Donald Trump is driving the American economy straight into a ditch. That's a pretty simple concept, and it's (just barely) short enough to fit on a bumpersticker. Which makes it a dandy political slogan for Democrats to start hammering out relentlessly.

Doing so is pretty easy, since you can connect all sorts of dots to it: A soft jobs market. Inflation rising. Hamburger prices up. Electricity prices way up. Trump's tariff war, which has created a "Trump tax" on a whole bunch of products. Trump took hold of an economy that had achieved a "soft landing," and now he's driving us all right into a ditch. Everything he does seems to make things worse. See how easy that is to do?

What sparked this off, of course, was yet another disappointing jobs report. Even after firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics last month (when the first truly disappointing jobs report was released) didn't change the underlying reality. Last month, the American economy only added an anemic 22,000 jobs. Anything under 100,000 per month is usually considering disappointing. And the number for June was revised downwards (once again) to actually losing 13,000 jobs -- the first time that has happened since the depths of the COVID pandemic. Joe Biden presided over four straight years of job growth, to put this another way, while Trump has sent us into negative figures only halfway through his first year back in office. The unemployment rate also ticked up to a high not seen since the days of COVID.

It was bad news all around, with the sole exception of it being good news for Donald Trump's wishes to see the official interest rates come down. With the jobs market this soft, the Federal Reserve will almost certainly cut interest rates this month, and they may continue cutting them for the rest of the year as well. But that is in reaction to the tough jobs market.

Next week we will get an updated inflation number from the B.L.S. to compliment the jobs report. With Trump's tariffs taking a bigger bite out of everyone's bottom line, this is expected to go upward once again.

One interesting thing in the midst of all this data is that manufacturing jobs are down -- 12,000 jobs lost last month alone in this sector. Another 12,000 jobs were lost in the wholesale sector. This is a direct result of the Trump tax. Over the course of this year, manufacturing has lost 78,000 jobs. You will note that this is the exact opposite of the stated intent of Trump's tariffs: to bring back factories and manufacturing jobs to America. Not only has that not happened, the opposite is happening again, after manufacturing jobs grew sharply under Joe Biden.

Donald Trump is driving the American economy straight into a ditch.

What is striking about a lot of what Trump is doing is how incredibly shortsighted it is. Trump, after all, is 79 years old, so he's not going to be around to see the fallout from a lot of the decisions he is making for the whole country. He is actively trying to destroy America's pre-eminence in university research, his big ugly bill is going to close down scores of rural hospitals, he put an absolute quack in charge of health who is actively destroying all the progress in vaccines made over the past century or so, he is firing weather forecasters and FEMA workers, and now he is going to shut down satellites that take measurements that prove climate change is real. It is all so incredibly shortsighted, and it is all destructive to... well... America's greatness.

We are losing any hope of being a world leader ever again in all sorts of emerging industries. And it doesn't matter whether this affects mostly Trump voters or not. In ruby-red Indiana, Trump is shutting down a project to make cement without causing damage to the environment. This was projected to be a model plant that the entire rest of the world might emulate. Here's the sad story:

The Heidelberg plant in the town of Mitchell [Indiana] was meant to be a model for the world, a place where the United States could take the lead in cutting carbon dioxide emissions from cement manufacturing -- an increasingly urgent goal for construction projects. Yet the administration's cancellation of the $500 million grant for machinery to trap and bury the plant's greenhouse gas left the staunchly Republican community stunned and cement industry officials questioning if the U.S. will be equipped to keep up with a fast-evolving global marketplace.

"This was going to be a demonstration project for the entire country," said Don Caudell, the Republican mayor of Mitchell, with a population of 4,000. "Part of what is disheartening for us is so much had already been done and spent on this project, and now it has all come to a halt."

. . .

"Why would we not proceed with this to see how viable the technology is?" said Caudell. "It could virtually eliminate carbon dioxide emissions. It would be a win for everyone."

Cement manufacturing also is one more sector where the United States has been in an innovation race with China, with both countries vying to invent the technologies that will be used by cement makers of the future. The abrupt cancellation of major projects in the U.S., industry experts say, plays into China's hands.

Trump seething hatred for anything to do with climate change is going to drive a very big emerging sector of the American economy right into a ditch. Not only is he firing all the scientists who study climate change and taking satellites offline for purely ideological reasons, he is also waging a full-on war on wind power. He hates windmills, ever since someone had the temerity to build a few offshore from one of his overseas golf courses. So the Trump administration just revoked the permit for a wind project off the coast of Rhode Island which was already 80 percent complete. This is beyond shortsighted, it's just mean-spirited. The company has already announced it will sue to regain permission to finish their installation, so hopeful a judge will see the illogic in cancelling a project that is nearing completion just because Donald Trump hates windmills.

