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."

A federal judge on Wednesday shot down a Texas law that would have mandated all public school classrooms across the state display the Ten Commandments.

As reported by local news station KSAT, US District Judge Fred Biery of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas issued a preliminary injunction, ruling that the state's law crossed the line from education to proselytizing on behalf of a specific sect of Christianity.

Noting that "the Ten Commandments set out in Texas's Ten Commandments law differs from the version observed by some Protestant faiths, and most adherents of the Catholic and Jewish faiths," Biery argued that the law violated the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which states that Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion.

Biery imagined the uproar that would ensue if the city of Hamtramck, Michigan, which is majority Muslim, passed a law mandating that all public schools post passages from the Quran in all classrooms. He then argued that such a law would be just as unconstitutional as the Texas Ten Commandments law.

"While 'We the people' rule by a majority, the Bill of Rights protects the minority Christians in Hamtramck and those 33% of Texans who do not adhere to any of the Christian denominations," he wrote.

The judge also 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."

Organizations that advocate for the separation of church and state were quick to praise Biery's decision to strike down the law, which had been due to go into effect on September 1.

Tommy Buser-Clancy, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Texas, said that the ruling affirmed that the state cannot coerce any Texans into adopting a particular religious faith.

“Today's ruling is a major win that protects the constitutional right to religious freedom for Texas families of all backgrounds," he said. "The court affirmed what we have long said: Public schools are for educating, not evangelizing."

Rabbi Mara Nathan, one of the plaintiffs who sued to get the law overturned, welcomed the ruling and stated that "children's religious beliefs should be instilled by parents and faith communities, not politicians and public schools."

Freedom From Religion Foundation co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor similarly said that "religious instruction must be left to parents, not the state, which has no business telling anyone how many gods to have, which gods to have or whether to have any gods at all."

Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, hailed the ruling and said that it sends a "strong and resounding message across the country that the government respects the religious freedom of every student in our public schools."

US President Donald Trump has pitched his tariffs on foreign goods as a way to bring more manufacturing jobs back into the United States.

However, it now appears as though the tariffs are hurting the manufacturing jobs that are already here.

As reported by Des Moines Register, iconic American machinery company John Deere announced on Monday that it is laying off 71 workers in Waterloo, Iowa, as well as 115 people in East Moline, Illinois, and 52 workers in Moline, Illinois. The paper noted that John Deere has laid off more than 2,000 employees since April 2024.

In its announcement of the layoffs, the company said that "the struggling [agriculture] economy continues to impact orders" for its equipment.

"This is a challenging time for many farmers, growers, and producers, and directly impacts our business in the near term," the company emphasized.

According to The New Republic, Cory Reed, president of John Deere's Worldwide Agriculture and Turf Division, said during the company's most recent earnings call that the uncertainty surrounding Trump's tariffs has led to many farmers putting off investments in farm equipment.

"If you have customers that are concerned about what their end markets are going to look like in a tariff environment, they're waiting to see the outcomes of what these trade deals look like," he explained.

Josh Beal, John Deere's director of investor relations, similarly said that "the primary drivers" for the company's negative outlook from the prior quarter "are increased tariff rates on Europe, India, and steel and aluminum."

The news of the layoffs drew a scathing rebuke from Nathan Sage, an Iowa Democrat running for the US Senate to unseat Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who has praised the president's tariff policies.

"John Deere is once again laying off Iowans—a clear sign economic uncertainty hits the working class hardest, not the CEOs at the top," he wrote in a post on X. "Cheered on by Joni Ernst, Republicans in Washington want to play games with tariffs and give tax cuts to billionaires while Iowa families continue to struggle. It's time to stop protecting the top 1% and fight for the working people who keep our economy strong."

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) also ripped Trump's trade policies for hurting blue-collar jobs.

"Because of Trump's tariffs, farmers can't afford to buy what they need to make a living," he said. "Equipment manufacturers like John Deere have lost millions, but let's remember that working people are hit hardest by the president's disastrous economic policies. Tired of 'winning' yet?"

John Deere is not the only big-name American manufacturer to be harmed by the Trump tariffs, as all three of the country's major auto manufacturers in recent months have announced they expect to take significant financial hits from them.

Ford last month said that its profit could plunge by up to 36% this year as it expects to take a $2 billion hit from the president's tariffs on key inputs such as steel and aluminum, as well as taxes on car components manufactured in Canada and Mexico.

