Trump Is Attacking Our Ability to Find Out What Is Going On in Our Country

If Trump is going to kill off data-collection or worse, cook the books, how can we make good decisions?

Erika Frankel, Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy

Alarms are sounding across the political and ideological spectrums about America’s collapsing federal data structure. But what is the big deal? Why does access to data, specifically from the federal government, matter so much?

At the heart of all work in this space are three questions:

1. What happened before?
2. What is happening now?
3. What might happen?

A society cannot make good decisions without knowing how prior decisions turned out, assessing the current situation, and developing reasonable predictions about possibilities under consideration.

Federal statistical work is how we find out what is going on with the 300 million people and 11 million businesses across the complex network of federal, state, and local systems that make up the world’s largest economy. Issues at that scale are too big for intuition or “common sense.” We need comprehensive information produced by rigorous, capable people who are not afraid to tell us the truth. We should be deeply and profoundly alarmed by the offer of anything less.

Each researcher approaches their work from a different direction with a different area of focus, which results in a wide range of conclusions on a variety of topics. But the common ground is the data.

Reliable, comprehensive, nonpartisan federal datasets like the American Community Survey from the Census Bureau, historical data tables from Internal Revenue Service Statistics of Income, economic reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, scoring from the Joint Committee on Taxation, estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, and other quality federal data products provide a stable point of reference to which most agree to calibrate their work, even though there may be different policy perspectives. We know we are all standing on the same ground, and that the ground is reasonably solid.

Until now, these data have been produced by teams of dedicated experts who understand that their job is to collect and report the numbers as accurately as possible. Sometimes the best available methods are imperfect. Sometimes estimates need adjustment based on the latest information. Sometimes the team responsible for a particular report does not have the ideal amount of funding or enough staff. But the reports have always been created in good faith by extremely competent people. The current threats to that are inexcusable.

Erosion of the ability to accurately describe our reality hobbles every aspect of our collective decision-making. The current program of erosion is steady, deliberate, and already well underway.

Couldn't be better

Trump interview on CNBC shows he's 'Living in a Fantasy World'

Weird claims about statistics, inflation, the price of gas and groceries, jobs, farmworkers, trade deals continue to raise questions about his sanity 

Brad Reed for Common Dreams

Donald Trump gave a lengthy interview to CNBC  and critics quickly pounced on the president for telling a large number of false claims on topics ranging from monthly jobs numbers to the price of gas to international trade agreements.

Toward the start of the interview, CNBC host Joe Kernen pushed back on Trump's claims that the Bureau of Labor Statistics had "rigged" job creation numbers against him and debunked a Trump statement that the BLS had covered up negative jobs data revisions under the Biden administration until after the November 2024 presidential election.

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

Trump, however, insisted that his statements about hiding downward revisions until after the election were correct even though the biggest downward revisions actually occurred in August 2024, well before the election took place. 

Now that Trump has sent the message that if you present data he doesn't like, he will fire you, can we trust ANY federal data?

Bureau of Labor Statistics used to tell the US what’s up with the economy

Thomas A. Stapleford, University of Notre Dame

Many financial and political analysts are trying to assess the impact of President Donald Trump’s decision to fire U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer on Aug. 1, 2025, the same day that an unemployment report conveyed weakness in the job market. 

Some of the strongest criticism of this unprecedented move has come from Republican-aligned and nonpartisan experts, including a former BLS commissioner Trump appointed during his first term and the American Economic Association, a nonprofit that has 17,000 members in academic, government and business professions. 

They have said that what Trump has accused McEntarfer of doing – “rigging” data“ – would be impossible to pull off.

The Conversation U.S. asked Tom Stapleford, a professor who has written a book on the political history of the U.S. consumer price index, to explain why this move could undermine trust in the indicators the government releases and why that could damage the economy.

What key data does the BLS release?

Founded in 1884, the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes monthly and annual data about American consumers and workers. Historically, the BLS has focused on urban workers and consumers, while the Department of Agriculture covered farmers and agricultural work. But these days, the Bureau of Labor Statistics also collects some data reflecting rural areas too.