This is all contributing to an issue that is becoming bigger and bigger with voters: the steep hikes in everyone's electric bills. Right when artificial intelligence is requiring massive amounts of new power generation, Trump is trying to kill off whole energy sectors (wind, solar) because he either fundamentally misunderstands how they work or he just hates them because liberals like them. Either way, the power bills will continue to go up due to Trump's shortsightedness.

Speaking of shortsightedness, Trump is now apparently following a strategy to convince Vladimir Putin to come to the table to negotiate a peace agreement with Ukraine not by actually pressuring Russia in any way but instead by militarily doing exactly what Russia wants. So much for all of Trump's tough talk on Russia, both before and after the disastrous summit meetings. Here's the story, in case you missed it:

The Trump administration intends to halt longtime security assistance programs for Europe, including an initiative to fortify the continent's eastern flank against a potential attack by Russia, as it endeavors to recast Washington's role within NATO, according to six people familiar with the matter.

The decision would impact hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military aid relied upon by some of the alliance's most vulnerable members. It has alarmed U.S. allies struggling to comprehend the administration's policy toward Europe and its chief adversary in the Kremlin after President Donald Trump, eager for a deal to end Russia's war in Ukraine, rescued its mercurial leader, Vladimir Putin, from diplomatic isolation. U.S. lawmakers, meanwhile, are confused by the move.

Trump tried to distract everyone from this disastrous policy choice by announcing he will be renaming the Department of Defense back to the "War Department," and (for good measure) blowing up a motorboat in the Caribbean that Trump claimed had a bunch of illegal drugs on it.

We have to give credit to one Republican who stood up against such a plan, since while Rand Paul is at times highly annoying, he occasionally still does stick to his strict constitutionalist ideology. He called out Trump for starting us on a very slippery slope, which is entirely correct.

Three actual strongmen (as opposed to Trump merely playing one on television) met this week to celebrate the end of World War II. China held a gigantic military parade (which must have made Trump pea-green with envy, after his own attempt to do so for his birthday flopped so badly), and the leader of China invited both Putin and the leader of North Korea to the party. America's role in W.W.II wasn't even mentioned, which got under Trump's very thin skin.

Closer to home, a group of the victims of Jeffery Epstein started speaking out in a very public way this week, meeting with members of Congress, holding a press conference, and making media appearances. Two House members, one Republican (Thomas Massie) and one Democrat (Ro Khanna) have filed a discharge petition to force the House to vote on a measure which would force the Justice Department to release all the Epstein files within 30 days, which the victims fully support.

Trump, when asked, dismissed the entire thing as a "Democrat hoax," as he has done before. But this time the victims themselves pushed back, stating that their horrific experiences were no "hoax." This even included at least one victim who had voted for Trump (but is now seriously disappointed in his inaction, to say the least). So far, four Republicans have signed the discharge petition, but they'll need two more for it to succeed, so stay tuned....

Trump got some judicial rulings against him this week, which brought forth a flurry of hyperbole (and idiocy) as he appealed to the Supreme Court to overturn an appellate court decision that all his "retaliatory tariffs" are completely illegal. Trump led this flood of outrageous statements with a social media post: "Without Tariffs, and all of the TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS we have already taken in, our Country would be completely destroyed, and our military power would be instantly obliterated." Um... what? Seriously? No tariffs would mean the destruction of our country and the obliteration of our military? In what universe? Trump is also claiming that America is "taking in $17 trillion" in tariff revenues, which is just beyond delusional. One columnist at Politico ridiculed this as "The Chicken Little Defense." Here are some quotes from the actual filing with the Supreme Court (written by lawyers who really should know better):

In the petition to the Supreme Court filed on Wednesday night, the administration continued in this vein, saying that "the tariffs are promoting peace and unprecedented economic prosperity" and "pulling America back from the precipice of disaster, restoring its respect and standing in the world."

This should all be seen for what it is -- a tacit admission that the administration is on very weak footing as a legal matter. The most charitable interpretation of the effort is that the administration is lobbying the Supreme Court to engage in the sort of outcome-driven judicial activism that conservatives have long claimed to hate. A less generous read of the situation is that this is an effort to politically blackmail the court into giving Trump what he wants even if it is clearly unlawful or unconstitutional.

. . .

