US Politics

Subterms

    More stories

    • 200 Shares48 Views

      in US Politics

      I was the US labor secretary. Trump’s latest firing undermines a key agency | Robert Reich

      by

      I spent much of the 1990s as the secretary of labor. One unit of the labor department is the Bureau of Labor Statistics.I was instructed by my predecessors as well as by the White House, and by every labor economist and statistician I came in contact with, that one of my cardinal responsibilities was to guard the independence of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.Otherwise, this crown jewel of knowledge about jobs and the economy would be compromised. If politicized, it would no longer be trusted as a source of information.So what does Donald Trump do? In one fell swoop on Friday, he essentially destroyed the credibility of the BLS.Trump didn’t like the fact that the BLS revised downward its jobs reports for April and May.Well, that’s too bad. Revisions in monthly jobs reports are nothing new. They’re made when the bureau gets more or better information over time, which it often does.Yet with no basis in fact, Trump charged that Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of labor statistics, “rigged” the data “to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad”. Then he ordered her fired and replaced with someone else – presumably someone whose data Trump will approve of.How can anyone in the future trust the information that emerges from the Bureau of Labor Statistics when the person in charge of the agency has to come up with data to Trump’s liking in order to stay in the job? Answer: they cannot.Trump has destroyed the credibility of this extraordinarily important source of information.When Trump doesn’t like the message, he shoots the messenger and replaces the messenger with someone who will come up with messages that he approves. So we’re left without credible sources of information about what is really occurring.Trump is in the process of trying to do the same with the Federal Reserve – demanding that Jerome Powell, the Fed’s chair, cut interest rates or lose control of the agency.What happens to the Fed’s credibility if Powell gives in to Trump? It loses it.In the future, we wouldn’t have confidence that the Fed is fighting inflation as rigorously as it should. And without that confidence, longer-term interest rates will spike because investors will assume that there’s no inflation cop on the beat, and therefore will demand a higher risk premium.Trump hates facts that he disagrees with. That’s why he’s dismembering the Environmental Protection Agency, which has repeatedly shown that the climate crisis isn’t a “hoax”, as Trump claims, but more like a national emergency.It’s why Trump is attacking American universities, whose scientists are developing wind and solar energy, and whose historians have revealed America’s tragic history of racism and genocide of indigenous people.He is killing off the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health, which are showing the sources of sickness and disease and how we can guard against them.This is a man and a regime that doesn’t want the public to know the truth. He is turning the US into George Orwell’s dystopian 1984.The Trumping of America is happening so fast and in so many places that it’s hard to see the whole. Which partly explains why he doesn’t want the facts out. He doesn’t want us to know how bad it really is.

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His next book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, will be out on 5 August More

    • 163 Shares31 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump firing of statistics chief puts US data credibility at risk, experts warn

