we have plenty of time.”

Advocacy organization Social Security Works immediately pounced on Bisignano’s statement, which it noted contradicted statements made by President Donald Trump during the 2024 election campaign.“That’s a betrayal of Trump’s campaign promise to protect Social Security,” the organization said in a social media post. “Raising the retirement age by a year translates to a 7% Social Security benefit cut. Forcing us to work longer, for smaller checks, and a shorter retirement is unconscionable!”

In fact, as flagged by former Biden White House Senior Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates, Trump said in 2024 that “I will not cut one penny from Social Security or Medicaid and I will not raise the retirement age by one day.”

Former US Labor Secretary Robert Reich also rebuked Bisignano for floating a retirement age increase, and he proposed an alternative way to improve Social Security’s fiscal health.

“A worker making $50,000 a year contributes to Social Security on 100% of their income,” he wrote. “A CEO making $20 million a year contributes to Social Security on less than 1% of their income. Instead of raising the retirement age, we should scrap the Social Security tax cap.”

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) noted that Bisignano’s call to potentially raise the retirement age came just months after Republicans passed massive tax cuts through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that disproportionately benefited the wealthiest Americans.

“Republicans gave away trillions in tax cuts for the wealthy,” he said. “Now they are asking Americans to work longer. We won’t stand for it.”

The social media account for United Auto Workers delivered a pithy two-word response to Bisignano: “Hell no!”

US President Donald Trump on Monday evening filed a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times that was quickly ridiculed by legal experts for entirely lacking merit.

In the lawsuit, Trump accused the Times of conspiring to prevent his victory in the 2024 election through a campaign of “election interference” that included, among other things, its editorial board’s decision to endorse former Vice President Kamala Harris.

“It came as no surprise when, shortly before the election, the newspaper published, on the front page, highlighted in a location never seen before, its deranged endorsement of Kamala Harris with the hyperbolic opening line ‘[i]t is hard to imagine a candidate more unworthy to serve as president of the United States than Donald Trump,‘” the lawsuit states.

Pointing to what it claimed was defamatory material published by the Times, the lawsuit singled out “a malicious, defamatory, and disparaging book written by two of its reporters and three false, malicious, defamatory, and disparaging articles, all carefully crafted by Defendants, with actual malice, calculated to inflict maximum damage upon President Trump.”

The book in question is ”Lucky Loser,” written by Pulitzer Prize-winning Times reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig, which did a deep examination of the president’s finances and contrasted it with what it described as his false claims of unprecedented success in business.

The three articles cited by the lawsuit include one that quotes Trump’s own former chief of staff, John Kelly, warning that he would rule “like a dictator” in his second term; a news analysis piece that described Trump as facing a well documented “lifetime of scandals”; and an article by Buettner and Craig that is an adapted excerpt from their book.

“The book and articles are part of a decades-long pattern by The New York Times of intentional and malicious defamation against President Trump,” the complaint stated. “Defendants maliciously published the book and the articles knowing that these publications were filled with repugnant distortions and fabrications about President Trump.”

The lawsuit then demanded the Times pay $15 billion in compensatory damages.

The Times issued a brief response to the lawsuit in which it defended its reporting and labeled Trump’s defamation allegations as baseless.

“This lawsuit has no merit,” said the paper. “It lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting. The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics. We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favor and stand up for journalists’ First Amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people.”

Some experts who examined the lawsuit were quick to side with the Times in this dispute, and many of them flat-out ridiculed Trump for filing the suit in the first place.

Holger Hestermeyer, chair of international and EU law at the Vienna School of International Studies, wrote on Bluesky that the lawsuit was “a full frontal attack on free speech” that also “almost reads like a parody.”

In addition to lampooning the suit’s specific defamation claims, Hestermeyer also mocked the suit for being loaded with hyperbolic statements, including one that said “The Apprentice” reality TV series “represented the cultural magnitude of President Trump’s singular brilliance, which captured the zeitgeist of our time.”

Attorney George Conway delivered an even pithier dismissal of the suit.

“Is it possible for a legal pleading to be psychotic?” he asked rhetorically. “I think we have an answer.”

Chris Geidner, a journalist who publishes the “Law Dork” newsletter, similarly expressed astonishment at the contents of Trump’s lawsuit.

“I honestly thought there was a chance that I’d fallen asleep and was dreaming the most absurd, childlike, ego-maniac lawsuit when I tried to read this Trump defamation complaint against the Times, Penguin Random House, and individual journalists,” he wrote. “Like, seriously. What are we even doing here, folks?”