The [lower] court ignored all of this fearmongering, but that did not stop the administration while the case was on appeal to the Federal Circuit. Trump claimed last month that a loss would yield "a GREAT DEPRESSION." Solicitor General John Saur and Brett Shumate, who heads the Justice Department's Civil Division, told the court that "the United States was a dead country" before Trump took office and that "the economic consequences" of a loss "would be ruinous, instead of unprecedented success." Last Friday, [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio upped the ante by claiming that an adverse ruling would make it harder for the administration to end the war in Ukraine.

In a sane world, the Supreme Court would laugh the case right out of their chambers and uphold the appellate court's ruling. But (sadly) that's not the world we live in, so who knows what they'll do?

Trump also lost in court this week on: deporting people using the Alien Enemies Act (from 1798), deporting people using a "fast track" method that denies them due process, using "rescission" to refuse to spend money Congress has appropriated, and using military troops to perform police duties in Los Angeles.

And finally, after using the tactic against too many political opponents to count, Trump's own health was the subject of a conspiracy theory last weekend, when the idea that Trump was actually dead started trending everywhere. Trump was not actually dead (he just took a whole bunch of days off), but seeing as how he's used health-based conspiracy theories against so many other politicians it seemed poetic justice for him to get a taste of it himself.

 

Once again, California Governor Gavin Newsom deserves an Honorable Mention for continuing to brilliantly troll Republicans. He shot back at some A.I. posts Trump made this week (complete with A.I. posts of his own), and he trolled red states for having higher murder rates than California. Here he is from a press conference this week:

The governor, seated at an executive desk and flanked by state law enforcement officers at Thursday's news conference, held up fliers that displayed Republican elected officials -- including House Speaker Mike Johnson (Louisiana), Sen. Josh Hawley (Missouri), Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves -- along with crime statistics for their states.

"Look at the murder rate that's nearly four times higher than California's -- in Louisiana," Newsom said, holding up the flier with Johnson's face. "I want to present some facts to the president of the United States, and I imagine this is alarming to the president to learn these facts, particularly to Speaker Johnson, who has been such a strong partner and ally in these efforts. The carnage in Louisiana is well defined."

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2023, the most recent year for which information is available, Louisiana had 19.3 homicide deaths per 100,000 people. California had 5.1.

"If the president is sincere about the issue of crime and violence, there's no question in my mind that he'll likely be sending the troops into Louisiana and Mississippi to address the just unconscionable wave of violence that continues to plague those states," Newsom added.

We also have an Honorable Mention for Representative Jerry Nadler, who announced he will be hanging up his spurs and not running for re-election. Nadler is 78 years old, and realized it is time to pass the torch to a younger generation, which is why he deserves some praise (in the hopes other Democrats of advanced age will follow in his footsteps).

But this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week goes to Senator Bernie Sanders, for his public call for Robert F. Kennedy Junior to resign. The award should really be shared between all the Democratic members of the Senate Finance Committee, which got the chance to grill R.F.K. Jr. this week.

It wasn't just the Democrats, either. Prominent Republican senators -- who all voted to confirm Kennedy, by the way -- also expressed dissatisfaction with Kennedy's quackery and anti-vaccine ideology, which has led to gutting the scientific experts that used to work for the government in the public health sector.

A few of the Democrats truly stood out in the hearing, with the best remark coming from Senator Mark Warner. Kennedy tried to walk an absolutely insane tightrope, where he praised Trump's Operation Warp Speed for producing a COVID vaccine in record time (even saying Trump deserved a Nobel prize for it), while at the same time saying that the vaccine was more dangerous than the disease and had killed all kinds of people. You can't really have that both ways, you will note -- it's either a medical miracle or it's a deadly concoction that should never have been approved. When Kennedy refused to state how many Americans had died of COVID and how many lives had been saved by the vaccine, Mark Warner asked him incredulously: "You're the secretary of Health and Human Services. You don't have any idea how many Americans died of COVID? How can you be that ignorant?" Other Democrats on the committee were just as scathing, while R.F.K. Jr. continued quack-quack-quacking in response. The internet also weighed in afterwards with a few choice comments as well.

But we're giving the award to Bernie, who also sits on the committee. Before R.F.K. Jr. appeared, he wrote an open letter calling on Kennedy to resign, which was equally as scathing. Here are a few excerpts:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, is endangering the health of the American people now and into the future. He must resign.

. . .

He has called the Covid-19 vaccines the "deadliest" ever made despite findings cited by the W.H.O. that Covid shots saved over 14 million lives throughout the world in 2021 alone.

He has ridiculously questioned whether the polio vaccine has killed more people than polio itself did even though scientists have found that the vaccine has saved 1.5 million lives and prevented around 20 million people from becoming paralyzed since 1988.

He has absurdly claimed that "there's no vaccine that is safe and effective."

