Trump’s One Weird Trick to Wreck the Economy

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday described a “curious balance” in the labor market, in which both supply and demand have sunk “sharply,” thanks to President Donald Trump’s immigration policies and potentially his tariffs.

Asked whether tariffs have created the weakened U.S. job market, Powell said that is “certainly possible.” But while trade policy “may” be affecting the labor market, Powell said, “the change in immigration” is the primary reason “employment is doing what it’s doing.” The change, of course, being Trump’s disruptive mass deportation campaign, which has dramatically decreased the supply of workers.

Amid this decrease in supply, Powell added, “demand for workers has also come down quite sharply,” leading to a “curious balance,” he said, repeating a term he used in a speech last month. “Typically when we say things are in balance that sounds good,” he added. “But in this case, the balance is because both supply and demand have come down quite sharply.”

The situation Powell described, some observers noted, resembles stagflation—the dreaded combination of stagnant economic growth, rising prices, and high unemployment. “‘Curious balance’ … Say the S word Jay,” tweeted Kevin Green, a markets correspondent at the Schwab Network, alongside a crying-laughing emoji.

At least eight members of the military have been punished for comments made in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death, and dozens more have been doxed and reported.

Task and Purpose reports that at least five Army officers and one Air Force sergeant have been suspended, one Marine was fired from his recruitment job for posting a meme of Kirk captioned, “Another racist man popped,” and one Army reserve major is under investigation.

“The Department of War maintains a zero-tolerance policy for military personnel or DOW civilians who celebrate or mock the assassination of Charlie Kirk,” the Pentagon posted from its rapid response account last Friday on X.

Even so, it won’t be as simple to just fire soldiers for posting things that don’t align with the current administration’s politics as the Pentagon is making it out to be.

“People who join the military have less First Amendment rights than those who don’t, but they still have robust First Amendment rights,” former military colonel, judge, and prosecutor Don Christensen told CNN. He went on to note that nothing says, “Pete Hegseth doesn’t like what you’re saying so I’m going to prosecute you.”

“You can’t just say out of the blue, ‘If you say something on social media about Charlie Kirk that Pete Hegseth doesn’t like, that’s a crime,’” Christensen continued.

While that may be true, it’s likely that the Pentagon’s gag order has already had the desired chilling effect.

House Republicans wouldn’t even let their Democratic colleague finish reading a motion to subpoena Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Wednesday for information about alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.

During Kash Patel’s House Judiciary Committee hearing earlier, the FBI director repeatedly deferred Representative Mary Gay Scanlon’s questions about $1.5 billion in suspicious transactions, which major banks had flagged to the government related to Epstein and his alleged collaborators, to the Treasury Department.

After the hearing, Scanlon attempted to introduce a motion to subpoena Bessent to produce the suspicious activity reports—but her Republican colleague Tom McClintock wouldn’t even let her get the words out.

Scanlon said she was seeking reports “in the possession of the Treasury Department identifying the roughly $1.5 billion in suspicious transactions—”

“Uh, Mr. Chairman?” McClintock interjected.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan then recognized McClintock, who made a motion to table Scanlon’s request. Jordan replied that the motion was “not debatable.”

“I didn’t finish,” Scanlon said.

“She hadn’t completed the motion,” said Representative Jamie Raskin. “It’s improper to cut it off before it’s completed, Mr. Chairman.”

Jordan said she could finish her last sentence.

“OK, so we’re asking them to identify the roughly $1.5 billion in suspicious transactions related to the sex trafficking crimes of Epstein, Maxwell, and their co-conspirators—” Scanlon continued, before being interrupted by McClintock yet again.

This time, Jordan moved straight to vote on McClintock’s motion to table, and Republicans promptly squashed her attempt to call Bessent in.

Scanlon wrote on X that her Republican colleagues had “voted for continuing the cover-up.”

McClintock also moved to table Representative Jasmine Crockett’s motion to subpoena the head of the Bureau of Prisons to produce records relating to Maxwell’s transfer, and Representative Eric Swalwell’s motion to subpoena deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino for witness interviews.

The Trump administration is taking its recent assault on alleged drug boats from Venezuela very seriously—not.

Recalling a recent conversation he had with War Department Secretary Pete Hegseth about the unprovoked air strikes in the Caribbean, Vice President JD Vance joked Wednesday that he “wouldn’t go fishing right now in that part of the world.”

