Trump’s Economy Breaks New Record With Surge in Layoffs

It’s month 10 of President Trump’s second term, and layoffs are the highest they’ve been in more than 20 years.

A Thursday report from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas shows job cuts last month increased by more than 153,000, up 175 percent from October of last year. In total, companies have announced more than one million job cuts in 2025, up 65 percent from the same time period last year. This was the worst October since 2003.

“This is the highest total for October in over 20 years, and the highest total for a single month in the fourth quarter since 2008. Like in 2003, a disruptive technology is changing the landscape,” the report said. “Technology continues to lead in private-sector job cuts as companies restructure amid AI integration, slower demand, and efficiency pressures.” Retail, warehousing, media, and nonprofits have also been impacted sectors.

These numbers come from an independent source as the Labor Department’s September and October jobs reports will remain unreleased in the midst of the ongoing government shutdown.

Yet while workers across the country deal with rising costs and struggle to find new work, President Trump and the GOP tout affordability and the return of the domestic economy.

The government shutdown has entered day 36, making it the longest shutdown in U.S. history—but Congress seems further than ever from coming to a resolution to end it.

That’s in large part thanks to Donald Trump’s public panicking over the blue wave that swept elections across the country Tuesday night.

PBS NewsHour correspondent Lisa Desjardins reported Wednesday that Democrats had been considering a “vague deal” with Republicans until the president began to buckle. So far, symptoms of his desperation include: threatening to close U.S. airspace, directing Republicans to kill the Senate’s long-cherished filibuster, and openly suggesting that Republicans’ nationwide election losses were the result of the ongoing shutdown.

“If you read the pollsters, the shutdown was a big factor, negative for the Republicans,” Trump told Senate Republicans at the White House Wednesday morning. “Last night, it was not expected to be a victory, it was very Democrat areas. I don’t think it was good for Republicans. I don’t think it was good for anybody.”

Congress’s failure to extend funding has crumbled SNAP benefits for millions of Americans and lapsed Obamacare subsidies, forcing tens of thousands of Americans to forgo their health insurance as their premiums skyrocket.

Yet Trump is continuing to live his billionaire lifestyle at taxpayers’ expense. While low-income Americans starve, Trump has opted to remodel the White House, transforming historic spaces such as the Lincoln bathroom into a gaudy, marble-plastered, Mar-a-Lago lookalike. The president is also pushing forward with plans to erect a $300 million ballroom on the fresh grave of the White House East Wing. But he’s not the only one blowing cash: FBI Director Kash Patel was caught last week using the bureau’s multimillion-dollar jet to ferry his girlfriend from state to state.

Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy told NewsHour that there’s an “unmistakable consensus” among Democrats that lawmakers should use this moment to stand up to Trump.

“I think last night’s results are having an impact,” Murphy said.

The Heritage Foundation’s Kevin Roberts is walking back his defense of Tucker Carlson.

Carlson caused a major stir on the right last week when he decided to interview Nick Fuentes, a known white supremacist and Hitler fan. The interview was immediately flamed by conservative Jews, who condemned the ex–Fox News host’s decision to elevate Fuentes’s talking points.

Despite the opposition, Roberts released a video on X Thursday in support of Carlson and Fuentes, noting that while he disagreed with Fuentes’s beliefs, he did not believe that the “venomous” coalition “cancelling” the Christian nationalist Holocaust-denier had an appropriate reaction to the interview.

Since then, the Heritage Foundation has been embroiled in internal controversy, with at least one staffer exiting the institution over the mess. Roberts addressed the schism Wednesday.

“I made a mistake and I let you down and I let down this institution. Period. Full Stop,” the conservative think tank’s president told employees at an all-staff meeting, according to The Washington Free Beacon.

Roberts called the assembly to explain how his response to Carlson’s interview came to be in a moment when he felt the Heritage Foundation was under pressure to “make a statement” that would cast Carlson out from the conservative movement.

“This is an explanation, not an excuse,” he said, apologizing for his use of the phrase “venomous coalition,” calling it a “terrible choice of words, especially for our Jewish colleagues and friends.”

Carlson’s interview with Fuentes gave the fringe influencer a chance to swim in the MAGA mainstream. The interview has since come under fire from several corners of the Republican Party, highlighting that the former primetime TV host threw the antisemite a string of softball questions while failing to challenge Fuentes’s radical and violent beliefs.

Interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan’s case against former FBI Director James Comey is coming apart at the seams.

During a hearing Wednesday, Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick raised concerns about the Department of Justice’s handling of evidence against Comey, Politico reported Wednesday. Specifically, Fitzpatrick took issue with how prosecutors handled materials via warrants initially issued in 2019 and 2020 against Comey associate Daniel Richman. The FBI probe into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election first came under scrutiny in those years.

Comey’s attorneys had argued that because Richman was previously Comey’s lawyer, some of the material Halligan used to personally secure his two-count criminal indictment may have potentially been subject to attorney-client privilege.

Fitzpatrick warned the DOJ that using privileged information could have dire consequences for the prosecution’s “highly unusual” case, but said they could continue to use materials they believed were fair game “at their own risk,” Politico reported.

Fitzpatrick ordered the DOJ to hand over all of its search warrant materials to Comey’s attorneys by Thursday, along with the complete records of the grand jury proceedings that led to his indictment, for the purpose of determining if any privileged information was used to secure the charges.

“They’re entitled to this information quickly,” Fitzpatrick said, according to Politico.

Tyler Lemons, an assistant U.S. attorney from North Carolina who is assisting Halligan with the case, said that his investigators had come to a screeching halt when they came across materials that appeared to be privileged, and that the files were now “isolated on a desk in FBI headquarters.”

Fitzpatrick’s request for the full grand jury proceedings to be turned over to Comey comes just one day after another order, issued by U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, for Halligan to turn over a complete record of grand jury proceedings. She had initially submitted only a partial report that did not include her jury instructions or presentation.

Crucially, Halligan’s jury instructions could be of interest to Comey’s legal team. While a prosecutor doesn’t have to dazzle in their delivery of jury instructions, they can’t present claims that are factually incorrect. If Halligan—a first-time U.S. attorney with no prior prosecutorial experience who presented the government’s case seemingly without the help of any assistant U.S. attorneys—elided the truth in her jury instructions, the case could be dismissed. Her failure to promptly turn over a record of her instructions, when paired with warnings from prosecutors that she did not have the evidence necessary to indict Comey, leaves open the possibility that this could be the case.

In a speech Wednesday morning, New York City’s next Mayor Zohran Mamdani warned Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents against violating the law.

Mamdani’s speech at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens was to announce his transition team, but he also stressed accountability for the federal law enforcement agents carrying out President Trump’s draconian immigration policies, which have resulted in violent raids and abuses.

“My message to ICE agents and to everyone across this city is that everyone will be held to the same standard of the law. If you violate the law, you must be held accountable,” Mamdani said. “And there is sadly a sense that is growing across this country that certain people are allowed to violate that law, whether they be the president or whether they be the agents themselves.”

That message is in sharp contrast to that of the current mayor, Eric Adams, who has been openly cooperating with the Trump administration on immigration, as the Department of Justice kindly dropped its corruption case against him. Mamdani openly embraced immigrants in his campaign for mayor, visiting communities across the city and putting out campaign videos in multiple languages.

That message clearly resonated with voters, and resulted in the highest turnout for a New York City mayoral election since 1969. Mamdani’s message Wednesday morning suggests that his administration will attempt to curtail ICE’s egregious actions in the city, which include interrogating children playing baseball and violently arresting people in immigration court. That message also seems to have the support of the people of New York.