Read the whole letter, it's worth your time. R.F.K. Jr. is a quack and anti-science and a conspiracy theorist. He never should have been confirmed to his position (for which the Republicans who are now complaining are fully responsible). He needs to go, as soon as possible.

Just on Mark Warner's point alone -- how can the head of H.H.S. claim not to know how many Americans died as a result of COVID? How can anyone that ignorant be allowed to be in a position of authority over health decisions?

So as a kind of group award, we're giving this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week to Senator Bernie Sanders and all the rest of the Democrats who got the chance to grill this quack in the Senate this week.

[Congratulate Senator Bernie Sanders on his Senate contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts, and all the other Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee via their own Senate contact pages as well.]

 

Technically, New York City Mayor Eric Adams is no longer a Democrat. He is running for re-election as an Independent. This was due to him realizing early on that he would never have won the Democratic Party's primary, since his administration has been an absolute sewer of corruption -- and he was only saved from being prosecuted for corruption himself by the corruption of Donald Trump's Department of Justice.

The race for mayor is now essentially a four-way contest. There is the Democratic nominee (Zohran Mamdani), the Republican nominee (Curtis Sliwa), the Serial Groper Party's nominee (Andrew Cuomo), and Adams running as an Independent. There is widespread and bipartisan fear that Mamdani could win the race, so Donald Trump is putting pressure on Adams to drop out, to clear the field a bit for Cuomo. This has apparently involved dangling plum administration jobs in front of Adams, including a high-ranking position at the Department of Housing and Urban Development or quite possibly an ambassadorship to Saudi Arabia. Adams seems to be considering the offer, which would have easily won him this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week, but as we said he's now technically an Independent.

So instead, we are going to award the MDDOTW to three prominent New York Democrats who have so far failed to endorse Mamdani: Governor Kathy Hochul, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

Think about it: Donald Trump is trying to get Andrew Cuomo elected mayor because he hates Mamdani so much. He'll have a harder time convincing Sliwa to drop out, since the two have never been buddies (and Sliwa swears he's in it until the end). But Trump's goal is to have the race narrowed down to only Cuomo and Mamdani, and then have Cuomo win. Cuomo, of course, is a despicable human being in his own right, which is probably why Trump likes him so much.

So why hasn't the Democratic Party loudly lined up behind their party's nominee? Because some are terrified of Mamdani's "socialism." Some Democrats have already endorsed Mamdani, and are speaking out about their colleague's failure to do so:

"We have a Democratic nominee," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told reporters. "Are we a party that rallies behind our nominee, or not?"

Unfortunately, it seems like "not" might be the right answer. Here was Mamdani's brilliant response to the news of Trump's meddling:

"Let's cut out the middleman. Why should I debate Donald Trump's puppet when I could debate Donald Trump himself?" the democratic socialist told CBS New York.

"If Donald Trump is serious about this, he should come to New York City. We can have as many debates as you want about why he is cutting SNAP benefits for hungry New Yorkers just to fund tax cuts for his billionaire donors."

And now, for contrast, here is the incredibly weak reaction to Trump's attempted manipulation of the race by the top Democrat in the state party's machinery:

Trump's apparent effort to stop Mamdani hasn't changed that political calculus for top New York Democrats.

"I'd suggest that we don't allow the machinations of Donald Trump to dictate what our own electoral preferences or actions are," New York Democratic Chair Jay Jacobs, a Hochul ally, said. "That's not the way smart political decisions are made. They're made on the basis of their best judgment as it relates to their constituents and whether you think it's right. Reactive behavior is very often the wrong way to go."

Excuse me? "Reactive behavior"? So the governor has to mull over whether she's going to allow Donald Trump to back his favorite candidate while refusing to endorse the nominee of her own party? It just makes your head spin.

This isn't the first time New York Democrats have banded together to tank a "socialist" candidate either -- just ask India Walton, who won the Democratic nomination to be mayor of Buffalo back in 2021. She lost the general election to the guy she beat in the primary, because of a concerted effort to keep her from winning.

This is disgraceful, all around. "Back the blue, no matter who" doesn't apply when you are afraid the candidate might suggest taxing rich people a wee bit more? Seriously?

To be fair, Schumer, Hochul, and Jefferies have not ruled out endorsing Mamdani, and each of them has held conversations with him already. But their delay in endorsing is becoming more and more notable -- and that was true even before Trump got involved in the race. Do they really want to aid Andrew Cuomo (who, again, is a serial groper of women) at the expense of their own party's candidate?

Get off the fence, guys. Endorse Mamdani. But for now, enjoy your Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week awards.

[Contact New York Governor Kathy Hochul on her official contact page, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on his House contact page, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on his Senate contact page, to let them know what you think of their inaction.]