      by

      Donald Trump’s firing of the head of the main agency for producing jobs figures risks propelling the US into the same category as countries notorious for “cooking the books” such as Argentina and Greece, experts have warned.Donald Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) commissioner last Friday, after accusing her agency of “faking” the latest employment figures for “political purposes,” which showed the US economy adding a lower-than-expected 73,000 jobs in July.The BLS, the US government official source for labor statistics since 1884, also revised down the estimates of new positions created in May and June by a combined 258,000.Trump provided no evidence for his accusations against McEntarfer, which he reinforced in social media posts on Monday, calling the bureau’s latest reports “rigged” and concocted.But his decision jeopardizes the US’s tradition of impartial and reliable statistic collection on which the country’s economic stability and international reputation depends, specialists have told the Guardian.Erica Groshen, McEnterfer’s predecessor as BLS commissioner during Barack Obama’s presidency, warned earlier this year that an impending civil-servant rule change that presaged last Friday’s sacking could usher in a “politicization” of government statistical bodies – whereby experts are pressured to produce massaged numbers that fitted an incumbent president’s agenda.She raised the specter of Greece and Argentina, where official statistics became discredited as a result of government-instigated misrepresenting of figures.The International Monetary Fund stopped accepting the Argentinian government’s inflation figures in 2013 after officials were found to have deliberately understated the rate for the previous six years.After threatening Argentina – historically one of the IMF’s biggest borrowers – with expulsion, the organization did not extend another loan to it until 2018.In the case of Greece, government statisticians were accused of having made inflation and soaring budget deficits “disappear” in the 1990s as the country sought respectable-looking numbers that would enable to qualify for the single European currency, the euro.Greece subsequently joined the currency, but at an exorbitant long-term price. The 2008 global financial crash plunged its economy into a deep recession, and the government was forced to accept multi-billion dollar bailouts from the IMF and European Union – at the cost of painful cuts to social services.Andreas Georgiou, who became head of Greece’s main statistics agency during the crisis, even faced prosecution after he discovered that authorities had been dramatically understating budget deficits for years.Both countries experienced severe political backlashes.In Argentina, after two further IMF loans failed to stabiliize its economy, Javier Milei, a populist economist and ally of Trump, was elected in 2023 promising to take a chainsaw to the governing bureaucracy and many public services.In Greece, a succession of left and rightwing governments have taken office amid a rise in support for radical and populist parties, giving rise to concerns for the health of the country’s democracy.Talking to the Guardian, Groshen warned of comparable scenarios following a rule change rolled by the White House’s office of personnel management in April.“Bureau of Labor Statistics leaders could be fired for releasing or planning to release jobs or inflation statistics unfavorable to the president’s policy agenda,” she wrote in a briefing paper.The revision altered the category of about 50,000 permanent civil servants to “policy/career” status, making their removal easier.Originally tabled in April to allow 30 days for comments, it gave agencies the right “to expeditiously remove career employees in policy-influencing positions for poor performance or misconduct, such as corruption or for injecting partisanship into the performance of their official duties”.The precise roles of officials affected were not defined, but Groshen pointed out that, if implemented, the president would determine who would be reclassified.The change stemmed from an executive order Trump issued on his first day back in the White House on 20 January. It stated that the power of “policy-influencing” civil servants is “delegated by the president, and they must be accountable to the president”.Groshen, now a specialist in government statistics at Cornell University, said the changes in civil servant status would make it easier for the government to tamper with numbers it disliked.“There are a number of changes to the civil service that makes it much easier for the administration to interfere with the activities of statistical agencies and that worries me,” she said.Under increased threat of removal, civil servants in federal statistics bodies “might also face pressure to change methodologies or reveal pre-release information”, she wrote.“By making it easier to remove employees if a president determines that they are interfering with his or her policies, it increases the potential for passivity or political loyalty to be prioritized over expertise and experience.” More

