Consumer sentiment fell about 5% in the University of Michigan’s preliminary February survey of consumers to its lowest reading since July 2024. Expectations of inflation in the year ahead jumped from 3.3% in January to 4.3%, the second month in a row of large increases and highest reading since November 2023.
“It’s very rare to see a full percentage point jump in inflation expectations,” said Joanne Hsu, who oversees the survey. Republicans have come off a postelection surge in confidence, she said, and Democrats and Independents also seem to believe that economic conditions have deteriorated since last month.
Morning Consult’s recent index of consumer confidence, too, fell between Jan. 25 and Feb. 3, driven primarily by concern over the country’s economic future.
“I don’t like the turbulence. I don’t like the chaos in the market,” said Paul Bisson, a 58-year-old, who writes proposals for a flight safety company and co-owns a dog daycare in San Antonio. Bisson voted for Trump, but feels “his policies have led to that chaos.”
Bisson is hoping to retire in the not-too-distant future, and is worried that won’t be possible if Trump follows through with his tariff threats rather than just using them as a negotiating tactic.
“That will make the economy worse, and that’s not what we signed up for.”
Yes it is what you signed up for you moron. He said tariffs were his favorite word in the English language! He talked about them incessantly! They aren’t a negotiating tactic as we just found out when he backed down once Canada and Mexico told him they agree to do what they’d already planned to do before he became president. He just likes to throw his weight around and, in his mind, they’re a way to make the country rich like it was in the 1890s. Whether he follows through on any of them time will tell but you can bet he’ll be issuing more threats and causing more turmoil in any case.
If these people like Trump and voted for him because he owns the libs (which is the real reason they like him) they should just admit it. Saying they didn’t sign up for him to wreck the economy is ridiculous. That’s exactly what they signed up for — and much, much worse. he didn’t try to hide it.
The Federal Communications Commission is investigating San Francisco-based KCBS for its coverage of immigration enforcement actions in San José last month, sparking concerns from press freedom advocates and drawing right-wing backlash to the radio station.
In an interview on Fox News, Trump-appointed commission chair Brendan Carr said he opened the investigation after KCBS shared the live locations and vehicle descriptions of immigration officials on Jan. 26.
“We have sent a letter of inquiry, a formal investigation into that matter, and they have just a matter of days left to respond to that inquiry and explain how this could possibly be consistent with their public interest obligations,” Carr said.
First Amendment advocates worry the FCC investigation will have a chilling effect on news organizations reporting on the Trump administration’s mass deportation plans.
“Law enforcement operations, immigration or otherwise, are matters of public interest,” said David Loy, legal director for the First Amendment Coalition. “People generally have the right to report this on social media and in print and so on. So it’s very troubling because it’s possible the FCC is potentially being weaponized to crack down on reporting that the administration simply just doesn’t like.”
Loy worried that the move could deter other news organizations from pursuing reporting critical of the Trump administration.
Ya think?
This is certainly an infringement on the First Amendment but that doesn’t matter. It’s being done to intimidate the media into second guessing its coverage of the Trump administration, and Carr is particularly focused on the local press. He knows that’s a place where he can throw his weight around and get to the TV and radio stations that the FCC actually regulates.
Musk has a lot of opinions lately about things he’s never expressed any interest in or knowledge of before. Via CNBC we find out why:
Until recently, Elon Musk seldom posted about the U.S. Agency for International Development on X, where he is wont to share his thoughts on nearly every subject.
Then on Sunday came a flurry of posts wherein the world’s richest person, the Trump-appointed head of the new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, described USAID, the foreign humanitarian assistance agency, as “a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America,” “evil” and “a criminal organization.”
“Time for it to die,” Musk posted. […]
Most of Musk’s more than 160 posts about USAID have been responses to a handful of small but influential verified accounts, many of them using pseudonyms. The most popular — including posts from Wall Street Apes, Kanekoa the Great, Chief Nerd and Autism Capital — have been viewed hundreds of millions of times, amplified by Musk and his 216 million followers, according to X metrics. As the theories spread, they are repackaged, and in many cases added upon, to further the claims.