General Motors last month also cited the Trump tariffs as a major reason why its profits fell by $3 billion the previous quarter. Making matters worse, GM said that the impact of the tariffs would be even more significant in the coming quarter when its profits could tumble by as much as $5 billion.

GM's warning came shortly after Jeep manufacturer Stellantis projected that the Trump tariffs would directly lead to $350 million in losses in the first half of 2025.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday was repeatedly put on the spot over the failure of US President Donald Trump to secure a cease-fire deal between Russia and Ukraine.

Rubio appeared on news programs across all major networks on Sunday morning and he was asked on all of them about Trump's summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin ending without any kind of agreement to end the conflict with Ukraine, which has now lasted for more than three years.

During an interview on ABC's "This Week," Rubio was grilled by Martha Raddatz about the purported "progress" being made toward bringing the war to a close. She also zeroed in on Trump's own statements saying that he wanted to see Russia agree to a cease-fire by the end of last week's summit.

"The president went in to that meeting saying he wanted a ceasefire, and there would be consequences if they didn't agree on a ceasefire in that meeting, and they didn't agree to a ceasefire," she said. "So where are the consequences?"

"That's not the aim of this," Rubio replied. "First of all..."

"The president said that was the aim!" Raddatz interjected.

"Yeah, but you're not going to reach a cease-fire or a peace agreement in a meeting in which only one side is represented," Rubio replied. "That's why it's important to bring both leaders together, that's the goal here."

Rubio also made an appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation," where host Margaret Brennan similarly pressed him about the expectations Trump had set going into the summit.

"The president told those European leaders last week he wanted a ceasefire," she pointed out. "He went on television and said he would walk out of the meeting if Putin didn't agree to one, he said there would be severe consequences if he didn't agree to one. He said he'd walk out in two minutes—he spent three hours talking to Vladimir Putin and he did not get one. So there's mixed messages here."

"Our goal is not to stage some production for the world to say, 'Oh, how dramatic, he walked out,'" Rubio shot back. "Our goal is to have a peace agreement to end this war, OK? And obviously we felt, and I agreed, that there was enough progress, not a lot of progress, but enough progress made in those talks to allow us to move to the next phase."

Rubio then insisted that now was not the time to hit Russia with new sanctions, despite Trump's recent threats to do so, because it would end talks all together.

During an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," host Kristen Welker asked Rubio about the "severe consequences" Trump had promised for Russia if it did not agree to a cease-fire.

"Why not impose more sanctions on [Russia] and force them to agree to a cease-fire, instead of accepting that Putin won't agree to one?" Welker asked.

"Well, first, that's something that I think a lot of people go around saying that I don't necessarily think is true," he replied. "I don't think new sanctions on Russia are going to force them to accept a cease-fire. They are already under severe sanctions... you can argue that could be a consequence of refusing to agree to a cease-fire or the end of hostilities."

He went on to say that he hoped the US would not be forced to put more sanctions on Russia "because that means peace talks failed."

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump said that he could end the war between Russian and Ukraine within the span of a single day. In the seven months since his inauguration, the war has only gotten more intense as Russia has stepped up its daily attacks on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.

A leading inflation indicator surged much more than expected last month, just as the impact of U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs started to weigh on American businesses and consumers.

New Producer Price Index (PPI) numbers released on Thursday showed that wholesale prices rose by 0.9% over the last month and by 3.3% over the last year. These numbers were significantly higher than economists' consensus estimates of a 0.2% monthly rise and a 2.5% yearly rise in producer prices.

PPI is a leading indicator of future readings of the Consumer Price Index, the most widely cited gauge of inflation, as increases in wholesalers' prices almost inevitably get passed on to consumers. Economists have been predicting for months that Trump's tariffs on imported goods, which at the moment are higher than at any point in nearly 100 years, would lead to a spike in inflation.

Reacting to the higher-than-expected PPI number, some economic experts pinned the blame directly on the president.

"So much for foreigners paying tariffs," commented Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at tax consulting firm RSM US, on X. "If they did, PPI would be falling. Wholesale prices up 3.3% from a year ago and 3.7% in the core. The temperature is definitely rising in the core. This implies a hot PCE reading lies ahead."

Liz Pancotti, the managing director of policy and advocacy at the Groundwork Collaborative, took a deep dive into the numbers and found that Trump's tariffs were having an impact on a wide range of products.

"There is no mistaking it: President Trump's tariffs are hitting American farmers and driving up grocery prices for American families," she said. "Wholesale prices for grocery staples, like fresh vegetables (up 39% over the past month) and coffee (up 29% over the past year) are rising, squeezing American families even further in the checkout line."

