US Government is Paying for Trump Advertising

At first glance, it looks like a typical Republican campaign advertisement. As images of President Donald Trump flash across the screen, the 30-second spot says “America will never be a communist country” and boasts about the “largest tax cuts in history.”

But there’s something different near the end — a bit of text at the bottom that says “paid for by the U.S. government.”

According to AdImpact, which tracks media spending, the advertisement cost $14,000 and it ran during conservative shows on Fox News and Newsmax.

It’s not clear what part of the U.S. government paid for the spot, which includes background music with singers crooning “love me” over and over. The White House did not immediately return a request for comment. Neither did Fox News or Newsmax.

The advertisement does not say who voters should support in the midterms, but it meshes with campaign messaging from Trump and other Republicans, particularly during the party’s unusual convention in Dallas earlier this month.

Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who is in line to chair the House Judiciary Committee if his party wins the majority in November, said in a social media post that it’s a violation of the Hatch Act for government employees to work on such a video.

“It is blatantly unethical under numerous federal ethics provisions proscribing the use of government resources for political campaigns,” Raskin wrote.

Poll: Trump's Approval Rating Breaks Below 30%

It was received wisdom during President Trump’s first term that his hard floor of support sat somewhere around one-third of Americans. Those were the MAGA true believers, the die-hards, the folks who stood in line for hours to attend their fifth Trump rally of the year. That rule of thumb proved to be true. Trump’s approval was still hovering in the 40s before ending around 34 percent on Jan. 4, 2021.

Whatever truths we can glean from Trump’s trainwreck of a second term, it is clear the MAGA base is now deserting him in record numbers.

An American Research Group poll published this week found Trump’s approval at just 29 percent — a new low for his presidency and a flashing warning sign for the congressional Republicans being dragged beneath the waves by the president’s plummeting popularity. 

What is surprising are the circumstances of Trump’s collapse. The economy is certainly in better shape than it was during the height of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, when Trump’s approval sat in the 40s. Last month’s 3.5 percent inflation rate is bad but well below its peak. Perhaps, more than high gas and grocery prices, Americans have just had enough of politicians who don’t seem to care about their problems.

The best example of Republican apathy doesn’t even come from Trump, but from the very mild criticism delivered by Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.). In a Sept. 6 interview with “Meet the Press,” Kennedy admitted that congressional Republicans could act before the midterms to ease an affordability crisis that is crushing regular Americans.  

“These prices are gutting the middle class like a fish and they expect Congress to address them. And we should have started five months ago. We didn’t. But we need to start talking about it now,” Kennedy said. 

When asked by host Kristen Welker if Republicans had the power to address inflation, Kennedy was clear: “Sure, if we wanted to,” Kennedy replied. “We can do anything we want to in reconciliation and ask the House to come back and do it. I’m not saying we will do that. Certainly based on our record of the last five or six months, it’s not likely.” 

It is one thing for angry voters to hear Democrats complaining about Republican inaction on inflation. It’s quite another to hear a prominent Republican tell voters in no uncertain terms that the Republican Party just doesn’t care enough about them to address skyrocketing prices. Sure, your nearly $5 a gallon gas may be demolishing your family budget, but don’t expect your Republican elected leaders to lift a finger to help. 

The apathy on display among Republican leaders is baffling, given the scope of America’s affordability crisis. A Fox News poll conducted Sept. 11-14 found that more than two-thirds of voters — including one-quarter of Republicans — blame Trump for making the economy worse. Those voters also trust Democrats over Republicans to address the inflation crisis by a 15-point margin, one of the largest spreads to date.

Interestingly, that number is driven more by voter anger over Republicans’ failure to act (51 percent) than confidence Democrats’ plans will actually work (47 percent). Voters would rather try a solution that might not work than let an indifferent and ineffective Republican Party squander two more years of power. 

Read the rest here.