    • 113 Shares31 Views

      in US Politics

      The one thing Donald Trump isn’t saying about tariffs

      by

      Donald Trump’s words and actions rarely align perfectly. If you watch carefully, what he doesn’t say can be just as telling as what he does.“Starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again, to bring down the prices of all goods,” he told the nation ahead of his re-election. The US president declared on 2 April would “forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn”, only to pause tariffs a week later.He promised peace in Ukraine on day one of his presidency, only to later clarify this was “said in jest”; and has claimed very few people can beat him at golf, only for footage from Scotland to raise questions over just how honest that round might be.As a real estate mogul, reality TV star and political campaigner, Trump learned to bend narrative to his will, even if it meant straying from reality.As president, this often leaves a gap between what he says and what he does. In many cases, the administration’s actions are more important to follow than the firehose of words.If you were, say, a US business buying coffee from Brazil, you might have rushed to import it last week after Trump insisted 1 August was the cast-iron deadline for new tariffs. “It stands strong, and will not be extended,” he wrote on Wednesday – hours before signing an executive order that said new steep tariffs on the country would come into force on 8 August, after all.And if you’re a US consumer, you might reasonably ask how inflation can be “dead”, as the White House has claimed, if you’re still shelling out more on groceries each month.The president has an awful lot to say about tariffs. They will, he argues, raise “trillions” of dollars for the US federal government; eliminate trade deficits with other countries; and even punish Brazil for putting his ally, the former president Jair Bolsonaro, on trial for allegedly seeking to seize power after losing the 2022 presidential election. The list goes on.But what about what the president doesn’t say?Trump was re-elected last November after repeatedly pledging to rapidly bring down prices for Americans. This assurance formed a central pillar of his election campaign – a regular refrain in rallies, interviews and debates – as millions found it harder to make ends meet after years of inflation.Every policy comes at a cost. Every tax must be paid by someone, somewhere. For consumers, The Budget Lab at Yale estimates the short-term price impact of Trump’s tariff changes is equivalent to an average per household income loss of $2,400.What Trump doesn’t really talk about the impact of his aggressive tariff agenda on US is prices. One of the few times he has acknowledged it might actually exacerbate inflation led to a bizarre tangent about dolls back in May. Acknowledging that tariffs might cause price rises, Trump suggested American children might have to settle for having “two dolls instead of 30 dolls”.Back then, Joe Biden was still to blame for any signs of strife in the economy, according to Trump. Now, he argues almost daily Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell is responsible.The biggest indication yet that the US economy is creaking on Trump’s watch came on Friday, when official data revealed the labor market had stalled this summer. He unceremoniously fired the veteran official in charge of the statistics – and alleged, without evidence, that the numbers had been rigged.With higher US tariffs now in place on a string of countries, the president and his administration will inevitably say a lot about the benefits of his economic strategy. They are already trying to stifle evidence of drawbacks. They might even raise the prospect of a handout – pitched as a sign of this policy’s success, rather than a concession that many Americans are still hard up.But if you’re running a small business reliant on trade, or walking into the grocery store on a budget, reality supersedes rhetoric. Words don’t pay the bills. More

    • 138 Shares39 Views

      in US Politics

      How the Trump administration made a sewage crisis ‘woke’ – podcast

      by

      Like hundreds of families across Lowndes County, Alabama, the McPhersons do not have access to proper sanitation – just a pipe carrying raw sewage a short distance from their home. For a country that is one of the richest in the world, it is a public health scandal.“There’s a chance if you don’t watch yourself, everything will shoot down with force and get all over you,” says Christopher McPherson.Nina Lakhani, a senior reporter for Guardian US, explains to Nosheen Iqbal that Lowndes County is one of the poorest districts in the country and has a history of brutal cotton plantation enslavement and also the civil rights and Black power movements.They discuss the way the soil has affected access to sanitation in the county, the significant health and psychological problems that have followed, and the long struggle for justice in which a landmark civil rights ruling under the Biden administration has been overturned by the actions of Donald Trump.Support the Guardian today: theguardian.com/todayinfocuspod More

    • 238 Shares56 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump news at a glance: political battle in Texas escalates and president under fire for firing labor statistics chief