Pancotti singled out the rise in milk prices as particularly worrisome for American families.

"Milk drove more than 30% of the increase in prices for unprocessed goods, rising by 9.1% in just the past month," she explained. "Tuesday's CPI print showed that milk prices rose by 1.9% in July, and this PPI data suggests further price hikes are on the way."

Betsey Stevenson, who served on former President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, also pointed the finger at Trump's policies.

"Tariffs will cause higher prices," she said. "Volatility and uncertainty will cause higher prices. The PPI jump is not a surprise, it was inevitable."

On his Bluesky account, CNBC's Carl Quintanilla flagged analysis from economic research firm High Frequency Economics stating that the new PPI numbers were "a kick in the teeth for anyone who thought that tariffs would not impact domestic prices in the United States economy."

The firm added that it "will not be a long journey for producers' prices to translate into consumer prices" in the coming months.

Liz Thomas, the head of investment strategy at finance company SoFi, argued that the hot PPI numbers could further frustrate Trump's goal of getting the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates given that doing so would almost certainly boost inflation further.

"The increase in PPI was driven by services, and there were increases in general services costs and in the Trade component (i.e., wholesale/retail margins)," she commented. "The Fed won't like this report."

Ross Hendricks, an analyst at economic research firm Porter & Co., described the new report as "scorching hot" and similarly speculated that it would stop the Federal Reserve from cutting rates.

"Good luck with them rate cuts!" he wrote. "Can't recall the last time we've seen a miss that big on a single monthly inflation number."

Hedge fund manager and author Jeff Macke jokingly speculated that the bad PPI print would cause Trump to fire yet another government statistician just as he fired Erika McEntarfer, the former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"Whoever compiles the PPI needs to update their CV," he wrote.

Just as with the monthly jobs report, the Bureau of Labor Statistics collects and publishes PPI data.

US President Donald Trump on Saturday morning tried to put his best spin on a Friday summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin that yielded neither a cease-fire agreement nor a comprehensive peace deal to end the war in Ukraine.

Writing on his Truth Social page, the president took a victory lap over the summit despite coming home completely empty-handed when he flew back from Alaska on Friday night.

"A great and very successful day in Alaska!" Trump began. "The meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia went very well, as did a late night phone call with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine, and various European Leaders, including the highly respected Secretary General of NATO."

Trump then pivoted to saying that he was fine with not obtaining a cease-fire agreement, even though he said just days before that he'd impose "severe consequences" on Russia if it did not agree to one.

"It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Cease-fire Agreement, which often times do not hold up," Trump said. "President Zelenskyy will be coming to DC, the Oval Office, on Monday afternoon. If all works out, we will then schedule a meeting with President Putin. Potentially, millions of people's lives will be saved."

While Trump did his best to put a happy face on the summit, many critics contended it was nothing short of a debacle for the US president.

Writing in The New Yorker, Susan Glasser argued that the entire summit with Putin was a "self-own of embarrassing proportions," given that he literally rolled out the red carpet for his Russian counterpart and did not achieve any success in bringing the war to a close.

"Putin got one hell of a photo op out of Trump, and still more time on the clock to prosecute his war against the 'brotherly' Ukrainian people, as he had the chutzpah to call them during his remarks in Alaska," she wrote. "The most enduring images from Anchorage, it seems, will be its grotesque displays of bonhomie between the dictator and his longtime American admirer."

She also noted that Trump appeared to shift the entire burden of ending the war onto Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and he even said after the Putin summit that "it's really up to President Zelenskyy to get it done."

This led Glasser to comment that "if there's one unwavering Law of Trump, this is it: Whatever happens, it is never, ever, his fault."

Glasser wasn't the only critic to offer a scathing assessment of the summit. The Economist blasted Trump in an editorial about the meeting, which it labeled a "gift" to Putin. The magazine also contrasted the way that Trump treated Putin during his visit to American soil with the way that he treated Zelenskyy during an Oval Office meeting earlier this year.

"The honors for Mr. Putin were in sharp contrast to the public humiliation that Mr. Trump and his advisers inflicted on Mr. Zelenskyy during his first visit to the White House earlier this year," they wrote. "Since then relations with Ukraine have improved, but Mr. Trump has often been quick to blame it for being invaded; and he has proved strangely indulgent with Mr. Putin."

Michael McFaul, an American ambassador to Russia under former President Barack Obama, was struck by just how much effort went into holding a summit that accomplished nothing.