The Bond Market Rout Continues

Treasury rates spiked on Wednesday to multiyear highs in what was the biggest one-day move for the 10-year Treasury yield in nearly 18 months. There were a number of reasons cited for the sudden move higher:

Much stronger-than-expected surveys on U.S. economic activity, especially in the manufacturing sector

Hawkish commentary from a top Federal Reserve official

A U.S. Treasury auction for five-year notes that was met with poor demand

Stubbornly high oil prices with WTI crude rising 2%

The 10-year Treasury note yield

 popped more than 13 basis points to 5.104% and reached a level not seen since July 2007. The move gained steam after the 10-year yield broke through the key 5% level. It marked the benchmark yield’s biggest one-day move since April 7, 2025 — when it surged 16.6 points.

The 2-year Treasury note yield

, which is most sensitive to expected changes in Fed policy, jumped more than 11 basis points to 4.889% and hit its highest level since May 2024 as traders increased their bet the Federal Reserve would need to hike again in October.

The 30-year Treasury

 yield gained more than 9 basis points to 5.398%. It hit the highest level since June 2007. One basis point is equal to 0.01%, and yields and prices move in opposite directions.

“This is the market telling us we’ve entered a genuine re-tightening cycle, said Tony Miano, global investment strategy analyst at Wells Fargo Investment Institute. “The Fed’s 25 basis point hike last week to 3.75%–4% was its first increase since 2023, and the dot plot signaled another this year.”

“A week ago you could argue that was a one-and-done insurance move or a one and maybe December hike). Today’s price action says investors no longer believe that,” he added. Bottom line, “you can’t fool or hide in the bond market – unless the Fed gets inflation under control the long end of the curve is going to continue to come under pressure.”

Read the rest here.

See also this for a more detailed discussion of the recent craziness in the markets.

75% of Americans Say Tariffs Will Be Important to Their Vote in the Midterms

A new Cato Institute/​Morning Consult survey of 4,150 registered voters finds that three in four (75%) say tariffs will be important to their vote in this November’s midterm elections.

Nearly the same share—74%—say that Trump’s tariffs increased the prices of things they buy at the store, including 66% of Republicans and 84% of Democrats. Majorities say the tariffs are a tax on Americans (57%) and believe they have weakened the US economy (53%), while just 23% say the tariffs have improved their personal quality of life. 

Overall, 57% have an unfavorable opinion of President Trump’s handling of trade policy (an increase from 54% in March), while 43% have a favorable view. 

Together, these findings suggest tariffs could pose a political liability for Republicans in the midterms, particularly among independents and voters concerned about higher prices. The survey finds that a plurality of Americans plan to vote for the Democratic candidate for Congress over the Republican candidate by 47% to 42%, with 11% unsure. 

Read the rest here.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Sees Serious Threats to the Global Economy

Four powerful shocks are hitting the world economy at the same time. They are escalating and feeding on each other, driving a commodity spiral that can end only in an inflationary blow-off.

The effects are ripping through the global bond markets and confronting central banks with an impossible dilemma. Yields on 10-year US Treasuries have surpassed 5pc, smashing through the Maginot defences of Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary.

The Bloomberg commodity index has risen 48pc this year, accelerating in pace and spreading in breadth from energy to industrial metals and grains. The fever has spread to shipping and freight.

Lloyd’s List says the cost of a giant VLCC oil tanker on the Baltic Exchange has hit $1m (£740,000) a day, eight times the cost in January. “What is happening is truly unprecedented,” said Erik Broekhuizen, the head of shipping at Poten & Partners.

The futures markets are no longer pricing in a quick return to normal, as they were in those first insouciant weeks of the Iran war, when traders still believed in the all-conquering might of the US navy. Brent futures contracts are over $90 a barrel all the way out to the spring of 2027.

European gas futures are locking in prices through the winter that are three times higher than last winter. Wheat, maize and soybeans are all in “contango”: futures prices are well above today’s spot prices.

Read the rest here.

