Politics

Federal judges are, by and large, a cautious lot, not given to dramatic public pronouncements or calling attention to themselves. But now that the judiciary is under a sustained attack from the Trump administration and allies, some judges are speaking out.  During a Thursday webinar presented by the newly formed Speak Up for Justice, a nonpartisan group working to defend the judiciary, a couple of lower court judges were forthright about the threats they’ve faced after ruling against the Trump administration.  U.S. District Court Judge John McConnell, an Obama appointee, revealed that, after blocking President Donald Trump’s catastrophic funding freeze, he received 6 credible death threats, along with more than 400 threatening voicemails.  He played one during the webinar, with the caller saying, “How dare you try to put charges on Donald J. Trump,” and, “I wish somebody would fucking assassinate your ass.”  A cartoon by Clay Bennett. Similarly, after U.S. District Court Judge John Coughenour blocked Trump’s birthright citizenship ban, he was swatted as a result of someone anonymously telling the police that Coughenour killed his wife.  From the bench, Coughenour has been forthright about Trump’s actions.  “It has become ever more apparent that, to our president, the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals. The rule of law is, according to him, something to navigate around or simply ignore, whether that be for political or personal gain,” he told Justice Department lawyers. Yes, much of this stems from the Trump administration’s near-constant attacks on judges, often whipped up by Trump personally. There’s also the willingness of congressional Republicans to go along with it, including some of Trump’s more ardent supporters introducing bills calling for the impeachment of judges who rule against him.  But the Supreme Court, particularly Chief Justice John Roberts, is also at fault.  Rather than squarely addressing the fact that these threats overwhelmingly come from the right and are driven by the president, Roberts has instead offered vague, anodyne statements.  “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” he said in one statement.  Yes, that’s all Roberts had to say after Trump personally called for the impeachment of U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who ordered the Trump administration to return the planes of deportees heading to El Salvador—an order the administration defied.  Related | Supreme Court cleared the way for Trump’s war on homeless people The Trump administration has now filed a misconduct complaint against Boasberg for private comments to his judicial colleagues, in which he expressed concern about the administration defying court orders.  The problem isn’t just that Roberts is wishy-washy about these threats, speaking about them without ever mentioning Trump by name or acknowledging that his actions are the foundation for the attacks. But he has also joined the other conservatives on the Supreme Court to give Trump whatever he wants, constantly overturning lower court rulings.  These days, separation of powers is indeed for suckers.  

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jonathan Capehart on Thursday called out The Washington Post’s shifting editorial focus when explaining his decision to leave the paper. While guest-hosting “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” on Thursday, Capehart alluded to Post owner Jeff Bezos’ February directive that the editorial section stop publishing pieces critical of traditionally conservative principles like “free markets.” Capehart also cited the paper’s new editorial head’s edict that the section “communicate with optimism about the country in particular and the future in general.” “How can we communicate with optimism about the future in general when we’re living in the here and now, where American democracy is in peril?” Capehart said. “Unapologetic patriotism is incomplete if it doesn’t allow for a mirror to be held up to America, her people, and her president—to hold them all accountable when they have strayed from her founding principles.”  After detailing the Trump administration’s various abuses of power—such as deploying troops in Los Angeles—Capehart continued, “And we’re supposed to ignore it, leave it to others to wrestle with on their news pages and websites? No, no, no, no, no. The Constitution gives us the inherent, unapologetically patriotic right to rail against such affronts to democracy and the rule of law, and the First Amendment demands it.” YouTube Video Capehart joins at least 100 journalists and staffers who have resigned or taken buyouts since November, according to a list compiled by Politico. Shortly before the 2024 presidential election, Bezos killed the Post’s endorsement of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. The Post continues to bleed both subscribers and talent as Bezos further prostrates himself before Trump, revealing his utter lack of principles.

Friday’s jobs report should send a chill through every American’s spine, as it showed that job growth in the United States was virtually nonexistent over the last three months—a direct consequence of the chaos President Donald Trump created with his nonsensical tariff policy. The U.S. economy added just 73,000 jobs in July, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced, missing forecasters’ already measly expectations of 110,000 jobs.  Datawrapper Content But even more troubling is that BLS revised down the previous two jobs reports by an eye-popping 253,000 jobs, saying that just 19,000 jobs were added in June and 14,000 added in May. That makes the last three jobs reports the weakest since the anomaly of the COVID-19 crisis. Not taking the COVID-19 months into account, this was the worst three consecutive months for job creation since 2010 and the aftermath of the Great Recession. “This labor market is in trouble,” Navy Federal Credit Union Chief Economist Heather Long wrote in a post on X. “Healthcare [and] social assistance are pretty much the only sectors hiring. This is NOT healthy.” Indeed, without job growth in the health care and social assistance sectors, job growth over the last three months would actually have been negative, as industries such as manufacturing, mining, trade, professional and business services, and government all lost jobs. “The weakest periods of job growth in the last decade all happened under Trump,” Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee wrote in a post on X. It’s just the latest report released this week that shows the U.S. economy is in trouble. On Thursday, the Commerce Department announced that inflation is up, especially in industries hit by Trump’s nonsensical tariffs. Meanwhile, the GDP report showed that the economy stagnated in the first half of the year. “We came into this week and we said it was a pivotal week for the economy. And I gotta say—indicator after indicator has turned out worse than expected,” Matt Egan at CNN reported. “Core GDP really showed that the U.S. economy slowed down during Q2. Yesterday’s inflation report—that heated up.” Even worse for this entire situation is that Trump announced MORE stupid tariffs on dozens of U.S. trading partners on Thursday night, including a massive 35% levy on Canadian imports. But don’t worry, Trump is laser-focused on ways to add jobs. The $200 million hideously ostentatious ballroom he’s adding to the White House will add a few construction jobs, right?  As Marie Antoinette is rumored to have said to the starving peasants of France, “Let them eat cake!”