Bloomberg columnist Tim O’Brien, who was unsuccessfully sued by Trump for defamation over his 2005 book “TrumpNation,” predicted that Trump’s lawsuit against the Times would similarly end poorly for him.

“Trump says he plans to sue the Times for $15 billion,” O’Brien wrote on Bluesky. “Been there, done that. He sued me for less—$5 billion. Discovery will be invasive and grueling—and involve Trump’s finances, family history and political machinations. And that’s just for starters.”

US consumers are increasingly feeling the impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, and the head of the Congressional Budget Office said on Monday that they are fueling inflation.

During an appearance on CNBC, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) director Phillip Swagel said that the president’s tariffs have pushed up inflation more than the agency initially anticipated, although he emphasized that their impact on inflation so far was “not by a lot, but by enough to show” in the numbers.

Swagel also said that the higher-than-expected inflation was a surprise because there are signs that the US economy has slowed significantly since January.

CNN on Tuesday published an analysis using numbers from the Yale Budget Lab estimating that Trump’s tariffs will cost US households an average of $2,300 extra per year, which is nearly three times as much as the $800 US households are projected to receive on average from new tax provisions contained in the Republicans’ “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that passed earlier this year.

The combined distributional impacts of the Trump tariffs and the GOP tax law are also highly regressive. According to CNN‘s analysis, a household with annual earnings of $38,840 would be $2,560 worse off thanks to the tariffs and the tax law, while households earning $517,700 would be $8,180 better off.

The Washington Post on Tuesday reported that Trump’s tariffs aren’t just hurting Americans in the US, but those living abroad as well.

As explained by the Post, Americans living abroad have been unable to send mail to the US without paying hefty fines thanks to the chaos being caused by Trump’s tariffs. The reason for this, writes the paper, is that Trump earlier this year canceled a policy known as the de minimis exemption, effective August 29, that “allowed the tariff-free flow of goods under $800 into the United States.”

This has led not just to increased shipping costs for Americans living abroad, but has also resulted in foreign nations slowing or even outright halting shipments to the US because they are unsure about how to calculate the costs.

“Confusion about the rules have led to issues since the exemption was lifted on August 29,” the Post wrote. “At first, national postal services in more than 30 countries temporarily suspended sending some or most US-bound packages. Since then, restrictions have eased, and the Universal Postal Union deployed a tool this week to help operators calculate duties and resume services.”

Reacting to fresh revelations about the impact of the tariffs, many progressive Democrats hammered Trump for increasing the cost of living for working-class families.

“Under Donald Trump’s economy: coffee is up 26%, beef is up 14%, oranges are up 17%, bananas are up 6%, chicken is up 6%, chocolate chip cookies are up 5%, potato chips are up 4%, milk is up 4%,” wrote Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). “But average worker pay is only up 2%. Trumpflation is eating up your paycheck.”

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) added that “from school supplies to gas to groceries, Trump is making your life more expensive.”

“Poor and working people are paying the price of his reckless policies,” said the congresswoman.

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), a member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, took to the Senate floor on Monday to single out a different Trump policy that he said was also raising prices for US consumers—namely, his attacks on green energy projects.

“This administration is shamelessly working to block one of our best defenses against rising energy bills: renewable energy,” Padilla said. “And I say so because renewable energy is absolutely affordable, renewable energy is abundant, and whether you want to admit it or not, renewable energy sources are our future.”

The senator also pointed to his home state of California as an example of what can happen when the government encourages the development of green energy projects.

“[California is] harnessing the power of solar and wind and hydroelectric power and nuclear, geothermal, even hydrogen power to our state,” he said. “And it’s exactly because of those investments that even in a year like 2024, just last year, when we experienced record heatwaves that we also saw record renewable energy generation, and we kept the lights on.”

NOW READ: Team Trump launches 'biggest assault on the First Amendment' in modern US history

US President Donald Trump and his administration have been signaling that they are planning to use the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk as a justification to launch a broad campaign targeting their political opponents.

Trump adviser Stephen Miller on Monday singled out left-wing organizations that he baselessly alleged were promoting violence in the United States and he said that the full weight of the federal government would soon come down on them.

“We are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people,” said Miller.

Shortly after this, Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared on the podcast hosted by Miller’s wife, Katie Miller, and vowed that the Justice Department would “go after” people who engage in “hate speech” against conservatives.