The bureau publishes monthly data on inflation, employment and unemployment, and compensation. It also measures productivity on a quarterly basis, and twice per year it issues reports on consumer purchases – what people buy and how much they spend in different categories.

These official statistics are often revised in the months that follow as the bureau adopts new methods or more data becomes available.

Governor brings back Stefan Pryor to fix problems he couldn't fix the last two times he served in government

Will the third time be the charm? Ask Einstein.

By Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current

Gov. Dan McKee has tapped a familiar face to return to his former job leading state economic development efforts.

McKee unveiled Stefan Pryor as his pick for Rhode Island Commerce Secretary Thursday afternoon. If confirmed by the Rhode Island Senate, the nomination will return Pryor to the same post he held for eight years, from 2015 to 2022. 

“Stefan Pryor has the experience and the right skill set to steer Rhode Island’s economic development efforts,” McKee said in a statement. “He has forged strong relationships with business over the years, knows Rhode Island’s strengths and potential, and is skilled at liaising between the public and private sectors.” 

After a failed run for Rhode Island General Treasurer in 2022, Pryor went on to lead the state housing department. He served as housing secretary from February 2023 to July 2024, before leaving for the private sector.

The once-prominent state cabinet head known for helping lure big-name companies to Rhode Island with public subsidies, and later, to shore up the nascent and struggling housing department, disappeared from the public eye after stepping away from state government. He most recently worked as a partner for Palm Venture Studios, a Connecticut-based impact investment firm.

However, speculation over his return to Commerce began to swirl after former Commerce Secretary Liz Tanner announced in June she would be leaving to take a position with a new nonprofit tied to the 2026 World Cup. The need to fill the role intensified after temporary replacement, Jim Bennett, took a leave of absence for health reasons weeks into his new duties, as first reported by the Boston Globe Rhode Island. Bennett, who also serves as Commerce president and CEO, did not attend the agency’s most recent meeting on Tuesday. 

How the ‘big, beautiful bill’ reduces poor families’ ability to afford food and health care

MAGA misery

Beverly Moran, Vanderbilt University

Make America Great Again like it was then. 
Photographed by Marion Post Wolcott
for the Farm Security Administration, September 1938

Donald Trump has said the “big, beautiful bill” he signed into law on July 4, 2025, will stimulate the economy and foster financial security.

But a close look at the legislation reveals a different story, particularly for low-income people and racial and ethnic minorities.

As a legal scholar who studies how taxes increase the gap in wealth and income between Black and white Americans, I believe the law’s provisions make existing wealth inequalities worse through broad tax cuts that disproportionately favor wealthy families while forcing its costs on low- and middle-income Americans.

The widening chasm

The U.S. racial wealth gap is stark. White families’ median wealth between 2019 and 2022 grew to more than $250,000 higher than Black families’ median wealth.

This disparity is the result of decades of discriminatory policies in housing, banking, health care, taxes, education and employment.

The new legislation will widen these chasms through its permanent extension of individual tax cuts in Trump’s 2017 tax reform package. Americans have eight years of experience with those changes and how they hurt low-income families.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, for example, predicted that low-income taxpayers would gain US$70 a year from the 2017 tax cuts. But that figure did not include the results of eliminating the individual mandate that encouraged uninsured people to get health insurance through the federal marketplace. That insurance was heavily subsidized by the federal government.

The Republican majority in Congress predicted that the loss of the mandate would decrease federal spending on health care subsidies. That decrease cost low-income taxpayers over $4,000 per person in lost subsidies.

The Congressional Budget Office examined the net effect of the 2025 bill by combining the tax changes with cuts to programs like Medicaid and food assistance. It found that the bill will reduce poor families’ ability to obtain food and health care.

Economists Pan 'Insane' Trump national sales tax

Slams Canada over non-existent fentanyl trafficking

Jake Johnson

That's an old Soviet car - Russian, not American -
in the GOP post on Trump's national sales tax 

Donald Trump  used “emergency” authority to impose high tariff rates on imports from dozens of American trading partners, including Canada—a move that economists criticized as a senseless approach to global trade that will further increase costs for consumers who are already struggling to get by.

