Politics

A cartoon by Clay Jones. Related | Musk’s anti-woke AI chatbot goes full Nazi—then gets shut off

President Donald Trump is reportedly going to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, a likely illegal move to end the bank’s independence and install a new chair who would carry out Trump’s demand for an insanely low 1% interest rate. According to a White House official, Trump met with a group of GOP lawmakers Tuesday night to discuss a crypto bill and whether he should fire Powell. “The president asked lawmakers how they felt about firing the Fed chair. They expressed approval for firing him. The president indicated he likely will soon,” the official said. Trump even showed the lawmakers a letter he drafted to fire Powell, according to The New York Times. One of the GOP lawmakers present was Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, who posted on X Tuesday night that Powell’s firing was “imminent.” Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell “Hearing Jerome Powell is getting fired! From a very serious source,” Luna wrote after her meeting with Trump, later adding, “I’m 99% sure firing is imminent.” And on Wednesday, other GOP lawmakers publicly egged on Trump to give Powell the axe. “Today’s a great day to fire Jerome Powell,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama wrote on X. But Trump, who has been railing on Powell for months, claimed on Wednesday that he isn’t firing him. “He’s doing a lousy job, but no, I’m not talking about that,” Trump told reporters. “Fortunately we get to make a change in the next, what, eight months and we’ll pick somebody that’s good.” And though Trump said that he hasn’t fully ruled out firing Powell, he added that it’s “highly unlikely” that he will. In yet another sign of his cognitive decline, Trump went on to tell reporters that he “was surprised he was appointed—surprised, frankly, that Biden put him in and extended him.” In actuality, it was Trump who appointed Powell in 2017. YouTube Video Banking experts say that if Trump does fire Powell, it will have devastating impacts for the economy. “We believe the market reaction would be large. The empirical and academic evidence on the impact of a loss of central bank independence is fairly clear: In extreme cases, both the currency and the bond market can collapse as inflation expectations move higher, real yields drop and broader risk premia increase on the back of institutional erosion,” Deutsche Bank head of FX research George Saravelos wrote in a memo. When Trump seemed likely to fire Powell in April, stock markets plummeted as investors panicked. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost nearly 1,000 points in a single day, and the S&P 500 and NASDAQ each lost nearly 2.5% of their value amid the reports. Related | Trump thinks insulting Fed chair will fix broken stock market—somehow The similar situation happened after news broke Wednesday that Trump is again considering firing Powell, who has said that he is not leaving and that firing him would be against the law. But Powell’s term expires in May 2026, at which point Trump will be able to choose his successor. Democrats, meanwhile, are questioning the timing of Trump’s latest outburst against Powell. “Trump is willing to destroy the independence of the Fed and tank bond markets if it would get you to stop talking about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein,” Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois wrote on X. We’ll see if it works.