So far this month, the United States has destroyed two small Venezuelan boats traversing international waters, which Trump administration officials deemed—without an investigation or interdiction—were smuggling drugs.

The first attack killed 11 people on September 2, while a second attack on September 15 killed an additional three individuals, according to Donald Trump.

Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, said that the Trump administration had violated U.S. and international laws by striking the boats. He condemned the attacks as a “heinous crime” and also suggested that the strikes were an attempt to goad Venezuela into a “major war.”

In a rare interview, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil told CNN last week that the nation is not looking for a military confrontation with the U.S.

“We are not betting on conflict, nor do we want conflict,” Gil told the network.

Another incident late last week, in which the U.S. military “illegally and hostilely” detained another boat off the coast of a Venezuelan island, further intensified relations between the two countries.

In a statement, Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry said that the U.S. was “looking for an incident to justify escalating war in the Caribbean, with the aim of regime change” in Venezuela. It further demanded that the U.S. “immediately cease these actions that endanger security and peace in the Caribbean.”

But the White House is apparently not looking to deescalate the situation. Instead, Trump and Vance have openly boasted about the unconstitutional killings. On Monday, Trump publicized that the second attack was on his orders, while promising to continue the “hunt,” and Vance has claimed that the needless deaths were the “highest and best use of our military.”

When a political commentator noted that killing citizens of another country without due process is a war crime, Vance simply retorted, “I don’t give a shit what you call it.”

Some Republicans back at home, meanwhile, have not been impressed by the aggressive international display. In an interview last week, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul told Fox News that he felt compelled to address the attacks, underscoring that not every ship sailing in the Caribbean is smuggling drugs.

“The reason we board them before we blow the crap out of them is some of them don’t have drugs,” Paul said.

Paul additionally lamented that the Trump administration was involving itself in affairs thousands of miles off U.S. coastlines, and expending federal resources on the lowest echelons of the global drug trade.

Representative Nancy Mace’s crusade against Representative Ilhan Omar has dredged up an old, Islamaphobic rumor.

The pair were going back and forth on X Wednesday, ahead of a scheduled floor debate over Omar’s potential censure, and Mace referred to the Minnesota lawmaker as “Somalia Ilhan Omar.”

“Is your ridiculous censure about me being born in Somalia? Because that’s just as crazy as you are,” wrote Omar.

But then Mace reached for the top shelf to offend her colleague.

“Who knows, maybe it’ll be about you marrying your brother next!” Mace responded. “Tune in!”

MAGA conservatives have rumbled for years—without evidence—that Omar married her brother to bring him into the United States. The conspiracy first emerged during Omar’s 2016 campaign for the Minnesota state legislature, in a since-deleted post on the conservative blog Power Line, where an anonymous source was quoted as saying that Omar’s ex-husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, was related to her by blood.

Omar has vehemently and repeatedly denied the unfounded allegations, which have been disproven by her marriage certificate. At the time, Omar described the insinuation that she had married her brother to be “absurd and offensive.”

But that hasn’t stopped Mace from digging the details back up. Over the last week, Mace has advocated stripping Omar of her committee assignments and censuring her, and has publicly suggested that Omar should be deported back to Somalia for having allegedly “smeared Charlie Kirk and implied he was to blame for his own murder” during an interview with Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan.

Clips from that interview were similarly picked up by far-right personalities, who claimed that Omar had said Kirk deserved to die. But that’s not accurate.

“No one said he deserved to die. Ilhan Omar said the exact opposite to me,” Hasan wrote on X. “She condemned his killing. And she said her heart goes out to Kirk’s widow.”

Omar also pushed back against Mace, arguing that she never made the comments that Mace was attempting to silence her for.

“Her [resolution] does not contain a single quote from me because she couldn’t find any,” Omar said. “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.”

Even other Republicans didn’t appear to galvanize behind Mace’s cause, apparently wiping their hands of the South Carolinian’s vendetta.

“It just seems like every week or so we want to censure somebody for something,” Texas Representative Troy Nehls told Fox News’s Chad Pergram on Tuesday. “A lot of people say a lot of stupid stuff around here.”

Ironically, Mace’s mudslinging comes just days after she insisted that she never bad-mouthed her Democratic colleagues.