"Summits usually have deliverables," he told The Atlantic. "This meeting had none... I hope that they made some progress towards next steps in the peace process. But there is no evidence of that yet."

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U.S. President Donald Trump's administration earned condemnation from Amnesty International on Thursday over its leaked plans to downplay human rights violations in countries favored by the American government.

News of the plan was originally reported on Wednesday by The Washington Post, which documented how the administration has been revising State Department reports on human rights in El Salvador, Israel, and Russia to "strike all references to LGBTQ+ individuals or crimes against them." The Post also added that "the descriptions of government abuses that do remain have been softened."

In the case of El Salvador, where the administration earlier this year began lawlessly shipping immigrants deported from the United States, the administration's report stated that were "no credible reports of significant human rights abuses" there, even though a State Department report under former President Joe Biden's administration issued last year documented "significant human rights issues" in the country.

Human rights violations against LGBTQ+ people were deleted from the State Department's report on Russia, while the report on Israel deleted references to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's corruption trial and to his government's threats to the country's independent judiciary.

Amanda Klasing, Amnesty International USA's national director of government relations and advocacy, ripped the administration for selectively whitewashing human rights records of nations favored by the president.

"The leaked chapters of the latest Annual Human Rights Report reveal a disturbing effort by the Trump administration to purposefully fail to fully capture the alarming and growing attacks on human rights in certain countries around the globe," she said. "Alarmingly, we understand that the mandate from Secretary Rubio was... to go back and wipe out portions of the reports that had already been written—to delete stories from survivors of human rights violations."

Klasing went on to accuse the administration of turning the human rights report "into yet another tool to obscure facts to push forward anti-rights policy choices."

She also emphasized that "it would be a travesty and subversion of congressional intent to downplay or ignore human rights violations faced by marginalized populations including refugees and asylum seekers, women and girls, Indigenous people, ethnic and religious minorities, and LGBTQI+ people throughout the world."

An unnamed State Department official this week told the Post that the administration was merely simplifying the human rights reports to make them more "readable."

"The 2024 Human Rights report has been restructured in a way that removes redundancies, increases report readability, and is more responsive to the legislative mandate that underpins the report," the official said. "The human rights report focuses on core issues."

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After multiple delays, the "reciprocal" tariffs first announced this past spring by U.S. President Donald Trump went into effect on Thursday even as the American economy is showing serious signs of weakness.

As reported by CNBC, the new tariffs hit nations all over the world and included particularly hefty tariffs on longtime trading partners such as Brazil, which got hit with a 50% tariff as Trump tries to pressure the country to drop criminal charges against former President Jair Bolsonaro, who allegedly plotted a coup attempt after losing the 2022 general election to current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

While many longtime U.S. allies such as the European Union and Japan struck deals with Trump ahead of this week's deadline, their products are still getting hit with 15% tariffs that are far higher than any duties placed on foreign goods in decades.

On his Truth Social page on Thursday morning, Trump celebrated the implementation of the tariffs and declared that "tariffs are flowing into the USA at levels not thought even possible!"

However, the president's triumphant tone does not match what consumer sentiment and economic data are currently showing. The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that the American manufacturing economy, which Trump has claimed will benefit the most from his tariffs, is currently "sputtering" as companies face higher costs of key inputs such as steel, aluminum, and copper.

"From March to July, U.S. manufacturing activity contracted, according to the Institute for Supply Management's monthly survey," noted WSJ. "The Manufacturing PMI last registered at 48, below the 50 score that differentiates growth and decline."

The Journal also cited top domestic manufacturers such as Whirlpool, Polaris, and Harley-Davidson who say that consumer demand has been hit in recent months as consumers pull back spending in the face of the president's tariffs. In fact, Polaris CEO Mike Speetzen told investors during a recent earnings call that "consumers are really just reluctant to go spend right now unless they really need to or they're fortunate enough to have the financial flexibility to do that."

Data released last week also showed that the American labor market overall has nearly ground to a halt over the last three months, as the economy added an average of 35,000 jobs per month from May through July.

As if all that weren't enough, the tariffs are expected to hit Americans with price increases across a wide range of products during a time when voters say they are still very anxious about the cost of groceries.

Leor Tal, campaign director for the progressive advocacy organization Unrig Our Economy, blasted Trump's tariffs as "a tax on working-class families, raising costs on everyday goods, killing jobs, and more." He also challenged Republican lawmakers who in the past have spoken up against the tariffs to use their power to retake from the president the authority to levy taxes.