Profiles in Cowardice

The thing I’ve found most shocking about Donald Trump’s second presidency is not the epic grift, the ICE paramilitary violence or the assaults on free speech. These abuses, while horrifying, are predictable. What has stunned me has been the capitulation of so many American elites to Trump’s vulgar authoritarianism.

I didn’t expect major law firms, some that have long boasted about their progressive pro bono work, to fold with barely a fight. I didn’t expect TV networks to settle bogus lawsuits by paying the president millions, or for Ivy League schools such as Columbia to relinquish autonomy over curriculum, admissions and student discipline. In Hungary, it took years for Viktor Orban’s government to bring most of academia, the news media and other pillars of civil society to heel. Why were so many powerful people in America, a country whose civic culture is steeped in resistance to tyranny, so willing to abase themselves and their institutions?

That’s the question at the heart of Jacob Weisberg’s important new book, “Profiles in Cowardice: A Study of Collaboration in the Trump Era.” It’s an inverted version of John F. Kennedy’s “Profiles in Courage,” offering character studies of eight people who gave in to Trump despite surely knowing better. Reading it made me wonder if there’s something about America today that selects for spinelessness at the highest levels.

Some of Weisberg’s choices perplexed me; a few of the figures he focuses on are less morally compromised than simply rotten. There’s nothing that mysterious, at least to me, in the failure of people like Mitch McConnell, Megyn Kelly or the vulture capitalist Stephen Schwarzman to display much democratic integrity. What’s harder to fathom is why people who presented themselves as bulwarks against Trumpism during his first term made such degrading compromises during his second.

The Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos adopted the motto “Democracy Dies in Darkness” for his newspaper during the first Trump presidency, then gutted it during the second. As president of Barnard during the first Trump administration, Sian Beilock championed sweeping antiracism initiatives. In Trump’s second term, as president of Dartmouth, she has kept mostly mum about Trump’s attacks on higher education. These are people who once knew how dangerous Trump was, but now that he’s worse than ever, they’re pretending not to see. Why?

Read the rest here.

A Sober Reflection on the National Debt

Imagine running into a movie theater and yelling “fire!” But just as people are starting to panic, you add, “I mean … not yet … but maybe at some unknowable point in the future.”

That’s a fair description of where many of us tracking the U.S. fiscal outlook find ourselves at this moment. For years, I wasn’t an alarmist about the national debt. During the Biden administration, I even criticized those calling for more austere budget policy; I thought that fiscal austerity would do more harm than good.

Our fiscal reality has changed significantly since those days, and so has my stance on public debt. Here’s why:

The basic budget math has worsened as the interest rate on our national debt has climbed closer to the economy’s growth rate. If the compounding debt consistently grows faster than the economy, we risk entering a debt spiral.

Our annual deficits, currently about 6 percent of G.D.P., are way above where history says they should be. We’re not in a recession, but we’re borrowing as though we were.

Politically, neither party shows any interest in addressing the problem. President Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in fact, are aggressively creating the very risks I worry about.

Mr. Trump does so by explicitly trying to manipulate the Federal Reserve to lower the nation’s debt payments.

Mr. Bessent may be even worse, abandoning the steady hand that’s essential for being Treasury Secretary for hedge-fund swagger. He’s flexing on markets — “I am the house now,” he said, referring to the Treasury’s recent purchase of Japanese yen to support the dollar — by daring currency and bond markets to bet against him. They did. The traders quickly waved off his swagger, and bond yields rose.

Read the rest here.

Good news (for a change)

 The UK parliament has rejected the legalization of euthanasia.

When ‘12 Angry Men’ becomes one angry man

“I hope that guy can sleep well at night.”

Those words from Kevin Reddington on the steps of the Plymouth, Massachusetts Courthouse were part of a diatribe against the “guy” who was reportedly the sole holdout in the Lindsay Clancy trial. The scene was a fitting end to a visceral trial, but it added a vindictive element that should prompt Judge William Sullivan to call out the seasoned defense attorney.