A cartoon by Mike Luckovich. Related | New poll finds Trump in hot water over Epstein scandal

The stock market is once again in free fall, after President Donald Trump announced a new round of tariffs on imports from dozens of countries and a new report showed that job growth has been virtually nonexistent over the last three months. For months, Wall Street investors have buried their heads in the sand and continued to make the markets climb, both banking on their belief that Trump would chicken out on his tariffs and that the economic data wasn’t showing the armageddon economists had predicted was coming. Yet that hope crashed into reality this week, as Trump implemented new ridiculous tariffs, and economic data—including a stagnating jobs market and rising inflation—finally showed the damage that had long been predicted. As of publishing time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had fallen more than 400 points, and the S&P 500 lost nearly 1.5% of its value. “Today’s release is best characterized as ‘bad news is bad news’ in our view. With job creation at stall speed levels and the tariff headwind lying ahead, there’s a strong possibility of a negative payroll print in the coming months which may conjure up fears of a recession,” Jeffrey Schulze, head of economic and market strategy at ClearBridge Investments, told CNBC. As for the tariffs, which will now go into effect as of Aug. 7, the most damaging is a 35% tariff on imports from Canada, America’s third-largest trading partner that supplies critical goods like crude oil, fertilizer ingredients that are necessary for U.S. farmers, and lumber. Those tariffs will make it more expensive for Americans to heat and build homes, as well as purchase produce.  As the economy falters, Democrats are slamming Trump and his GOP enablers. “Today’s jobs report is a stark warning for America’s economy. With unemployment rising and costs skyrocketing, working families across the country are left paying the price for Trump and Republicans’ reckless tariffs and economic chaos,” former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote in a post on X. Related | New jobs numbers hint at Great Recession 2.0 Other Democrats were quick to point out that the only sector adding jobs is health care—but that too is about to take a massive hit as Trump and the GOP’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” kicks in and makes massive cuts to Medicaid.  “An incredibly bad jobs report in which most of the jobs added in July were in health care—an industry soon to be decimated by Trump’s Big, Ugly Bill. But don’t worry, he’s putting in a $200M ballroom at the White House,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) wrote in a post on X. Meanwhile, GOP lawmakers are virtually silent, unable to polish the turd that was the July jobs report. “Trust in Trump,” Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX) declared in a post on X.  Given that Trump is directly responsible for the economic decline, we’ll take a pass on that one. Instead, they are parroting Dear Leader and blaming the bad data on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. “Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell needs to quit playing games and lower the rate!” Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) wrote in a post on X. But at the end of the day, lowering rates can only do so much when businesses are being crippled by idiotic tariffs, forcing them to either raise prices on consumers—which many are doing—or cut jobs to make up for the hits to their profit margins. Trump should change his slogan to Make America go through a Great Recession Again.

PoliticusUSA is independent media that you can rely on. Please support our work by becoming a subscriber. Subscribe now The Trump administration loves to refer to itself as the most transparent administration in history. A good rule of thumb for the American people is that when a presidential administration continually refers to itself as transparent, they are most likely hiding lots and lots of things. Such seems to be the case with the Trump administration. Bloomberg reported on how any mention of Trump has been redacted from the Epstein files: While reviewing the Epstein files, FBI personnel identified numerous references to Trump in the documents, the people familiar with the matter told me. Dozens of other high-profile public figures also appeared, the people said. (The appearance of Trump’s name or others in the Epstein files is not evidence of a crime or even a suggestion of wrongdoing.) In preparation for potential public release, the documents then went to a unit of FOIA officers who applied redactions in accordance with the nine exemptions. The people familiar with the matter said that Trump’s name, along with other high-profile individuals, was blacked out because he was a private citizen when the federal investigation of Epstein was launched in 2006. … A White House spokesperson would not respond to questions about the redactions of Trump’s name, instead referring questions to the FBI. The FBI declined to comment. The Justice Department did not respond to multiple requests for comment. PoliticusUSA is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. The only way that Trump’s name will ever be unredacted from the Epstein files is if he signs a privacy waiver allowing his name to appear in the public release of the documents. The Trump administration appears to be doing everything in its power to block the release of the files, so before the issue of getting Trump’s name made public can be addressed, the documents will have to be publicly released. If Trump is as innocent as he claims to be, none of this looks good. If Trump has nothing to hide, he could allow his name to be used and protect the privacy of people who appear in the files. Donald Trump’s entire political career has been about hiding secrets, so it is no surprise that so many Americans think that he is hiding something involving his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. The questions and suspicion will only grow until the American people can see Trump’s name in the files. What do you think about Trump’s name being redacted in the Epstein files? Share your thoughts in the comments below. Leave a comment

A cartoon by Clay Bennett. Related | Trump goons take another step toward creating a secret police force

Joan Walsh Donald Trump said this week that a known Epstein victim was one of the people “stolen” from Mar-a-Lago by the convicted sex offender. Could Trump have known what would happen to her? The post Did Trump Know What Epstein “Stole” Virginia Giuffre For? appeared first on The Nation.

Gia Ruiz America voted against itself. The post Condoning Wrongdoing appeared first on The Nation.

Harrison Stetler But even the ad world isn’t immune to the groundswell of climate organizing. The post How Fossil Fuel Mad Men Have Aided and Abetted the Industry’s Climate Denial appeared first on The Nation.