A review of the accounts’ profiles reveals how a lengthy crusade to paint USAID as a malevolent force built up in recent years in relatively fringe internet circles, only to be suddenly elevated and acted upon by Musk. The pattern is similar to one that played out with the so-called Twitter Files in 2022, when selectively framed narratives and out-of-context internal documents were weaponized to fuel allegations of a grand government censorship conspiracy. And it is one likely to continue under Trump and Musk, who have histories of trafficking in falsehoods.
[…]
A key voice behind both the Twitter Files and the USAID conspiracy theories is Mike Benz, a former Trump administration official-turned-conservative researcher whom Musk has promoted and interacted with on X more than 40 times in the past week.
Benz, a self-described cybersecurity expert who briefly worked as an assistant deputy for international communications for the State Department under Trump, started tweeting about USAID in 2022. He framed its funding of a handbook on disinformation from a nonprofit democracy consortium as evidence of an agency-run global internet censorship program.
Over the next two years, he posted waves of tweets and dozens of hours of video presentations marked with highlighted texts and red notes, scribbles, circles and arrows, flicking at a sprawling narrative of USAID as a covert operations division of the CIA in which staff members sought to enrich themselves, spread leftist ideology at home and abroad and harm Trump. The theory alleged that USAID was behind the mass censorship of Americans, as well as global efforts to manipulate social media, rig elections and quash dissent.
“Benz runs the same playbook every time,” said Renee DiResta, an associate research professor at Georgetown University and author of a book about how fringe creators, including Benz, increasingly influence public opinion. “He picks a villain, pretends it has ties to the CIA or some ‘deep state’ and acts as if he has inside knowledge when he’s really just decontextualizing public content. The remarkable thing is that the masters of the universe seem to repeatedly fall for it.”
Few seemed to question Benz’s qualifications, and fewer still seemed to be aware of his identity as a former alt-right vlogger, a self-described white identitarian who posted videos under the alias Frame Game alleging a mass censorship conspiracy against white people, with links to Jewish organizations, the U.S. government and social media companies. (After NBC News published an article connecting Benz, who is Jewish, to Frame Game in 2023, he said the account was a covert effort intended to somehow combat the antisemitism it espoused.)
This guy is now making big bucks on the wingnuts freak show circuit. So Elon Musk is destroying the US government on the word of some conspiracy hustlers on Twitter who are little better than QAnon.
It would still be terrible if Musk were the genius he pretends to be and was doing what he was doing. But it’s worse that he’s actually a drug-addled fool who’s gone down the idiotic Twitter rabbit hole. To see a country destroyed by such puerile bullshit is almost too much to bear.
From the book, “Character Limit” about Musk’s takeover of Twitter:
Trump at the National Prayer Breakfast: "The water comes down from the northwest parts of Canada, I guess, but the Pacific Northwest. And it comes down by millions and millions of barrels a day and uh, I opened it up. It wasn't that easy to do. But I opened it up and it's pouring… pic.twitter.com/UcHiv8uZRe
I like the bit at the end where he claims that his own plane uses a completely different air traffic control system from another country because it is better. https://t.co/8xPb5Kd8IV
Josh Marshall has been pushing the idea that the best opportunity for Democrats to stop Trump/Musk’s wrecking ball is in the upcoming budget and debt ceiling negotiations that have to be done my March. It’s almost impossible for the GOP to pass anything without Democratic help and the wild, extreme nature of what Musk is doing is having the effect of making Democrats band together. He writes:
The standard should be: no help on the budget or the debt ceiling until the lawbreaking stops. Period. End of story. No wilding gangs marauding through the federal government. End the criminal conduct. Period.
That’s it. No nuance….
If you’re concerned about the constitutional crisis, I would use every opportunity to convey to lawmakers that a flat “no” on any assistance until the criminal conduct stops is the only acceptable position. It is the right thing to do, the constitutional thing to do and it is the only path that holds the possibility of meaningfully changing the situation in the short to medium term. It also demonstrates and shows an understanding of how to use power. And that is something the opposition desperately needs. Make them come to you.
I more or less said the same thing actually a while back only I phrased by saying they haven’t o get rid of Musk and DOGE, period. I think it pretty much amounts to the same thing.
Trump is very exercised about the debt ceiling and very angry that they didn’t raise it before he took office. That’s the leverage point. People are waking up to the chaos and the consequences of a government shutdown will accrue to the Republicans (as if always does) because they are in charge and should be able to get it done without the Democrats.