After declaring that the 11-1 mistrial was “no time to gloat,” Reddington bragged repeatedly about “crushing” District Attorney Tim Cruz, whom he also attacked. He insisted that, in the trial, no one said a single negative thing about his client as a mother — ignoring that little matter of the three young children whom she had strangled to death, one by one.

But it was his attack on the holdout juror that was a breathtaking abandonment of restraint and decency. Reddington knows it is very likely that the name of this juror (he has already been identified as one of only three males on the jury) will eventually be uncovered by Internet sleuths. He effectively put a target on the back of a juror who committed the unpardonable sin of not being convinced by his arguments.

The fact that this is one of the three male jurors only ramped up the rage. This case prompted a striking gender divide between men and women, with many women expressing sympathy for Clancy and anger at the system for failing her. 

For Reddington and many viewers, the hung jury was less “Twelve Angry Men” and more like “One Angry Man.” Indeed, in addition to attacking the juror, women outside of the courthouse heckled Cruz as he tried to speak to the press, shouting that he “only cares about the three children. What about the Mom?”

Reddington followed up by saying that Cruz really did not care about the children (because he looked down to read their names). He also accused the holdout jurors of wasting the time of the jury, complaining “that guy stole seven weeks from those jurors.” 

It was an ironic twist on the 1957 classic. In that movie, Juror number eight (Ford) was repeatedly attacked for “wasting time” and not yielding to the majority — until he ultimately convinced all of his peers.

Earlier in the day, Reddington had asked a Massachusetts Supreme Court justice for an emergency order to force Sullivan not to declare a mistrial, and instead to remove the holdout in favor of an alternate. It was an utterly meritless effort, but Reddington used the filing to further denounce the juror. He compared the juror’s refusal to vote for his client as akin to leaving a racist on a jury. In this case, he suggested that the “guy” was a virtual anti-disability version of “Bull” Connor or some deranged “ableist.”

Read the rest here.

Whatever one's opinion on the case, Redington's behavior was grossly unethical. It can only have the effect of undermining public confidence in the jury system and making ordinary citizens reluctant to serve on jury duty for fear of being the target of a vengeful lawyer. He should be sanctioned and removed from the case if there is a retrial.

Dutch central bank moves gold bars out of U.S. and Canada, citing ‘crisis preparedness’

The Dutch central bank (DNB) has transferred approximately 86 metric tons of gold out of the U.S. and Canada to the U.K., seeking to shore up its contingency planning in view of “increasing geopolitical unrest.”

Just over one-quarter of the central bank’s gold reserves held in New York and Ottawa had been shifted to London between March and August, DNB said Wednesday.

The transferred gold is now stored with the Bank of England because gold stored there must meet international trade standards and is recognized as “the world’s most easily tradable gold,” DNB said, adding that the move strengthens its “crisis preparedness.”

By contrast, DNB said the gold bars held in the U.S. and Canada could not be utilized as quickly and directly in a crisis situation.

“With this relocation, we have improved the tradability of our gold reserves. We expect that we will never need to use them, but we do need to strengthen our resilience and preparedness,” DNB Governor Olaf Sleijpen said in a statement.

The move comes amid a blockbuster rally in gold prices and continued U.S.-Iran geopolitical tensions over the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, with a comprehensive settlement agreement far from certain.

Read the rest here.

Israel ‘seeking Trump’s support for plan to expel Palestinians from Gaza’

Israel’s defence minister has said his country is seeking Donald Trump’s support to approve plans to expel Palestinians from the Gaza Strip in what has widely been condemned as a potential war crime.

Israel Katz said there was “no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration” during a conference hosted by the Israeli news site Ynet and the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. He said the Israeli government was “organised and prepared to get them out by sea, by air, by every way possible”.

Trump discussed a US takeover of the Gaza Strip in early 2025 that would have involved removing Palestinians from the territory, but has since pulled back from the idea. A 20-point peace plan the White House drew up last year did not call for Palestinians’ deportation, an act that would be widely seen as ethnic cleansing.

Read the rest here.