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- The Damage to Economic Data May Already Be Done
If you have been closely following the ongoing Bureau of Labor Statistics story—in which Donald Trump fired then-Commissioner Erika McEntarfer after being displeased by the bureau’s July jobs report and selected the Heritage Foundation economist E. J. Antoni to succeed her—you will have heard an unusual consensus about the airtight political independence of the agency and the people who work there. Among BLS employees, including former Commissioner William Beach, whom Trump appointed in his first term, a fierce loyalty to the data is bone deep.Antoni does not appear to share that spirit of independence, nor does he seem to have a great deal of talent for economics or statistics, according to economists from across the political spectrum. Even so, his power to avoid future reports that embarrass Trump appears to be limited. In an interview recorded on August 4, before his nomination, Antoni proposed eliminating the monthly release of employment… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.5 days ago - Will Trump Get His Potemkin Statistics?In 2013, ahead of a scheduled visit from President Vladimir Putin to the small Russian town of Suzdal, local officials worried that he would be disappointed by the dilapidated buildings. In a modern revival of Grigory Potemkin’s possibly apocryphal deception of Catherine the Great, they slapped exterior wallpaper onto buildings, hoping to hide the decaying concrete behind illustrations of charming village homes. It was intended as a comforting myth to keep Putin happy. (In the end, Putin never showed up.)On August 1, President Donald Trump demanded a comforting myth of his own, one that could have far greater consequences for the world economy. He began by firing a skilled economist, Erika McEntarfer, from her job running the Bureau of Labor Statistics, for a cardinal sin that ordinarily exists only in dictatorships: producing “bad numbers.” In authoritarian regimes, good numbers are always right, and if anyone says otherwise—if they are foolish… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.6 days ago
- Is This the Hardest Physical Contest in the World?
Photographs by Kendrick BrinsonThe United States Army, in business now for more than 250 years, comprises more than 450,000 soldiers. Of those, about a third are in combat arms, serving in armor, artillery, engineering, cyber, and aviation units. Some 56,000 are in the infantry, the “Queen of Battle,” serving in units such as the 82nd Airborne Division and the 4th Infantry Division. These are the soldiers who go to battle on foot (or, in the case of Airborne units, by parachute—at least on occasion). Among them are some of the most physically fit humans on the planet—the soldiering equivalent of Olympic decathletes.These are the sort who choose to attend Ranger School, the grueling 61-day Army course at Fort Benning, in Georgia, that is meant to push the body, and the spirit, substantially past the breaking point. Only about half of those who start Ranger School eventually finish, some after trying… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.7 days ago - Trump’s Dreams for D.C. Could Soon Hit RealityWashington, D.C., more than any other city in the country, presents President Donald Trump with the opportunity to meddle in the minutiae of municipal governance. Even in the capital, though, his powers are far from limitless. And the chasm between Trump’s sweeping plan to “clean up” D.C. and his actual authority over the city sets up a stark choice for the president: He can either settle for a significantly diminished version of the kind of change he desires or attempt to push the bounds of the law.On Monday, Trump announced that he would federalize the city’s police department, deploy the National Guard, and dispatch hundreds of federal officers to patrol the nation’s capital, pledging to address its “crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor.” Trump set a high bar for himself during a press conference in which he promised to, among other things, get rid of D.C.’s “homeless encampments” and “slums,” revoke… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.1 week ago
- Vladimir Putin Could Be Laying a TrapVladimir Putin has had a tough few months. His military’s much-feared summer offensive has made incremental gains in Ukraine but not nearly the advances he had hoped. His economy has sputtered. Donald Trump has grown fed up with Putin’s repeated defiance of his calls for a cease-fire and, for the first time, has targeted the Russian president with consistently harsh rhetoric. Last week, Trump slapped one of Russia’s major trading partners, India, with sanctions.Putin needs to buy time to change the trajectory of the conflict. So the former KGB spymaster has given Trump something that the U.S. president has wanted for months: a one-on-one summit to discuss the end of the conflict. Trump leaped at the chance. But as the two men prepare to meet in Alaska on Friday, foreign-policy experts—and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—are warning that Trump could be walking into a trap that the Russian leader is setting… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.1 week ago
- Kari Lake’s Attempt to Deport Her Own EmployeesAfter rushing to shut down the government-funded media outlets she was tapped to lead, Kari Lake has launched on a mission so strange that it is perhaps unprecedented: She is trying to force her own employees out of the country.Lake has been making the rounds on right-wing media in recent weeks to pitch herself as a devoted enforcer of President Donald Trump’s broader agenda. Her latest targets are J-1 visa holders who worked for Voice of America. Obscure to most Americans, they have attracted Lake’s attention in part because they embody a trifecta of triggers for Trump’s ire—they are federal employees, they are immigrants, and they are journalists.And in Lake’s telling—which distorts the facts in pursuit of a more provocative narrative—they are national-security threats worthy of the same kind of rough handling that Trump has encouraged for suspected Venezuelan gang members.“Their time here is up. And I said before, if… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.1 week ago
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