In Wake of Trump Tariffs, John Deere Announces Mass Layoffs

John Deere has been hit hard by President Donald Trump’s tariffs. The farm equipment manufacturer and industry bellwether just announced mass layoffs affecting more than 200 workers at three Midwestern plants.

The company is set to fire 115 employees at a facility in East Moline, Illinois, later this month, according to the Des Moines Register. Next month, 52 workers at a facility in Moline, Illinois, and 71 employees at a facility in Waterloo, Iowa, will also reportedly be terminated.

“As stated on our most recent earnings call, the struggling ag economy continues to impact orders for John Deere equipment,” said the company in a statement, per Illinois Public Media. “This is a challenging time for many farmers, growers and producers, and directly impacts our business in the near term.”

In that same earnings call, John Deere attributed a slowdown in Q3 sales to customer cautiousness amid Trump’s freewheeling tariff policy.

“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,” said John Deere executive Cory Reed.

“The primary drivers for the change from last quarter are increased tariff rates on Europe, India, and steel and aluminum,” said Josh Beal, the company’s director of investor relations.

Estimating that tariffs have already cost the company $300 million this year, Beal forecast a full-year tariff impact of nearly $600 million.

The news comes as evidence increasingly accumulates that ordinary Americans are shouldering the costs of the administration’s trade policy.

Texas is treating Democratic representatives like convicted felons for trying to stop the GOP’s illegal gerrymandering efforts.

Republican House Speaker Dustin Burrows is forcing every Democrat to stay with a state trooper at all times if they want to exit the House chamber, in response to their leaving Texas to protest Governor Greg Abbott’s redistricting efforts. The state legislature is set to return on Wednesday, but it’s unclear just how long Democrats will be followed home by law enforcement.

“The speaker announced, once quorum was restored, that the call of the House would remain, and any member that was out because of the quorum break would be required to sign a permission slip agreeing to be under the authority of [the Texas Department of Public Safety] in order to leave the Capitol. I refused,” Democratic Representative Nicole Collier told NPR’s Texas branch. “I refused to sign the permission slip to be able to leave the Capitol. I disagree with that authoritarian tactic that they have taken.”

Over 50 state Democrats left Texas two weeks ago in response to the Republican Party’s attempt to reshape voting districts to favor Republicans to gain more House seats in the 2026 midterms elections.

This is a blatantly unethical power grab, and the Texas GOP knows it, which is why it’s trying to hold Democrats hostage unless they have a police officer by their side. If this was happening in any other country, words like “authoritarian” or “draconian” would likely be used. Yet Texas Democrats are being forced to capitulate, scared to even leave the House floor to sleep in their homes.

Collier, meanwhile, has at least temporarily accepted her fate.

“I will have to stay here; I hadn’t really given [it] much thought. What matters to me is making sure I resist, and fight back, and push back. I’m sure I’ll fall asleep eventually, whether that’s in my chair or on the floor,” Collier continued, referring to her forced detainment in the House chamber.

Texas Democrats have already been threatened with arrest and expulsion. This State Trooper watch is yet another aggressive escalation by a state government that has cast basic democracy aside.

“This was my night, bonnet and all, in the #txlege,” Collier posted this morning, accompanied by a picture of her asleep in her House Chamber chair.

New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo needs a little push to regain his Cuo-mentum—and he’s hoping Donald Trump will give it to him, Politico’s New York Playbook reported Tuesday.

Speaking at a fundraiser in the Hamptons Saturday, the former New York governor said that he anticipates Trump and other top Republicans will direct support his way in an effort to stop New York Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, who trounced Cuomo’s Democratic primary efforts by double digits.

“We can minimize (the Sliwa) vote, because he’ll never be a serious candidate,” Cuomo said, referring to Curtis Sliwa, the 71-year-old, ever-bereted GOP candidate. “And Trump himself, as well as top Republicans, will say the goal is to stop Mamdani. And you’ll be wasting your vote on Sliwa. So I feel good about that.”

When asked by an attendee whether he or his team was in conversation with the White House, Cuomo was vague but not dismissive when he said, “Let’s put it this way: I knew the president very well.”