Trump outlined the new tariff rates in executive orders signed just ahead of his arbitrary August 1 deadline for U.S. trading partners to negotiate a deal with the White House, whose erratic, aggressive, and legally dubious approach has alarmed world leaders.

Under the president's new orders, Canadian goods that are not covered by the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) will face 35% import duties, while steel and aluminum imports will face a 50% tariff rate.

Trump claimed Canada "has failed to cooperate in curbing the ongoing flood of fentanyl and other illicit drugs." But Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney hit back in a statement early Friday, noting that Canada "accounts for only 1% of U.S. fentanyl imports and has been working intensively to further reduce these volumes."

"While we will continue to negotiate with the United States on our trading relationship, the Canadian government is laser-focused on what we can control: building Canada strong," Carney added. "Canadians will be our own best customer, creating more well-paying careers at home, as we strengthen and diversify our trading partnerships throughout the world."

Economist Brad Setser said that while the impact of the higher tariff on Canadian imports could be muted because of the exemption of USMCA-covered products such as oil, the 35% rate is still "insane" and "dumb."

"Same with the high tariff on Switzerland. Crazy," Setser wrote, pointing to the 39% rate for Switzerland imports. "This isn't just protectionism, it is bad protectionism—and will have all sorts of unintended consequences."

Trump congratulates himself

The new tariff rates for Canadian goods will take effect Friday while the higher rates for other nations such as Brazil (50%), India (25%), and Vietnam (20%) won't kick in until next week "to give Customs and Border Protection officials time to prepare," The Washington Post reported. Customs and Border Protection collects tariffs, which are effectively taxes paid by importers—who often pass those costs onto consumers in the form of higher prices.

"Trump's definition of 'winning' is hitting the American people with ever-higher taxes," Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote late Thursday.

Recent U.S. economic data indicates that Trump's tariffs are already putting upward pressure on prices—and companies are using the president's trade chaos as an excuse to drive up prices further and pad their bottom lines.

The Tax Foundation noted earlier this week that "a variety of food imports" will be impacted by Trump's tariffs, likely leading to "higher food prices for consumers." More than 80% of Americans are already concerned about the price of groceries and many are struggling to stay afloat, according to survey data released Thursday by The Century Foundation.

Baker warned Thursday that even nations that have agreed to trade frameworks with the U.S. are not out of the woods.

"Deals are meaningless to Trump. He'll break them in a second any time he feels like it," Baker wrote. "I trust everyone negotiating with Trump understands that fact."

If the measure of success is losing billions of dollars, than chalk one up for King Donald

Trump deals another blow to American automakers 

by Emily Singer, Daily Kos Staff

Donald Trump announced late on Tuesday that he and Japan reached a trade agreement, which will slap a 15% tariff on Japanese imports in exchange for Japan investing $550 billion in the U.S.

The so-called deal is another shit sandwich for Americans, especially U.S. car manufacturers. 

That's because Japanese cars imported into the U.S. will face a 15% tariff rate—lower than the 25% tariff American car companies currently face for imported auto parts. 

American automakers have already said Trump's tariffs have dealt a massive blow to their companies.

General Motors reported Tuesday that it lost $1 billion from April to June, attributing the losses to Trump's tariffs. And Stellantis, which manufactures American brands like Chrysler, Jeep, and Dodge, said it lost a whopping $2.7 billion in the first half of 2025 because of Trump's tariffs.

That 15% rate is less than the shocking 25% tariff Trump had threatened against Japan if a deal wasn’t struck.

That’s why Japanese car stocks rose on Wednesday, with Toyota up about 13%.

“Toyota is up +8% on the news of a 15% tariff. Why? It's simple,” Spencer Hakimian, founder of the hedge fund Tolou Capital Management, wrote in a post on X. 

“Ford, GM, Tesla, and all the other American manufacturers are going to be paying 50% more for their steel, 50% more for their copper, 25% more for their Canadian production, 25% more for their Mexican production, and 55% on their Chinese production. Toyota only has to pay 15% more and they're done with all the shenanigans. Ford has to pay much more than that. A lot more in fact."

“We've given a Japanese car company an advantage over American car companies. All in hope of bringing auto jobs back to America,” he added.