Meanwhile, Republicans still can’t agree on whether to do one big bill or two. Here’s the state of play from Punchbowl News:
As Johnson and the House Republican Conference search for common ground between unyielding conservative hardliners and everyone else, the Senate has gotten tired of waiting.Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham(R-S.C.) announced that he’s going to mark up his own $300 billion budget resolution next week, throwing a massive wrench into Johnson’s plans. Graham announced the budget-resolution markup as Johnson insisted that the House needs to move first.
The Senate’s budget plan won’t look at all like what the House is envisioning. Graham’s proposal would include $150 billion for the Pentagon and other defense programs, plus $150 billion for border security, including Trump’s border wall. There’ll also be energy policy provisions. Graham says the new spending will be offset by cuts to mandatory programs, but he didn’t say which ones.
Graham and Senate Majority Leader John Thune want to hand Trump an early win on the border, defense spending and energy policy — something the president might find attractive. Senate GOP leaders plan to return to extension of the 2017 tax cuts later this year with a second reconciliation package. If the Senate passes its budget resolution before the House moves, it would put the Senate in the driver’s seat in dictating the legislative contours of the 119th Congress.
Meanwhile, Johnson, House Ways and Means ChairJason Smith (R-Mo.) and Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) want a single reconciliation package that includes the totality of Trump’s agenda, everything from border security to energy to tax cuts. House Republicans think one bill is easier to pass than two.
Graham’s gamble —and it is one — may not make it through the House. Graham and Thune admitted as much during the Senate GOP lunch Wednesday, according to multiple Republican senators who attended the session. Yet Graham and Thune insisted that something had to be done, adding that they had little faith in Johnson or House GOP leaders.
This Senate drama shows how badly Johnson is getting squeezed on every side, just weeks after he barely survived a vote to be speaker. And that was only because of Trump’s direct intervention. Conservative hardlinersspoke up in a closed party meeting Wednesday, telling Johnson that they want two reconciliation bills, not one. A number of conservative hardliners — Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and others — are backchanneling with Senate Republicans to urge them to spoil the speaker’s plans.
So far, Trumphas deferred to Johnson’s one-bill strategy. But the president has left the door open to the idea that two bills may be easier. And there are White House aides who privately agree with Graham, not Johnson.
House and Senate Republicans are sniping at each other with some worried that if they don’t do their precious tax cuts early they could find themselves backed against a wall next fall when they run out. It’s a big mess and there is no reason on earth that Democrats should even think of bailing them out under these circumstances.
Puck reported this a couple of days ago:
Senator Patty Murray usually flies under the radar—she’s not a social media hyperventilator—relying on her considerable power as the vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee to talk for her. So it was notable that, while news cameras flocked to outraged Democrats protesting Elon Musk, Murray firmly told Punchbowl that it would be “extremely difficult” for Democrats to agree on a spending bill when the president was “illegally blocking” funding approved by Congress. “Democrats and Republicans alike,” she warned, “must be able to trust that when a deal gets signed into law, it will be followed.”
For those versed in Murray-ese, her commentary could be interpreted only as a shutdown threat. Given their margins, House Republicans can’t pass spending bills without Democratic votes unless they achieve near total unity within their conference—a mathematical reality that gives otherwise powerless Democrats their only serious leverage. Indeed, Murray’s seemingly dry statement caught a lot of attention around the Hill.
It would not be the Democrats shutting anything down. The Republicans have the majority. If they can’t round up enough votes to pass their agenda that’s on them. If they want Democrats to help them out they have to give them something in return and Democrats want this DOGE bullshit to stop. If Republicans don’t want that then they can figure out some other way to pass their bills.
Unfortunately, the press is characterizing this as the Democrats “telegraphing a possible willingness to play chicken with the global economy” but they really shouldn’t care about that. This is too important.
Of course, when Republicans make such threats, they typically extract a few concessions, dutifully cave, and wind up dealing with the opposition to pass a compromise bill. Threats, as Donald Trump will tell you, are just jumping-off points to start negotiations. (See: tariffs.) But there are reasons to take Murray more seriously than the more prolific blusterers of the Senate. She’s the most senior Democratic senator, at the peak of her powers. She’s a close ally of minority leader Chuck Schumer, and she’s not known to go rogue. When Murray speaks, it should be assumed the entire caucus is behind her. She is, moreover, one Democrat that Republicans actually listen to. And whatever the fate of spending negotiations in March, she has crystallized how Democrats see their dispute with Musk: as a war for Congress’s very survival as an independent branch of government.
