Trump’s Tariffs Give CEOs New Ways to Swindle Americans

America’s business class is openly admitting to using the president’s tariffs as “great cover” for its rising prices.

A report published Tuesday by the Groundwork Collaborative found that executives were, in their own words, taking advantage of Donald Trump’s unstable tariff policies to jack up the price tags on consumer goods. Analyzing earnings calls from major corporations in the first half of 2025, Groundwork found executives admitted that they intended to raise costs even if they were not affected by the administration’s economic agenda.

The CEO of auto parts manufacturer Holley, Matthew Stevenson, reportedly said that the marketplace had showcased “price increases well in excess of what we put out into the market.” He noted that “we’ve seen increases as high as 30 percent or more on some categories from some competitors.”

Aaron Jagdfeld, the CEO of generator manufacturer Generac Power Systems, claimed 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.”

In their first quarter, the world’s largest wholesale distributor of pool supplies, POOLCORP, reported to their shareholders that they “expect that currently announced tariffs will positively impact net sales by approximately 1 [percent] based on vendor price increases to-date.”

Thomas Robertson, the CFO of footwear company Rocky Brands, said that “regardless” of whether Trump relaxed his tariffs on China, his company intended to keep its high prices.

“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,” Robertson said, according to the Groundwork Collaborative.

In the end, it will be America that pays the price for Trump’s chaotic trade blitz. Earlier this month, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said that the central bank likely would have lowered its key interest rate if Trump hadn’t announced his tariff plan. Trump’s tariffs are slated to go into effect for more than 80 countries on August 1.

But at least 71 percent of consumer goods in the U.S. are already grappling with the new trade policy, according to a report published Monday by the Tax Foundation that suggested that everything from manufacturing to food imports could be squeezed by Trump’s agenda.

Public perception of Israel has plummeted to a new low in the United States, particularly among Democrats. And yet the party continues to cut the country a blank check to carry out its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, lagging sorely behind its voter base on the issue.

A new poll from Gallup, conducted in July, shows that only 32 percent of Americans approve of Israel’s “military action taken in Gaza,” down 10 percentage points since last September. Among Democrats, only 8 percent support Israel’s actions, the lowest approval rating to date. Compare that to 25 percent of independents and a robust 71 percent of Republicans.

The poll also saw Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu receive a negative rating from the majority of Americans for the first time since 1997, with only 29 percent of the country viewing him positively.

These numbers reflect a new reality in U.S.-Israel relations, and the Democratic Party must act accordingly if it wants to be successful. As New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani showed, mindless capitulation to Israel is no longer a prerequisite for Democratic voters. If party leadership was actually in touch with its base, it’d be baking aid to Gaza and funding cuts to the Israeli military into the foundation of its campaigns. Only time will tell if they’ll wake up and capitalize.

Republicans across the country are working hard to pass bills banning something that the fringe corners of the internet told them to be afraid of: weather modification.

Weather modification refers to geoengineering processes such as solar radiation modification and cloud-seeding that are used to counter the effects of global warming and drought, respectively. These processes have been woven into right-wing conspiracy theories that the government is able to control the weather, and MAGA lawmakers—fearful that the Democrats could rule the heavens and summon a deluge to wipe them out—have started to take action.

Republican lawmakers in nearly 20 states have introduced legislation to prevent weather modification. Some of the laws allude to “chemtrails,” a conspiracy theory that planes aren’t leaving “contrails” of condensation in the atmosphere but are spreading chemicals on an unsuspecting public. In two states, Florida and Tennessee, those bills have passed and been signed into law.

In July, right-wing concerns about weather modification reached a new fever pitch.

Earlier this month, Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin announced an effort to “compile everything we know about contrails and geoengineering” and release it to the public.

Days later, Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tim Burchett introduced the Clear Skies Act, a bill that would levy steep penalties for anyone who “knowingly conducts weather modification,” including geoengineering, cloud seeding, solar radiation modification, and the release of aerosol to “influence temperature, precipitation, or the intensity of sunlight.”

After Hurricane Helene struck the southeast United States in October, Greene boosted the right-wing conspiracy theory that the Biden administration had used weather manipulation to target Republican areas ahead of the U.S. general election. “Yes they can control the weather,” Greene wrote in a post on X at the time. “It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”

The theory of weather control is not only outrageously anti-science but based on an explicitly antisemitic conspiracy theory—though that’s something Greene has never shied away from in the past. In fact, she added to the conspiracy theory with her now-infamous “Jewish space lasers” comment.