The American Automotive Policy Council—which represents General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis—said on Wednesday that the Japanese trade agreement is a "bad deal for U.S. industry and U.S. auto workers."

But Trump’s trade policy is not hurting just automakers.

Goldman Sachs on Tuesday said that U.S. economic growth will slow in 2025 because of Trump’s tariffs. The bank’s chief economist, Jan Hatzius, wrote in a memo to clients that the tariffs “will eat into real income, at a time when consumer spending trends already look shaky.” 

TACO Trump is back on his destructive tariff spree

An embarrassing exercise in economic and diplomatic futility

Stephen Robinson

Donald Trump just escalated his mindlessly self-destructive trade war against our (former) economic allies — again.

On July 7, Trump sent rambling letters informing 14 nations, including major trading partners Japan and South Korea, that the US government was slapping them with significantly higher tariffs as of August 1. 

These tariffs are separate from his previously announced sectoral tariffs on automobiles, steel, and aluminum. (This week, he also announced a 50 percent tariff on copper imports for August 1.) 

Trump sent more letters sporadically through the week, with an especially bonkers one to Brazil threatening a 50 percent tariff if the government proceeds with its prosecution of Trump’s partner in coups, Jair Bolsonaro.

Then, Trump announced a new 35 percent tariff on Canada, citing debunked claims about the country turning a blind eye to fentanyl flowing into the United States.

Trump’s new August 1 deadline is completely arbitrary, and his tariff numbers aren’t grounded in any rational economic policy. As everyone seems to understand but the president and his sycophants, these new tariffs will result in increased prices on goods Americans need and can’t magically produce ourselves. Other nations won’t shoulder the costs from tariffs. We will.

The letters all read mostly the same, like shockingly incoherent spam e-mails with the recipient’s name in an obviously different font. They are filled with alarming typos, random Capitalization, and sloppy errors. For instance, Trump’s letter to Željka Cvijanović, the chairwoman of the presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, begins with “Dear Mr. President.”

Deregulation. Privatization. Tax cuts. Free trade. Stagnant pay for most. A soaring stock market for the top.

These are all self-inflicted wounds

Robert Reich for Inequality Media

I rarely ask you to look at charts. Today is an exception. This one is from the Economic Policy Institute. It compares the typical American’s pay starting just after World War II (light blue line) with the nation’s increasing productivity since then (dark blue).

The chart shows the widening divergence between the rise of pay and the yields from productivity.

In the first three decades after World War II, the typical American’s pay rose in tandem with the nation’s growing productivity. The benefits from higher productivity were broadly shared.

But then, starting in the late 1970s and dramatically after 1980, pay barely grew, even as productivity continued to soar. The benefits from higher productivity went increasingly to the top.

Why?

I’ve been looking into this question for a long time.

I’ve also been living it, as head of policy for the Federal Trade Commission under Jimmy Carter, secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, and an economic adviser to Obama. I’ve chronicled this in my upcoming memoir, Coming Up Short.

Much of the answer has to do with a giant upward shift in power.

It started in 1971, with a memo written for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by Lewis Powell exhorting corporations to play a far more active role in American politics. They did, and their increasingly active role paid off, at least for their CEOs and top investors.

It continued through Reagan’s tax cuts and deregulation, his legitimization of union bashing, and the emergence of corporate raiders who insisted that corporations maximize shareholder value above all else.

And onward through George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton’s North American Free Trade Agreement, their support for China’s accession to the World Trade Organization, and their deregulation of Wall Street.

And then through George W. Bush’s tax cut — again, mainly for big corporations and wealthy individuals — and Barack Obama’s bailout of Wall Street after it nearly destroyed the world economy.

Deregulation. Privatization. Tax cuts. Free trade. Stagnant pay for most. A soaring stock market for the top.

That’s the legacy of neoliberalism.

It also brought us Trump — who exploited the anger and resentment stirred up by all this and pretended to be a strongman on the side of the working class (while quietly giving the emerging American oligarchy everything else it wanted, including a giant tax cut; he’s readying another as you read this).

