Trump Gets More Bad News as Consumer Confidence Plummets

As Americans navigate Donald Trump’s deranged war on global trade, consumers have never trusted him less.

Consumer sentiment has plunged for the fourth month in a row, according to new data released Friday by the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index, a key indicator of national economic conditions.

“Consumers report multiple warning signs that raise the risk of recession: expectations for business conditions, personal finances, incomes, inflation, and labor markets all continued to deteriorate this month,” the University of Michigan said in a statement.

Sentiment among consumers is down 11 percent from March, and the decline was “pervasive and unanimous across age, income, education, geographic region, and political affiliation,” wrote survey director Joanne Hsu. Sentiment is also down 30 percent from December, before Donald Trump took office and tanked the hopes of millions of consumers desperate for affordable groceries and sustainable livelihoods.

Since taking office, Trump has spurred economic mayhem in the United States and abroad with his relentless flip-flopping on tariffs and perverse trade policy. On his so-called “Liberation Day,” Trump used national emergency powers to enact tariffs ranging from 10 to 60 percent on more than 90 nations, including an 84 percent tariff. A week later, he announced a 90-day reduction on most of the tariffs while ramping up those on China, leading to some of the most volatile fluctuations financial markets have seen in decades—not exactly the best way to gain consumer trust.

The index also showed that inflation expectations grew from 5 percent last month to 6.7 percent, the highest recorded reading since 1981. Unemployment expectations among consumers also rose to more than double what they were last year.

The numbers were recorded and released before Trump announced the 90-day freeze on reciprocal tariffs, which may have inspired some relief among consumers. Regardless, Americans across all demographics are losing faith in the administration that promised them economic refuge.

Donald Trump’s former attorney turned interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey is threatening to prosecute the state’s governor.

Alina Habba, following reports that Governor Phil Murphy has directed state police not to work with federal immigration officers, told Fox News Thursday that she has directed her office to open an investigation into Murphy, as well as New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin, saying that she wanted it “to be a warning for everybody.”

“That will no longer stand,” Habba said, of Murphy and Platkin’s actions.

“[Attorney General] Pam Bondi has made it clear, and so has our president, that we are to take all violent criminals and criminals out of this country and completely enforce federal law, and anybody who does get in that way … will be charged in the state of New Jersey for obstruction, for concealment, and I will come after them hard, and those investigations will start immediately,” Habba told Sean Hannity.

It’s a direct challenge to the leader of a heavily Democratic state by the Trump administration. New Jersey’s Immigrant Trust Directive, issued in 2018, limits how much assistance law enforcement officers can provide to federal immigration authorities, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Murphy has thumbed his nose at the Trump administration over immigration, at one point in February alluding to harboring an undocumented immigrant in his home and daring ICE to come after them, resulting in a backlash from right-wing media. Murphy later clarified and said that actually wasn’t the case, but that likely put him on MAGA’s radar, with Trump’s border czar saying, “We’ll look into it.”

A president taking legal action against a sitting governor is unprecedented, and threatens to cause a constitutional and legal crisis. The question is how the federal court system will handle charges against Murphy if the situation gets that far.

The U.S. military has fired yet another woman it disagrees with.

Colonel Susan Meyers, the commander of the U.S. military base in Greenland, was fired after she sent an email distancing herself from JD Vance, who visited Greenland last month and slammed Denmark for not keeping it safe amid Donald Trump’s fixation on annexing the territory of 56,000.

“I do not presume to understand current politics, but what I do know is the concerns of the US administration discussed by Vice President Vance on Friday are not reflective of Pituffik Space Base,” Meyers wrote in an email obtained by Military.com. The military news site said the email was confirmed as accurate by the U.S. Space Force.

On Thursday, Space Operations Command released a statement announcing that Meyers was “removed from command” for “loss of confidence in her ability to lead,” further cementing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s quest to rid the U.S. military of anybody who isn’t a white, straight, male MAGA loyalist. Linda Fagan, the first woman to lead the U.S. Coast Guard, and Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to serve as the highest-ranking officer of the U.S. Navy, were fired earlier this year.

Hegseth is yet to comment on Meyers’s release, but the rest of MAGA has taken to X to celebrate another barrier to Trump’s speculative invasion of Greenland being removed.

“Colonel Meyers tried to politicize the Space Force and was held accountable.

“Lloyd Austin isn’t SecDef anymore. Thanks @PeteHegseth,” Senator Jim Banks wrote in a post.