"When they return from their month-long vacation, will Republicans finally change course and vote to end these tariffs, since—according to them—they are bad for the economy?" he asked. "If they truly want to support their constituents, and not just millionaires and billionaires, they should."

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) delivered a similarly scathing denunciation of Trump's tariffs, which he labeled "backward economic policies."

"The management of these tariffs has been utterly chaotic, secretive and ripe for corruption as Trump and his advisors scheme and deal behind closed doors," he said. "Regardless of whether Trump still doesn't know what tariffs are or is lying about them, he should never be forgiven for jacking up the cost of living by thousands of dollars per year after campaigning on a promise to bring prices down across the board."

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, said that Trump's tariffs are a complete betrayal of his 2024 campaign pledges to bring down the cost of living.

"The damage is only beginning," she said of the tariffs. "Everything from shoes to dish soap, to diapers, to American automobiles, is about to cost more. President Trump and the billionaires he serves could not care less. To them, your cost-of-living increase is just the cost of doing business."

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U.S. President Donald Trump is constitutionally prohibited from being elected to a third term in office, but that's not stopping his super political action committee from raising eye-popping sums of money.

A report from the Brennan Center for Justice released on Tuesday found that MAGA Inc., the main super PAC supporting Trump's political campaigns, raised an "unprecedented" sum of $200 million between last November's presidential election and the end of June 2025. This massive war chest is more than six times the amount that former President Joe Biden's super PAC raised between the November 2020 election and the end of June 2021.

The Brennan Center also said that MAGA Inc. has become "almost exclusively a game for the richest of the rich," with 96% of the money it's received over the last seven-plus months coming "from donors who gave more than $1 million each." This massive fundraising haul raises serious questions about where this money is going, presuming that Trump isn't going to try to run for an unconstitutional third term.

The biggest donors to the super PAC have been entities that might benefit from regulatory or policy changes that the government could enact: Energy Transfer, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, donated $25 million; investor Jeffrey Yass, whose company Susquehanna International Group owns a large stake in the parent company of Chinese social media app TikTok, donated $16 million; and Foris Dax Inc., the firm behind Crypto.com, donated $10 million.

Advocacy group Public Citizen on Monday took a look at the donations pouring into MAGA Inc. and found that cryptocurrency companies, executives, and investors had forked over a total of $41.7 million to the PAC, while fossil fuel companies and executives had shelled out $26.8 million.

Jon Golinger, democracy advocate for Public Citizen, said that the massive sums being given to the PAC should raise real questions about corruption.

"The real question this mega-donor list raises is not 'how much,' but 'who from?'" he said. "By taking contributions from wealthy individuals and industries who want something from government, Trump's super PAC has used pay-to-play to raise big money from special interests like a legalized shakedown."

The Brennan Center similarly raised corruption concerns and said the super PAC's dealings were yet another example of how the
U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission to scrap all limits on campaign donations from corporations and outsized interest groups had damaged the integrity of American politics.

"The degree to which wealthy donors appear to be using super PAC contributions to curry favor with the Trump administration once again illustrates how wrong the Supreme Court was... when it predicted that the 'independence' of groups like super PACs would prevent them from becoming vehicles for real or perceived corruption," the Brennan Center wrote.

A report from Politico last week suggested that the MAGA Inc. war chest could give Trump unprecedented power for an incumbent president to influence the 2026 midterm elections.

"Having millions of dollars at Trump's disposal—an unheard of amount for a sitting president who cannot run again—could allow him to become one of the biggest single players in next year's midterms, alongside long-standing GOP stalwarts like the Congressional Leadership Fund and Senate Leadership Fund," explained Politico. "Trump could boost his preferred candidates in GOP primaries, or flood the zone in competitive general election races in an effort to help Republicans keep control of Congress."

Trump has not yet ruled out running for a third term in office even though the United States Constitution's 22nd Amendment explicitly states that "no person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice."

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U.S. President Donald Trump gave a lengthy interview to CNBC on Tuesday and critics quickly pounced on the president for telling a large number of false claims on topics ranging from monthly jobs numbers to the price of gas to international trade agreements.

Toward the start of the interview, CNBC host Joe Kernen pushed back on Trump's claims that the Bureau of Labor Statistics had "rigged" job creation numbers against him and debunked a Trump statement that the BLS had covered up negative jobs data revisions under the Biden administration until after the November 2024 presidential election.