The Trump Administration Thinks You Should Be OK With Being Poor

You should learn to love a lower standard of living, for Trump's sake

By Nathalie Baptiste, HuffPost

The Trump administration released bad news about the economy on April 30: According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, the economy shrank for the first time since 2022 in what is likely the first tangible sign for everyday Americans of the impact of President Donald Trump’s policies.

The news sent the stock market into a tailspin, while business owners warned that shoppers could start seeing empty store shelves.

But even as the bad news piles up, the Trump administration has decided to reassure panicked consumers with a chilling talking point: Poverty is good, actually.

Last month, as economists warned of the harm Trump’s tariff policies could cause, including drastically increasing the price of goods, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent attempted to dismiss those concerns by insinuating that being able to afford things is not important to Americans.

“Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream,” Bessent said to a crowd of economists.

It turns out this assertion was only the beginning of the Trump administration’s vision for a new American dream.

From Trump telling reporters that he’s not worried about empty stores to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick saying during an interview that in his version of America, multiple generations will work in the same factories, it sure seems like the Trump administration is trying to prime Americans for accepting and even enjoying a drastically lower standard of living.

TACO

New Trump nickname (TACO - "Trump always chickens out") is catching on in the financial press

No confidence in Trump economic plan causes US credit rating to drop

Credit agencies know a bad risk when they see one

Robert Reich for Inequality Media

Last Friday, the credit rating of the United States was downgraded. Moody’s, the ratings firm, announced that the U.S. government’s rising debt levels will grow further if the Trump Republican package of new tax cuts is enacted. This makes lending to the United States riskier.

(Moody’s is the third of three major credit-rating agencies to downgrade the credit rating of the United States.)

So-called “bond vigilantes” are being blamed. They’ve already been selling the U.S. government’s debt, as the Republican tax package moves through Congress. They’re expected to sell even more, driving long-term interest rates even higher to make up for the growing risk of holding U.S. debt.

Some right-wing Republicans in Congress have already used the Moody’s downgrade to justify deeper spending cuts in Medicaid, food stamps, and other social programs that lower-income Americans depend on.

Just follow the money. The real cause is the growing political power of the super-rich and big corporations...

But, hello? There’s a far easier way to reduce the federal debt. Just end the Trump tax cuts that mainly benefit the wealthy and big corporations — and instead raise taxes on them.

I’m old enough to remember when America’s super-rich financed the government with their tax payments. Under President Dwight Eisenhower — hardly a left-wing radical — the highest marginal tax rate was 91 percent. (Even after all tax credits and deductions were figured in, the super-rich paid way over half their top marginal incomes in taxes.)

But increasingly — since the Reagan, George W. Bush, and Trump 1 tax cuts — tax rates on the super-rich have plummeted.

Donald Trump and the power of the big FAKE number

Trump and Musk love to put out big numbers but the facts don’t back them up.

Paul Waldman

If there’s one thing Donald Trump loves more than a deal, it’s the announcement of a deal, the part where he comes before the cameras in triumph to tell the world that through his superhuman negotiating skills he has secured an agreement that will bring a future of unfathomable riches to all Americans.

These announcements invariably center on a dollar figure, usually one almost preposterously large. Five hundred billion, two trillion, 10 trillion — we are all supposed to marvel at the majesty of this number, to the point where our critical faculties fail us and we accept it without skepticism.

There may never have been a better case study of this than Trump’s recent trip to the Middle East. During the tour, Trump repeatedly touted the enormous deals he supposedly obtained from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, but an examination of those and some other recent deals he has announced — all portrayed as new investments pouring into the American economy — shows them to be largely a mirage.

We’re the marks, and the suspiciously large dollar number is the centerpiece of the con.

So many deals you’ll be tired of all the deals

MAGA posters suitable for framing

Read his own words: Trump's brain is gone

The guy with the nuclear launch codes

Stephen Robinson

Donald Trump’s recent interviews with Time and The Atlantic revealed a president who is completely unhinged and incoherent. Sadly, that’s not news. 

But what stood out is that Trump is consistently confused and disconnected from reality even on issues that are supposedly in his wheelhouse.