Greene isn’t actually worried about manmade impact on the environment; after all, she’s got no problems with fossil fuels. Rather, she’s latched onto conspiracy theories about how weather can be controlled by those in power. Meanwhile, Greene said she saw a kind of “funny hypocrisy” from the environmentalists who oppose pollution but not weather manipulation.

In interviews, Greene and Burchett said that the impetus for their legislation was concerns of constituents. Burchett admitted that the issue “was in the realm of the conspiracy theorists” but had “taken on a little bit more mainstream.”

“You have one group that says it’s real, and the other group says, ‘You’re a lunatic,’ that it doesn’t exist,” he said.

“If it doesn’t exist,” Burchett added, “then you don’t have anything to worry about.”

While weather modification does exist, it can’t be weaponized as Greene has implied. Several states have programs for cloud seeding—a decades-old technology that helps to induce rain—including California, Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, and North Dakota.

As the horrors induced by Israel in Gaza elicit increasing international outcry, French President Emmanual Macron announced last week that France will recognize the state of Palestine. The U.K. on Tuesday decided it will also recognize Palestinian statehood, unless Israel takes certain steps to improve conditions in Gaza.

France’s decision has been criticized by U.S. officials. But it’s what international law demands, said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday: “Statehood for the Palestinians is a right, not a reward.”

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has a more hysterical take.

Huckabee told Fox News Tuesday that the “very foolish” move would embolden Hamas (an extremely arguable assumption) and therefore “be like letting the Nazis have a victory after World War II.”

The former Arkansas governor and Fox News host is a frequent purveyor of outrageous Nazi analogies.

Recently, he’s trotted out such comparisons most often in relation to Hamas. In May, he made the mind-boggling suggestion that Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack was in ways worse than the Holocaust, telling NPR that “Israel had people murdered in the most vicious, horrible way that we’ve seen, and—I wanted to say, since the Holocaust, but, in all candor, as awful as the crimes were in the Holocaust, they weren’t worse, and, in some cases, they weren’t as malicious.”

Huckabee’s penchant for frivolous Nazi comparisons goes back years. In 2015, he likened Obama’s Iran nuclear deal to “marching the Israelis to the door of the oven.” Search earlier still, and you’ll find out that plenty more has brought Nazism to Huckabee’s mind—be it abortions, gay marriage, or gun control.

The current leaders of the FBI have “no idea what they’re doing,” according to outgoing employees.

The federal investigative agency is undergoing a “radical deprofessionalization,” with a growing emphasis on ideological loyalty to the Trump administration over a responsibility to serve the public, reported The Atlantic Tuesday. No longer is competence a key priority for new recruits.

Michael Feinberg, who left the bureau in June after 15 years, claimed he was denied a promotion after he decided to maintain ties with his former colleague Peter Strzok. Strzok was fired from the FBI during Donald Trump’s first term for sending text messages that allegedly disparaged the MAGA leader, landing him on FBI Director Kash Patel’s notorious enemies list.

Moving up in the agency, according to Feinberg, was practically a done deal. Feinberg, who had been serving as the acting assistant special agent in charge at the FBI’s Norfolk field office, was already preparing to move to the FBI’s headquarters in Washington in anticipation of the promotion. But the newly installed Special Agent in Charge Dominique Evans put a pin on that on May 31. Over a series of phone calls, Evans revealed that FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino had left Feinberg with two options: get demoted or resign, he recalled in a personal essay published earlier this month to LawFare. Feinberg chose the latter—five years before he was eligible for retirement and a pension.

“Furthermore, she told me, I would be asked to submit to a polygraph exam probing the nature of my friendship with Pete, and (as I was quietly informed by another, friendlier senior employee) what could only be described as a latter-day struggle session,” Feinberg wrote. “I would be expected to grovel, beg forgiveness, and pledge loyalty as part of the FBI’s cultural revolution brought about by Patel and Bongino’s accession to the highest echelons of American law enforcement and intelligence.”

Feinberg is not the typecast, anti-Trump type so loathed by MAGA circles. He graduated from Northwestern Law School in 2004, where he was the vice president of the school’s Federalist Society chapter. He considers himself a conservative, aligning with the political theory of philosopher Edmund Burke, according to The Atlantic. He joined the FBI in 2009 to help “protect both United States interests in the world and the rule of law on the domestic front,” he told the magazine.

“They get a kick out of playing dress-up and acting tough,” Feinberg told The Atlantic. “But they actually have no idea what they’re doing.”