The lights are on at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau across the street from the White House, and employees still get paid. But in practice, the bureau has been mostly inoperable for nearly six months. CFPB employees say they essentially spend the workday sitting on their hands, forbidden from doing any work by directive from the White House. The bureau is supposed to be helping oversee the nation’s banks and financial services companies and taking enforcement action in case of wrongdoing. During its 15-year existence, the CFPB has returned roughly $21 billion to consumers who were cheated by financial services companies. Related | Fraud victim ‘not hopeful’ for refund after Trump wrecks consumer protection agency Instead, its main function now seems to be undoing the rulemaking and law enforcement work that was done under previous administrations, including in President Donald Trump’s first term. One current employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the directive forbids staffers from speaking publicly about their jobs, said outsiders would be amazed at how little work is being done. Employees are reluctant even to talk to one another, out of fear that a conversation between two employees would be considered a violation of the directive. Another employee described the drastic shift in mission, from trying to protect consumers to doing nothing, as “quite demoralizing.” To gain an understanding of what is happening inside the CFPB, The Associated Press spoke with 10 current and former employees, as well as bankers and policymakers who used to interact with the bureau nearly every day but now say their emails and voicemails go into a black hole. The agency’s press office doesn’t respond to emails. Related | Agency that targets corporate crooks shuttered by Trump—of course The CFPB took a lighter approach to its mission in Trump’s first term but continued to pursue enforcement actions. Under President Joe Biden, the agency took an expansive view of its authority, targeting profitable practices by banks such as overdraft and credit card late fees, as well as investigating companies over credit reporting and medical debt. The bureau also turned a spotlight on Big Tech companies that have made inroads into financial services. For example, the CFPB ordered Apple to pay $89 million in fines and penalties for problems related to the Apple Card. Banks and the financial services industry felt the Biden CFPB acted too aggressively, particularly with a proposal to cut overdraft fees to $5 from the industry average of $27 to $35. The bureau estimated the move would save consumers roughly $5 billion a year. The proposal was overturned by Congress in April with Trump’s backing. Once Trump 2.0 began, the bureau became a main target of the Department of Government Efficiency, then run by Elon Musk, who posted on X that the CFPB should “RIP” shortly after DOGE employees became embedded at the agency. Through the bureau’s acting chief, Russell Vought, the White House issued a directive that CFPB employees should “ not perform any work tasks. ” Russell Vought at the White House on July 7. The administration then tried to lay off roughly 90% of the bureau’s staff, or roughly 1,500 employees. Courts have blocked those layoffs, but there is a feeling inside the bureau that the court rulings are only a temporary reprieve. Companies that committed wrongdoing, or had open investigations, have lobbied the bureau and the White House for their punishments to be rescinded. Last month, the CFPB rescinded an agreement under which Navy Federal Credit Union agreed to pay $80 million to settle claims that it illegally charged overdraft fees to its members, who include Navy servicemen and women, and veterans. In mid-May, the agency scrapped an order for the auto financing arm of Toyota to pay customers a total of $48 million for illegally bundling products onto car buyers’ auto loans. “Companies are lining up to get out of repaying harmed customers,” said Eric Halperin, former enforcement director at the bureau, who resigned earlier this year. The Associated Press sent a list of questions to the White House regarding President Trump’s vision for the CFPB. The White House did not respond. While the lack of new initiatives and the scuttling of old ones frustrate employees the most, they also note that even everyday tasks have largely fallen to the wayside. A report from the office of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the senior Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, found that the bureau is uploading roughly 2,200 complaints a day to its complaint database, compared to the roughly 10,500 complaints it was doing in the months before Trump took office again. Warren came up with the idea for the bureau when she was a law professor at Harvard University. The bureau did take an enforcement action on Friday. The pawn shop chain FirstCash Inc. agreed to pay $9 million to settle claims that it charged excessive interest rates on loans to armed service members, in violation of the Military Lending Act. FirstCash operates more than 1,000 stores. The bureau is going to be even further diminished in the coming months. The new budget law signed by Trump earlier this month cuts the CFPB’s funding by roughly half, meaning the bureau will be forced into mass layoffs. Senate Democrats are looking for ways to restore that funding. In the meantime, employees go about their mundane routine: They continue to check their email once or twice a day to see if any of their previous work has been slated for being undone. They wait to be laid off. The only constants are the silence from bureau political appointees or the “mini funerals” that happen every Friday, when another batch of employees who have decided to leave the bureau voluntarily have their last day. “I don’t think I’ll ever work in public service again,” said one current employee, who has been looking for a new job for the past three months.