Trump has always been an ignoramus who masks his intellectual shortcomings with bombast and declarations of his own brilliance, but his rambling nonsensical responses in these latest interviews should set off alarms — especially in light of all the media attention and scrutiny Joe Biden received after his disastrous debate performance or when Special Counsel Robert Hur described him as “a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”

Trump, who turns 79 in June, is the oldest person ever elected president. His repetitive speech patterns, frequent use of empty phrases, and overall rambling discourse are too often graded on a curve.

White House officials and pandering Republicans might boast about Trump’s boundless energy in a manner that would shame North Korean state media, but the Time and Atlantic interviews tell a very different story.

Economic Anxiety of Americans Surges Under Trump

The worst part is Trump's bizarre claims that everything is great, all evidence to the contrary

Julia Conley for Common Dreams

Posted by Trump on May 12

The Trump administration has made its desire for Americans to expand their families well known, but a new survey out Monday details how a growing number of people are postponing such major life decisions—including having children, buying a home, or expanding their education—due to the economic anxiety created by Donald Trump's policies.

The Harris poll was conducted on behalf of The Guardian between April 24-26, in the wake of the news that the White House was considering multiple ways to encourage people to have more children. 

The proposals being floated by "pronatalist" advisers include a $5,000 "baby bonus" that the administration would offer to people when they have a new baby—which would cover less than half of the average annual cost of childcare in the United States.

Musk and Trump get all the attention but in the Trump regime, incompetence is a job requirement.

A cabinet of dunces

David R. Lurie With rare exceptions, you must be a rich white male, totally loyal to Trump and cruel. Being corrupt, stupid or incompetent is not a problem. Credit: Mark Schiefelbein

As the second Trump administration passed its 100 day mark, pundits expressed awe at the “astonishing” amount the president had purportedly accomplished.

Trump and his cronies have certainly engaged in more flagrantly illegal and wantonly destructive activities than any modern presidential administration, and in a strikingly brief time. But as we head toward the sixth month of Trump 2.0, it is becoming increasingly clear how little there is to it apart from self-enrichment and nihilism.

In his second term in office, Trump is, truly, being Trump. He’s rigorously demanding that the government be “operated” the way he conducted business for decades — that is, solely and exclusively for short-term gain and self-aggrandizement. The result, it is becoming clear, is a regime that leaves chaos in its wake instead of creating anything approaching the foundation for a legacy.

Thus, far from setting out to institutionalize a sustainable right-wing revolution — like Ronald Reagan did, with some pernicious success — Trumpers are engaged in a project directed at sabotaging as much of the nation’s government and destroying as much of its economic and political power, as possible.

While the consequences of this nihilistic assault are likely to be catastrophic, the hopeful possibility is they could also be remarkably short-lived.

The incompetence is the point

Noem, earning her nickname "ICE Barbie."
Best known for bragging about shooting her puppy

To meet his nihilistic standards, Trump has systematically stocked the government with cronies that he demands perform incompetently.

For instance, during Senate testimony this week, Trump Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem declared that the habeas corpus clause, a bedrock constitutional guarantee against illegal detention, protects the “constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country." (Watch below.)

In this and other contexts, Noem — who purportedly manages the agency responsible for carrying out Trump’s lynchpin immigration policies — has established that she’s not simply a bad faith actor, but also a genuinely and willfully stupid person.

She’s not alone. Profound inability and/or unwillingness to perform competently are job requirements for service as a senior member of the Trump regime.

Democratic senators who voted to confirm the few Trump cabinet nominees who had minimal qualifications for their jobs — such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — have appeared shocked to see these Trump officials strenuously endeavoring to be just as incompetent, and morally obtuse, as Noem. But they should not have been surprised.

In an administration in which the sole consistent goals are valorizing Trump and making him as rich as possible, any official who demonstrates an ability to effectively administer and carry out the business of the US government is viewed with profound suspicion. On the other hand, those who are willing to learn incompetence and moral obtuseness are promoted.

Trump is now, absurdly, speaking of Rubio as his potential successor to the presidency. This comes after the longtime Russia hawk and promoter of American international leadership has become the willing instrument of Trump’s campaign to undermine it and turn our nation’s longstanding allies into enemies, aligning the United States with pariah nations like Russia and undemocratic ones like El Salvador. 