“There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society,” Bondi said. “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”

While many prominent conservatives denounced Bondi’s remarks and reiterated that hate speech is protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, Trump himself appeared to give her views his endorsement.

When asked by ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl about Bondi’s comments on Tuesday, the president signaled that he would favor prosecuting journalists on “hate speech” charges.

“We’ll probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly,” Trump said in response to Karl’s question. “You have a lot of hate in your heart.”

Trump then pointed to the $16 million defamation settlement he agreed to with Disney after ABC News host George Stephanopoulos said on air last year that Trump had been found liable for raping journalist E. Jean Carroll, when in fact the jury had technically only found Trump liable for sexually abusing her.

”ABC paid me $16 million recently for a form of hate speech,” Trump said. “Your company paid me $16 million for a former a hate speech, right? So maybe they’ll have to go after you.”

These development have caused widespread alarm among some Democratic politicians.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) posted a video on social media in which he warned that Trump and his administration were engaging in “the biggest assault on the First Amendment in our country’s modern history.”

He then pointed to statements made by Vice President JD Vance, Stephen Miller, and Bondi, and he encouraged his supporters to be willing to confront dangers to American liberty.

“This is the time where every American must stand proudly for free speech and our freedoms,” he said.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), after posting the video of Trump threatening to “go after” ABC News’ Karl, argued that Trump’s actions made it impossible for him to vote in favor of continuing to fund the federal government.

“How can we fund this?” he asked. “I am being asked this week to fund a government that locks up a reporter Trump doesn’t like. This isn’t a close call folks.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who has become the target of a censure resolution by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) amid false claims that she did not condemn the Kirk assassination, hit back at Republicans for being hypocrites on free speech.

“Nancy Mace is trying to censure me over comments I never said,” she said. “Her [resolution] does not contain a single quote from me because she couldn’t find any. Unlike her, I have routinely condemned political violence, no matter the political ideology. This is all an attempt to push a false story so she can fundraise and boost her run for governor.”

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The New York Times on Monday published a blockbuster report detailing how US President Donald Trump’s administration gave the United Arab Emirates access to high-powered artificial intelligence chips just days after receiving a massive investment in Trump’s cryptocurrency startup.

As the Times report documented, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) ruling family, had one of his investment firms deposit $2 billion into World Liberty Financial, the startup founded by members of the Trump family and the family of Trump Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.

Just two weeks later, wrote the Times, “the White House agreed to allow the UAE access to hundreds of thousands of the world’s most advanced and scarce computer chips, a crucial tool in the high-stakes race to dominate artificial intelligence,” despite national security concerns about these chips being shared with China.

The Times, which interviewed more than 75 people in its investigation of the deals, did not present direct evidence that the two deals were explicitly linked, and the White House denied any connection between the massive investment in the Trump family’s crypto firm and the decision to grant UAE access to the chips.

However, the paper interviewed three ethics lawyers who said that “the back-to-back deals violate longstanding norms in the United States for political, diplomatic, and private dealmaking among senior officials and their children.”

Other political observers were stunned by the Times’ report.

“If this is true, this is the largest public corruption scandal in the history of the United States and it’s not even close,” commented Ryan Cummings, chief of staff at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

US foreign policy journalist Laura Rozen questioned whether Witkoff’s dealings with the UAE and other countries were impacting his ability to do his job in other areas.

“Maybe Witkoff is too busy pushing deals to enrich his and Trump’s families to focus on getting an Israel-Gaza hostage deal over the line, recognizing the Russians are not interested in ending the war on Ukraine, etc.,” she speculated.

Alasdair Phillips-Robins, a fellow in the Technology and International Affairs Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, marveled at the reporting that Trump’s negotiation team appeared to be willing to grant UAE access to the chips without forcing any major geopolitical tradeoffs.

“This sounds like the world’s weakest negotiation: telling the UAE they’ll get unlimited chips before they’ve agreed to a single concession in return,” he wrote.

Independent journalist Jacob Silverman, who has written extensively on the politics of the US tech industry, remarked that the Trump administration’s actions exposed in the Times report were “impeachable” and smacked of “incredible corruption.”

In addition to his cryptocurrency-related dealings with UAE, Trump has also come under scrutiny for accepting a luxury jet from the government of Qatar that he plans to use for the remainder of his term in office and that will be given to his official presidential library after he leaves the White House.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Monday released a photo showing a pornographic birthday card that US President Donald Trump allegedly sent to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The birthday card's existence was originally reported by The Wall Street Journal back in July, and it features an outline of a naked woman along with Trump's squiggly signature in the area where the woman's pubic hair would be.