Trump, however, insisted that his statements about hiding downward revisions until after the election were correct even though the biggest downward revisions actually occurred in August 2024, well before the election took place.

Commenting on Trump's assertion, Media Matters for America senior fellow Matt Gertz described it as "completely backwards."

"The BLS announcement on November 1 [2024] showed weak growth of 12,000 jobs in October and downward revisions to August/September of 112,000," Gertz explained on X. "Then after the election, the October figure was revised upward. Impossible to tell if Trump is lying, dumb, or sundowning."

Nick Tiriamos, the chief economics correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, similarly said that Trump was "getting his dates wrong" when he asserted a cover-up of negative jobs numbers given that "the big downward revision" was reported before the election took place.

Trump also made also false claims about the price of gas in the United States falling to just $2.20 per gallon, which prompted Kernen to note that the lowest prices he's seen for gas in the U.S. were $2.80 per gallon.

National security attorney Bradley Moss slammed Trump for his claim about gas prices and added that the latest data show that inflation has been accelerating in recent months as the president's tariffs begin to force companies to raise prices.

"The rest of the country is suffering from higher prices on everything, and this senile old man is living in a fantasy world in which it's simply not happening," he wrote on Bluesky.

Trump proceeded to make false claims about the trade deal he had recently struck with the European Union when he said that the agreement gave him "$600 billion to invest in anything I want." This drew the ire of Steve Peers, a professor of E.U. and human rights law at Royal Holloway University of London.

"Well no, it's a vague, nonbinding, unwritten nonstatement about companies' future investment plans, not cash for him to personally control," Peers commented on Bluesky. "But enjoy your weird demented fantasy, I guess."

Another eye-popping Trump statement came when he tried to defend the use of immigrant labor in the American agricultural industry by claiming that the immigrants had unique physical attributes that were absent from American workers.

"People that live in the inner city are not doing that work," Trump said of the prospects of American citizens picking crops. "They've tried, we've tried, everybody tried. They don't do it. These people [immigrants] do it naturally. Naturally... they don't get a bad back, because if they get a bad back, they die."

This statement drew the attention of Branden McEuen, a historian at Wayne State University who specializes in teaching about the history of the eugenics movement. Specifically, McEuen linked Trump's statement to past racist beliefs about people of color being genetically predisposed to engage in manual labor.

"Trump saying people of color are naturally suited to farm labor sure sounds a lot like the slaveholders that said slaves were naturally inclined to servitude," he remarked.

SiriusXM radio host Michelangelo Signorile picked up a similar vibe from Trump's statement about farmworkers.

"The racism here is on steroids, as Trump tried to make [the] case to MAGA that farmers need exemptions," he wrote. "[Trump] says brown people do hard labor 'naturally' and don't get [a] bad back, while also saying they've tried to replace them with people 'in the inner city' but they can't get them to do the work."

Two Democratic senators on Monday tore into their Republican counterparts for "sneaking" a provision into their party's massive budget legislation that they said would provide a "multibillion dollar bailout" for the American pharmaceutical industry.

In a letter sent to U.S. President Donald Trump, Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) pointed out that the budget package "includes provisions that block or delay the Trump administration from using Medicare drug price negotiation to lower the price of certain blockbuster drugs" including "the top-selling cancer drugs in the world, such as Keytruda, Opdivo, Darzalex, and more."

The senators explained that Keytruda was originally due to become subject to Medicare price negotiations starting next year, but that has now been put on ice by the GOP's legislation.

"We see no policy rationale whatsoever for delaying the... ability to negotiate lower prices on these drugs other than handing money over to the industry," they charged. "Because of you and congressional Republicans, seniors will continue to face astronomical, unaffordable costs for lifesaving cancer treatments."

The senators noted the cruel irony of this gift to the pharmaceutical industry was that Republicans offset its cost by slashing roughly $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade, a move that's projected to strip health insurance from millions of Americans.

"Republicans were able to find billions of dollars to bailout the pharmaceutical industry in their multitrillion tax bill, but you claimed that fiscal austerity required you to enact the largest healthcare cuts in history, terminating coverage for more than 15 million Americans and hiking healthcare costs for everyone, even imposing a 'sick tax' on the lowest income Americans," the senators argued. "Republicans' budget bill benefited the ultrawealthy and big corporations, like Big Pharma, with tax cuts and bailouts at the expense of working and middle-class Americans' healthcare."