      by

      Texas governor Greg Abbott on Monday ordered the department of public safety to arrest and return any House member who had left the state and “abandoned their duty to Texans”, as Democrats thwarted plans to redistrict the state along lines that would favour Republicans.“There are consequences for dereliction of duty,” Abbott said in a statement on Monday, after the Republican-dominated House issued civil arrest warrants in an attempt to compel the return of the members who fled the state in order to deny the legislature a quorom.“This order will remain in effect until all missing Democrat House members are accounted for and brought to the Texas Capitol.”Democrats hold 62 of the 150 seats in the legislature’s lower chamber, so as long as at least 51 members remain out of Austin, the Texas legislature cannot move forward with any votes, including a plan to redraw the state’s congressional maps to give Republicans five more seats in Congress.Here are the key US politics stories of the day:Texas Democrats deny quorum in attempt to thwart Republican plansTexas Democrats in the state legislature denied its speaker a legislative quorum Monday by leaving the state, forestalling plans proposed by the White House to redistrict Texas’s congressional lines to more greatly favor Republicans. Texas governor Greg Abbott has threatened arrest, fines, felony charges of bribery and expulsion against the lawmakers.Read the full storyTrump firing of labor statistics chief ‘undermines credibility’, ex-leaders sayThe former Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) commissioners and non-partisan economic groups have criticized Donald Trump’s shock firing of BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer after the July jobs report data revealed jobs growth stalled this summer.Read the full storyHundreds of ex-Israeli officials urge Trump to help end Gaza warAbout 600 former Israeli security officials, including previous heads of the Mossad and the military, have urged Donald Trump to pressure Israel to end the war in Gaza as the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, considers expanding the conflict.In an open letter, the former officials said an end to the war was the only way to save hostages still held by Hamas.Read the full storySpeaker Mike Johnson visits occupied West Bank to support Israeli settlersMike Johnson became the highest ranked US official to visit the occupied West Bank on Monday, the Republican House speaker drawing measures of praise and condemnation for his trip in support of Israeli settlements amid a worsening starvation crisis in Gaza.Read the full storyMore than 40 arrested at protest against Gaza war at Trump hotel in New YorkMore than 40 people protesting the war in Gaza and worsening humanitarian crisis were arrested outside the Trump International hotel in New York City on Monday evening.Read the full storyTrump envoy to visit Moscow this week Donald Trump’s special envoy is expected in Moscow days before the US president’s deadline on Friday for Russia to make progress on ending the war in Ukraine or face increased US sanctions.Trump said Steve Witkoff would visit Moscow on Wednesday or Thursday. When asked what message Witkoff would take to Russia and what Vladimir Putin could do to avoid new sanctions, the US president answered: “Yeah, get a deal where people stop getting killed.”Read the full storySome travelers entering US may face up to $15,000 bondThe US state department has prepared plans to impose bonds as high as $15,000 for some tourism and business visas, according to a draft of a temporary final rule. The bonds would be issued to visitors from countries with significant overstay rates, under a 12-month pilot program.Read the full storyTrump officials look to block abortion services at veterans affairs hospitalsThe Trump administration is seeking to block veterans from receiving abortions at hospitals run by the Department of Veterans Affairs in cases of rape or incest, or when a veteran’s pregnancy has imperiled their health, according to new paperwork filed by the administration.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      The Swiss stock market has plunged, the cabinet has held crisis talks and the country’s president has been accused of mishandling a vital phone call with the White House after Donald Trump hit the country with a shock 39% export tariff.

      News Corp, part of the Murdoch family media empire, has announced it will bring a version of the brash rightwing New York tabloid to California in early 2026.

      Marjorie Taylor Greene said that she feels the Republican party has lost touch with its base – but she said she has no plans to leave the party.

      More than a dozen Democratic members of Congress signed on to a letter that urges the Trump administration to recognise Palestinian statehood, in a draft copy shared with the Guardian.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 3 August 2025. More