“I believe there’s a big piece of him that actually wants redemption in New York. He feels that he was rejected by New York. We voted for Hillary Clinton. Bill de Blasio took his name off things. So I believe there will be opportunities to actually cooperate with him,” Cuomo continued.

“I also believe that he’s not going to want to fight with me in New York if he can avoid it.”

But it was Cuomo who said that he was not “personally” looking to do battle with Trump and compared their relationship to a “dysfunctional marriage,” according to The New York Times.

Earlier this month, the Times reported that Cuomo had spoken with Trump about New York City’s mayoral race. Mamdani excoriated the reported call as a “betrayal” of the entire city. Cuomo denied that the conversation had taken place.

Cuomo also claimed that he would decline the president’s endorsement. But while rubbing elbows with the Hamptons’ wealthy donors, Cuomo seemed markedly less opposed to working with Trump—and even open to being part of his “redemption,” whatever that would mean.

Mamdani slammed Cuomo for courting Trump’s support. “At (another) Hampton’s fundraiser with Republican donors on Saturday, Andrew Cuomo said it plainly: he’s expecting Trump’s help to defeat us in November. ‘I feel good about that,’ Cuomo said. New Yorkers won’t,” Mamdani wrote Tuesday on X.

On Fox and Friends Tuesday morning, President Donald Trump somewhat clarified his murky plans for the Russia-Ukraine war, giving his word—notoriously fickle as it is— that there will be no U.S. troops on the ground.

Earlier in the week, the president met with EU leaders, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Trump had also met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska a few days before.

Trump on Monday couldn’t be pinned down on whether U.S. troops would be sent to aid Ukraine, merely stating that European countries would provide the “first line of defense” and “take a lot of the burden,” whereas the U.S. will “be involved” and provide “a lot of help.”

In his Tuesday morning Fox News appearance, he promised that there will be no American boots on the ground in Ukraine.

“Well, you have my assurance, you know, I’m president,” Trump said.

However, he added that European nations such as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom are willing to put “boots on the ground”—and claimed that they would not be acting as “a part of” NATO. “I don’t think it’s going to be a problem, to be honest with you,” the president said.

Trump also mentioned the possibility of providing U.S. air support to such European ground troops, saying, “We’re willing to help them with things, especially, probably, if you could talk about, by air.” He repeated that he doesn’t think this would “be a problem.”

It seems that, for now, Trump remains committed only to putting American boots on the ground in Democratic-run cities.

Representative Elise Stefanik was not well received when she returned to her district in upstate New York.

The congresswoman received a particularly hostile reception from her constituents during a ceremony in Plattsburg Monday evening. More than half of the attendees at the event, intended to mark the renaming of the Clinton County Government Center, were actually protesters, according to the local NBC affiliate NBC 5.

The crowd jeered at Stefanik both times she approached the podium, calling the staunch MAGA supporter a “traitor,” while others chanted, “Shame.”

“You sold us out,” cried one protester.

“You’re a Nazi,” shouted another.

Yet another protester yelled on repeat that Stefanik needed to “unseal the Epstein files.”

Stefanik chided the protesters, claiming that the renaming ceremony for her “dear friend” was the wrong time and place to attack her—but her constituents disagreed. Instead, they argued that Stefanik had been so absent in their district that they were left with no other choice.

“Well, Elise has not shown up in our district for months and months,” protester Mavis Agnew told NBC 5. “She won’t hold a town hall, she won’t take questions. She’s never in her office. People show up at her office constantly; door’s closed. Her representatives, her employees won’t talk to her.… So this was her first appearance, the first opportunity we had to let her know we’re unhappy.”

But Stefanik wasn’t willing to recognize that her support for Donald Trump’s agenda was the basis for her hometown hatred.

“It is a disgusting disgrace that this is what the far left does, rather than understanding that his family has been through a tremendous amount. It was about honoring his legacy,” Stefanik told NBC5 after the event, referring to John Zurlo, for whom the center was renamed.

Stefanik isn’t the only Trumpian legislator who has gotten scorched during the summer recess for voting against the needs of their constituents. Earlier this month, Nebraska Representative Mike Flood was excoriated during a town hall for failing to protect SNAP benefits, veterans’ programs, and health care access, which combined with voters’ simmering resentment for Flood’s lagging on the release of the Epstein files.