The scandal over President Donald Trump’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files issue is not going away. As his MAGA base rails against the Justice Department and congressional Republicans attempting to bury the issue, Democrats are amplifying their criticisms of the chaotic state of affairs. On Tuesday, House Republicans voted as a bloc, 211 to 210, and defeated a Democratic effort to compel the government to release information on Epstein, a convicted sex offender who was charged with trafficking minors. The result echoed the outcome of a Monday vote in the House Rules Committee that also kept Epstein information under wraps. For years, Republicans have campaigned on the claim that when in power, they would reveal the government’s Epstein information, including the contents of his purported client list. But the Justice Department, led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, has now claimed the information they touted isn’t there and that further information would be withheld. The stance has led to unusual criticism of Trump from MAGA supporters. Democrats are now mocking the apparent Republican cover-up and calling for transparency. “Did anyone really think the sexual-predator president who used to party with Jeffrey Epstein was going to release the Epstein files?” Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia asked at a rally on Saturday. YouTube Video Rep. Katharine Clark, the Massachusetts Democrat who serves as House Minority Whip, released a video on Wednesday, calling for the release of the files. “The Republicans are fighting with themselves over what? The Epstein files,” she said. Noting that Trump and Republicans are backtracking from their previous promises on the material, Clark asked, “What is the administration hiding?” Release the files. — Katherine Clark (@whipkclark.bsky.social) 2025-07-15T23:00:30.397Z Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington echoed the question in a post of her own, asking, “What are they hiding?” Kendall Witmer, rapid-response director for the Democratic National Committee, slammed the GOP vote in a statement: “Republicans talked a big game about releasing the Epstein files during the campaign, and now they are chickening out. It doesn’t matter how the GOP tries to spin it—either they lied to the American people to get elected, or they are lying now to protect Donald Trump from any accountability for his long association with an infamous sex trafficker.” “There’s no excuse for blocking the release of the Epstein files,” Rep. Judy Chu, Democrat of California, noted. “The public has a right to know who enabled his heinous crimes. Republicans are blocking Americans from the truth.” Jeffrey Epstein, shown in March 2017, in a photo provided by the New York State Sex Offender Registry. Democratic Rep. Dwight Evans of Pennsylvania accused Republicans of “choosing to protect a morally corrupt and crooked President and his administration.” Trump fumed over the issue in a Wednesday morning rant posted to his Truth Social platform. He accused Democrats of pushing a “SCAM” that “we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax.” “[M]y PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker,” Trump lamented. “[A]ll these people want to talk about, with strong prodding by the Fake News and the success starved Dems, is the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax. Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore!” Apparently, his own family is a part of the “hoax.” His daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, recently told a right-wing YouTube show that the administration needs more “transparency” on the Epstein issue. Republicans have spent years fostering a conspiracy culture, but now that they control the government, that focus is ripping them apart—and Democrats are giving them hell for it.

Winston Smith Democracy dies in the dark. The post The Light That Failed appeared first on The Nation.

Elie Mystal In ruling the president can decimate the Department of Education, the court took a key Congressional power—and gave it to Trump. The post The Supreme Court Just Crowned Trump King—Again appeared first on The Nation.

The increasingly opaque path for protection adopted by Trump leaves those who fled their homeland with little hope. By Kate Morrissey for Capital & Main When Mohamad presented his evidence about how the Taliban had tortured him because of his previous work in the Afghan government, a U.S. official found his story credible. But the United States is still trying to deport him, just not to Afghanistan. Mohamed spoke to Capital & Main from the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, where he said he had been waiting almost half a year with no ability to pursue his case for protection or attempt to get released from immigration custody. He asked that he not be fully identified due to safety concerns. “Nothing is clear for me,” Mohamad said through a Dari interpreter. “I don’t know what will happen to me.” He said officials have told him that he might be deported to Costa Rica, Panama or El Salvador. He is one of many asylum seekers who have been trying to navigate the increasingly opaque system that the Trump administration put in place in January to restrict access to protection for those who cross the border without permission. A district court judge in Washington on July 2 found that the Trump administration’s changes to the immigration system were unlawful and ordered the government to process people who are still in the U.S. through the full asylum process. Related | Here’s what’s happening to the people ICE arrests in immigration court That could mean that Mohamad’s case will finally move forward in a way that allows him to present his evidence to an immigration judge. Mohamad had been waiting in Mexico City in January, trying to get an appointment to request asylum through a phone application called CBP One, when President Donald Trump took office. On his first day in office, Trump canceled all CBP One appointments and closed down the application process, which the Biden administration had created to receive asylum seekers at ports of entry. Four days later, Mohamad, believing that the United States was the safest place for him to go after the Taliban had tortured him, made his way to the Arizona border and crossed onto U.S. soil to request protection. He has been in limbo in U.S. immigration custody since then. The administration suspended the ability to apply for asylum, but people could still request a lesser-known protection under the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, known as the Convention Against Torture or CAT. Instead of following the previously established screening process for protection under the convention, the Trump administration created a more difficult legal assessment, according to multiple immigration attorneys whose clients went through the process. A mural of a bald eagle and the U.S. flag at the ICE detention center in Tacoma, Wash., in Dec. 2019. Under the old process, people seeking protection under the Convention Against Torture went through initial screenings, known as reasonable fear interviews, which assessed whether there was a reasonable possibility that they would be tortured. Those who passed the screenings went on to immigration court, where they had time to gather more evidence and find attorneys to help them prove to a judge that they were more likely than not to be tortured if returned to their country, the legal standard to win final approval for protection under the convention. But under Trump’s new system, that more-likely-than-not legal standard moved from the final step in the process to the initial screening, requiring a higher level of evidence with less time to gather or show it. A report from Human Rights First found that the Department of Homeland Security conducted the assessment for some migrants who express fear of returning home, but it deported others without screening them at all. “It feels very arbitrary of what happens to each person, and there’s really no record,” said Natalie Cadwalader-Schultheis, a senior staff attorney with Human Rights First. “No paper record, no witness, no administrative judge or federal judiciary judge who’s able to review what’s going on. It’s very secretive and very opaque.” When asked about the process, the Department of Homeland Security responded through an unnamed spokesperson that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services does not assess for persecution concerns based on protected grounds — what would typically be assessed in initial screenings for asylum. The spokesperson also said that the officer assesses for fear of torture in the country of origin if that’s the planned deportation destination. None of the agencies within the department involved in the process — Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — responded to the request for comment from Capital & Main. Many people fleeing legitimate fears of harm have failed the stricter assessment, including a woman from Ethiopia who was previously tortured there after witnessing government officials commit extrajudicial killings. “They found that our client was detained and beaten by the Ethiopian government but still found that she had no right to go into removal hearings to apply for CAT relief,” said attorney Ginger Jacobs. “She didn’t rise to the standard even though she’d already been tortured by her government, and they found her credible.” Attorneys are not allowed to be present for the Convention Against Torture assessment interviews, Jacobs said — another change under the Trump administration from prior practices for reasonable fear interviews. Jacobs said that the new assessments, though requiring more evidence to reach the high legal standard, are generally shorter than the old interviews as well. “They just created this whole process out of whole cloth,” said Tim Warden-Hertz, the directing attorney at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and the lawyer representing Mohamad. “It’s a ridiculous process.” Related | Which authoritarian country are we secretly deporting people to today? Despite the obstacles, Mohamad managed to pass the assessment after more than a month in custody. He told the officer about how the Taliban had used electric shocks on him. “Still I have nightmares in my dreams that the Taliban is torturing me or killing me,”