Trump has for weeks denied that he ever sent Epstein such a birthday card and he filed a libel lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal that sought at least $20 billion in damages for what it described as "glaring failures in journalistic ethics and standards of accurate reporting."

With the note's existence seemingly confirmed, however, many Democratic lawmakers rushed to charge the president with trying to cover up the full extent of his relationship with Epstein, who was accused by multiple women of sexually abusing them when they were teenagers.

"We got the Epstein note Trump says doesn't exist," said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.). "Time to end this White House cover-up."

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) called on the Trump White House to release the full Epstein files.

"Trump said it didn't exist, but here it is," she said. "Thank you, Oversight Dems, for proving he is lying. And if he's lying about this, what else is he lying about? Makes it clear why he is so opposed to releasing these files..."

Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) had a similar reaction to the card.

"No surprise the note does exist," she said. "More proof this White House cover-up is to protect Trump, the powerful, and the wealthy. Release the full files now."

Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio) also took note of Trump's past denials about the letter's existence and declared, "All of this is so disturbing and so disgusting."

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt took a defiant tone after the note's publication and continued to insist that it was all a "hoax."

"As I have said all along, it's very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it," she said. "President Trump's legal team will continue to aggressively pursue litigation... This is FAKE NEWS to perpetuate the Democrat Epstein Hoax!"

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US President Donald Trump on Friday angrily lashed out after the European Commission slapped tech giant Google with a $3.45 billion fine for violating antitrust laws.

The European Commission ordered Google to end its anticompetitive practices such as its payments to ensure its search engine receives preferential treatment on internet browsers and mobile phones. The commission also demanded that Google "implement measures to cease its inherent conflicts of interest along the adtech supply chain."

EU competition chief Teresa Ribera said that the decision demonstrated that "Google abused its dominant position in adtech harming publishers, advertisers, and consumers" and that it must "must now come forward with a serious remedy to address its conflicts of interest, and if it fails to do so, we will not hesitate to impose strong remedies."

Shortly after the ruling, Trump took to Truth Social to blast Europe for enforcing its antitrust laws.

"Europe today 'hit' another great American company, Google, with a $3.5 billion fine, effectively taking money that would otherwise go to American investments and jobs," Trump wrote. "Very unfair, and the American taxpayer will not stand for it! As I have said before, my administration will NOT allow these discriminatory actions to stand. Apple, as an example, was forced to pay $17 billion in a fine that, in my opinion, should not have been charged—they should get their money back!"

Trump added that "we cannot let this happen to brilliant and unprecedented American Ingenuity and, if it does, I will be forced to start a Section 301 proceeding to nullify the unfair penalties being charged to these taxpaying American companies."

Max von Thun, Europe director for anti-monopoly think tank Open Markets Institute, had a decidedly different take from the president, and praised the European Commission for taking an "important first step in breaking Google's chokehold over the underlying architecture not merely of the internet, but of the free press in the 21st century."

"It is only right that Google pays the price for its blatant and long-standing lawbreaking," he added. "More importantly however, the commission has given Google two months to end its illegal practices and resolve the profound conflicts of interest which arise from its control of every layer of the adtech stack."

The European Commission's decision stood in stark contrast to a decision issued earlier this week from Judge Amit Mehta of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, who declined to force Google to sell off its Chrome web browser or share all requested data with its competitors despite finding that the company had violated American antitrust laws.

A federal jobs report released on Friday showed the US economy added a mere 22,000 jobs in August in yet another signal of weakness in the US labor market.

Economists had projected the economy would produce 75,000 jobs on the month, which means that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) numbers released on Friday were well below the consensus estimate.

What's more, the total number of jobs created in July and June were once again revised downward, and the economy as a whole has added an average of fewer than 30,000 jobs over the last three months.

Heather Long, the chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, put the bad jobs report in stark terms.

"The labor market is going from frozen to cracking," she said, and then pointed to net job losses in industries including mining, construction, and manufacturing that show significant stress in the blue-collar economy. In fact, the majority of job growth came from the healthcare industry over the last month.

"The US job market is almost entirely dependent on healthcare," she observed. "That's not healthy for the economy."

Justin Wolfers, an economist at the University of Michigan, also said that the new numbers showed a continued deterioration in both the US labor market and the economy as a whole.