The senators also slammed Trump's decision to eschew Medicare price negotiations of the kind first employed by former U.S. President Joe Biden's administration after the passage of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that authorized such negotiations for a limited set of drugs for the first time. Instead, they pointed out that Trump has demanded pharmaceutical companies cut prices on Americans by raising them everywhere else in the world, which they described as a "flashy, empty announcement."

Steve Knievel, access to medicines advocate at Public Citizen, similarly dismissed Trump's recent letters to pharmaceutical companies last week as a completely ineffective approach to lowering prescription drug costs.

"If President Trump was serious about lowering drug prices for Americans, instead of promising to help drug corporations profiteer in other countries, he would work with Congress to pass legislation to lower prices here so Big Pharma can no longer charge U.S. patients and taxpayers the highest prices in the world," he said.

Trump in recent days has been making a number of mathematically impossible promises to lower the cost of drugs for Americans by as much as "1,200%," which would mean that pharmaceutical companies would be paying Americans substantial sums of money in exchange for taking their drugs.

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U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to immediately bring down inflation upon taking office, but a Thursday report from the Century Foundation finds that Americans' finances are still in a very precarious condition.

The Century Foundation commissioned a survey last month with polling firm Morning Consult and found that roughly 6 in 10 Americans say that Trump's policies are to blame for their current financial struggles. However, the report also emphasized that Americans' "financial insecurity is widespread and runs deep," and that their concerns stretch back well before Trump's second term.

"More than 4 in 5 Americans (83%) are concerned about the price of groceries, with nearly half (46%) saying they are very concerned," writes the Century Foundation. "Nearly half (47%) of Americans are worried about their current ability to pay their rent or mortgage. And nearly two-thirds (64%) worry about their ability to pay an unexpected medical expense if one should arise. Nearly half of all Americans (48%) believe they would have difficulty paying an unexpected $500 bill without borrowing."

These anxieties were particularly strong among younger Generation Z voters, as well as among Black and Latino voters across all age demographics.

Even more troubling, the survey found that Americans are increasingly using financially risky strategies to keep up with paying their bills.

"More than a third of Americans are turning to high-cost debt to cover their bills," writes the Century Foundation. "Significant shares have also had to turn to credit cards (37%) or take on debt (29%) to afford the bills. This is consistent with the larger trends in use of credit products, like the notable shift in use of 'buy now, pay later' products for groceries. The rates of families using credit card debt to cover expenses is all the more concerning as credit card delinquencies continue to rise."

Roughly 2 in 5 Americans reported dipping into their personal savings at least once in the last year in order to pay their bills, while 1 in 4 Americans reported skipping out on meals to make ends meet, the survey found.

When it comes to what Americans see as the major obstacle to having a lower cost of living, the survey found that they considered unchecked corporate power to be the main culprit.

"Across party lines, Americans believe that tamping down corporate power will help them," writes the Century Foundation. "According to most Americans, actions that hold the wealthy and powerful accountable would help them and people like them. That includes reducing the influence of money in politics (60%), prosecuting companies that cheat workers and consumers (60%), and raising taxes on the rich (57%)."

The Century Foundation's poll isn't the only one to release this week to show Americans are highly anxious about the economy. A poll conducted by YouGov on behalf of U.K.-based newspaper The Times found that 50% of Americans believed the economy was getting worse under Trump's watch while just 24% said it was improving.

This poll similarly found that Americans are concerned about the cost of living and the impacts that Trump's tariffs will have on their ability to afford basic necessities such as groceries.

"The honeymoon at the beginning has gone: Inflation and jobs are still the leading issues and there is not a perception of anything improving," explained YouGov analyst Mark Blumenthal. "The survey suggests that Trump's two flagship economic initiatives—his tariffs and the One Big Beautiful Bill—are not perceived as helping the economy."

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The effects of U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs are winding their way through the American economy, and a new piece of analysis claims that corporate America is using them as "cover" to further jack up prices.

Progressive advocacy group Groundwork Collaborative issued a new report on Tuesday that uses corporate executives' own words to show how many firms are taking advantage of the tariff situation by using it as an all-purpose justification for price increases. The report found many of these executives' admissions through quarterly earnings calls in which they discussed plans to increase costs even if their inputs were not being significantly affected by the tariffs.

Among others, the report cited a statement made earlier this year by Aaron Jagdfeld, the CEO of power generation products manufacturer Generac Power Systems, who said on an earnings call that "even if we have metals that weren't impacted directly by tariffs, the indirect effect of tariffs is that it gives steel producers and the mills and other fabricators... great cover for increased pricing in some cases."