On Tuesday, Senate Republicans moved one step closer to cutting billions in congressionally appropriated funding Dear Leader Donald Trump dislikes, after Vice President JD Vance broke a tie to advance a recissions package that defunds NPR and PBS, and cuts billions in foreign aid. A recissions package is not subject to the filibuster, so Senate Republicans only need a simple majority for it to pass. Three Republicans—Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky—voted against moving the package to debate, requiring Vance to break the tie. Passing this recissions package—which would make permanent some of the cuts former co-President Elon Musk tried to make through his incompetent and destructive Department of Government Efficiency—is problematic for multiple reasons. First and foremost, it would be damaging for rural Americans who both rely on publicly funded PBS and NPR stations for weather warnings and more, and also receive billions in foreign aid money growing crops that are distributed to poor countries across the globe. “For Republicans to turn around and slash local news and public radio in the name of fiscal responsibility is a vindictive swipe at rural America, where these stations are needed so badly. It’ll leave rural communities twisting in the wind,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement Monday night after Vance’s tie-breaking vote.  It would also be damaging for Congress’ ability to pass future government funding bills down the road. It shows the Democratic senators—who voted for the government spending bill—that any deals they make in future government funding negotiations are just smoke and mirrors if Republicans will turn around and strip that funding away through the recissions process. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) called the recissions package a “dirty trick” by Republicans. Sen. Chris Murphy calls the package a “dirty trick.” “What they’re doing is cutting out of the budget all the things that DOGE targeted. With this recissions bill they are going after all the foreign aid funding that DOGE hates, and they’re going after PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. They’re literally going to take Sesame Street off the air,” Murphy said in a video posted on X. “Why would Democrats ever again negotiate a bipartisan budget with Republicans if Republicans two months later can just pass a partisan bill that keeps the spending that Republicans like and cuts the spending that Democrats supported in the bipartisan process? So this isn’t just really bad policy, this is just another way that Republicans are corroding the rule of law, the institutional norms that have held together our democracy for decades.” And Schumer warned that this is just the start for Republicans, who could come after other critical funding in future recissions packages. “Let me be clear, this is not just about foreign assistance, important as that is. This is the playbook that Republicans will use across the board,” Schumer said. “They will do it with healthcare. They will do it with the Department of Education. They will do it with our schools, our veterans, our housing. They will do it to research dollars. I’ve heard of more great research projects that could have saved lives now on hold, that can never be brought back again, because of the greed of the billionaires and the obeisance of Republicans to go along.” Meanwhile, even Senate Republicans who voted to advance the recissions package to debate say it’s problematic, saying that the Trump administration has not given enough information about the exact programs that would be cut. “When George W. Bush proposed Rescissions back in 1992, he listed specific programs that would receive specific amounts of cuts. And it was a rather thick proposal. But members on both sides of the aisle in both houses … had exact information about what programs would be targeted and where the cuts would be made and by what amount. That is not present in the proposal before us tonight. And that troubles me,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) told Fox News’ Chad Pergram, even though Wicker voted to advance the legislation to debate. But since defying Dear Leader is out of the question for the cultists in the GOP, they are speeding this latest crap sandwich legislation toward passage. God helps us all.