"I'm worried," he said. "The economy was in a good place in late 2024. That's no longer true. And the trajectory is, at a minimum, concerning. That's millions of people's lives, and millions of stories of pain."

Wolfers also zeroed in on the fact that manufacturing employment has been contracting for several months, despite US President Donald Trump's pledges to lead a manufacturing revitalization.

"But the Administration has made dramatic policy shift to boost manufacturing, and it just ain't working," he said. "Manufacturing employment fell [by 12,000 jobs], and is down [78,000 jobs] over the year."

Former BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer, whom Trump fired last month after he baselessly accused her of concocting negative job numbers to harm him politically, argued on Bluesky that the new report's downward revisions of previous monthly estimates are indicative of a labor market that is very quickly cooling.

"The larger-than-usual downward revision last month was in large part driven by a negative skew in the job growth distribution among late reporting firms," she said. "That's unusual, but it's happened before when the pace of job growth slows rapidly. This print is more evidence that was the case."

Mike Konczal, senior director of policy and research at the Economic Security Project and former member of President Joe Biden's National Economic Council, argued the new jobs report demonstrates that "the theory of Trumponomics is failing."

"The first theory of Trumponomics was that tariffs would build up manufacturing work and federal workforce cuts would free up workers for them," he explained. "That's failed. Manufacturing lost jobs almost as fast as the federal workforce (-12 vs. -15K)."

Konczal then showed how Trump's tariffs have hurt his stated goal of bringing back well-paying jobs for blue-collar men, as industries that produce such jobs have also been harmed by his tariffs on foreign goods and materials.

He also pointed out that Trump advisers claimed that mass deportations of undocumented immigrants would create new job openings that native-born workers would rush in to fill.

"But, you guessed it, that's also failing," he said. "Amidst the broader weakening, the native-born unemployment rate is at the highest levels since the pandemic."

Elise Gould, the director of health policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, similarly noted that "there have... been sustained losses over recent months in manufacturing, construction, and mining," in recent months, which she said was "an indication that Trump's blue-collar renaissance is clearly not happening."

Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at the progressive advocacy organization Groundwork Collaborative, called the jobs report "devastating," while laying the blame at the feet of Trump.

"Trump's promises to working families have fallen flat," he said. "The unemployment rate is the highest in nearly four years, the economy has lost nearly 40,000 manufacturing jobs this year alone, and millions of workers are unable to find full-time employment. Families are getting fewer chances to secure the American dream in Trump's economy."

Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) reacted to the jobs report by issuing a scathing rebuke to Trump and his management of the economy.

"Donald Trump inherited an economy built on years of steady job growth," he said. "In just seven months, he's managed to screw it up—just like he's screwed up everything else in his life. Now, working families are getting squeezed from every direction: higher prices, Republicans' Big Ugly Law ripping health care away from millions, and a job market that's slowing down."

Multiple economic indicators are pointing to a worsening labor market ahead of a critical jobs report due to be released on Friday.

As reported by Bloomberg on Thursday, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas calculated that American companies announced plans to add just under 1,500 jobs last month, which is the lowest total of announced job additions for any month going all the way back to 2009, when the United States was in the depth of the Great Recession.

What's more, the firm found that announced job cuts last month totaled nearly 86,000, which was the largest August total since 2020, when the United States was in the throes of the global Covid-19 pandemic.

Data from processing firm ADP, meanwhile, projected that the economy only added 54,000 jobs last month, which was below economists' consensus forecast of 75,000 jobs added. Nela Richardson, ADP's chief economist, said in a statement that the labor market has been "whipsawed by uncertainty" caused in part of US President Donald Trump's tariffs, as well as disruption caused by the spread of artificial intelligence.

ADP's survey has traditionally been seen as less reliable than the monthly survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), although that might change after Trump fired former Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, whom he accused of delivering negative numbers to hurt him politically, without providing any evidence.

However, ADP isn't alone in predicting weaker-than-expected job growth. Economist Bill McBride noted in a post on Bluesky that economists at investment bank Goldman Sachs are estimating the economy created 60,000 jobs last month, or 15,000 fewer than economists' consensus forecast. Goldman also projected that "the unemployment rate edged up to 4.3% on a rounded basis" last month.

Weekly jobless claims numbers released Thursday also pointed to a weakening labor market, as new claims last week totaled 237,000, above economists' consensus estimate of 231,000, and the highest weekly total since late June.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) pointed to the weak labor market indicators in a social media post and blasted Trump's management of the American economy.