I have a sneaking suspicion there are a few Republicans who will be glad to see the Democrats take a hard line on this. They’re too cowardly to buck Trump but I believe they’ll play the game to the Democrats’ advantage if they see it could result in shutting down DOGE.
Keep in mind that Trump isn’t really into all this cutting business. It was never his thing. He thinks if he can do tariffs and drill, baby, drill he’ll get enough growth to erase the deficit without having to cut anything. But he’s willing to let Musk run with this for the moment because he’s bought into the shock and awe strategy. I just have a feeling that’s not going to last. Musk is getting too much attention and he’s making Trump look sort of weak and pathetic.
REPORTER: Do you have a reaction to the new Time Magazine cover that has Elon Musk sitting behind your resolute desk?
TRUMP: No. Is Time Magazine still in business? I didn't even know that. Elon is doing a great job. pic.twitter.com/AUXoNOed5F
As Paul Krugman said Friday, what the Musk and Trump are attempting is a self-coup with “the full support of every Republican in the House and the Senate.”
“The president is openly violating the law and Constitution on a daily basis,” Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, told The New York Times:
“We’re talking about the idea of whether the president has to follow the law at all,” Nyhan said. “That’s a sentence I never thought I’d have to say about the United States, but here we are.”
The GOP has not only rejected democracy, as David Frum predicted tardily six years ago., but the American experiment itself. The very idea of it. All that’s left of the Republican Party is crumpled bunting. It’s not clear if their goal now is the return of the monarchy or feudalism. Oligarchy is too soft a term. Trump wants to be king. He’s always wanted to be king. But Musk? He and his Silicon Valley chums want to be gods. Ill-tempered ones at that.
And a large faction of our neighbors, both the complacent and the violent, are prepared to allow it.
This week has felt like one of those nightmares in which you’re trying to run from a pursuer but your legs don’t seem to work.
What’s stunned us (even those who warned what was coming) is the speed and nastiness of Trump 2.0. Trump with his vengeance-palooza and Musk with his deep hatred of people who spend their lives in public service not trying to maximize their wealth. Trump thinks they’re losers out to get him. (He thinks the world is out to get him.) Musk, as evidenced by his palling around with racists and a eugenecist, really does seem to embrace a “master race” ethos. He wants inferiors not just out of the government but out of the gene pool. He’s as gleeful about his work as a Bond villain mowing down the hired help. (He’d find the comparison flattering.)
Musk is malware burrowing deep into the software of the United States, and no one is quite sure what he’s doing in there.
Also stunning is how Senate Democrats (unless I missed it) did not make more of an issue of Pam Bondi’s confirmation evasions by drawing a direct, very public parallel with Bill Barr’s confirmation and tenure as Trump AG. Barr elided through his grinning teeth during direct Senate questioning and then went to work serving as Trump’s personal attorney instead of guardian of the law. No one should have missed that that’s just what Pam Bondi would do the moment she was sworn in. But they missed the opportunity to state the obvious. Now that she’s launching investigations into a list of enemies she swore her department would never have, it simply looks like for Democrats it was fool me twice, shame on me.
I had been somewhat pessimistic about what I was seeing from congressional Democrats on this front. But starting yesterday they began to change their tune and started saying explicitly that the budget and debt ceiling were a key lever for them in handling the situation. That’s real progress. But I think the terms need to be sharpened a lot. The standard should be: no help on the budget or the debt ceiling until the lawbreaking stops. Period. End of story. No wilding gangs marauding through the federal government. End the criminal conduct. Period.
The long wait is over. After more than 20 months of pregnancy, Rose-Tu, a 30-year-old Asian elephant at the Oregon Zoo, gave birth at 4:29 p.m. Saturday afternoon. Staff are keeping their distance to give the pair time to bond, but the calf appears to be a healthy, strong female, weighing in the vicinity of 200 pounds.
“We couldn’t be happier with how everything is going so far,” said Steve Lefave, who oversees the zoo’s elephant program. “This was one of the smoothest births I’ve ever seen. Rose knew just what to do. She helped her baby up right away. The kid was standing on her own within 15 minutes and took her first steps soon after that.”