    • 113 Shares32 Views

      in US Politics

      Texas House reconvenes without quorum as Democrats flee state

      by

      Texas Democrats in the state legislature denied its speaker a legislative quorum Monday by leaving the state, forestalling plans proposed by the White House to redistrict Texas’s congressional lines to more greatly favor Republicans.When the legislature gaveled in at 3pm local time on Monday, Republicans fell short of a quorum by eight votes after Democrats fled to Illinois, a legislative conference in Boston, New York and elsewhere.In an extraordinary escalation, the state’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, said he he had ordered the Texas department of public safety to “locate, arrest and return to the House chamber any member who has abandoned their duty to Texans”.“There are consequences for dereliction of duty,” Abbott said in a statement on Monday, after the Republican-dominated House issued civil arrest warrants in an attempt to compel the return of the members who fled. “This order will remain in effect until all missing Democrat House members are accounted for and brought to the Texas Capitol.”Democrats hold 62 of the 150 seats in the legislature’s lower chamber, so as long as at least 51 members remain out of Austin, the Texas legislature cannot move forward with any votes, including a plan to redraw the state’s congressional maps to give Republicans five more seats in Congress.The Texas speaker, Representative Dustin Burrows, adjourned the house until 1pm on Tuesday after issuing a call for absent lawmakers and threatening their arrest. He cited pending legislation on flood relief and human trafficking – and not the contentious redistricting proposal before the chamber – in his call for Democrats to return.“Instead of confronting those challenges, some of our colleagues have fled the state in their duty,” Burrows said. “They’ve left the state, abandoned their posts and turned their backs on the constituents they swore to represent. They’ve shirked their responsibilities under the direction and pressure of out-of-state politicians and activists who don’t know the first thing about what’s right for Texas.”Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, who fled his own impeachment hearings and refused a court order to release his travel records after speaking at the rally in Washington that preceded the January 6 insurrection, has described wayward Democratic legislators as “cowards”.Speaker Burrows said the house would not sit quietly. “While you obstruct the work of the people, the people of Texas are watching and so is the nation, and if you choose to continue down this road, you should know there will be consequences.”The Texas House Democratic Caucus said in response: “Come and take it.”“We are not fighting for the Democratic party,” state representative James Tallarico said in a video message recorded at an airport. “We are fighting for the democratic process, and the stakes could not be higher. We have to take a stand.”Most of the Democratic caucus absconded to Chicago, a city with a Democratic mayor and city council in a state with a Democratic governor and legislature.Illinois governor JB Pritzker, who owns the Chicago Hyatt hotel, announced on Monday he would provide free rooms to the Texas Democrats for as long as they are out of state.A special session of the Texas legislature lasts for 30 days, but Abbott can renew the call for a special session at will. Under new rules the Texas house adopted in 2021, each lawmaker will be fined $500 a day for each day they abscond from the state. More

    • 150 Shares42 Views

      in US Politics

      Marjorie Taylor Greene says Republican party has lost touch with its base

      by

      Marjorie Taylor Greene, historically one of the most prominent voices in Donald Trump’s Maga movement, has declared in an interview that she feels that the Republican party has lost touch with its base, but she said she has no plans to leave the party.After telling the Daily Mail this week she was questioning whether she still belongs in the Republican fold, the Georgia congresswoman told the Guardian she would not become independent or seek a third party option.“No – I’m urging my own party to support ‘America first’,” Greene said.Still, she made clear resounding frustration with GOP leadership and her place within the party’s planning.“I don’t know if the Republican party is leaving me, or if I’m kind of not relating to Republican party as much any more,” Greene said in the Daily Mail interview. “I don’t know which one it is.”Greene, who boasts 7.5 million followers on X and commands one of the largest social media audiences of any Republican woman, accused party leaders of betraying core conservative principles.She did not criticize Trump himself, instead preferring to express her ire for what she attempted to paint as political elites.“I think the Republican party has turned its back on America First and the workers and just regular Americans,” she said, warning that GOP leadership was reverting to its “neocon” past under the influence of what she termed the “good ole boys” network.The 51-year-old lawmaker, in the roughly six-month mark following Trump’s return to the White House, said she was particularly frustrated with the House speaker, Mike Johnson, saying: “I’m not afraid of Mike Johnson at all.”Her remarks reflect a broader pattern of voter dissatisfaction with traditional party structures. Americans appear to also be holding deeply unfavorable views of both major parties: a July Wall Street Journal poll found 63% view the Democratic party unfavorably, its worst rating in 35 years, while Republicans fare only marginally better in most surveys.Independent or independent-leaning Americans now account for nearly half the electorate, according to July Gallup polling, and public support has increasingly shifted toward Democrats through those leaners in recent months.On Monday, Greene used social media to criticize the lack of accountability over what she deems key issues to the base, sharing a table showing no arrests for the “Russian Collusion Hoax”, “Jan 6th”, and “2020 Election”.“Like what happened all those issues? You know that I don’t know what the hell happened with the Republican Party. I really don’t,” she said in the interview. “But I’ll tell you one thing, the course that it’s on, I don’t want to have anything to do with it, and I just don’t care any more.”Her recent bills have targeted unconventional Republican territory: preventing cloud-seeding, making English the official US language, and cutting capital gains taxes on homes. She is also the first Republican in Congress to label the crisis in Gaza a genocide, and has called for ending foreign aid and using the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to cut down fraud and waste in the government.Greene acknowledged her isolation within the party, saying: “I’m going alone right now on the issues that I’m speaking about.” More