“Actions to undermine the chain of command or to subvert President Trump’s agenda will not be tolerated at the Department of Defense,” wrote Sean Parnell, the chief spokesperson for the Pentagon.

“This is a good start but it is not enough,” former U.S. Army Colonel Rob Manness wrote. “The partisan rot in the officer corps is much wider and deeper than most realize. It must be pulled out root and branch, and fast. Our actual readiness must be atrocious,” Manness continued, foreshadowing the administration’s approach to defense as Trump tanks U.S. legitimacy worldwide.

Donald Trump’s administration falsely declared more than 6,300 immigrants dead in an attempt to get them to self-deport, The New York Times reported Thursday.

Earlier this week, the White House added the names and Social Security numbers of thousands of living, breathing people to the Social Security Administration’s Death Master File, which is used to track when a person has died and should stop receiving government benefits. 

But it can have far-ranging effects, as people will no longer be able to access their bank accounts or use their credit cards. The SSA’s website said that the effects of being wrongly included in the DMF can be “devastating to the individual, spouse, and dependent children.”

The outrageous move targeted individuals whose legal status had just been revoked, people who the government claimed were convicted criminals or “suspected terrorists,” according to documents reviewed by the Times. However, the list managed to include eight minors, including one 13-year-old.  

The Trump administration’s system for identifying suspected terrorists has come under scrutiny in recent weeks, after multiple individuals swept up in the mass deportation of alleged Tren de Aragua members said that they were wrongly identified based on their innocuous tattoos.

A White House official told The Washington Post that included in the DMF list were nearly 1,000 people collecting Medicaid payments, 41 collecting unemployment insurance, and 22 receiving student loans. 

The SSA’s acting Commissioner Leland Dudek has also agreed to provide Immigration and Customs Enforcement with the last known addresses of 98,000 people, a major shift for the agency charged with closely guarding citizens’ private information. Twelve current and former officials told the Times that before the Trump administration, the agency had never engaged in widespread data sharing with immigration authorities.

In taking this action, the Trump administration has transformed the SSA into an arm of enforcement for its massive deportation efforts. 

Mere hours after the markets were slightly buoyed by a White House announcement that Donald Trump’s global tariff plan would see a 90-day pause, the president decided to reverse course and threaten more tariffs.

In a nighttime post to Truth Social Thursday, Trump warned that Mexico could be subject to a higher tariff rate as punishment for allegedly violating an 81-year-old water treaty.

“Mexico OWES Texas 1.3 million acre-feet of water under the 1944 Water Treaty, but Mexico is unfortunately violating their Treaty obligation,” Trump wrote. “This is very unfair, and it is hurting South Texas Farmers very badly.

“Last year, the only Sugar Mill in Texas CLOSED, because Mexico has been stealing the water from Texas Farmers. Ted Cruz has been leading the fight to get South Texas the water it is owed, but Sleepy Joe refused to lift a finger to help the Farmers,” he continued.

“THAT ENDS NOW!” the president wrote. “I will make sure Mexico doesn’t violate our Treaties, and doesn’t hurt our Texas Farmers. Just last month, I halted water shipments to Tijuana until Mexico complies with the 1944 Water Treaty. My Agriculture Secretary, Brooke Rollins, is standing up for Texas Farmers, and we will keep escalating consequences, including TARIFFS and, maybe even SANCTIONS, until Mexico honors the Treaty, and GIVES TEXAS THE WATER THEY ARE OWED!”

Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum didn’t outright reject the claim that her country had violated the water deal, but instead cited a three-year drought induced by climate change as the reason for the decreased shipments, noting on X that “to the extent water is available, Mexico has been complying.

“I have instructed the Secretaries of Agriculture and Rural Development and Foreign Affairs, as well as the Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources, to immediately contact the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of State,” Sheinbaum wrote. “I am confident that, as with other issues, an agreement will be reached.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s hit-or-miss approach to enacting tariffs has sent the U.S. markets into a tailspin in little more than a week, leaving some financial experts believing that the president had done irreparable damage to America’s trade reputation and its economy. Banks and investment firms are still predicting a high possibility of a recession, even after Trump caved to mounting domestic pressure Wednesday and announced a 90-day pause to his sweeping tariff proposal for 200 countries.

China has fired back at Donald Trump’s tariff hike with one of its own.

The country raised tariff rates against the U.S. from 85 percent to 125 percent Friday morning, following Thursday’s confirmation from the Trump administration that it was placing tariffs of 145 percent on China—125 percent as a reciprocal measure, plus an additional 20 percent because Trump thinks Beijing isn’t doing anything about fentanyl.