Zoo staff had been on baby watch since Jan. 29, when Rose-Tu’s progesterone levels dropped to near zero, indicating labor should begin soon. Rose experienced early labor throughout the day on Feb. 1 and began showing signs of active labor a little after 3 p.m.
Veterinary staff have yet to conduct their first check-up, but once Rose and her calf are ready, they’ll weigh the baby and confirm its sex. Based on their observations so far though, everything is going very well. “Rose is a fantastic mom,” Lefave said. “She’s so gentle and protective, and the calf is already nursing well. These are signs that they will have a strong bond, which is exactly what we want to see. We’re ready to help if needed, but so far mom and baby are doing just fine on their own.”
It might take a little time before the new baby is ready for visitors, Lefave says, but once they’re feeling comfortable they’ll spend time in Forest Hall, where guests can catch a glimpse of the smallest member of the herd. “We want to make sure the calf continues to do well and that Rose-Tu is calm and comfortable with people around,” Lefave said. “And we also want to give the baby a chance to bond with the rest of the elephant family.”
Considered highly endangered in their range countries, Asian elephants are threatened by habitat loss, conflict with humans and disease. It’s estimated that just 40,000 to 50,000 of them remain in fragmented populations from India to Borneo, and their home range overlaps with some of the most populous human areas on the planet — 20% of people worldwide live in or next to Asian elephant habitat.
The Oregon Zoo is recognized worldwide for its elephant care program, which has spanned more than 60 years. The zoo supports a broad range of efforts to help wild elephants and has established a $1 million endowment fund supporting Asian elephant conservation.
Yesterday Trump unveiled his priorities for his tax bill. Everyone needs to understand what’s going on here. It’s a massive tax giveaway to the rich and powerful, financed by deadly cuts to programs like Medicare and the ACA that help regular people. I explain it here — Chris Murphy
Yesterday Trump unveiled his priorities for his tax bill.
Everyone needs to understand what's going on here. It's a massive tax giveaway to the rich and powerful, financed by deadly cuts to programs like Medicare and the ACA that help regular people.
In a closed-door meeting with House Leadership today President Trump reportedly outlined his tax priorities. According to press reports, they included extending the expiring pieces of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA); expanding the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction; enacting tax breaks for goods made in America; cutting taxes on income from tips, overtime pay, and Social Security benefits; and eliminating tax breaks for carried interest and stadium owners.
Depending on the details of these proposals, our rough estimate is that a package of this nature would:
Reduce revenue by $5.0 trillion to $11.2 trillion over ten years.
Lower revenue by 1.3 to 3.0 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Boost debt to between 132 and 149 percent of GDP by 2035, if not offset, compared to nearly 100 percent today and 118 percent under current law.
This is why they need to eradicate as much government spending as they can. Musk and the boys need their tax cuts and Trump wants to deliver on his promises:
Obviously, this is just a wingnuts wet dream. But you can bet that the tax cuts for the wealthy and the corporations will go through on a party line vote no matter what. They always do. The big question is how much they’re going to take out of the hides of the rest of us to make it happen.
On Wednesday evening, one day into her tenure as U.S. attorney general, Pam Bondi announced the end of the Kleptocracy Initiative, launched by the Justice Department in 2010 to battle high-level corruption worldwide and return ill-gotten funds to victims of financial crimes. The former Florida attorney general and legal counsel to President Trump during his first impeachment trial, who spent the last several years as a corporate lobbyist, also closed the KleptoCapture task force, created under AG Merrick Garland in 2022 to target Russian oligarchs violating U.S. economic sanctions imposed because of Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine. Through the initiative, the DOJ has prosecuted frauds worth billions, recovering embezzled funds and seizing assets like megayachts and luxury condos.
The irony of this is simply overwhelming:
Bondi’s DOJ is now presumably free to spend a multi-billion dollar forfeiture fund of money seized through these efforts — otherwise repatriated to the nations it was stolen from — however it likes. That could mean anything from expanded contracts with private prisons (Trump has already reversed a Biden administration order that prevented the Justice Department from renewing such contracts) to new mass detention camps for immigrants in Guantánamo Bay and along the border.
Kleptocrats using the kleptocrats’ stolen billions. Sweet.