President Donald Trump’s budget is gutting Medicaid—and rural America is on the front lines of the damage. And big shocker: Most of Trump’s fervent supporters refuse to accept reality. A health clinic in McCook, Nebraska, which has a population of 7,446, recently made national headlines after announcing that it’s shutting its doors, unable to survive the massive GOP Medicaid cuts. “Anyone who’s saying that Medicaid cuts is why they’re closing is a liar,” a resident of nearby Curtis, which has a population of 806, told the Washington Post.  Another resident brushed it off as people just “trying to blame everything on Trump,” calling it “horse feathers.” Must be a Nebraska thing. And the town’s mayor, who proudly displays an Obama punching bag labeled “Obama stress reliever” on his desk, insisted, “I don’t think the signing of the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ had one thing to do with the closure of this clinic.” Okay then.  Datawrapper Content For years, Trump and the Republican Party have sold rural white voters a story: that the real problem with government isn’t that it fails people like them—it’s that it helps the wrong people. Benefits aren’t going to “deserving” Americans like them but to immigrants, big cities, Black and brown people, and coastal elites. It’s a lie, but a potent one. And it still works. Right-wing message boards are full of people claiming that the only health care being cut is for “illegals” or freeloaders. So when the cuts hit them instead—the “hard-working, God-fearing patriots”—they short circuit. The media must be lying. There has to be another explanation. It can’t be Trump. And, yes, most of those voters are gone. We’re not getting them back. Their political identity is built around the idea that Trump is their champion, even when it’s crystal clear that he’s the one twisting the knife. But not all of them are unreachable. A disabled protester holds a sign that reads, “Medicaid = life 4 disabled,” at the U.S. Capitol. Take Brenda Wheeler, a 61-year-old Republican from Curtis. She voted for Trump in 2016 but then soured on him and sat out of the 2024 election. When the clinic closure hit home, she told the Post, “I’m not in agreement with this bill.”  “When we talked about making America great again, I don’t think this is what we all had in mind,” said Wheeler, who is even considering switching her voter registration to independent.  People like her are the opening. Not all of them will defect. In fact, most won’t. But we don’t need most. If just 5-10% of Republicans peel off—or if a few million nonvoters finally show up—the math shifts toward Democrats. Our fragile 49-48 Democratic national edge becomes a robust 55-45 majority. That’s not just a win; it’s a buffer. It’s how we build a durable progressive coalition that can weather any right-wing wave. We’re not going to deprogram the cult, but we don’t have to. What we can do is reach the people asking why their mom’s Medicaid got slashed, why their insulin suddenly costs more, or why their town’s only clinic just shuttered. That’s the silver lining of our current dystopian nightmare: there’s no one else to blame. Republicans control everything. They own it. The first step is making that reality stick. The second is flipping at least one congressional chamber in 2026 to stop Trump’s agenda and launch real investigations into the corruption unfolding. And the third is offering something better—visible, tangible, immediate help that voters can actually feel. Or, as I’ve been arguing, cut out the buzzwords and promise to directly and immediately make voters’ lives better.  That’s how we win not just in 2026, but for the long haul.

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