Another executive quoted in the report was Matthew Stevenson, the CEO of auto parts manufacturer Holley, who said that "in the marketplace we have seen price increases well in excess of what we put out into the market" and added that "we've seen increases as high as 30% or more on some categories from some competitors."

Thomas Robertson, the CFO of footwear company Rocky Brands, flat-out said during an earnings call that his company planned to raise prices even as Trump had backed off his most strident trade-war threats with China.

"We certainly welcome a reduction in the Chinese tariffs, but we'll be announcing a price increase here regardless of any changes of the Chinese tariffs over the next week or two to go into effect in June," he said.

While the report names and shames corporations for price increases, Groundwork Collaborative executive director Lindsay Owens did not absolve Trump of responsibility for the situation.

"President Trump's turbulent trade policy has created a perfect storm of market chaos, giving corporations a golden opportunity to jack up prices, pad profit margins, and fleece Americans simply because they can," said Owens. "While Trump's tariffs continue to cause economic upheaval, corporations are exploiting the chaos and working families are left to foot the bill."

The Groundwork Collaborative report was released on the same day that consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble announced that it would be raising prices on roughly one-quarter of its products due to Trump's tariffs. As reported by CNBC, the company said during its quarterly earnings call that it expects "mid-single-digit price increases" on a wide range of products over the next quarter to help offset what it projects to be a $1 billion hit from the tariffs levied against major trading partners such as Canada and China.

A report by the Tax Foundation on Monday estimated that the Trump tariffs would affect 75% of all food imported from other countries, which would add even more burden to American consumers. What's particularly troubling about the food tariffs, the Tax Foundation explained, is that they will fall on products such as bananas and coffee that are simply not capable of being grown on a mass scale in the United States.

"In 2024, the U.S. imported about $221 billion in food products, 74% of which ($163 billion) faced the Trump tariffs," wrote the Tax Foundation. "While these imports currently face tariff rates ranging from 10% to 30%, they will exceed 30% for some countries if the reciprocal tariffs go into effect on August 1. The top five exporters of food products to the U.S., in order, are Mexico, Canada, the E.U., Brazil, and China, accounting for 62% of total U.S. food imports."

After months of national protests over U.S. President Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda, even some of his supporters—including an Alabama man who runs day-to-day operations at construction sites—have come to the conclusion that workplace raids aimed at rounding up undocumented immigrants are the wrong way to go.

In an interview with Reuters published Monday, construction site superintendent Robby Robertson expressed frustration at the way the Trump administration's hard-line immigration policies have impacted his business.

He said that trouble at his site began in late May shortly after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid on a construction site in Tallahassee, Florida, which he said scared off nearly his entire workforce for several days afterward. Even though nearly two months have passed since then, he said a little more than half of his workforce has come back.

This is negatively impacting his current project, which he said was projected to be finished already but which has been slow to complete now that his initial 22-person roofing team has dwindled down to just a dozen workers. As if that weren't enough, Reuters wrote that Robertson's company "is facing potentially $84,000 in extra costs for the delays under a 'liquidated damages' clause of $4,000 for every day the project runs beyond" its deadline.

"I'm a Trump supporter," Robertson told Reuters. "But I just don't think the raids are the answer."

Robertson added that the raids aren't just intimidating undocumented immigrant workers but also Latino workers who are in the country legally but who don't want to get swept up in raids "because of their skin color."

"They are scared they look the part," Robertson explained.

Tim Harrison, the CEO of the construction firm that is building the project being overseen by Robertson, told Reuters that finding native-born American workers to do the kind of work he needs is extremely difficult, especially since Alabama already has a low unemployment rate that makes trying to attract workers to a physically demanding industry difficult.

"The contractor world is full of Republicans," explained Harrison in an interview with Reuters. "I'm not anti-ICE. We're supportive of what the president is trying to do. But the reality of it is our industry has to have the Hispanic immigrant-based workers in it."

A report issued earlier this month by the progressive Economic Policy Institute (EPI) projected that the construction industry could take a severe hit from Trump's mass deportation plan given how many undocumented immigrants work in that industry.

"Employment in the construction sector will drop sharply: U.S.-born construction employment will fall by 861,000, and immigrant employment will fall by 1.4 million," wrote EPI senior economist Ben Zipperer, who added that the Trump administration's plans risked "squandering the full employment... inherited from the Biden administration and also causing immense pain to the millions of U.S.-born and immigrant workers who may lose their jobs."