“Even if the U.S. continues to impose higher tariffs, it will no longer make economic sense and will become a joke in the history of world economy,” the Chinese Finance Ministry said in a statement, which CNBC translated.

“With tariff rates at the current level, there is no longer a market for U.S. goods imported into China,” the statement added, saying that “if the U.S. government continues to increase tariffs on China, Beijing will ignore.”

Despite its tough talk, China’s Foreign Ministry said that it was open to negotiate with the U.S. on an equal footing in a separate statement, refuting Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s comments on Wednesday that “it’s unfortunate that the Chinese actually don’t want to come and negotiate, because they are the worst offenders in the international trading system.”

The move is a further escalation of the trade war between the two countries instigated by Trump, which doesn’t help either economy. Countless corporations in the U.S. depend on China, and 10 million to 20 million Chinese workers are involved with U.S. exports. Trump’s tariff moves have been so erratic that hedge fund managers are wondering if he is insane. Nobody knows how this is going to end, but it seems likely that a recession is looming.

Donald Trump definitely isn’t spending government funds to throw himself a birthday parade, according to the White House.

The administration denied Thursday that Trump was organizing a military procession to celebrate his 79th birthday in June. That is, despite the fact that several local leaders—including Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser and Arlington County Board Chair Takis Karantonis—confirmed to Politico that they had been in conversation with Trump officials to arrange the summertime military procession.

Trump’s birthday on June 14 coincidentally (or perhaps conveniently) falls on the same date as the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army.

“As we enter 2025, the Army’s 250th birthday will be celebrated with a series of commemorations, including leadership engagements, community outreach events and other events showcasing Army units, history, lineage and esprit de corps,” read a February press release by the U.S. Army. It did not make mention of a parade.

Trump wanted a parade in 2018, but the idea was quickly shot down by local and military officials who cited enormous estimated damages to Pennsylvania Avenue and torched the hefty price tag involved in dragging heavy equipment through the U.S. capital. The president reportedly was inspired after watching a Bastille Day celebration in Paris in 2017.

“It was one of the greatest parades I’ve ever seen.… We’re gonna have to try and top it,” Trump said at the time, “but we had a lot of planes going over and a lot of military might, and it was really a beautiful thing to see.”

But Washington was unconvinced.

“The military leaders said it would cost too much, nearly $90 million; Mayor Bowser ridiculed the idea on the Twitter system and said it would cost us $20 million just for public safety,” Washington City Paper’s Tom Sherwood told NBC News 4 earlier this week. “So he canceled it—angrily canceled it. But this time around, it doesn’t sound like he is gonna cancel.”

Bowser said that the administration’s current plans would have the military march from the Pentagon to the White House, and underscored that the economic concerns over holding such a parade had not changed, noting that driving military vehicles and equipment through Washington’s streets would likely cost millions in damage.

The White House is now asking people in power to forget the evidence of their eyes and ears.

Two planes bumped wings while taxiing on the runway at Reagan National Airport Thursday, marking yet another critical safety failure at one of the nation’s major airports. One of the planes carried several U.S. lawmakers, including Representative Josh Gottheimer, who blamed the incident on the Trump administration’s recent cuts to the Federal Aviation Administration, claiming that slashes to the agency “weaken our skies and public safety.”

But the White House outright rejected Gottheimer’s explanation, insisting without evidence that the New Jersey representative was “wrong.”

“There have been no cuts to air traffic controllers, safety personnel, or safety-critical positions at the FAA,” the White House official X account posted.

That is, however, not exactly honest—even according to Trump’s own officials. In February, the administration erased 400 FAA roles, including positions that supported air safety. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed the cuts that time, though he attempted to minimize them by highlighting the overall staffing of the agency, which Duffy claimed employs some 45,000 workers.

Other representatives aboard the plane shared their experiences, similarly arguing that the White House was distorting the safety of America’s air travel.

“You felt it, and you saw the wing actually flapping up and down, so you knew there was a strong contact there,” Representative Adriano Espaillat told CNN. “They told us that they were going to take us back to the gate. We waited a little bit, we saw some emergency vehicles near us, and then they took us back to the gate.”

When asked if he believed that the White House was attempting to deceive the public about the health of America’s airports, Espaillat said, “They’re downsizing, they want to misguide us about that, but this is an agency that in particular, this airport, has seen already tragic incidents where many people died.” Espaillat said, “They should be beefed up to a level where everyone feels secure.”