Rubio is also serving as the figurehead of Trump’s shambolic gutting of American soft power infrastructure that has left vast numbers of children around the world at risk of starving as food rots in warehouses, and HIV sufferers to die in desperation for lack of lifesaving medication.

Trump has similarly rewarded Bessent — who business leaders claimed was well positioned to serve as a steward of the American economy because of his experience working for George Soros — for choosing to become a pathetic stooge whose primary function is to make nonsensical claims in support of his boss’s full bore assaults on the US economy.

Most recently, Bessent was heard parroting Dear Leader by contending that the panic in the bond markets induced by Trump’s irrational and constantly shifting tariffs — and the resulting increases in interest rates — should be of no concern to consumers because oil prices are falling. Left out of that “analysis” is the reality that oil prices have declined rapidly in anticipation of a potential recession.

Nobody, including the credit rating agency Moody’s — which just downgraded the US government’s longstanding AAA credit rating — takes anything Bessent says seriously anymore. But his deep and abiding commitment to being willfully stupid on Trump’s behalf has resulted in the president affording him increasing “responsibility” for what passes as MAGA economic “policy.”

Nihilism as a job requirement

Most of the cronies Trump has placed “in charge” of other critical agencies of the US government did not have to learn to be stupid like Rubio and Bessent. Instead, they were chosen precisely because had established track records of being lazy, ignorant, incurious, and morally obtuse, thus giving Trump confidence they would not bat an eye as the institutions they are charged with administering are destroyed. The examples are becoming chillingly familiar.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was selected to “head” the Department of Health and Human Services — a sprawling agency responsible for everything from Medicare and Medicaid to pharmaceutical regulation and food assistance — precisely because he’s a conspiratorial wacko who’s perfectly willing to preside over the dismantlement of much of the federal healthcare infrastructure so long as he’s given free rein to pursue his paranoid assaults on vaccinations, fluoride, and lifesaving medical treatments.

This week, Kennedy angrily declared to a Senate subcommittee that he denied daycare funding to the children of working parents (even as he and Trump threaten to deny Medicaid to people who don’t work) because Sen. Patty Murray is somehow responsible for Americans suffering from an “epidemic of chronic disease,” a contention so bizarre and defamatory that it led the presiding Republican senator to intervene and bring an end to Kennedy’s rant. 

Pam Bondi was selected be the nation’s attorney general because she’s happy to devote her term to serving as a near daily guest on Fox News, where she proudly describes the efforts of Trump cronies to break nearly every core function of the Department of Justice, including its policing of financial crimes, government corruption, flouting of environmental laws, and violations of civil and voting rights.

Meanwhile, Linda McMahon, a pro wrestling mogul who has no apparent knowledge or interest in the activities of the Department of Education she was chosen to “administer,” is content to serve as figurehead of the illegal Trump scheme to dismantle that department without congressional approval. 

In the process, she’s happily presiding over a rapidly growing cascade of chaos as uncertainty grows over the administration of the federal government’s massive student loan program. Often entirely unexplained delays and cancellations of grants to educational institutions are already contributing to the collapse of colleges and universities, and causing hardships in many already underfunded local school districts.

For her part, Noem — whose mélange of utter laziness and amorality makes her the ideal type of a Trump crony — is doing her best to exacerbate actual disasters. Apparently anticipating that it would please Trump, she declared that she will — once again, entirely illegally — dismantle the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is primarily responsible for coordinating and assisting in relief efforts by other federal agencies, without establishing any replacement for it.

As Rep. Jared Moskowitz, who led Florida’s Director of Emergency Management in the wake of a major hurricane, has warned, Noem’s actions have already set the stage for the potential disappearance of some rural communities, which are unlikely to have the resources required to recover from future hurricanes.

Once again, this is not simply bad governance — it is systematic stupidity. And Trump, who has praised Noem’s gutting of FEMA, loves it.

Just a little pinch

For more cartoons from Tom Tomorrow, click HERE.

Stupid is as stupid does