"More bad jobs numbers from Trump's economy," she said. "This is the direct result of policies that only work for billionaires and corporations while leaving working families in the dust."

Economists are warning that US President Donald Trump's efforts to meddle with the Federal Reserve are going to wind up raising prices even further on working families.

Michael Madowitz, principal economist at the Roosevelt Institute, said on Wednesday that the president's efforts to strong-arm the US central bank into lowering interest rates by firing Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook would backfire by accelerating inflation.

"The administration's efforts to politicize interest rates—an authoritarian tactic—will ultimately hurt American families by driving up costs," he said. "That helps explain why Fed independence has helped keep inflation under 3%, while, after years of political interference in their central bank, Turkey's inflation rate is over 33%."

Heidi Shierholz, the president of the Economic Policy Institute, said that the president's move to fire Cook "radically undermines what Trump says his own goal is: lowering U.S. interest rates to spur faster economic growth."

She then gave a detailed explanation for why Trump imposing his will on the Federal Reserve would likely bring economic pain.

"Presidential capture of the Fed would signal to decision-makers throughout the economy that interest rates will no longer be set on the basis of sound data or economic conditions—but instead on the whims of the president," she argued. "Confidence that the Fed will respond wisely to future periods of macroeconomic stress—either excess inflation or unemployment—will evaporate."

This lack of confidence, she continued, would manifest in investors in US Treasury bonds demanding higher premiums due to the higher risks they will feel they are taking when buying US debt, which would only further drive up the nation's borrowing costs.

"These higher long-term rates will ripple through the economy—making mortgages, auto loans, and credit card payments higher for working people—and require that rates be held higher for longer to tamp down any future outbreak of inflation," she said. "In the first hours after Trump's announcement, all of these worries seemed to be coming to pass."

Economist Paul Krugman, a former columnist for The New York Times, wrote on his personal Substack page Thursday that Trump's moves to take control of the Federal Reserve were "shocking and terrifying."

"Trump's campaign to take over monetary policy has shifted from a public pressure to personal intimidation of Fed officials: the attack on Cook signals that Trump and his people will try to ruin the life of anyone who stands in his way," he argued. "There is now a substantial chance that the Fed's independence, its ability to manage the nation's monetary policy on an objective, technocratic basis rather than as an instrument of the president's political interests and personal whims, will soon be gone."

The economists' warnings come as economic data released on Friday revealed that core inflation rose to 2.9% in August, which is the highest annual rate recorded since this past February. Earlier this month, the Producer Price Index, which is considered a leading indicator of future inflation, came in at 3.3%, which was significantly higher than economists' consensus estimate of 2.5%.

Data aggregated by polling analyst G. Elliott Morris shows that inflation is far and away Trump's biggest vulnerability, as American voters give him a net approval of -23% on that issue.

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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Monday said that the vast majority of schools in the Lone Star State should still plan on displaying the Ten Commandments in classrooms even after a federal judge ruled against it last week.

In a statement, Paxton said that "schools not enjoined by ongoing litigation must abide" by a state law that requires the display of the Ten Commandments in all public and secondary school classrooms.

"The woke radicals seeking to erase our nation's history will be defeated," he said. "I will not back down from defending the virtues and values that built this country."

Paxton asserted that only nine Texas school districts are affected by the injunction and said that all other districts "must abide by the law once it takes effect on September 1, 2025."

The Texas attorney general's defiant stance on the Ten Commandments earned him a quick rebuke from Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), who accused him of grandstanding instead of doing his job as the state's chief law enforcement official.

"Paxton's job is to uphold the Constitution, which guarantees the separation of church and state—not the Ten Commandments," he wrote on X. "Our public schools should focus on educating Texas students, not stoking culture wars."

The Freedom From Religion Foundation also rebuked Paxton for failing to uphold the Constitution's prohibition of the government establishment of a religion.

"The Constitution, not the Ten Commandments, built this country," the foundation said. "Forcing students to observe one religion’s rules is a blatant violation of the First Amendment regardless of what Ken Paxton claims. Public schools are for education, not religious indoctrination."

Paxton's declaration came less than a week after US District Judge Fred Biery of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas issued a preliminary injunction against the state law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed.

In his ruling, Biery argued that the classroom displays "are likely to pressure the [students] into religious observance, meditation on, veneration, and adoption of the state's favored religious scripture, and into suppressing expression of their own religious or nonreligious background and beliefs while at school."