“I thought about going Amtrak,” he added, calling the episode “dangerous.”

It’s just the most recent of critical errors occurring at Reagan National Airport. Last week, a physical fight broke out in the air traffic control tower at the politico-favorite airport, resulting in one supervisor being arrested and charged with assault and battery, as well as a managerial shakeup that saw three air traffic control managers being forced out of their roles.

In January, a midair crash between an American Airlines passenger plane and a U.S. military Black Hawk helicopter over the airport killed 67 people—the first major deadly crash involving a U.S. airliner since 2009.

The Trump administration’s basis for seeking to strip pro-Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil of his green card amounts to this: He didn’t do anything illegal, but he holds beliefs that go against “core American interests.” 

In a two-page memo from Secretary of State Marco Rubio obtained by the Associated Press, the government alleged that keeping Khalil in the country would undermine “U.S. policy to combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States, in addition to efforts to protect Jewish students from harassment and violence in the United States.”

Otherwise, the memo states, Khalil’s actions were “lawful.” 

“Condoning anti-Semitic conduct and disruptive protests in the United States would severely undermine that significant foreign policy objective,” Rubio wrote.

A federal judge, Jamee Comans, had ordered the government to provide evidence by 5 p.m. Wednesday for its justification to deport Khalil, an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent and Columbia University graduate who was a spokesperson for student activists at the university during protests last year against Israel’s brutal war on Gaza. A hearing is scheduled Friday on whether his detention can continue.

Khalil’s attorneys, Marc Van Der Hout and Johnny Sinodis, said in a joint statement that  “immigration authorities have finally admitted that they have no case whatsoever against him.”

“There is not a single shred of proof that Mahmoud’s presence in America poses any threat,” the statement reads.

When asked if the government had any additional evidence against Khalil, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, provided an emailed statement to the AP stating that “DHS did file evidence, but immigration court dockets are not available to the public.”

Khalil, who is married to a U.S. citizen due to give birth this month, has been held in a detention center in Louisiana after being arrested and detained by immigration agents last month at his university-owned residence. Khalil wrote in a letter last month from Louisiana that his detention was a “direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza.”​​ 

Administration officials have alleged that Khalil’s actions support Hamas but failed to provide any evidence in any court filings. That may very well help Khalil, as Comens said Tuesday that if the government’s evidence doesn’t support his deportation, “then I am going to terminate the case on Friday.”

President Donald Trump falsely suggested Thursday that autism may be caused by a “shot,” parroting his anti-vax health secretary. 

During a Cabinet meeting, the president discussed an increase in the rate of autism diagnoses, but seemed to invent some statistics to do it. 

“It was one in 10,000 children had autism, and now it’s one in 31. Not 31,000, 31,” Trump said. 

In reality, about one in 36 children aged 8 years old have been identified with autism spectrum disorder, according to the CDC. That’s an increase from 2000, when only one in 150 children born in 1992 were diagnosed with autism.

Sitting only a few seats away from the president was Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent figure in the anti-vaccine movement, who used the one-in-10,000 statistic during his Senate confirmation hearings. It’s entirely unclear where he got this number, but Trump has since repeated it multiple times. 

“That is horrible—that’s a horrible statistic, isn’t it? And there’s gotta be something artificial out there that’s doing it,” Trump continued, turning to Kennedy. 

“So you think you’re gonna have a pretty good idea, huh?” Trump asked. 

“We will know by September,” Kennedy replied. 

“There will be no bigger news conference than that, so that’s it. If you can come up with that answer: where you stop taking something, you stop eating something, or maybe it’s a shot. But something’s causing it,” Trump said. 

Kennedy has previously claimed that autism comes from vaccines, and it seems that the president has officially bought in—or is at least open to the possibility. Trump’s newest comment comes months after a leaked phone call with Kennedy in July, where the president could be heard tying vaccines to autism. 

Meanwhile, experts have attributed some of the rise in autism diagnoses to a widening definition of autism spectrum disorder, which encapsulates a broader range of symptoms, as well as people being more aware of and willing to get diagnostic testing, according to ABC News.  

While Kennedy claimed he has “never been anti-vaxx,” he has spent his first two months in office pushing alternative, unproven medicines amid a deadly national measles outbreak. Last month, Kennedy suggested that contracting measles had more long-term health benefits than getting the measles vaccine, which he falsely claimed could cause all the same illnesses associated with measles.