 

Volume 811 (9/5/25)

We have two things to mention before we dive into the talking points this week, the first being to offer up our hearty congratulations to Senator Cory Booker, who got engaged over the summer break.

And the second is to feature a quote from Jesse Ferguson, a "strategist who previously worked for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee," which is the group that tries to get more Democratic House members elected. He very nicely sums up what we've been saying for a while now:

The biggest problem we had in 2024 was Democrats weren't seen as being on the right side of cost of living, and nothing else mattered when we're on the wrong side of that. The combination of health care, taxes, Medicaid cuts, tariffs all put together, Democrats now have a real story we can tell about how Trump's agenda has betrayed people, and we have to be relentless in telling it.

Hear, hear! Amen to that!

Which we thought would be the perfect intro to this week's talking points....

 

   Just like he's screwed everything else up

This first one came as a social media post from Representative Brendan Boyle, who is the ranking Democrat on the House budget committee. This was his reaction to the new jobs numbers:

Donald Trump inherited an economy built on years of steady job growth. In just seven months, he's managed to screw it up -- just like he's screwed up everything else in his life. Now, working families are getting squeezed from every direction: higher prices, Republicans' Big Ugly Law ripping health care away from millions, and a job market that's slowing down.

When the facts don't go his way, President Trump doesn't fix the problem, he fires the messenger. Just last month, he axed a nonpartisan official for telling the truth about the numbers. Who will he blame this time?

 

   Inflation is up

These were taken from two big signs flanking House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in a photo taken at a recent press conference, and they both admirably zero in on the key issues. It is good to see such clarity coming from Democratic leadership, at this point.

DONALD TRUMP PROMISED TO LOWER COSTS ON DAY ONE
Inflation is up
Higher healthcare premiums
Electricity bills at record levels

REPUBLICAN TRACK RECORD
Higher costs
Inflation is up
Biggest cut to healthcare ever

 

   Straight into a ditch

Seems the Republicans are having a bit of a messaging problem. Which means (for once) Democrats are winning the messaging battle. So keep it up!

"I notice that Republicans are desperately trying to rebrand their 'Big Ugly Bill' and sell it as a giant tax cut -- even when most Americans aren't going to see any tax cut at all when they fill their income taxes out next year. Republicans are just lying about the fact that they cut Medicaid by the biggest amount in American history, and want you to believe that they're not going to throw millions of Americans off the program and leave them with nothing. They can lie all they want, but American voters can see for themselves, and what Donald Trump and his Republicans have done is nothing short of driving the American economy straight into a ditch."

 

   Funny coincidence, eh?

This is a great point to make, and it's pretty easy to understand.

"You know, the last time we had a month where the American economy lost jobs, Trump was the sitting president. And the last time the unemployment rate was this high, Trump was also president. What a funny coincidence, eh?"

 

   Putin's lapdog

Remember "two weeks"? Yeah, that was a lie.

"Donald Trump has apparently completely thrown in the towel on trying to achieve a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. He swore he'd end the war on 'Day One,' and then after 200 more days, he met with Putin and Trump totally caved on all the threats he was making toward Russia. But what's shocking is that he's now actually doing Putin's bidding, apparently, announcing he's going to halt longtime security assistance programs for the NATO countries closest to Russian soil. Putin couldn't have gotten a bigger present from Trump if he had asked. Trump is no more than Putin's lapdog, at this point. Ronald Reagan is spinning in his grave, folks."

 

   Say it to their faces

Democrats should challenge Trump on this one.

"Donald Trump calls the cover-up of the Epstein files a 'Democratic hoax,' which is bizarre since he's now in control of whether to release the files or not. I would challenge Trump to tell all the victims who have come forward that their trauma and pain is just a 'hoax.' I dare Trump to say that right to their faces, and see what they have to say in return."

 

   Time to get rid of Ken Paxton and three cabinet members?

Democrats should really lean on this one.

"Donald Trump is trying to fire a Federal Reserve board member, by dredging up mortgage paperwork from years before she started her job and calling it 'mortgage fraud.' But you know who else is apparently guilty of doing exactly the same thing? Well, for starters there's the attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton. He's running for Senate next year, so I'm sure Donald Trump will refuse to endorse him and call for him to be removed from office in the meantime. And even worse, it appears that three members of Trump's own cabinet also did the same thing! So of course Trump will fire them all immediately, since he has declared that this 'crime' is completely disqualifying for anyone in a position of responsibility, right? Well, I don't know about you, but I'm not exactly going to hold my breath waiting for any of that to happen...."

-- Chris Weigant

 

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Cross-posted at: Democratic Underground